The Sad Tale of Uncle Paddy and the search for Patricia Doran

Such excitement a day or two before Christmas.!  A breathless email from brother Bernard the family historian.  He’s the one who some years ago decided to sink a great deal of time and money into attempting to discover illustrious ancestors and found only Horse Traders and Pikeys, in fact generally the kind of individuals any self respecting Gipsy would cross the street to avoid.  Anyhow it seems the family also harbours a bigamist in the form of Poor Uncle Paddy.  Who would have thought it?  

Now Uncle Paddy Doran hailed from Ireland and had married our mother’s sister Martha and shortly before the outbreak of World War Two a daughter was born to them – Cousin Patricia.  He went off to war at about the same time as our own father.   Some time in 1945 Aunt Martha received a telegram to tell her of his imminent return and Cousin Patricia confidently told me he was bringing back with him a walking, talking doll from Italy, especially for her.   To that I retorted that my own father was bringing twin dolls and a twin pram – so there!

A day or two later Aunt Martha received a second telegram, this time to say that unfortunately during a drunken episode to celebrate peace, Paddy had unfortunately fallen from a roof and broken his neck.

I asked Patricia if she thought she might still get the walking, talking doll but she didn’t know and told me she didn’t really care but I knew she did.

Well that, you might imagine, would have been the end of the sad business but you’d be wrong. Imagine Bernard the historian’s surprise to be recently contacted by a half brother to Patricia.  Yes, it appears that God fearing Uncle Paddy who attended Mass every Sunday  had a second family in Liverpool of all places where a son was born who would now very much like to meet his sister.   The problem is that no-one seems to know what finally became of Patricia Doran.  I can remember her teenage marriage to a local Crayford  lad in 1957 or thereabouts and the birth shortly afterwards of an infant named Sharon, who was blessed the following year with a little sister called something like Cheryl-Anne.   Then Patricia seemed to fade onto the periphery of the family and it was rumoured that because of their dysfunctional nature her husband had forbidden her to have anything to do with her many aunts and cousins.  Although she was seen pushing her daughters through the Dartford shopping centre from time to time it was said she rarely stopped to chat.  

But common sense dictates that as none of us has heard to the contrary she is presumably still alive and living somewhere, tending her garden and her grandchildren.  So if you are still out there  Patricia, you should urgently contact any one of your many cousins who are all bursting to tell you the news.

(And if any curious non-related reader wishes to know more of the story behind the story, you should go to Amazon or Smashwords and download `Chalk Pits & Cherry Stones’)