The DNA Results Are Back, and it turns out I'm...

 About 20 years ago, I went through a phase of trying to trace my family tree (see: https://kimayres.blogspot.com/2006/03/family-tree.html).

I'd grown up without much in the way of extended family. My father was an only child, and my mother had one brother who I'd seen barely a handful of times in my life.

We'd moved house every few years as my father was an artist and would get restless with a desire to paint different landscapes. 

As such I didn't even grow up with a consistent set of friends and neighbours either, and this definitely led to a feeling of not having roots - tribeless, so to speak. 

And given that for the first 290,000 years of human existence (not to mention several million years of pre-human ancestors), we had evolved as a nomadic, tribal species, then there is no doubt a deep seated psychological need within all of us to feel we belong.

There's a programme on BBC TV called "Who Do You Think You Are?" where they trace the family trees of celebrities.

Every week there would be tears as someone found out how some ancestor or another lived in poverty or died some horrible death. 

But there would also be these scenes where the said celebrity would latch on to something about someone to explain an aspect of their own personality. 

So the revelation that someone once was part of a circus or a troubadour, would create a response of, "Ooooh, that will be where I get my desire to perform from then!"

Or if someone had gone on a march, or been seen as standing up to something unjust, then it would be followed by an utterance about where the celeb got their energy/feistiness/sense of justice from.

If I'm honest, after a while, I started to find these things grated a bit. I realised that it was very, very easy to cherry pick the aspects people wanted to identify with and ignore anything unsavoury. You never heard anyone saying. "Oh, so my great-great-great-uncle was hung for murder? That'll be where I get my psychopathic tendencies from then!"

And one day it dawned on me that my brother and sister both had exactly the same ancestry as me, and yet our personalities were all very different to each other. 

In the end, I came to realise that my "tribe", as such, were people who shared an outlook on life with me, more than some blood connection. 

So after an initial surge of excitement and building of a family tree, it petered out and stopped being something I was overly concerned about.

However, a couple of year ago, my stepdaughter, Holly, bought DNA kits from MyHeritage.com for me and Maggie as Christmas presents.

The idea with these is that you take a swab from the inside of your cheek and send it off to be analysed, and then you can find out what part of the world your genetic heritage comes from.

And my curiosity was definitely aroused by this.

My father seemed quite convinced that we had gipsy blood in us somewhere, which explained his restlessness and desire to constantly move from one place to another.

I'm embarrassed to admit that the kits sat on a shelf for 2 years before we got round to doing anything about it. They were not consciously ignored, but we would only remember about them late at night, or when we were away from the house, or when we'd just eaten a curry and figured it might skew the results if we didn't leave it for an hour or two (by which time we'd forgotten again).

However, finally, just before Christmas, Maggie and I finally opened the kits, followed the instructions, and sent them off to the US (where Trump's tariffs meant that the postage was over twice the amount it should have been) for processing.

A few days back we got the results and it turns out that I am...

Drum roll please...

...

...

English.

More precisely, I'm:

47% English
19.5% Scottish/Welsh
15% Dutch
5.6% Breton
and then a smattering of German, Danish, French, Swedish and Irish.

In other words I'm a mix of Northern European Germanic and Celtic. 

I would be lying if I didn't admit to being faintly disappointed to find nothing more exotic.

No Cherokee, Innuit, Mediterranean, nor any hint of Romani (sorry Dad - you'll have to let go of romantic notions of living in a vardo).

So if anyone was entitled to be a member of the Reform Party and demand an end to foreigners being in our country, then I have genetics on my side.

Except for the fact I despise that mentality. 

I have a love for difference and diversity - I have always seen these things as enriching our lives, not diminishing. 

It is those who think that skin colour, and which bit of the planet you were born on, are the most important aspects of a person, who I feel are the saddest, most restricted people living the narrowest of lives. 

So, what about my Scottish wife, Maggie? 

It turns out she is...

...

Scottish!

More precisely, about 49% Scottish/Welsh, 35% Irish, 10% English, and a smattering of Dutch and Breton. 

In other words, about as Celtic as it's possible to be in this country.

Needless to say then, our kids are an even more concentrated mix of English & Scottish: they are as British as can be.

Fortunately, they too have a love for the richness that diversity brings.

Have you ever found anything interesting, exotic or completely surprising in your family tree or DNA investigations? Leave a comment and let me know!