Its just my geneaology talking...
My mothers mother died a year after she was born. I have a few pictures of my Gran and my baby mother, sitting on a shingle beach underneath a Japanese parasol. My granny uber-fashionable for her day in bobbed hair and flapper dress. Mum wearing a knitted jacket and bonnet ensemble trimmed with ostrich feathers. I dont know how or why my granny died, but it was unreasonable in 1928 for a widower to care for a small girl child. My mum was passed to Granpas three sisters-There was no formal agreement about this. Just a family thing. One of the sisters married and I presume that the other two died as virgins. When my mother married a Romani gypsy, eyebrows were undoubtedly raised, but nothing was ever said. Certainly not in front of me. But, oh the shame! I didn't find out that my Dad was Romani until after he died.

Stick with me. It will get more interesting

When my parents married, they bought a house in East Dulwich, a south London Suburb and my mothers' aunts moved in with them. It was a very large house and there was plenty of room for everyone. It had a fantastic garden, I spent many happy summers camping out in the back yard on the grass that never seemed to get cut. My Dad was a scaffolder and my mum, a telephonist. Mum stopped work when I was born. I'm not sure if she returnned before my father abbandonned us. My mother had a late miscarriage in 1970. I should have had a sister! Imagine that! Two of us! Sometimes as a lonely only, I wished passionately for someone to play with. But I had books and a whole gang of imaginary friends...I had seen my two 2nd cousins rip each other to shreads, so was quite content with my books and fertile imagination.

Dad left in 1973. I was just five years old. Bizzarely that's how old my daughter is now. I saw my father once again, when we took him to court to increase the maintenance he paid my mother. I walked straight past him and wondered why my mother had stopped and was talking to that strange man. I dont know if he tried to contact me and really I dont care. I remember childhood jealousies of children who had fathers at home, or had fathers away from home who could be bothered with them. Schoolfriends received gold bracelets on their birthdays. I didn't even get a card. That makes me sound incredibly avaricious. I was very small at the time. Once I found the letter that my Dad had left for my mum, explaining that he didnt love her anymore and that he was sorry for me. I never quite worked out if that meant that he was sorry I would grow up without a father and therefore carry a totally fucked-up view of men with me for a good few years. or whether he was sorry that I had come into existance. He couldnt even say goodbye to her face. Fucking pitiful coward. Whilst I don't think that he was ever physically violent to her he was mentally cruel. He huniliated her. He fucked around on her...emotionally immature and not ready for the kind of commitment that my mother and I warranted. My childhood was somewhat indulgent. My mother had returned to work by the time my Dad left and I was cared for after school by the remaining maiden aunt, Jacket. This was surprisingly not the name on her birth certificate, but was the first word to fall from my rosebud baby lips, whilst waving in her general direction. Unfortunately it stuck, maybe she never forgave me. I was a solitary child. Unlike today when at least 1 in 4 families are headed by a lone parent, there were few children at school who queued up for free dinners with me. Additionally my extreme height added to my isolation. I discovered books. Books remain my true and constant companions. Books never gossip behind your back. Books never fuck off when a new reader sashays past. I read constantly, avidly catholically. I excelled academically, just to ensure that the other kids really hated me. Then I got glasses!! freak!! I far prefered the company of adults to children, finding children....childish (funnily, right now I prefer the company of children, finding adults...adulterous...)I applied for a place at a posh girls school in Victoria and was turned down. Probably far too common and from a (gasp!) single parent family. If they had admitted me, who knows where it would have ended? with the coloured folk? ( uh huh...what colour do you have in mind? purple? blue?)

The one with Ross and Shelley
So. My Parents split up and i never saw my father again. About a week after Murdo was born..Therefore April 1998, the phone rings one Sunday, and it's my 2nd Cousin Keith. We share great grandparents...His side of the family had become detached fom ours, but he had researched the family tree ( back to the early 1500s!!) (we are undertakers and bus-drivers by trade!) and tracked us down..anyway, Keith worked in Balham Benefits Agency office, and the girl who sat opposite him, a good friend, had invited him to her wedding. Well, he took one look at the invitation and all colour drained from his face as he realised that her step-father was my Dad. Without going into too much detail here, my Dads name was Lancelot (really.)So it was pretty obvious from the invitation alone, that he would be confronted with my father. Anyway. Basically Keith was ringing to tell me that my father had died ( So...? He did little for me while he lived) but more importantly ..that I had a half sister, older than me, Shelly, and a half brother younger than I...Ross.

I still havent met them.
Shelly knew a little about me, but she was adopted as a child..Ross didnt know until the day of our fathers funeral, that I even existed...how fucked up is *my* family?