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nnyI'm never quite sure where I stand on the family tree issue. I'm currently watching snippets of Stephen Fry in Vienna, tracing his great grandparents and being moved to tears, and I just... can't quite imagine having so extreme a reaction.
I suppose it depends to a very great extent on how close the familial ties are with your relatives. I barely even know how many cousins I have, let alone what my great grandparents were up to. We're not a particularly close family, which is somewhat pathetic when you consider that most of my family is in the vicinity of Kent - we barely manage to keep up with the ones that live in Southampton, where I'm from. I should, though - my granddad is an extraordinary man, friends with astronauts, owner of what was once the only sun telescope not owned by NASA, builder of camera obscurers for little museums in places like Middle Wallop. He has a camera obscurer in his attic, too, a hole he knocked through the roof and a huge metal construction poking out, swathed in bin bags presumably to keep the rain out. There's another skylight for a telescope, too, which pokes out of the room on the second floor that's filled entirely with fossils. And for all that he's obsessed with mashed potato, gravy, sausages and Grand Prix, he manages to still be coherent and eloquent on the subject of Suetonius.
I don't think, though, that I will ever know him well. I don't have the time to visit, that often, and when I do he's usually busy with the television, and I'm speaking to my grandmother, who belongs to Southampton's historical society and was, last time I was there, describing where T.E. Lawrence once lived in between cooking dinner, berating granddad, and asking about how life in Cardiff was going. I'm almost embarrassed that they're so interested in me, when I have nowhere near as interesting things to talk about as they do.
And that was an enormous tangent, I'm sorry. What I meant to go onto was family trees, and genealogy, and my conflicting views on the subject.
See, I can see that it's very interesting, and I can see that it's something that could be important - it's good to know where you come from even if, like me, there is not a sniff of diversity. I think my great grandfather on one side may well have been Irish, but that's pretty much it as far as non-English goes. Not that I'd know, as has been previously mentioned. Of course it gets complicated because my grandma was adopted, but still. I don't really know anything of where I came from, or what my heritage is, but I don't feel like it's important to me personally. Perhaps that's an irresponsible attitude in some way, or somehow unfaithful, but I really don't quite understand or share the obsession with forefathers. It's possible that I might feel some smidgeon of interest were I to find out that my however-many-greats uncle invented the first height-adjustable piano stool, but the fact that I might share the slightest of commonality at the genetic level with such a person doesn't really seem, to me, as though it has any affect on who I am.
See, I worry that so much time spent looking backwards might make a person forget that there are other directions. I think spending one's free time researching whether their family tree contains some long-forgotten branch of a little importance might well overtake their desire to be someone themselves. To make a point of developing into who they are rather than who their parents great-uncles might have been.
Then again, it could be I'm just bitter, 'cos as far as I know, no one I'm related to has ever done anything interesting.
I suppose it depends to a very great extent on how close the familial ties are with your relatives. I barely even know how many cousins I have, let alone what my great grandparents were up to. We're not a particularly close family, which is somewhat pathetic when you consider that most of my family is in the vicinity of Kent - we barely manage to keep up with the ones that live in Southampton, where I'm from. I should, though - my granddad is an extraordinary man, friends with astronauts, owner of what was once the only sun telescope not owned by NASA, builder of camera obscurers for little museums in places like Middle Wallop. He has a camera obscurer in his attic, too, a hole he knocked through the roof and a huge metal construction poking out, swathed in bin bags presumably to keep the rain out. There's another skylight for a telescope, too, which pokes out of the room on the second floor that's filled entirely with fossils. And for all that he's obsessed with mashed potato, gravy, sausages and Grand Prix, he manages to still be coherent and eloquent on the subject of Suetonius.
I don't think, though, that I will ever know him well. I don't have the time to visit, that often, and when I do he's usually busy with the television, and I'm speaking to my grandmother, who belongs to Southampton's historical society and was, last time I was there, describing where T.E. Lawrence once lived in between cooking dinner, berating granddad, and asking about how life in Cardiff was going. I'm almost embarrassed that they're so interested in me, when I have nowhere near as interesting things to talk about as they do.
And that was an enormous tangent, I'm sorry. What I meant to go onto was family trees, and genealogy, and my conflicting views on the subject.
See, I can see that it's very interesting, and I can see that it's something that could be important - it's good to know where you come from even if, like me, there is not a sniff of diversity. I think my great grandfather on one side may well have been Irish, but that's pretty much it as far as non-English goes. Not that I'd know, as has been previously mentioned. Of course it gets complicated because my grandma was adopted, but still. I don't really know anything of where I came from, or what my heritage is, but I don't feel like it's important to me personally. Perhaps that's an irresponsible attitude in some way, or somehow unfaithful, but I really don't quite understand or share the obsession with forefathers. It's possible that I might feel some smidgeon of interest were I to find out that my however-many-greats uncle invented the first height-adjustable piano stool, but the fact that I might share the slightest of commonality at the genetic level with such a person doesn't really seem, to me, as though it has any affect on who I am.
See, I worry that so much time spent looking backwards might make a person forget that there are other directions. I think spending one's free time researching whether their family tree contains some long-forgotten branch of a little importance might well overtake their desire to be someone themselves. To make a point of developing into who they are rather than who their parents great-uncles might have been.
Then again, it could be I'm just bitter, 'cos as far as I know, no one I'm related to has ever done anything interesting.
