My dad, Mikhail, is a pain. And I mean a pain. He is fifty-seven and lives in sheltered housing because he can’t cook. When I say can’t, I mean won’t. He sees that as a woman’s work, and when Mum passed, he just did not look after himself at all. I managed to get a place for him in a complex that specialises in the over-fifties. They bring him one hot meal every evening, a cold lunch, usually a sandwich, and he has cereal for breakfast.

There is a toaster; he could use it but won’t. It costs pretty much all of his pension to be there, only leaving him a few pounds for treats. His clothes, when he remembers and puts them in the laundry basket, get washed and ironed and returned. All he has to do is put them away. He doesn’t do that; he just leaves them where the service drops them off and wears them until the next laundry day. Sometimes when I go to visit, I put them away. He is quite capable of getting something out of his wardrobe or drawers, just not putting it in.

My mother should have had a medal for looking after him all those years. What did she get instead? Non-operational terminal sarcoma. Breast cancer, passing three months after the diagnosis.

Leo, my brother, is only marginally better. He hardly pops in to see Dad, but when he does, he never thinks to do simple things like putting Dad’s clothes away; I think they just talk football, United, and when is the current manager going to be sacked?

I took Dad out yesterday; we went to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. I thought he would enjoy it; if he did, he didn’t let on. I actually enjoyed it more than I had expected. Seeing Henry the Eighth’s armour showed just how ‘portly’ he was and also how short. He was much smaller than I expected; his reputation definitely exceeded his stature. Dad just said, ‘Tiny bloke then.’

The manikin with the samurai outfit didn’t impress him either; it was too ornate to fight in, it seems. We had a nice lunch in their café: soup and a roll, but the mulligatawny was too foreign, and the crusty bread scratched his mouth, and the butter wasn’t British. He wears me out.

Last month I took him on a private tour through Standedge Canal Tunnel, apparently the longest, highest, and deepest canal tunnel in the UK. We did the return trip, a trip of a few hours each way, with a Canal Trust guide that explained how it worked, how they used to use their legs to pass through, and in certain places there are links to the various railway tunnels that parallel it, and of course the ghosts found at several points.

“It was a bit damp,” was his comment.

The month before, I had booked an Airbnb in Whitby. “Let’s go and try their fish and chips,” I said.

“Batters not as good, tastes funny.” He just doesn’t get joy from anything.

I was sitting in Leo’s flat supping at a Diet Coke.

“You want some rum with that?” He asked.

“No, bro, I’m driving.”

“Well, you don’t have to.”

“You only have one small bed, bro. No.”

“How is Dad?”

“Same old, just moans at everything. He has been the same ever since Mum passed.”

“Oh, he seems okay when I go round.”

“That is because you just go round and talk football; you never do anything like put his clothes away, never take him out, not even up to the pub.”

“That’s all he wants to do, so that is what I do with him. The stuff you do, he has no interest in, seriously, why do you bother?”

“I just want him to have a bit of quality of life.”

“He isn’t interested. Mum was his life; she’s gone. He isn’t interested in anything else.”

“Oh sod it, I’ll have some rum in my next coke. One won’t hurt.”

Leo went and poured me a rum and coke, and I took a large swig. It tasted different from what I was used to.

“What is this, Leo? I don’t recognise the taste.” I took another drink; it was growing on me.

“Oh, let’s have a look. It says Spiced Jamaica overproof rum”.

“Well, it is a bit lush.”

He topped me up a few times, and then I realised there was no way I was driving anywhere. I berated him and called him a sneaky boy; his response was to tickle me. I hate being tickled; it hurts me more than it makes me laugh.

“Ouch, ouch, stop it,” I squealed, trying to poke him to make him stop; it just made him worse, and then he was pulling my blouse up and tickling me directly on my skin, fingers at my side and then on my boobs.

I tried to stop him, but it wasn’t happening, and eventually I managed to straddle him and pin his arms down. That quietened him, and then I realised my brother had a nice big hard lump in his trousers.

“Oh Leo,” I giggled, “your sister made you have a hardy.”