So who round here believes in ghosts? It’s a tricky one. I definitely believe in something,  though not the  ghoul in a white sheet variety. Which reminds  me of a strange thing that happened when I was at boarding school. Not ghostly but more creepy because it involved  real people , at least I assume it did, although the mystery was never solved.

Our all girls boarding school had large grounds and the older you got the further you had to walk through them to get to the place you were sleeping in. In this particular case a large  Victorian house called St C’s where the lower  sixth lived and then the more modern mews block where we had bed sits in the sixth form. To get to these you had to walk out of the main building, past the science labs and the guinea pig hutches ( there as pets not as experiments) and then down a long pathway with bushes on one side, a lawn on the other and past the ancient copper beech tree. All this was done with the aid of one light placed on the corner of the Biology block. So basically, not much. It’s worth pointing out that as an all girls school with extensive, easily accessible grounds and absolutely no security we did have more than our fair share of ” weirdos”.  It  was not unusual  to see gentlemen revealing themselves while we were playing tennis, or hanging about in the bushes looking hopeful. Bizarrely it never felt frightening or scary, more hilariously funny, which can’t have done much for their morale.  Then again you have to be pretty tragic to get off on exposing yourself to a pack of teenagers who are laughing like hyenas

One evening two of my friends had nipped outside to the bushes behind the guinea  pigs for a cigarette.The equivalent of the bike shed as we didnt have one.  In those days you could buy single cigarettes for about 2p and everyone smoked Players number six, though for a brief  period it was fashionable to smoke Consulate, a hideously foul menthol monstrosity. Then the rumour went round that they made you sterile , so everyone went back to Players,  with a brief and misguided  flirtation with Cocktail sobranis which we mistakenly all thought were the height of cool.

Anyway, they were both puffing away in the bushes sitting on the pile of logs the gardener ( who we called Ganglion on account of an unpleasant growth on his neck)  had stacked there,  when one of them heard a noise.  They turned to see a man step out from behind one of the trees wrapped in white bandages with a painted white face and painted genitals.  The pair of them fled in terror appearing screaming hysterically  in our common room. And so began the saga of the white man. For the next 6 months or so he was seen off and on around the same area, always in the dark, always to groups of two or three. When some of the teachers finally saw him they started to believe the rumours and put up more lighting. From then on we were made to walk in large escorted groups. Eventually he disappeared but nobody ever found out who he was.

I had my own strange encounter while I was at school. During a lesson our music teacher had forgotten to bring her briefcase and asked for a volunteer to walk over to her study and fetch it. The teachers lived in the same boarding houses as the pupils and she lived in St C’s  ( in white man territory ). She gave me the key and I set off.

Though it was over 40 years ago I can still remember the feeling of silence and calm as I let myself in through the front door and into the spacious hall, almost as if I was having a dream. As I turned the corner  I noticed an old man slowly making his way up the stairs. He turned and smiled at me and carried on walking to the landing and through a door. I skipped up the stairs after him but less than a minute later when I reached the  top he had completely disappeared. A couple of years later I lived in St C’s and the weird thing was that the door I remembered him walking through that day was simply not there. Apparantly before the house was taken over by the school an elderly couple lived there. Various other people had seen the old man throughout the years, though I did not find this out until afterwards.

Two inexplicable things happened the year after Tim died. One morning I got up and the house felt very cold. No hot water from the tap and the heating that usually clicked into life of its own accord was silent. I noticed the main switch that operated the boiler had been turned off.  I opened the fridge, no light came on. In those days our large fridge freezer was in the far corner of our kitchen. The plug socket for it was right behind it and the only way to get to it was to pull the fridge right out from the wall, no mean feat. I managed to manoeuvre it out and lo and behold it too had been switched off. 

The second was even stranger. I got home from work and let myself in. I could hear loud music coming from the attic which is where I sleep.As I got nearer the music faded away. When I got into my bedroom the Velux skylight was wide open and rain was pouring on to my bed. As you probably know,  these skylights require a fair bit of manhandling and there is no way they open themselves. And no way I opened it myself that day.

So you there you have it. Strange but true. I promise.

I never really thought of myself as a cat person, or a dog person for that matter. More a horse person if I’m honest. Back in the 80’s we were living  up Brixton Hill. One day a council workman knocked on the front door holding the upturned back of a telly, in which were a huddle of four  tiny kittens. ” If I can’t find someone to take them, I’m going to have to drown them”  he said. Well, I don’t need to tell you what happened next. 

They were very new, and their eyes hadn’t even opened. And so began my life as a multiple cat owner. They needed feeding regularly through a tiny syringe which took ages, and I carried them around with me in a sling. I even took them to work We had a complicated chart between us so that there was always someone on duty. Amazingly they all survived and moved to Camberwell with us. We kept two, Mr Sniff  ( who was in fact a female who went on to have more kittens of her own including Rev Banana and Desmond Tutu. Unfortunately my friend Stuart managed to tread on one of the other kittens with a hideous crunch, thus removing the need for re homing,  and Doolally. Jon next door had Boot ( who got pregnant very  young and had Norman Bates, herself a couple of sandwiches short of a full picnic ). I’m ashamed to admit I can’t for the life of me remember who took Beetle. The only thing I remember about Beetle was that he spent most of his days running up and down the curtains

Doolally  ( or Lally / fat Lall as we called him)  was a real character. He grew enormously fat, mosty because he spent his days wandering round the street pretending he was homeless and being taken in by various neighbours. One morning he arrived home for his evening snack sporting a large bandage on his paw. We had absolutely no idea where or who this had come from. A couple of days later I happened to be out in our street. Lall sloped past at the same time as one of the local policeman happened to be passing. In those days the Camberwell police station was functioning and had an entrance at the end of the road.   “Hello Ginger” he said,  bending down to stroke the ginger monster. ” His name is Doolally” I said. “Well” said the policemen, “he’s our station cat and we call him Ginger. He comes in every morning, has his breakfast  and gets inside a paper bag we leave by the gas fire for him. He spends most of the day asleep. He appeared with a cut paw the other day so we bandaged it up”. 

Lally’s third home was opposite . The rest of the  houses in our street were what was  known as sheltered housing, though from our experience there wasn’t much shelter. One of the residents had obviously been in the army or the war (or both ) and spent each  night marching up and down his bedroom listening to regimental marching band music. If you ever bumped into him in the street he would salute you,  though I never once heard him utter a word. Years later I was at the Oval waiting for a bus home and he suddenly appeared, tears in his eyes and  saluted me silently before disappearing off into the drizzle. Anyway, in the same house lived a sallow cheeked woman who took a fancy to fat Lall. Predictably she also named him Ginger and used to follow him down the street calling his name.

Over the next couple of weeks it got to the point when he was so fat he could’nt fit through the cat flap and on interrogation  Mrs Sallow cheeks  confessed that she fed him a tin of salmon twice a day. This combined with breakfast at the police station and the sub standard fare dished up at home meant he was in danger of exploding. 

Then one day she moved house. And Lally mysteriously disappeared. After a couple of days of searching and calling I went to see the sheltered housing manager who told me that Mrs S-C had indeed moved and had gone to Ladbroke Grove. And taken our cat with her. So we got in the car and drove up west. The flats were new , bleak and sparse. In fact when she answered our knock on her door it became apparant that  the only bit of furniture inside  was a large cage. Sitting on a cushion inside and looking very pleased with himself  was fat Lall. Literally the cat who got the cream. What had seemed quite funny on the drive up suddenly felt really sad. There was Mrs S-C  all on her own, without a stick of furniture, home comforts  or family and her only companion was the cat. But he was actually my cat and I wanted him back. We wandered around looking for the office and finally spoke to someone. I explained the situation and offered to get her another cat to replace fat Lall. We were told that no pets were allowed and that once they had realised he was there they would have got rid of him anyway. Shamefaced and feeling really mean , we bundled him up and drove back to Camberwell. I drive past those flats in Ladbroke Grove every now and then and I always wonder what became of her. 

Lally finally came to a gruesome end after we had moved to the house we live in now. He developed a habit of sleeping in the middle of the road..yes you can guess where this is going. 

We now have Gollum, a reincarnation of Doolally but much more of a wimp and definitely in touch with his feminine side. He is frightened of most things including leaves but we love him. And I also have Camberwell chickens but that’s another story. 

• Those of you who know me know that I simply hate fish. Even fish that you are convinced does not taste like fish.In fact, especially fish that you are convinced does not taste like fish.  A childhood in Japan was, according to family folklore, responsible for this. Some people simply can’t believe that I have survived to adulthood without extensive fishy feasting . I, on the other hand have had no problem, despite some near escapes. 
• When I was eighteen I went to work in a pottery high up in the mountains above Tokyo. Though there were lots of women around and about, I was the only western woman in our particular workshop, plus I had fair curly hair, blue eyes, smoked roll ups, laughed like a drain, and shock horror did not, nor did I particularly want, a husband. But the most astonishing fact about me and one  that resulted in minor celebrity status was that I did not eat fish. Even the person who ran the local supermarket who didn’t even know my name, knew  that I was the strange fishless foreigner in town
• The day before I was due to leave the pottery to return to Tokyo,  everyone got together and  threw me a farewell dinner.To avoid upset ( and any embarrassment on part of my hosts who were the most lovely people on this earth) I had already told a white lie on arrival , in that if I ate fish I would be taken very ill and would most probably have to be rushed to hospital. And so the meal started. Alarmingly no water in sight, only bottles of sake and because I was the guest of honour all eyes were upon me and every single time I put my glass down it was immediately re filled. 
• First course. One ( beautiful) bowl containing a raw egg. Much whisking and gulping of sake
• Second course . Hot steaming seaweed on bed of rice . All I can say is that seaweed is more fishy than fish. More gulping of sake
• Third course. Something in a shell..snail? Slug?Slimy sea cucumber?  It doesn’t  look like a fish. Get a grip. More sake
• Fourth course. Imagine long rashers of bacon rind without the bacon.Lack of cutlery made it impossible to cut in half to avoid gagging, coughing, spluttering. Emergency sake
• Fifth course Prawns.No comment though to be fair they don’t look like fish,  though that’s the extent of my compliment. By this time I was past speech and my mouth had gone numb on account of excessive sake, which was just as well
• Sixth course. bean paste cakes. I was almost out of the woods . Imagine chewing blu tac except it’s a pretty colour. More sake. Because it was there
• Then for reasons that escape me I got everyone to do a conga around the room and then sang the National Anthem while standing on ( and then falling off) the table

• Isn’t it funny how we have such firm ideas about what we like to eat and what we don’t?  When I was pregnant and very sick,   my appetite lost its way and there was very little I could face eating. In a weird and most unlike me way I became almost frightened of food, the smells and the very thought of it . Usually I drink numerous cups of Earl Grey tea throughout the day interspersed with coffee, but in those days even thinking about putting the kettle on was enough to send me out of the door and the sight of a teapot threw  me into  a nauseous panic. All the usual things like cheese, pasta, avocados, hummus, pickled onions, chutney, bread went out of the window, and my poor long suffering partner had to be ready at any moment to rush off and get me my latest craving .. custard, a pork chop, white rice..usually by the time he had returned I would no longer want it. In despair he once asked me if there was anything I did actually imagining being able to eat without being profusely sick. “Earth” I replied. Wisely he didn’t go and dig up the garden, preferring to wait until I moved on to more sensible items like pineapple chunks or leather.
• Things returned to normal after each of my three births,  when the first thing I asked for afterwards was a nice cup of tea. Followed by a cheese sandwich.With a gherkin.

         

Last week I joined a  group  which concentrates on the history of the  Camberwell and Peckham area. Some of the posts are  quite mundane ( school reunion requests/ people looking for family  etc) but mostly its completely riveting. Obviously being extremely nosey gives me an immediate head start, and I have become quite obsessed with it, so much so that I reach for my ipad every morning in eager anticipation of more photos of  long gone grocery shops, of street parties and local gossip.

Up the road, at the end of the  park is a large church, imposing, severe with pillars, stone steps and a statue of Mary at the entrance. In the 1970’s it  became derelict  and for a while lay empty. At one point around then our Housing co op was  in tentative discussions with Southwark Council about converting it into flats,  but this never came to fruition ( though it did in fact happen with another developer,  and the well appointed apartments were built  within the listed skeleton of the church and are still there).  I now know that the last vicar of the church was called Father Vile and that generations of  kids ( now adults ) used to scuttle past this  statue in terror as ” its eyes watched you wherever you went”. I walked up there this morning and indeed, it is rather creepy. It reminded me of a holiday house we went to in Cornwall where they had rather an imposing dining room with some less than imposing ( ie very bad) portraits. One of  them was of a crow like gentleman and indeed , wherever you sat  ..his eyes followed you. Anyway, the other snippet, (and very juicy one)  was that while the church lay empty, the crypt got broken into on several occasions and in one incident ” a coffin lid was removed, only to reveal the preserved body of a young man, complete with full red beard. On contact with the air his body immediately started to deteriorate”. I wonder if the residents  have any idea of these unsavoury activities,  as I doubt it was much publicised down at the local Estate Agents at the time

Another discovery  is  that around here ( and presumably everywhere else) pretty much every single street had a pub  on the corner, some to this day remain unscathed and unchanged , some standing though primped and preened beyond recognition, a few converted into churches of enlightenment and worship, but most long flattened and replaced by  the obligatory blocks of flats or Sainsburys local. Back in the days when a pub was a pub without Sky sports or wasabi flavoured peanuts.  And when “having one for the road” was actively encouraged

Even when I first came here there were still some good characters who frequented these establishments. The  large hairy man who sat in The Hermits with his equally large and hairy pet tarantula on his shoulder, bunch of grapes nose man   (named for obvious reasons),  Mr Warty  who ran the dry cleaners and used to sing country and western songs in a weird high pitched falsetto voice, the place  up the hill where rather than stand around  at the bar  the locals  cleared away the tables and played cricket. And courtesy of the group,  a fabulous story about a landlord who kept an owl in his cellar, wore a selection of whistles around  his neck which he frequently blew, and who used to fire a starter pistol at last order shouting “let’s be having you”. Mind you, last orders in those days were strictly 10.45pm on a weekday , 10.15pm  on a Sunday, though some pubs didn’t open at all on Sundays

It’s easy to become all misty eyed about the past, to imagine  everything was fine and dandy, with freshly baked pies in the larder and starched washing on the lines,  children playing safely in the streets, when nobody locked their doors. I  also imagine life was hard, cold and unforgiving, a time of uncertainty and change, of overcrowding and squalor, of making ends meet, scrimping and saving.

However the overwhelming emotion that comes through in all these posts is that there was  such a strong sense of community, a feeling  of belonging, a sense of place, of being part of a family, a school, a class, a gang, having a laugh, hanging around. I cannot help but think that today, in 2017 , with technology and the whole world at our fingertips, we have lost some of this along the way. 

The Ballad of Dog man
In Camberwell there lived a man

With fourteen dogs in his backyard

His shorts held up with baler twine

He liked to keep his bare legs warm

By rubbing them with lard
Each day he rummaged through the bins

His garden full of litter

Drank tea from empty dog food tins

And snacked on slabs of butter
His Georgian house had no mod cons

No heat, no light, no water on

Windows boarded up with tape

The front steps piled with clutter
Matted hair, greasy beard

Weather beaten cheeks

Eyes that looked right through you

When he passed you in the street
The story was he used to be

A teacher of photography

Extremely learned in his day

Then gradually he lost his way
One day he simply disappeared

Gone to the Maudsley so we heard

Sectioned and taken up the road

And his ramshackle house was eventually sold
In Camberwell there lived a man

With fourteen dogs in his back yard

His shorts held up with baler twine

He liked to keep his bare legs warm

By rubbing them with lard

Well.I am back in Sears St and there is obviously something wrong with the tea trolley as it hasn’t arrived. Its funny how the sounds around me feel so unfamiliar when by tomorrow they will be back in my brain as the most familiar to me. I can hear birdsong ( so there must be one other bird in Camberwell other than parakeets). I remember this time last year I was in Arizona and the birdsong was just extraordinary every morning.. real proper noisy squawking, totally different from anywhere here

Anyway, Monday morning on the ward was like Piccadilly Circus after the weekend. Poor old Mrs Staples was surrounded by at least 4 different people every 20 minutes or so, poking and prodding, nodding and scribbling notes.

The funniest thing happened. I never found out what happened to her, but it obviously involved her throat and neck ( hence staples). Up until yesterday she could make no sound at all and then suddenly we hear what I can only describe as pinky and perky gobbledygook coming from her bed. I assumed she was watching some kind of cartoon but then realise it was coming from her voice box. If you think of those chipmunks from whichever cartoon it was and speed them up that is exactly what it sounded like. Everyone laughed including dear old Mrs Staples. Not sure how funny it would have continued being for the next 24 hours but it was brilliant

So I went up to the torture chamber ( having had an interesting cocktail of drugs for an early morning) Good old Tash got out of bed to cycle up and hold my hand. It was actually not too bad compared to Fridays escapade. The swelling outside is down though very swollen inside and I am still very deaf but they decided I could go home in the afternoon

It felt quite strange to be leaving my new bed fellows and I felt guilty to be getting dressed when I know most of them will be lucky to be out anytime soon. Then again Mrs S was so desperately ill when she was wheeled in and is already talking like a cartoon character on helium and walking to the loo by herself

The human body is an extraordinary thing, not to mention the human spirit

So after hugs all round and promises to go and visit ( which I will) and 

armed with a plastic bag full of different drugs and drops I went home. And I am extremely grateful to be lucky enough to have had the option to do so.

Sent from my iPad

Another night of banging and crashing, with the added treat of there being none of the right antibiotics until the courier got them from another hospital which meant I finally got hooked up to my drip at 12.30. Again dealt with calmly by the lovely ward nurse, and certainly nobody’s fault here, but this is the second time the right drugs have been in the wrong place in 5 days so if its happened to me twice it must happen all the time.. why is this? Because of some bureaucratic malfunction? Mrs Staple is now up and has had a lot of her tubes removed. Incredible that after only 2 days she is able to hobble to the loo. Last night she was sobbing and I could hear the nurse reassuring her” that things would get better”. She had just seen her face in the mirror. A mass of bruises and scars with the ugly staples holding her neck together. I cannot imagine how long she will be here for.

So yesterday I ventured out into the sunshine of London bridge. I was collected by Lucas, Ig and Phoenix who got hold of a wheelchair and off we sped to meet Tashi, Molly, Tony, Ben, Eli and Henry in the pub. The term wheelchair should be used loosely. Yes, it was a chair ( of sorts) but not sure about the wheel.. or the steering

and it preferred to go round in circles rather than straight. Anyway, we got there despite a lot of strange looks from passers by. . Weird to be in the outside world which seemed very noisy and made me realise I am still pretty feeble really ( and very deaf). The London fog came down and there was something Dickensian about our procession of ragamuffins making our way through the winding streets in a proper “pea souper”. I think people thought we had nicked it and were on some weird hen night or something 

The fog reminded me of when we lived in Tokyo where our Japanese friends imagined we lived in a permanent Sherlock Holmes world of pea soupers and muffins with regular visits to Harrods thrown in for good measure

Anyway, it was huge fun, though a bit scary to be out in the real world again, strangely enough I felt safer being back in my bed here at 6.30pm .. interesting how quickly we become accustomed to being institutionalised. And how quickly little decisions become big decisions.. this mornings dilemma.. hot or cold milk on my weetabix? And how we don’t talk about the weather ( because we cant see it).. preferring to discuss the fine array of colours options on display on all the different hospital outfits. When with the ear specialist waiting for some sort of hideously painful torture procedure I found myself complementing him on the colour of his tunic. Well, yes it was a lovely winey magenta kind of a pink but really?  

So today is torture chamber show down day . Do I get to go home? Watch this space

As it is 4am here in hospital world it seems perfectly normal that we are all wide awake and sitting up in bed drinking tea .

Now I need to set the record straight, Mr Staples is in fact a Mrs. Nothing is quite as it seems when you

have been gulping down morphine with your PG tips and hob nobs
My introduction to morphine was mixed. While friends went a bit misty eyed and looked a bit envious at the thought, for me it wasn’t quite the golden experience I had anticipated. it did however give great cause for a lot of sniggering around me. When Tashi rang to tell me her ( brilliant) MA results, instead of saying “Well done” it came out as “Thank You very much”. Later on I apparently asked if I had indeed shot Justin , I do know a few Justins but bear none of them any ill will so I can only apologise.
I escaped a trip to the torture chamber (ear clinic) yesterday morning, a fact so very pleasing that it outweighed the news that I have to stay here until at least Monday. Even the nurse drawing an outline of the swelling on my face in black indelible pen, thus rendering me unsuitable for public viewing anytime soon did nothing to diminish my joy at not having to go upstairs and sit there while having a long needle like torture implement was wiggled about inside my ear. Basically the doctor took one look at it and said he couldn’t possibly do anything until the swelling had gone down. Or maybe he had read the notes about the deranged weeping deaf woman in bed 14 and decided it was better to leave the pleasure of my company to somebody else’s shift. Either way it was a triumph this end
These nurses are extraordinary.Resiliently cheerful, calm and reassuring throughout the long days and even longer nights. They have already been in 3 times to change the bedding 2 beds up .And here they are, the salt of the earth, the people who look after us when we are at our most vulnerable, in pain, away from home, frightened, and yet some politicians seem to think this country would be better off without the NHS..
Last night after all the visitors had gone, the nurses pulled back all the curtains round our beds so that the 6 bed ward became one large room. Initially I felt a bit territorial , well not territorial quite, but a bit as if my privacy had been invaded. But then I was reminded of something I heard on the radio from somebody who worked in a care home in particular looking after patients with dementia. She said that at dusk , human beings ( and animals ) have a natural urge to go home. to nest for the night, to re group, to settle. This struck me as incredibly moving, particularly in a group of people who have mostly lost track of time and place in the every day sense, but it is still within. A bit like when Mole needs to find his home in Wind in the Willows. Anyway, last night something very wonderful happened. We came, blinking out of our own curtained cocoons and sat on each others beds and talked. I cannot believe the ghastly procedures that each and everyone has been through. making my troubles pale into insignificance. I was talking to a lovely young woman who has been in and out of hospital with mouth cancer.Without wishing to go into the details, during her latest operation the surgeons replaced the roof of her mouth with skin grafts from her ankle. She can now swallow properly for the first time in 2 years. She stated quite simply that they had saved her life.
Obviously everything is relative. Im not going to pretend that ear infections are fun. Incredibly painful doesn’t really do it justice, But I count my blessings and will never ever underestimate what others go through on a daily basis.
And those of you who know me well will know that I must be getting back to normal because I have actually just raided the emergency cheese supply in my cupboard. I need to emphasise that it was a very small yet highly satisfying portion. and at 5.28am I can think of no better start to the day. Well. yes I can actually but we work with what we have at the time
Hares and rabbits everyone, Cant believe its November

Having spent the last couple of days in hospital with a severe ear infection with the right side of my face swollen like a pumpkin ( it is after all Halloween) it’s funny how quickly one loses track of time and place. I have no idea if it is light or dark, sunny, rainy, there could have been a freak blizzard for all I know as haven’t glimpsed daylight /night sky since I got here.Its a bit like being on a cruise ship though sadly without the entertainment (Steve Rawlings). And it’s impossible to get any sleep whatsoever.Last night I got a new neighbour who seems to have his neck stapled together.. Obviously he needs regular attention but the trouble is this involves the main light being turned on each time and his curtains round his bed being swished open, his bed being cranked up with the best Hammer house of horror creak.Then the nurses come to check my blood pressure and temperature and give me more drugs.Poor stapled man moans all night ( as I would, with a stapled neck) and he has a machine going that sounds like a washing machine … Maybe it is.In my morphine be fuddled state anything is possible .Each morning I get wheeled upstairs to the torture chamber ( ear clinic) to see Raj, the ear specialist .He sticks a long pipe into my infected ear and tries to suck as much gunk as he can out before I start screaming .Not recommended for a fun way to pass the time of day.But the nurses are brilliant and everyone very kind towards slightly deranged mad woman who snivels a lot.And then I meet the lovely woman in the bed opposite who has serious heart problems with all sorts of drips and wires and has been in this ward for a month.There’s me hoping I might get out this weekend and she is hoping she might get out by Christmas .I am indeed very lucky all round

I cannot imagine what it must be like to have to give your baby away. I remember you told me that they took the babies away on a Tuesday, from the mother and baby home that you were sent to in Putney , far enough away for your father never to find out. A place full of young women who had done nothing wrong other than to get pregnant out of wedlock. A place drenched in unspeakable sadness and tragedy.
I knew nothing of this until I contacted Westminster social services as a 38 year old mother of three and was then sent a letter with your name. Suddenly you had a name. And strangest of all, I had another one. You had called me Caroline. I took the bus to Pimlico and was ushered into a windowless office where I was handed a file. All about me.

Amongst the scrappy bits of badly typed notes I found a copy of a letter that you had written to the adoption people after I had been given away. It stated that you had made a mistake and that you wanted me back. There was a copy of the reply from the authorities, so brutal and harsh that I could hardly bear to read it. In no uncertain terms it stated that you were a foolish young woman and that it was not an option to upset ” the charming young couples first Christmas with their new baby”. In other words, you made your bed, so lie in it.

Where was the support and care for you young women ? How could you manage to cope? At a time when your hormones and emotions were raging. You were given no compassion, no counselling, nothing.

Based on the information I found in my file I set about tracking you down. Pre internet I relied on a visit to St Catherine’s House in Holborn. A place of searching and questions, of people pulling down large leather bound books and poring over them. I very quickly found your marriage certificate and then while hunting through the phone book I found you. Later on I found out that your husband had paid to have your name put in capital letters in case I ever tried to find you.

I wrote to you, pretending to be researching my family tree , and the next day you rang me. Three weeks later we met. For the first time in my life I was standing next to someone who looked like me. You said that you had thought of me every single day and that on the 2nd August ( my birthday) every year you would go away by yourself and weep for me. And that you would die happy because we had found each other.

You also persuaded me to find my birth father. Because you said we were so alike.

And indeed we were,  more than I can say. But that’s  another story.