CHAPTER TWO

BY THE time I was in the sixth form at school and studying for my A-levels, I'd set my heart on joining a newspaper. I was hoping to go straight from school by gaining a job as a trainee reporter, after having already ruled out any idea of going to university. While I knew that my parents would do their very best to support me, they would have to face the possibility of making a large financial contribution to my university grant. It would have been very tough on them, particularly as none of my siblings had done A-levels, let alone gone to university. Besides, Mum and Dad had never been in the position of having much spare cash.

To help with the family finances, I took a job in 'Bob's', a local greengrocer's in a little row of shops on the Walcot estate. Every Thursday night I traipsed around Walcot selling lottery tickets for Swindon Town Football Club. I also worked on the giant dish-washing machine in Swindon's BHS. I paid my parents £3 a week housekeeping. So, with three kids off their hands, they could comfortably afford two holidays a year. It was another reason why I didn't want my presence at university to prevent my parents from having that second holiday, which I knew meant such a lot to them.

So, armed with my book of cuttings, and some six months before my final school exams were due to start, I drew up a list of a dozen newspapers within a sixty-mile radius of Swindon. But the process of applying for a job proved to be very dispiriting. If I managed to get a reply - I'd even enclosed stamp addressed envelopes with my applications - I had the distinct feeling that the editors were sneering at my efforts. 'We prefer to interview candidates who have a degree' was the usual comment.

Eventually, there was only one newspaper left to write to on my list. Home from school during the Christmas holidays, I told Mum I wasn't going to send off that last letter. 'I've written to eleven papers. And every one of those who've bothered to reply have all been really snotty,' I grumbled, feeling heavily depressed at my failure to succeed in securing even one interview. Especially, as I gloomily told myself, I had no degree and couldn't even guarantee that I was likely to get high grades in my A-level exams.

The newspaper I was petulantly refusing to write to was the Gloucestershire Echo in Cheltenham. My mother did her best to change my mind, saying that she had an idea that this time I would succeed. But I had an uneasy feeling about Cheltenham itself. I wasn't sure why. Was it due to the fact I'd spent the first two years of my life there, in the Nazareth House Orphanage? Eventually, Mum, who never took no for an answer, persuaded me to write to the Echo. But I still remember thinking, as I walked to the post box, that I had little chance of success. Especially for a boy from a comprehensive school, who lived on a council estate and whose dad worked in a local factory, light years away from the likelihood of being employed by a newspaper in a posh spa town like Cheltenham.

So, doing my best to put that last application completely out of my mind, I went back to school, totally unmoved when, about ten days later, I got home one evening to find a typed envelope addressed to me. I was pretty sure that it was from the Gloucestershire Echo, and even more certain that it was likely to say something along the lines of: 'Thanks, but no thanks.' But. to my utter amazement I discovered that, against all the odds, I was being invited for an interview. I was ecstatic! All my doubts were immediately forgotten as I realised that my wonderful mum had been proven right, yet again.

On the train to Cheltenham, I felt resplendent in my new sports jacket and slacks. I could even see my reflection in my polished shoes. And, as I was ushered into Tom Hoy's office, I was thrilled to see that the editor was busy leafing through the sheaf of Daily Mirror cuttings I had included along with my application. Softly but well-spoken, with slicked-back hair and large glasses, he immediately made me feel at ease. I soon got the impression that he wasn't particularly a sports fan, because the letter he was focused on was the one I had written some four years earlier that had made my mother cry. He asked me to explain the circumstances that had led me to write and send it to the Daily Mirror. So, I took a deep breath and told him the story.

It happened that Mum was home from work one day. And in her lunchbreak, as usual, she was engrossed in the Daily Mirror. I had noticed she was reading a spread by Marje Proops, the paper's legendary 'agony aunt', who was a regular fixture on TV and radio. But I was surprised to note that Mum's eyes were red. Had she been crying? But before I could say anything, she pushed the paper across the table and said very quietly, her voice sounding wobbly, 'Your dad and I would never stand in your way if you ever wanted to track down your birth mother.' I was stunned. What on earth was Mum talking about? I couldn't remember the subject of my birth mother ever having been mentioned. But, before I could gather my scattered wits, my mother rose swiftly from the table and hurried off back to work.

Totally mystified, I picked up the paper to discover that Marje Proops had written an article firmly supporting the government's decision to allow adopted children to track down their birth parents. Upon reading further, I learned that Marje thought it right that people like me should be able to make contact with their birth mothers. The government had acted to change the law because so many children who were given up for adoption in the 1950s and 1960s when single mothers were social pariahs, wanted to find out who they really were. Harold Wilson's government had proved sympathetic to the idea and the law was being changed.

Basically, the idea seemed to be an attempt to try to piece together the first few days, weeks, months or even years of their lives. It took some minutes for me to grasp the full ramifications of what Marje was saying. And even longer to take on board the fact that I was one of the people she was writing about; one of those people she thought had the legal right to know about their heritage. It was the first I'd heard of the change in adoption law. It had certainly never been mentioned at home or school. Mum and Dad must have been painfully aware of the change in legislation but they never mentioned it to me and I must have missed it on the news.

But while I was intrigued by the idea, I really hated to see my usually tough mum so upset. So, no sooner had she left the house than I dashed off a letter to Marje Proops on my mother's baby Brother typewriter. Among other points, I argued that 'blood wasn't necessarily thicker than water'. And why would I need to find my so-called 'birth mother', when I had the mum I loved at home? I'd thought that I was writing a personal letter to Marje. But, to my astonishment, it was the leading letter on the readers' letters page a few days later. No one from the paper had contacted me, so it came as a complete surprise. Although, to be fair, we weren't on the telephone, so the Daily Mirror would have struggled to make contact, even if they'd wanted to.

It was a routine day at work for Mum at WH Smith's supply depot, when one of the girls in the warehouse where she worked exclaimed, 'Ooh, Betty! Your Andrew is in the Mirror again.' Instinctively, my mother turned to the sports pages, but her colleague Peggy said: 'No. Not there, Betty. It's here, near the front.' After Mum read the letter, she dissolved into floods of tears. By this time, all the other girls in the warehouse were crying too. Mum was so moved that she even took the rare step of telephoning my dad at British Leyland, where he was a spot welder on the assembly line, to tell him to read the letters page. Always more emotional than Mum, he also burst into tears on reading his son's tribute to his mother.

As for me, the first I knew of the letter's publication was when I went to pick up the front door key from our neighbour, 'Aunty' Maureen Tilsley. Like my parents, she had moved from London to Swindon after the war. So, she told me all about the letter when I knocked at her door after school. Like any typical teenager of only fourteen years of age, I was deeply embarrassed by all the fuss. I didn't want to talk about Nazareth House, and certainly not about my birth mother, about whom, at that stage in my life, I knew absolutely nothing. In fact, I could hardly look at Mum, who probably just wanted a big hug from her youngest child, when she came home from work. To be honest, I can remember that my mind was already on school the next day, because I knew the other kids would torment me. And, of course, they did. I had to put up with being called 'Marje' for a few months until another boy made a right fool of himself by calling me that out loud in the classroom, which earned him a stinging rebuke from our form teacher Mrs Greevy and after which I was left in peace. The nickname vanished.

But winding forward to February 1979, it seemed that Mr Hoy, the editor of the Gloucestershire...