North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Maureen
And, I didn’t even know, this was in the May, err so, er that was alright. I wrote back explaining, I says, well we’ll take him over, ye know, for a holiday. We’d take him over for a holiday, er but then they wrote back again and says, ‘no, he wants you to come over to him’. So that’s what we did. He sent us money, don’t get me wrong, he sent us money for us to go to him. He was living downstairs in a house and he had and old dog with him and he was living on Pot Noodles and he was walking round the house at night and only for neighbour women giving him hot meals. And I says, he may have done this, that and another to me when I was little but I couldn’t see him living like that. So I says, ‘why don’t you come over for a holiday and see what it’s like in Northern Ireland. If you like it you can stay and if not you can come back’. So that was the first week we were there, that was what the plan was. The second week he started breaking up his home, he says, ‘I am coming over to live with you’. So he started breaking up his home, giving thing out here, giving things out there and we packed a big trunk of his and just took him straight over to Northern Ireland from then on and that was twenty years ago.
So had your adoptive mother died?
Yes she had died in the May and that was the Post Mistress was actually writing on his behalf
I thought it was to tell you Michael had died
No I didn’t even know Michael had died
At this point you didn’t know?
No, I didn’t even know until I got the letter that Michael had died.
At this point you didn’t know?
No, not until I got the letter saying that mother had died and of course, ye know, it was sad to say about your brother and all, and I went, that was how we got to know. I wasn’t even told. So erm, as I say he come over and we had him over for twenty years in Northern Ireland and then we brought him back home again. He’s with us now still. My daughter’s told me different times, ye know, to put him in a home I said I couldn’t. I mean, I know he wouldn’t, I know he wouldn’t do in the home. I know that and I wouldn’t have that on my conscience that’s just, I’d rather have him in the house. I know there’s ups and downs, ins and outs and all, but it doesn’t matter I would rather him here.
When you said you went
Sorry,
No, I know it’s going back a bit but when you went to Birmingham, why did you choose Birmingham? Did you have ties there?
No, no, I just, down to Birmingham thought it wasn’t a big, big city like London and it was something like Newcastle ye know, and a place where you can maybe get, and as I say I applied for jobs and I went down I went in to a hostel and I applied for jobs and that’s where I met, I was actually staying in a hostel anyway.
Do you ever talk about adoption with your father?
Right well that was another issue too. I told him er that I had been tracing my family and er, I said, ‘I’ve got a brother’. And I was coming up to er Christmas time and I’d been found him in the November, maybe the end of December. No end of November, beginning of December and I said, ‘I’ve found a brother’ and I says, ‘I’m keeping in contact with him’. I said, that at that time I had missed my mother by a year and ten months and I was out at, one Saturday night at the Corner and when I come back and he says, ‘your brother phoned’ and I says, ‘oh did he?’, ‘we had a good chat an all and I said, ‘well that’s alright’. And then he got on again two days later, about this and that’s not your brother and I went, ‘that’s fine, right’. Whenever Alex come over er, as I say he was over for the four weeks, there was one day he turned round, cos Alex had brought me photographs of me mum, and he says, he turned round, the old man says to me, ‘Maureen,’ he says, ‘that’s not your mother’ showing me a photograph of me mother and he turned round and pointed to Alex, ‘and that’s not your brother and you are nothing but a load of, ye know’ bad names and stomped out of the house. One minute he was denying it was me brother and the next minute, ye know, so as I say you just couldn’t believe everything that come out of him but I think it was ingrained over the years he didn’t know whether it was, like, there’s no smoke without fire type of thing. So I think it was more or less ingrained into me that I wasn’t wanted from ye know, from when I was a baby and I think that’s why, as I say before, I never really bothered. Thought to myself, if they didn’t want me then, they wouldn’t want me now, ye know, what’s the point going through that again. I don’t know what idea it took me one, that sunny day to phone up the lady in Hertfordshire and asked her how you go about tracing your family tree. I think I more or less wanted to find out, ye know, if had I any Aunts, Uncles and ye know, even find out a cousin in Sandsend on my father’s side ye know, so and we went down to visit. It was my son took be down last year, we just went down to Sandsend to see him for a day, well not a day, just for a wee while because it was a long drive down and we had a long drive back again. It was nice seeing him. So.
What about your birth father?
He drowned, I think it was in the middle, excuse me, in ’74, ’76 and I was, it’s Dougie’s Uncle and he didn’t know exactly what had happened and some say he died, drowned er at Whitby and another one said he drowned in Shields and not too sure where abouts but I think he was the type that whenever he come on shore, see he was on the boats mid week and he was drunk and drunk and drunk and then he just went back on the boats again and I think he missed his footing on the planking anyway, and with the water going up and down at the side of the quayside he was sucked under, sucked under the ship and that’s how he drowned. So.
