Dearest Bloggo,
I think I told you that last week I went up to Yorkshire and stayed in a Pod? I think I did. (Tell you I mean ... I know I stayed in a Pod). Well, while I was Podding I went to see my mother. We were chatting generally, and I said that I was still trudging. She enquired if I had found out about my granddad, her father. Now this is interesting. I had been running about four or five years when Granddad died. As far as I can recall, he never mentioned my running to me. This was in the 1960s. Out of the blue, about three years ago, my mother suddenly mentioned that Granddad used to run. I thought this was my mother just being fanciful as she had never mentioned this fact before; somewhat surprising considering I had run once, twice, three times daily for the best part of forty years!!! I would have expected it to have surfaced at some time in the past? I questioned her further, not really believing what she had to say. She went into details saying that he had been a member of Wath Athletic Club and she had seen a couple of his medals. I had seen medals in a drawer full of oddments when I was young but had assumed that they were his war medals; I am sure they were. Granddad did come from Wath on Dearne which is near Doncaster. As I had never heard of the athletics club, I naturally did a bit of research and found out that there indeed used to be such a club in the immediate post WW1 days, which would be the right era for Granddad to be active. Then I drew a blank. SO. Doncaster seems to be a possible holiday destination for weekend break to check up the facts at the local library to see what athletic news they might have in the local papers from that time. It would be most interesting to see if running ran in the family genes!!??
I told my mother that I would make some further enquiries for her about my granddad’s athletic prowess, I also told her what the rest of the family had been doing athletic competition wise. Furthermore, I mentioned the situation with someone running using my full name, club and birth date etc. (see London Marathon and Stafford Half Marathon I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago Blog). I also made reference to the other coincidences that have happened in the past, repeating what I have told you Blog, suspecting that there may be two Colin Kirkhams. It was then that she broke down and started to cry. She got quite emotional. I wondered what on earth was wrong with her. I tried to comfort her, wondering whether to call for help from one of the care assistants. Heartbroken she was. (My mother, not the care assistant). When she finally calmed down, she sobbed that there was something that she had meant to tell me for years! I didn’t know what to expect. She explained that I actually was a twin, and that my brother and I were both christened Colin. Apparently, at the christening, my dad was suffering from a heavy cold which had temporarily made him a little deaf. After I had been baptised, I started to yell from the cold water being placed on my forehead. Regardless, the vicar pressed on with the ceremony and asked my dad what the name of my brother was to be. With the row I was kicking up and the fact that dad could not hear too clearly, my dad thought the vicar was still talking about me so dad replied ‘Colin’ ... and the rest, as they say, is history.
However, the story doesn’t end there. No way, Blog. My mother went on to explain that we were so poor, Dad suffering from the effects of the unemployment caused by the post war depression, and mum working part time in the mill, that they could only afford to buy a second hand perambulator as money was so tight. This was not as bad as it seemed; mum told me only one of the twins could be taken out at any one time, as my parents had barely enough money for one single set of clothes, caused directly by the result of the lack of clothing coupons in the austerity conditions prevailing from the war rationing. With hind sight mum said that I must be eternally grateful that my twin was a boy; would my sister be wearing trousers or would I have been wearing a dress as we grew up together?? Shudder!
Because of the clothes situation, only one of us could attend school at a time. But because we were identical twins, the teachers never noticed. Apparently we took it in turns to go to school, I did Monday Wednesday and Friday, Colin did Tuesday and Thursdays. In year two we changed attendance, me dropping to two days, Colin upping his attendance to three alternate days, ‘To give us both a fair equitable start in life!’ mother explained. I must say that she was quite proud that we always won the ‘Attendance Prize’ each year with an unblemished 100% attendance; if one of us was ill, the other simply stood in and did an extra day! Having been told this revelation of a twin, distant memories stirred. It explained why I never got to grips with my 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 times tables but was absolutely brilliant at my 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 times tables. It explained why the stories the teacher read to the class never made sense – I only got to hear alternate chapters. It explains why I sometimes got caned at school for things I never did; apparently, the upside was that if either of us got lines to write out as a punishment, we only did half as we shared the task. Having only one set of clothes explains why we always went to a nudist camp for our holidays. It explained why I couldn’t play out when Colin could, he could go to the park and I couldn’t. Mum said the neighbours never knew she had two children because of our strange double (single) life. She told any nosey neighbours who heard me and my brother making a noise while we were playing indoors that I had a vivid imagination and talked to myself a lot. Sometimes she told them I had an imaginary little girl friend whom I called Colleen after my Irish great, great Granma. She (my mother not my great, great Granma from Eire) once had a visit from the Council’s Children’s Welfare Officer because the local shop keeper had reported her (my mother not my great, great Granma from Eire) for cruelty because mum bought so many boxes of Farley’s Rusks; the charge he (the Council’s Children’s Welfare Officer not the local shop keeper) was investigating was ‘cruelty by over feeding’. The Welfare Officer had also visited me at school when I had spots; he was confused so I was examined by the school doctor who tried to explain why the spots seemed to be there one day and gone the next and then returned. Mum told me that she believed he (the doctor not the Welfare Officer) wrote a little pamphlet on the phenomenon and as a result, got a job lecturing at the London School of Medicine on the strength of it.
Mum went on to tell me that by the time we left Infants’ School to start at the Junior School, the pretence was getting too much for her. When I (we) was (were) seven, mum and dad took the decision to have me (him) adopted. She thought it was the other Colin that was adopted but it could have been me, she didn’t really know which one went and which one stayed as we were so alike. Mum said I was inconsolable for weeks afterwards, the reason being that I could not get used to the thought of a life that entailed two extra days at school; mum told me that is what happened at the new Junior School, they went five days a week not just a couple like at the Infants. I must say that I was most surprised when my own children started infant school to find out that they attended every day. Five full days! I just assumed it was one of the new ideas that that lovely Mrs Hatcher introduced into education to compensate the kiddies for nicking all their morning drinks of milk.
All this took me aback, I can tell you Blog. So much so that I didn’t trudge on last Friday, I could not bring myself to put one foot in front of the other.
Please Blog, I am deeply embarrassed by these recent revelations. I haven’t quite got my head round them yet. Please respect my privacy in this matter and not mention what I have just told you to anyone else. Perhaps I will feel differently when I find my long lost brother. If running is in the genes like it seemed to be with me and my grandfather according to my mother, I should not really be surprised to find that there actually is another Colin Kirkham out there trudging in races because he must have inherited the same genes as me. Not only did we share the same clothes when we were small, we shared same genes as well!!
See you, Colin and Colin
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