' Don't come down unless you're asked.' I can still hear those words ringing in my ears, from my adoptive mother ...Ooh must be..thirty years or more.what it really meant was don't come down again..full stop..
There's a little chapel in rural Cheshire just outside Winsford..with a neatly kept graveyard..there in peace I hope,lies my adopted mother and father..
I remember a teacher telling me once in school about a species of bird called the cuckoo...apart from it's well documented habit of pecking large holes in a tree trunk, little was known of a cuckoos' behaviour when laying it's eggs..I was reliably informed their eggs were laid in the nest of another species of bird.and I was in another nest.
My adoptive mother told me at an early age, that my real mother was ' no good, a streetwalker and didn't want me. '
I was born in a run down hospital in Wolverhampton in nineteen fifty two..along with my twin sister..Rose Millicent our birth mother barely grasped the reality of having twin babies and the nurses were left to come up with a name for us, Janet and John seemed the easy choice, characters from a series of childrens book of the time.Facts were Rose, our mother had seven children and my twin sister and I were the only two with the same father..my adoptive mother's assertion about her could have been believable..the truth was she a vulnerable young woman, with little family support..having children out of wedlock in the fifties was frowned upon by many.
My twin sister was adopted within three weeks, girls were said to be more popular for adoption at that time..I went home with my mother..Home for the first eight months of my life, would be a pokey little one bedroom flat above a Mangle repair shop in Potters Lane Wednesbury..it was home too, for Pamela an older half sister from a previous relationship my mother had..
Rose had very little money so had to go out cleaning a couple of times a day..I would sleep in a cramped cupboard at night and spend most of the day in an old squeaky pram..
At eight months old I was ' handed over ' to my adoptive parents...'like a piece of meat ' wearing clothes I'd seemingly grown into...continued...
There's a little chapel in rural Cheshire just outside Winsford..with a neatly kept graveyard..there in peace I hope,lies my adopted mother and father..
I remember a teacher telling me once in school about a species of bird called the cuckoo...apart from it's well documented habit of pecking large holes in a tree trunk, little was known of a cuckoos' behaviour when laying it's eggs..I was reliably informed their eggs were laid in the nest of another species of bird.and I was in another nest.
My adoptive mother told me at an early age, that my real mother was ' no good, a streetwalker and didn't want me. '
I was born in a run down hospital in Wolverhampton in nineteen fifty two..along with my twin sister..Rose Millicent our birth mother barely grasped the reality of having twin babies and the nurses were left to come up with a name for us, Janet and John seemed the easy choice, characters from a series of childrens book of the time.Facts were Rose, our mother had seven children and my twin sister and I were the only two with the same father..my adoptive mother's assertion about her could have been believable..the truth was she a vulnerable young woman, with little family support..having children out of wedlock in the fifties was frowned upon by many.
My twin sister was adopted within three weeks, girls were said to be more popular for adoption at that time..I went home with my mother..Home for the first eight months of my life, would be a pokey little one bedroom flat above a Mangle repair shop in Potters Lane Wednesbury..it was home too, for Pamela an older half sister from a previous relationship my mother had..
Rose had very little money so had to go out cleaning a couple of times a day..I would sleep in a cramped cupboard at night and spend most of the day in an old squeaky pram..
At eight months old I was ' handed over ' to my adoptive parents...'like a piece of meat ' wearing clothes I'd seemingly grown into...continued...
