North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Jean

a few people when I was younger used to say like who knew I was adopted, em, do you never think to, but I was always led to believe me parents were dead

Rod:     Ah right

Jean:     It wasn’t actually said out right

Angie:   They just implied it

Jean:     Just aha and like I say me mam not long before she died em, because me mam was a very open person wasn’t she? Ye know she didn’t like the idea of keeping and a mean she’d kept it all that time and she told us, ye know, a few things what she thought I should know and bless her a think she was more or less saying to us, ‘our Jean, if you want to, you know if you don’t think it’s too late go, go ahead’

Rod:     Cause obviously you had to consider them as well

Jean:     Yeah aha and when I lost me mam I did lose apart from her being me mam, a lost a very good friend, a very good friend, cos she was funny wasn’t she? Like I say she was very open and that

Rod:     Well my mum was very much like that near the end as well in the latter years when I lived, a mean I got a flat as soon as I could but it wasn’t because me life with me mum, I was very independent and em, from about 15 stroke to 18 nearly when, when I lived with her, it was a good life, there wasn’t any problems there and we used to visit all the time didn’t we? And just coming from work used to pop in Saturday mornings pop in, she was a great lady she really was

Jean:     In my life I mean I was married young through choice you know you think you know what your doin, but it ended up pretty disastrous it was a pretty nasty em, ordeal and for sanity’s sake and for like Lee and Cheryl em, thought gotta get out of this because they were seeing things what children shouldn’t have

Rod:     Well yes it’s not fair

Jean:     You know and it can effect them, and it took us a long time, didn’t it Norman?  For to em, was by me self like with me children it was them and the home and I can keep a roof over our heads and also, and Norman and I have known each other well practically nearly all our life’s

Chatter

Jean:     Like our parents lived round the corner from each other you know, well as we do now from them! Em, then Norman and I got together and I learned to trust him greatly

Rod:     That’s more important the second time it’s a friend before it’s a lover isn’t it

Jean:     Well it was wasn’t it?

Rod:     We were like that em, I’ve known Angie 20 years, met her at disco

Angie:  28 years actually

Rod:     28 years is it god! When’s me birthday? I am terrible for that I am

Jean:     em, and like I say we, we got together and me mam was just inundated, over the moon, you know, because em, she new Norman as a person, she new well she thought the sun shone out of you didn’t she, me mam em, and a mean she used to say to me, ‘a know you’re safe and I know your happy so I’m contented’

Rod:     aha well a think mothers do think that you know I mean my mum our Winny’s first marriage split up, my first marriage split up, Angie’s first marriage split up, you know it’s life

Angie:   there’s a lot of it about!

Jean:     isn’t there!

Rod:     Well you see you tend to get together through this stupid thing love if you like when your young it’s infatuation and then when the reality hits you about money and bills and that oooh your away with the mixer

Jean:     Aha yeah well a mean like a say we had Warren, but I mean Normans been well both Lee and Cheryl, Norman is their father you know

Rod:     Same with Angie’s Paul.  We got together, friends when we three, but I wouldn’t live with Angie a wanted to get married.  A didn’t want Paul to come to an environment with an uncle.  So we got married, and then we brought Paul up really.

Jean:     Aha we had the same cause we had Warren em, and eh, and a mean him, we had a bit of a hard time with Warren, at first we nearly lost him a few times em, through a virus off meningitis and then he took severe asthma, we nearly lost him a few times then as, a mean, as he’s grown older, hopefully the asthma isn’t getting very far and er, but we had some hard times, didn’t we?

Rod:     So how do your children feel about you sorting out family?

Jean:     Me daughter Cheryl, who Andrea’s met (laughing) just thinks it’s absolutely wonderful

Rod:     So how old’s Cheryl?

Jean:     Em, Cheryl will be 25 in July.  Lee keeps asking how things are going and are you alright mam you know?  And Warren says ‘well can I not come’?! Lee’s, well Lee’s 30 next March, still at home, he’s been away a few times like a boomerang he keeps coming back, but he has a lovely fiancé erm Eve, erm and like a said we’ve got an extension on the house and we think it’s well like, they think it’s their flat! Like I say Cheryl’s got two lovely children, Kane who is

Norman:  No she’s got one!! The other one’s a little swine!

Rod:     Aha Damian!

Norman:    It’s Keisha that’s she’s a little swine she is!

Jean:     I keep saying this Kane’s so laid back he’s nearly horizontal he is, where Keisha’s a very you know

Rod:     Ben and Rie yeah

Jean:     beautiful a mean you just can’t but help but laugh at her because some of the sayings she comes out with for her age

Andrea: [adoption worker]   Coffee, Tea?

Jean:     Please Andrea if you don’t mind.  Some of the things that she comes out and says

Rod:     You get a lot of pleasure out of kids

Jean:     Ah yeah

Angie:   I’m going to my son’s to collect the grandchildren on an Friday night and a go in and the little girl Rie is ready and waiting and I say where’s Ben says, ‘Damian will be here in a minute’

Jean:     How old are they?

Angie:   Rie’s three and Damian’s 18 months!

Rod:     Together there wicked but apart there brilliant.  We have one on a Monday night and one on the Tuesday night and we have them both on a Friday night right through till Saturday tea time but they’re, they’re great. I mean, they really are

Jean:     Well Kane was over last evening and he was like out in the garden and that helping, helping you and that wasn’t he? because we’ve been having to renewal of the roof on our extension Normans clever at things like that em, so the scaffolding was up

Rod:     Thank god someone in the family at last that can do something! (laughing) You know, one of them things, you have a huge family and nobody but nobody can repair or build anything in our family!

Jean:     There’s one thing I can say about my husband he’s em,

Rod:     As a say our George is very talented.  I mean obscure stuff like glass etching and that he’ll pick a glass up and he’d yeah he’d do that or he’ll do ‘ah am gonna lay a new floor’ and he’ll put click flooring down no bother or he’d put pine beams up

Jean:     Our Cheryl’s

Angie:   What about he made a bed, for the little-uns

Rod:     Aha.  He made a bed oh his bedroom fantastic he did the Tyne Tunnel on the wall with the road coming out, coming down the wall, across the floor and up the other side and disappearing up to a roundabout.  So the bairn could play with his cars on it and he made his bed as a car, you know and oh it was amazing

Jean:     Cheryl’s very talented like that a mean.   Cheryl’s classed now as disabled em, through a condition in her leg’s and her hips em, a can’t even pronounce the word; we’ve tried operations with her because she’s been told she’s too young to have any joint replacements because of their life span she could need quite a few em, but she’s very talented she’ll have a go at anything.  She loves art, like Keisha’s bedroom she designed herself and that, the flooring, well both her and Jay you know like together, you know like she put the wood flooring and that down, you know but eh, it must

Rod:     There must be something there!

Jean:     That’s the latest of our grand children

Rod:     Ah ah Rei!

Angie:   Oh, she’s very like our granddaughter

Rod:     She’s very like our granddaughter!

Jean:     Is she?

Angie:   They’re not actually blood related but she is

Rod:     She’s very like her, when we put bunches in her hair like that

Jean:     Well Keisha decided to take hairdressing up last week and cut hers, a fringe, with paper scissors believe it or not?    

Rod:     Little lads a bonny load, good looking little lad [looking at photos]           

Jean:     Well, Keisha is very like what Cheryl was at that age. Ye know, very like I says, I was going to bring,

Norman:    [?????]

Rod:     You’ll get wrong later [to Norman]

Jean:     ….when she was younger

Norman:           Cheryl was very, very shy

Jean.  Oh, no I’m on about looks.  But erm. Well they are, they’re lovely to have….. Keisha will follow Norman round, and she tries to copy every stair he walks.

Rod:     Ben does that with Rie

Jean:     He either puts her hands there or there.  She’s three, she’s going in to nursery in September.

Rod:     So’s Rei

Angie:   Right

Jean:     Which, y’know …. she needs to interact with other kids.

Rod:     Yeah, Rie’s got the same thing …. too old.  She’s been with adults too long, sort of thing.

Jean:     Well, mind, I think Keisha was mine

Angie:  I think some of them are

Jean:     Like if Cheryl is chastising her a bit and that, and she’ll ‘umm, ummm’.  She’ll say, ‘Keisha, I’m the mam’ and Keisha’ll go, ‘and I’m the Keisha’

Rod:     Rei’s explicit with her hands, she’ll say, ‘I’m telling you what I want, will you listen’.  Ye know enunciate, ‘Will you get me!!’  (laughs)

Angie:   I was taking her somewhere the other week, I had stopped at a junction, it was dead busy and she’d been talking none stop all day and I’d said to her, ‘will you just be quiet for a couple of minutes so nanna can get across this road without having an accident.  ‘Well nanna, if you won’t talk to me I’ll have to talk to myself’.  I thought, oh alright pet then, sorry.

Jean:     That’s just like our Keisha, and stubborn.

Rod:     Ah yes.  Bloody minded is what comes to mind.

Jean:     Really, really, really I don’t know where she got that from.

Rod:     I know where Rei gets it from, her mother.

Jean:     but er, no I mean, ye know I’m proud of them and that.  Lee the oldest one, he used to work with Norman but there was like redundancy factor and,  Norman’s been there for years and years and it was other people and that

Rod:     Last in, first out is the most

Jean     ….. unannounced sort of thing, and he has tried a couple of things for himself.  He wouldn’t sign unemployed, just wouldn’t, he was adamant about that, really very

Rod:     There’s no stigma now.  The important thing now is to get your stamp

Jean:     That’s what we said

Angie:   But it’s nice that the lad

Rod:     Oh, yeah

Jean:     I’ll see if I can go down my own road. He’s started a little bit of a business up ……rehearsal studios.  It’s going, it’s hard cos overheads and he doesn’t get much.   It’s getting more established like but

Norman: Arthur Daleys

Jean:     He’ll go everything from pop

Norman:  He’s on about going to college now and do all the, do ye know the gas conversion?  He’s on about doing a course on that and get himself in to business in that.

Jean:     Him and his friend.  So, they have been saving up like billyoh cause they have got to go down to London

 

Rod:     I’m surprised they haven’t gone into meter reading.

Jean:     for to do it

Rod:     They’re always crying out for meter readers and they pay good money for them.

Jean:     He mustn’t have thought of that venture.

Rod:     Yes they do, the pay a lot for meter readers and there is a lot of hours to be worked

Jean:     Just now he’s working for an agency, erm, to keep himself, ……boom boom rooms, what’s coming in and as I say the overheads and that.  He’s got to keep his prices down because even on that side of it like, up in the town, and everything the prices are extreme and, believe it or not, there’s a lot of students and that who go, for the likes of that.

Rod:     They have their ideas don’t they and want to put them

Jean:     Yes, they have.  And so.  He’s got like his people who go every week and that.

Norman:  He’s got a band going down to London.  Must be well very, very shortly

Jean:     ha,ha

Norman:  cause they have got a contract for a big rehearsal down there.

Jean:     Like for a record so.  I mean it has had a few mentions in the local paper and that, so it but

Rod:     He has done the right thing, starting early and doing that.  We’ve, over the last ten, fifteen years, we’ve had three shops; we’ve always worked in between because things haven’t worked out.  We are doing one now, collectable toys.  Now, the shop is OK, the business is good but it’s not dependant on a shop.  I do a lot outside the shop.  We’ve been doing that

Angie:   We are now in a position where we can risk a bit because Paul’s not at home we don’t have the responsibility now.

Rod:     But I wish, what I am getting at is that now what your lad is doing, if I had started stuff like that earlier – got the experience OK, fell down a bit, got up a bit, went back to something but then got a grip of it.  I would have done well

Jean:     I mean like, like now, Warren if 14 at Christmas, erm, and mind he’s getting, he’s Warren’s like at school and that, ye know

Norman:  Think he is going to turn out the same way as me

Jean:     Right happy.  He can put his hand to anything but he keeps saying,

Norman:           Oh aye

Jean:     He was on about the Air Force, but with the asthma and that, well, ye know, later on, but like erm, he will be doing something with his hands like won’t he?  He’s very

Rod:     Be a craftsman of some sort

Jean:     Just made a flagpole, there, hasn’t he?  For his England flag, the pulleys and everything

Rod:     In retrospect I wish I’d joined the Air Force.  That’s what I’d fancied but ye know when you are a kid, it’s like a long way from home, a long way from your mates and you never take the plunge but I wish I had have done I really do.

Jean:     And like his work at school and that.  We have had to pull him up a little bit last report.  Not, he’s, his results were still good but it was like the reports off the teacher ye know.  I think they all go through it at some time.

Rod:     Are they still listening to you, that’s a plus isn’t it

Jean:     Yeah.

Rod:     I was, up to about fourteen and a half and then we lost it.  Lost the plot.

Angie:   We knew nothing, we understood nothing

Rod:     And we’ve struggled with him ever since.  A great disappointment.  I mean.  I’ve got three children, I’ve got twin girls, and a lad.

Jean:     Twins?

Rod:     Yeah, don’t know where they come from!  Now, they are totally individual honestly, they are so different, but in the early years ………… from my wife to me er, it’s, I’ll give you the story and bore ye tonight.  Anyway we split up and I wasn’t allowed access to the kids.  So I had to leave it for a number of years when the kids made their own minds up er.  Mark was a bit of a problem, the laddy.  One of the girls, I’ve always got on very well with Susan, she’s very easy to get on with.  She’s made her own life.  Not the best life in the world.  She manages very well, she just gets on with it.

Angie:   She never asks anybody for anything

Rod:     Doesn’t ask anybody for help, she just gets on with it.  She loves kids.  She’s got about five now I think.  She thrives on, she’s an earth mother.  She loves kids, ye know, she’s surrounded by animals and kids.  She wants to … oh it does my head in but I get on well with Susan.

Angie:   She’s happy, they are all well cared fed and well looked after. 

Rod:     She’s latched on to this poor lad who’s a motor mechanic, who works all gods hours, so he finances her from that side, so she’s happy and pleases his self after that.

Angie:   They are getting on very well.

Rod:     Our Wendy is a stuck up bitch because she has done so well for herself, she’ll have nothing to do with the family well not my side.  No contact with me in her life.

Jean:     Oh right.

Rod:     She had a granddaughter about two years ago, well she had a daughter and we’ve had no contact with her what so ever.  She

Angie:  She only keeps in touch with Pauline because she baby-sits for her

Rod:     That’s right, her mother baby-sits for her.  That’s my side.  Angie has got Paul, which we are working on!

Andrea:            Do you take sugar Angie?

Rod:     And that’s the children sort of thing.  My kids have got about, I think we have got about twelve grandchildren between us.

Angie:   Eleven, I keep counting them

Rod:     oh one

Jean:     sounds like her, Norman’s mam

Norman            She’s got

Jean:     There’s

Norman:           Five of our Paul’s, there’s six of our Carol

Rod:     Thanks Andrea [for coffee]

Jean:     Thank you Andrea.  Two of Alan’s

Norman:           Alan’s and three

Jean:     Our Warren, about eighteen, about nineteen

Rod:     I’m hopeless,

Jean     Two great, great grandchildren

Rod:     I like them

Norman:  I’m exactly the same, I’m exactly the same

Rod:     Ye know, I’m aware of them but I’m not a great go, to grasp them and cuddling them, ye know, not, but you have an empathy with them when you’re there and that’s it.

Jean:     Norman’s dad use to say, cause, its, its erm twelve year, this year since we lost Norman’s dad.  Norman’s dad used to say, ‘love to see them come, love to see them go, didn’t he?’  And I mean there wasn’t as many of them then and Lil, that’s Norman’s mam, I’ll turn round to Norman and I’ll say, ‘how can your mam’… our lifestyles, I think if they weren’t

Rod:     Our Susan’s the same.

Jean:     That would, ha, ha

Rod:     I can’t do a half hour in our Susan’s.  I can have a cup of coffee with her and a bit of a natter, I’ve got to go.  I’ve had it. 

Norman:           I’m like that on a Sunday when I go and see em

Jean:     Just live round the corner but

Norman:           Only live, say about a hundred and fifty yards from each other coming out, round the corner.  Ten minutes and me heads spinning, and I want to gan back home.

Rod:    I think if you’re independent, you’ve ye know, led your own life and you have decided what comes in to your life and what doesn’t.  Then it’s very hard when it’s forced upon you.

Jean:     Ha, ha, yeah, it’s a fact, and like me