It’s Father’s Day fairly soon. I’ve started getting emails asking me to consider relevant content for both the paper and online. And so my thoughts have turned to my dad.

He died four years ago, but it took another 18 months for me to find out. No one told me. My mum got a letter from HM Revenue & Customs which casually confirmed Dad’s death – and she told me.

When we contacted the undertakers which handled the funeral to find out more, they said he didn’t have any next of kin. He did, they just walked away from him a long time ago, and never looked back. Well, I never looked back until it was too late.

I tried to find out where Dad’s ashes were scattered so at least I’d have somewhere to belatedly pay my respects, but the friends who scattered them, eventually as they lay unclaimed for months it seems, didn’t want to talk to me.

I don’t know the man he became before he died. In the two decades after I walked away, we had no contact save a letter that turned up at my place of work saying we should talk, and he was sorry for what he did. But I know the man George Alexander Farbrother was with me, and my mum. He was a bully.

I used to be so angry about that. And while there was little I could do about his behaviour when I was younger, by the time I was 16 I was a strapping 6ft 1in and 14 stone rugby player, and more than capable of pushing him back, which I did.

I wonder, sometimes, if it was at least in part my fault he behaved the way he did. I was a kid with a smart mouth who questioned everything, because I wanted to understand everything. And I’ve always liked playing with words and never been frightened to disagree with someone if I think they are wrong. I was the smart-mouthed product of a private school, he was a football loving bloke who worked on the quayside. I’m too old to know everything now, but back then…

And I wonder whether I did the right thing cutting him out of my life so abruptly and completely. He had no contact with my family. I didn’t want him near my wife, or my daughter.

But now he’s gone, there’s a hole in my life I never expected. We weren’t in touch, and I hated the way he behaved towards me and Mum. But I always knew he was out there, somewhere. Most likely in the little three up, two down near Newcastle where I grew up. And that was always a comfort. There was always a chance – and in my mind a likelihood – of reconciliation.

Because, over what were to prove to be the final years of his life, there were a number of times when I came close to calling him. And now I never can. I suspect that will always be one of my biggest regrets.

I wish I had. I’d imagined we’d sit, and have a pint at the Benedictine, the working men’s club he liked to go to. And we’d agree we saw the world differently, but I was never going to have another dad, and I was his only son.

I forgive you, Dad. And I miss you.