EVERY now and then I have a forage into the world of online family records. Why? At the end of a few wasted hours that’s exactly what I ask myself. I was adopted a blur of years ago and even though I have all the various certificates and papers, including my parents marriage certificate, I still can‘t track down my birth mother.

Okay, so my parents weren’t into babies but they did find some decent folk to take me on in the shape of my adopted parents, Rene and Ern. How or why, is a mystery. The story goes that Ern, a gas fitter, went round to do a job and ended up with a baby, i.e. me. The idea of having me was apparently discussed over lunch, or dinner as it was known in those far off days. That very evening Rene and Ern took a short train ride and picked me up. Apparently the ‘welfare‘ (social services of the day) came round to check things out at a much later date. Rene and Ern always explained that they were looking after me because my mother couldn’t manage me. Mind you, during my teens neither could they. My adopted parents passed on in the early 1980s and ever since then I have tried at various times to trace my birth mother. A clever friend found my birth father for me a few years back. Unfortunately, he had been killed in a hit and run. The vehicle was stolen and Albert, my birth father, had been across the road against the lights on his way to the pub aged 77. So I never got to meet him.

As to my mother, Edith, if she is still around, she will be in her nineties, not impossible but improbable. I have visions of turning up at a nursing home and finding her glued to day time telly, not wishing to be interrupted by this crazy stranger who‘s saying, ‘Hello, Mum, I‘m your long lost daughter.’ Ern’s mother, my adopted Nana, used to tell me that my mother had run off with the circus. Perhaps she still performing on the high wire, zimmer frame an’ all.