A FEW YEARS AGO, I was messing about at home one Sunday when my mother called and told me my father was in an ambulance after sticking his hand down a woodchipper, but that I needn’t worry because “it wasn’t like that scene in Fargo or anything”. Fargo, the Coen brothers’ 1996 black comedy/crime thriller, was a favourite of my parents. I knew the scene alright: Frances McDormand catching Peter Stormare in the act of mulching Steve Buscemi; the chipper’s engine whining from the effort of a still-socked human leg; the snowy bank of a Minnesota lake repainted red…
So, Dad hadn’t been dismembered. But with my father, you could never be sure. Another weekend, in the winter of 1990, he cut off much of his left big toe with a chainsaw – then drove himself to hospital. It wasn’t until hours later that Dad rang us from hospital, the surgery a success. The sole clues to his absence were the chainsaw and earmuffs left uncharacteristically in the paddock, and the upturned boot beside them, which my sisters and I dared not look inside.
This time, my father had been
