As non-difficult things go, it is a difficult thing to have an organised father. It is a great hobby of his to organise nice things, and for that I am grateful. And yet his means of achieving this noble end often leave me weary. Take, for instance, the time I found myself embroiled in a plan to see the rugby at Twickenham. He had managed to get three of his four flighty children to commit to the event, which was the first battle won. But the real work came later, and this is the story of that work.
At the time the story begins, the match was only three weeks away, and not one of his children had yet downloaded the ticket onto their phone. Action mode kicked in for Dad. He knew he was the only one to recognise what a massive potential fuck-up this could be. He had only three weeks to ensure that the four tickets on his phone were distributed evenly amongst his children and him. He had the vision: one ticket per phone, each phone attached to one of the attendees at the rugby. Only he could make it happen.
So first, after a good night’s sleep, he sets up a WhatsApp group: ‘England Rugby Match’. Informative and formal, with each word capitalised to make sure his children are sitting up and noticing. Of course we are. Only 20 days to go, after all.
A message quickly follows: Please confirm receipt. I will post info here.
What you need to know about my father’s text messages is that they are dictated into his phone, including punctuation. So the above would read, ‘Please confirm receipt full stop I will post info here full stop’.
I reply: receipt of what???
Him: Receipt of the message!
That’s odd. The blue tick normally does the job. We all quietly ignore the instruction to confirm receipt. We are already messaging, on the group, about the message.
Instead, for want of something to say, I type: remind me of the date?
Confirmed in all his suspicions that he’s the only one holding this shit show together, he replies: 12th February. 11am-8pm.
9 hours??? I reply.
He doubles down. 90 mins travel each way. Get there early or face big crowds.
I’m still only counting six hours: three for travel, a generous two for the 80-minute game, and an hour to beat the crowds. But I don’t want any arguments, so I go with the flow, and say as much.
This earns me a kiss emoji: 😘. I’m grateful, and proud.
Niceties out of the way, he gets down to business: Please download the Twickenham Stadium app that looks like this and create an account. This instruction is sent as an appendage to a screenshot of the Twickenham app displayed on the home screen of his phone.
He continues: It will verify it and you with your phone number and email address. The verification code will take a couple of minutes to come through so don’t refresh. Just wait till you get the codes. Please let me know when you have done it.
These are extremely detailed instructions about how to, ultimately, get an app. But this close to the wire, he can’t take the risk of our downloading a sham app or getting bogged down in delayed and mismatched verification codes. That kind of stuff could set him back hours, possibly days. He needs to be sure we stay calm. Indeed, the message reeks of his having spent a frantic hour or two not waiting long enough for verification codes, refreshing, swearing, possibly speaking to customer services, deleting the app, re-downloading and eventually coming out the other side. His writing has the tone of someone who has seen it all – how very, very wrong it can go – and is now duty-bound to warn his children.
It’s a Thursday morning and I have nothing better to do at work, so I reply promptly. If I can ease his burden in any way, it is right that I do so. I download the app and, thank God, have no trouble with the verification code. It comes in first time, and I type it in clean. All in, start to finish, the process takes maybe one and a half minutes. Following his instructions to the letter, I now let him know I have done it.
An immediate response: Nice! I will need to transfer your ticket electronically. What email address did you use to register?
He’s very pleased, but he allows himself only a single exclamation mark, perhaps because multiple would require him to dictate, ‘exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark.’ In any case, he can’t let emotion interfere at this point. He needs to do some extremely complex work now: transfer the ticket ‘electronically’ – an instantaneous but risky procedure, with only a handful of weeks to do it.
The email address I used to register on the app is my one and only email address, the same one he has been emailing me on for 15 years. I didn’t bother with a fake account, not this time. I type it out for him.
A moment later: Got it? I mean the ticket.
Yes! I type, grateful for the clarification as to what we are talking about.
Hoorah! says he.
He permits himself a moment of celebration, a moment of lightheartedness, but at the back of his mind he knows that this is small victory. He has two more tickets on his phone, and the other children aren’t playing ball.
He leaves it a few days, and then comes back guns blazing. He has only 15 days to go before we present ourselves at that ticket barrier, all four of us, with four tickets paid and processed. But, at this point, it’s looking like they may not be evenly distributed between the phones. He has visions of being trapped behind an impermeable barrier, unable to pass his phone back to one of us to scan the next ticket. A righteous man in a high-vis asking him why he didn’t transfer the tickets to our phones. All against the backdrop of those big crowds he anticipates. He can’t bear it a second longer.
He messages the group which my siblings have still not confirmed receipt of. His tone is pleading. Sammy and Rachel, please download the App.
This time, Sammy responds. He has learned from my experience, and supplies his email address upfront.
S***********@gmail.com. Have downloaded the app and registered etc
This is apparently insufficient, and Dad follows up: What mobile number used?
Sammy: 07*********
This is the number that Dad is currently messaging Sammy on, and the only number Sammy has. Thankfully, the number checks out and the ticket is sent. Two down, one to go, 14 days till game day.
Over the next few days, he manages to wheedle Rachel into following suit by messaging her at various times during the working day. She’s busy; she’s training as a teacher but, while that may be important, it is not urgent in the way that this is. And what other choice does he have? Wait until the 90-minute train journey there to mention any of this? Do the electronic transfer standing by the ticket barriers, and risk a five minute delay, making us only two hours 55 minutes early for the match, rather than the three he had carefully mapped out? Simply scan the tickets from his own phone?
When, during a phone call five days before the event to discuss train times from London (would we want to be getting the 11:38 or the 11:44?), I ask him why, why he has done any of this, he replies with fervour: ‘The QR code keeps changing!’ He’s relieved to get this off his chest. I learn that it’s an extremely dynamic situation involving advanced technology, warranting a firm hand.
I can only assume he has spent the last three weeks opening and reopening the app, studying the intricacies of the black dots on the QR codes, and somehow, with forensic skill, identifying that a new one is being generated each time. No amount of planning can still them. It has clearly been driving him crazy and he has had to bear the strain of it alone. He was protecting us from the worst of it.
But as we talk it through, we reach a point of calm acceptance. He has truly done what he can. Come what may on the day, he can be proud of himself. My father can face those men in high vis jackets with dignity, knowing that true wisdom is to change the things you can, and to accept the things you cannot.
Isabel Kempner is a writer of personal essays and creative non-fiction. She also writes and performs comedy with her sister, Jess, as Jezebel. Find out more on Substack @jezebelcomedy