Dads in their seventies

A dad in his 70s this year was born between 1947 and 1956, which puts his teenage years across the 1960s and the 1970s. That is the useful part: a ten-year bracket does not sit inside one decade, so the list below is drawn from both.

By seventy the direction of travel has usually reversed for good. For fifty years the house filled up; now it is being emptied, often deliberately, sometimes because a move is coming.

A present arriving into that has to be worth the space it takes, and most presents are not. The underrated answer is a replacement rather than an addition: the kettle, the radio, the reading light, the chair cushion. He has been putting up with the old one for years and would never spend the money on himself.

The most common miss. Another object. Also a subscription Dad has to remember to cancel, which is a small ongoing job disguised as a present.

If it is his 70th specifically, that is a different problem · a birthday has a date, and the date changes what works