Tony Millard cogitates about ancestry and its influence on the modern man…sort of
Another major busy farmer day yesterday – among other events there was a return of the well excavator, which has been away for a month, in pasta-sphere time, for some minor surgery. I thus had some quality “digger time” yesterday afternoon which is as good a substitute as can be found for the 7.05am Haslemere-Waterloo express, upon which I used to do most of my cogitation (45 mins each way per day) before moving to easier-on-the-eyes Northern Tuscany.
It struck me as to the appositeness (or otherwise) of our antecedents. For instance, many moons ago I used to be a broker at Lloyd’s – a job something akin to a pirate on the Spanish Main. Well blow me over with a wafting feather, if I didn’t discover after a while that a couple of my fellow-travellers around the floor of Lloyd’s sported the names Kidd and Morgan, and yes, they were both direct descendants of the eponymous pirates. Genetic programming or pure coincidence? Or just a couple of boys having some fun at the expense of their ancestors? Who knows… Perhaps we should ask Adriana Cronin or Perry de Havilland, if they are led by the ancestral star. Me, well, I’ve been traced back to a family of itinerant and impoverished flour millers of 17th century Britain. QED. Anyone else sporting an interesting past?
Tony Millard, Tuscany, Italy
