A close shave from beyond the grave

Some might say I got the thin end of the wedge, Dad.

You’d already donated your piano to the care home and my sister got your violin.

I got a couple of your old conductor’s batons. I wave them around occasionally when there’s an inspirational orchestral piece on the radio without knowing what the hell I’m doing.

And I also got this. Your old shaving mirror.

I think the house clearance was well advanced when it occurred to me to ask what had happened to it. Now it’s on my bathroom wall.

I doubt I’d have heard of Heath Robinson if it hadn’t been for you. You sometimes talked about him and the oddball contraptions he came up with, and I remember that every time I pull the mirror away from the wall on its concertina arms, to shave in better light.

And I think of you, shaving religiously every single day, while I hack away at several days’ accumulated growth, time after time.

I remember you occasionally sitting down for breakfast — because families did sit down for breakfast back then, before progress intervened — with two or three slivers of toilet paper stuck to your chin. Your regular reminder that the blade needed changing. And now mine.

That mirror brings us closer than any violin could have done, because I know how to work a shaving mirror.

It encircled your face for decades. Now it encircles mine. And particularly at this time of year, that symmetry is not lost on me.

Happy New Year, Dad. Wherever you are.