Mark was born in 1942 and attended the Foundling Hospital School at Berkhamsted, but left at the age of 12 to attend Fullbrook school. He returned to the Foundling Hospital school and was apprenticed to Vickers Armstrong aircraft manufacturers and worked for BEA which became British Airways for 38 years. While studying for his apprenticeship, he met his wife Jan and they married in 1967. He met and got on well with his birth mother.
Early Life
‘I remember when I was living with my foster mother in Newhaw being in her garden, on a three wheeled tricycle which was donkeys years old, I was pretending the bicycle was a tram, I had a wire attached to the washing line and I was cycling down the garden and I could hear an awful lot of engine noise in the sky, and on looking up I could see squares of aircraft flying out in formation over to Germany. I didn’t know that obviously at the time but I can remember my foster mother who was out hanging in the wash– hanging the washing, turning to me and saying, “you needn’t worry, they’re ours,” and with that I just stood or sat on the bike watching them fly over you know, but I can remember that even to this day, it’s so vivid, just wave after wave of aircraft flying over.’
Into the World
‘It was an aircraft craft apprentice which covered just about everything in the aircraft manufacturing industry. It was a brilliant, absolutely brilliant apprenticeship. I did five years and then at the end of the fifth year, the idea was that you then went out into the factory which employed 21,000 people. They were to take you on and you would have some sort of say in where you finally ended up in the factory working, and because we moved from department to department during the appre– apprenticeship you got to know and see different parts of the aircraft, et cetera, and when the time came they said, “Well, unfortunately because of the number of– there aren’t the vacancies in the factory for you to actually go into the factory right now. Would you mind staying on another year during your apprenticeship?” so it would be a six year apprenticeship. So we were quite happy with that, because obviously you form quite a good bond with other apprentices, et cetera, et cetera and so I actually did a six year apprenticeship and the sixth year was probably quite a lot of fun you know because we felt that we’d been there, done it all, and we was having a glorious time, building canoes and things of this sort in the evening and mucking about generally during the day but– and then of course the reality struck in where after the sixth year we had to go and start earning our keep and we– we would be put with a more experienced person initially and they would show you the ropes and then you would get stuck in and do whatever it is you’ve been assigned, you know.’
Reflections
‘I can look at situations and whether I learnt in an early stage in my life to be almost non emotional to isolate those emotions, I don’t know, but even now I think I spend more time thinking of the practicalities of life than the emotional sides of things. I can… how do I get around a problem, how do I solve a problem and I don’t let my emotions get too heavily involved. I find it even now very difficult to show emotion and I believe this is something which was down to my upbringing, where love as such was a bit thin on the ground.’
School Life
‘I can remember in the gymnasium we used to have a game which I thoroughly enjoyed which was called Tarzan and the idea was that all the equipment in the gym was laid out where you could move around the gym swinging on ropes, climbing wool bars and there would be someone who would be Tarzan and he had to touch you and your– the idea was you would climb beams and wall bars and rope swinging around and horses and all this sort of thing, as long as you didn’t touch the ground with your feet you continued to be in the game and obviously the last one sort of standing was the person that won or become Tarzan next time round, and I loved that game.’
Search for Birth Families
‘It’s a long story but the lady who used to lie– live opposite us was very friendly with us and she has a much more enquiring mind than I had and she knew my background and she said to me, you know, one day, dea– she’s actually moved from there to somewhere not too far away and we was round there one evening and she said “have you ever thought about tracing your mother?” so I said “well I have and I haven’t,” sort of thing, you know, it’s not always the best thing to do. Anyway, cut a long story short, she picked the phone up, she said “well, do you know your surname?” I said “well I do, it– my proper surname would be Bird,” so she said “well, can’t be too many Birds living in a little village like that, you know” and so she picked up the phone directory as we had in those days and started thumbing through it you, there was about eight or nine birds and– at Sancton, you know, so she said, “well give one of them a ring. Do you want to do or me?” so I said “No, you’ve g– you do it, you do it” so she started, you know, picked up and she said “well”– what was it name, Clifford Bird she said, Clifford Bird. That was about the first one, and she said “I’ll try that one first,” then he turned round and said “No, we know nothing” and she picked up the phone and dialled, there was quite a pause and then he answered, the gentleman answered, you know [background noise] and I heard him– because I was sat right next to her by then, and I heard him say something about “I know what this is about…” so she said “Oh do you?” he said “well I think I do”… and now what did sh– what did he call me now? “It’s about Frankie” so she said “No I don’t know a Frankie” so she said “are you related to Dorothy Bird” and he said “well yeah I’m her brother.” “Ah, oh” and it sort of went a bit quiet, you know, and there was a long pause and then she said “well do you know anything about Mark?” so he said “I don’t know a Mark,” you know, this sort of conversation went on for a little while and then it slowly dawned on him that, you know, what he’d actually tumbled across– he said “well I still– I’m a lorry driver and I do see Dorothy about once a month, I pop off, you know I’m driving to Manchester” and he said “I pop off, and I see her.” He said “what I could do, rather than sort of just confront her straight head-on, is sort of ask her would she like to meet up or whatever you know and put it to her that way” and so “that would be nice, you know, if you wouldn’t mind, you know” and eventually, about a fortnight later I think it was, he must have driven over there, and within no time at all I had a big envelope arrive from Eccles, and that was from my mother, including, corr, 15, 16, 17 photographs, something like that and “I’d love to meet you” and all that sort of thing you know and so we arranged to meet at Euston station, as you do, and [coughs] it was teaming with life, Jan came with me, and it was absolutely teaming with life but it– it’s extraordinary really… when she– when she got off the train, instantly I– I saw her and I knew it was her.
I’ve got the letters here that she wrote when I first was put into Thomas Coram’s care and she wrote– I think on maybe 12, 13 something like occasions to find out how I was getting on and had I still got straight blonde hair and can I walk yet, can I talk, am I doing alright, and a Christmas card I believe. Not things I get out and read– look at very often, and the responses that Thomas Coram replied were very cold and sort of… not encouraging her in any way at all to continue to correspond and ask questions, you know, because now he’s been fostered, it’s probably best that these things are left to lie you know, and that was quite distressing to read that, you know, I mean at least in reading those letters I was aware of the fact that I wasn’t easily let go of and I wasn’t just sort of given up as a piece of furniture, I mean it really did mean a lot to her.
One of the things she did strangely enough was to ask me to put my head down, and I put my head down and she checked the back of my neck and she said, “Oh yeah that’s my boy,” because apparently where the creases on the back of my head as a baby, you know, they’re still there and she could identify with that. I can remember her holding my hand all the way back pretty tightly… discussion wise, didn’t really talk masses on the train, I believe there was discussion although I– I was a bit sort of overawed by it all so I can’t recall a great deal of the discussion but we did talk quite late into the early hours I think when we got back about the whys and the wherefores and it wasn’t by choice and they thought it best and you know, a little bit of background about how times were so different then and it was hard to appreciate that the pressure’s on you, you know, I mean you don’t give up a child just like that and I– I mean, she– she felt that it was, even then, that it was probably the best for me, that I probably had a better education and all that and a better lifestyle that I would have had where we were, you know, where she lived.
You know, it was almost like making up for lost time, you know, we went out and about with her and she just seemed delighted to think that after this sort of period of time, you know, we’d met up and it was obviously to her and me putting pages back missing from a book, it was… to me, a way of saying, “Okay I– I’m back on earth again now, I know a little more about myself.” Meeting my mum, if you like, that was a part of a jigsaw which helped me look at the world in a different way and prior to that I felt a little bit like a cork in the sea, you know a bit tossed and turned and not really sort of got any real roots.‘
