What’s not generally known is that my grandad practically disowned my dad. This was because my dad wanted to sell my grandad’s farm. He didn’t just want to sell it, he wanted to develop it. He wanted to build forty unique luxury executive-style residences each to a different design and standing on between half an acre and three quarters with pre-landscaped gardens. My grandad’s farm was eleven acres. Eleven point seven to be precise. It was all he ever owned, that and the house he lived in. My dad announced his plan. My grandad would sign over the land to his son for love and affection. That is the legal term. My dad would develop the land, which he insisted on calling the site, and set aside one house for my grandad. That was his first mistake. My granny died in my grandad’s house. He didn’t want to move into an executive-style residence. You never saw anybody less like an executive than my grandad. He made his living growing vegetables, keeping pigs and a few cattle. When the tax relief for horses came in he bought a mare and bred foals. His back was bad idk like what happens to people’s backs? He used to say, Suzy my back is destroyed. When he stood up he would take five minutes holding his back and forcing himself to straighten bit by bit. That’s how I remember him – his hand on his back, straightening slowly like a branch that was bent for a long time. So my dad laid out his commercial proposition and my grandad listened and then he said, The best you can do now, Matt Regan, is bugger off home before I go upstairs and get the shotgun, for I’d just as soon shoot the arse off you as listen to you.

My dad made a second mistake. He thought my grandad was joking.

So my grandad went upstairs and came down with the shotgun with two number five cartridges in his hand.

My dad left.