Meeting my Dad in a Bar in 1986

I sit down next to him on one of the high bar stools,

ordering a pint of golden because I know that's what he's drinking.

When the bartender raises a quizzical eyebrow,

my dad, age eighteen, leans over and explains that it's half lager; half bitter.

He smiles at me, and I imagine that somewhere, thirty-seven years in the future, he's saying, good choice kid.

There's a lot I want to tell him, and none of it that I can.

Back in my time, he always tells me how happy he is that his life turned out the way it did, so I can't meddle in things that happened before I was born.

It's enough for me to imagine what his reaction would be if I told him that the woman in a bar across the street will one day be his wife,

that he'll have three children and one dog and a house with a garden

and that he'll travel the world by her side.

Right now, he's riding the high of King Kenny's goal against Chelsea,

animated with the love of football that he still has

almost forty years in the future. Some things never change,

but he's eighteen years old, bringing in the finest racing pigeons

of the North West, and he isn't my dad yet.

That's why I'm here, to see who he was before he became

the man who helps me become

the man I'm going to be. He's just a kid in a bar,

ordering another pint of golden,

wondering if he'll ever get to say more than hello

to my beautiful mum, in the bar across the street,

smiling back at him all this time.