Well, I’ve won. The owner of the café that I told you about last week has retired, and Julian the Butcher tells me that the place is now being run by her son. I think I might pop in for a cup of tea in a minute and see how it is served.
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It’s been the school’s half term holiday this week and Caroline took her nephews to Covent Garden. Timo has only recently stopped wearing nappies and has discovered the simplicity, convenience and ease of the ‘Wild Wee’. This involves just “doing it” wherever he might happen to be – as long as it is outside.
The three of them gathered, along with about a hundred other little children and their adult companions, to watch a street entertainer. They all stood in a horseshoe about three deep around Bernie the Balloon Man. Timo was enthralled but suddenly got the urge. Down came his shorts and underpants and he assumed the pose.
One hundred people stopped watching Bernie and looked instead at Timo. Bernie released his half inflated balloon.
“I can’t compete with that,” he said. “There’s heckling and there’s heckling.”
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I received an e-mail from ‘Genes Reunited’ recently and I was offered the opportunity to use better ways and techniques to trace the Wiltons some hundreds of years into the past.
Why the Wiltons? What about the Spears, Westens and Wiggs that have contributed to my genes in the last 100 years and which families contributed to the Spears’, Westen’s and the Wigg’s genes? That is one reason why I have never been gripped by this “tracing of ancestors” business.
My suspicions first became aroused in the 60s when virtually every one I met whose origins were north of Manchester told me proudly that they were descended from George Stephenson who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. At first I thought, “So what?” and then I began to think that all northerners had pretentions of grandeur and they had to throw in this invented ‘fact’ to try to brighten up their drab, dreary, black and white lives (Yes, I’d read ‘The Road to Wigan Pier) but now I think that they are all probably right and they could all be descended from him but I still think, “So what?”
I was born in 1947 but let’s say that it was 1950. A generation is, for the sake of this argument, 20 years. In reality it is longer than that now but until fairly recently, when life expectancy was much less, it was shorter.
This means that my parents were born in 1930 and their parents in 1910. In reality my parents were born in 1922 and 1923 and my grandparents in 1887, 1891, 1900 and 1904.
My children should have been born in 1970 but did in fact arrive in 1976, 1978 and 1980. (I was busy.) My first grandchild, instead of honouring the world with his presence in 1990, delayed his entry until 2008. (I have no idea what my daughter was up to)!
| William’s and Annie’s Ancestors | Birth Year | World Population (approx) |
William and Annie – my grandchildren | 1990 | 6,200,000,000 | |
My children (Parents) | 2 | 1970 | |
ME (Grandparents) | 4 | 1950 | 2,410,000,000 |
Great Gpts | 8 | 1930 | |
Great G Gpts | 16 | 1910 | 1,610,000,000 |
Great G G Gpts | 32 | 1890 | |
Great G G G G Gpts | 64 | 1870 | |
Great G G G G G Gpts | 128 | 1850 | |
Great G G G G G G Gpts | 256 | 1830 | 900,000,000 |
Great G G G G G G G Gpts | 512 | 1810 | |
Great G G G G G G G G Gpts | 1,024 | 1790 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 2,048 | 1770 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 4,096 | 1750 | 660,000,000 |
Great G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 8,192 | 1730 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 16,384 | 1710 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 32,768 | 1690 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 65,536 | 1670 | 550,000,000 |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 131,072 | 1650 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 262,144 | 1630 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 524,288 | 1610 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 1,048,576 | 1590 | 500,000,000 |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 2,097,152 | 1570 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 4,194,304 | 1550 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 8,388,608 | 1530 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 16,777,216 | 1510 | 480,000,000 |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 33,554,432 | 1490 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 67,108,864 | 1470 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 134,217,728 | 1450 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 268,435,456 | 1430 | 450,000,000 |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 536,870,912 | 1410 | |
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts | 1,073,741,824 | 1390 | 430,000,000 |
Like Poo Bah, I can trace my ancestors to here: “back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.” Its name was Sydney. | 10000 BC | 1,000,000 |
He had two children: a son who died in 1859 aged 56, who although married, had no children and a girl who died in infancy in 1805. George Stephenson had siblings and so perhaps his ‘descendants’ around today come from them.
I remember one of the first maths lessons that I had at grammar school. Miss Wimpenny (who is still to return the ring she confiscated from my girlfriend that I gave as a birthday present six years later), told us an old tale to demonstrate the rapidity of progression in a simple geometric series:
As a reward for some great service he had carried out, a peasant was asked if he would like to have 1000 tons of rice.
The peasant wasn’t as daft as he looked (Have you noticed, they never are?), and said, “No thank you,” and asked instead that the king imagine a chess board with 64 squares and put one grain on square 1, two on square 2, four on square 3, eight on square 4 and so on. The king, thinking that he’d got off lightly, agreed to it and consequently and subsequently bankrupted the nation.
It’s the same thing with ancestors. Six hundred years ago, my grandchildren have around twice as many ancestors as the estimated world population. How does that work? Is it a lot of close cousins breeding or is it the way I hope it isn’t? If you know, please tell me. It’s really bothering me.
Anyway, only one of the 1,000,000,000 ancestors that William and Annie have from 600 years ago can be traced back through the male line to them. I bet that they, you and I share the same ancestor at some point. We are probably all related to Charlemagne, Galileo and da Vinci.
But by the same logic, unfortunately, we are more likely to have Attila the Hun as an ancestor too.
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