Sins of Omission. Chapter One. South London in the late 1940s.

I was born in West Norwood at my grandmas house on 26th September 1948. I think I was born at midnight.

My mum was a civil servant at the Ministry of Works-yes it does sound like something out of Harry Potter! She had met my dad, a naval officer during the war. But now he wasn't a naval officer because the war had ended and he was either working on the docks or training at Acton to be a telegraphist with Cable and Wireless. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My birth was a shock! I suppose every birth is a shock but mine was for many reasons. My dad was actually married to someone else, to Joan Macanally in Wallasey. He also had another daughter Eileen, born 29th August 1946, but I wasn't to learn this until about 23 years later. So my birth was shameful. It was so shameful that my dads name wasn't on my birth certificate and was added at a later date in the 70s. 

I was born at my grandmas in West Norwood, 27 Wolfington Road, in the first floor back bedroom that I think had been my mums room before she moved in with my dad. Another scandal! Four years later my sister would be born in the same bedroom, but again Im getting ahead of myself.

My mother

My mother Estelle Annie Fogg was born into a Kentish family, the Kennetts. My great grandma, Grandmother Annie Pointer was married to a chimney sweep from Minster, Thomas Kennett, and they kept a boarding house in Ramsgate. Ive been there. Its still standing. Not far from the sea. 

The whole family lived there. Great uncles, great aunts, my great grandparents, my grandmother, my mother and her brother Ronnie Kemp. The Pointers were originally from Romney Marsh and were farmers. Its rumoured they had been involved with smuggling on the Kent coast and that is the reason they all had blonde hair and blue eyes from associations with Vikings and Scandinavians! My dna has Norwegian and Swedish in it so that corroborates this theory!

My mother didn't have blonde hair. She was dark with an olive complexion and brown eyes. My mother was the daughter of a relationship between my grandmother and a French Jewish educator. So there was plenty of shame and plenty of scandal. 

My grandma. 

Lillian Minnie Kennett was born in 1894 in Ramsgate, Kent. She was the eldest daughter in the family of 8 children. She herself had little education although her mother was a great proponent of education. She went on to work in service in a large house of the Levines. Samuel Levine, entered into a relationship with her and she bore him a son Ronald in 1913 and a daughter, my mother, in 1917. It was a secret! 

My uncle

My uncle Ronnie, Ronnie Kemp, was brought up as Jewish and attended boarding school in Easterborne and had his Barmitzvah. He knew his father as Guardi,  his guardian but didn't know he was his father. Ronnie went on to work for New Zealand Insurance.  He was the bread winner for the home in the 1930s. He was in the Army Reserves and sadly was killed in the Royal Artillery in 1941, at the beginning of the II World War in Normandy. He is buried in the Canadian cemetery at Dieppe. 

My grandfather

Samuel Levene was born in 1867 in Ramsgate, Kent England. He went to Westminster Jews College. He studied theology at London University. He was joint principal of Townley Castle School, Ramsgate from 1890 until 1935. He was also involved in the Jewish Orphanage in Wolfington Road, West Norwood, London. He was still alive in 1941 when Ronnie died as he visited my grandmother, who also lived in Wolfington Road and my mother met her father, I think maybe for the first time in her life. She didn't like him and said he was old and his hands were clammy! He would've been 74 at the time. Mum was 24 and working as a civil servant. My grandmother's relationship with Samuel and her children from that relationship were never officially acknowledged anywhere as far as I know. My great Auntie Bruff called him Sam and said he was a good man.