The Padre has been perhaps the quintessential (unessential?) old man at every year of his life so far. He has seen (but has rarely provided) service in The Navy, which he calls the seniors’ service.

Occasionally we meet up in one port or another and he tells me of his escapades and exhorts me to record them as dizains, or disdains as he calls that poetic form.

Several years ago an ex-nun who had read some of the Padre’s doings wrote to me that she thought she knew the Padre, that his name was John and that he had headed out to Miami in a single-engine plane and had never been seen again. The Padre made me reply to her that he was not real, that he had never met her, and that it actually had been a twin-engine plane.

Recently the Padre began pestering me (he calls it bringing up a suggestion) to bundle ‘his’ dizains into an ebook. He says that it will take the Jackdaw, him and me no time at all if we work together:

‘A pint of port,’ the Padre said,‘will do
the three of us. We shan’t be up that late.’