Mum and I were delighted to find out we were descended from 'bog-trotters.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother's family came from the British West Indies. And my father's family came from, well, my father's father came from the Montana/South Dakota area. They were Blackfoot Indian.
My mum's parents were from Ireland, my dad's mum was American-Irish.
My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
I adopted England as least as much as England adopted me.
My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.
I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.
Mum and Dad split up when I was nine. We upped and moved from London to Sussex, and suddenly I went from an urban life to nothing in the countryside - with a new father and new life.
The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.
We were descended from royalty.
On my mother's side, I come from Midlands engineers and, on my father's, from tenant farmers near Oxford.