Genealogy - Up Your Tree

 

I sat in the train not looking forwards to a long journey. I was alone in my compartment so I started reading one of my books. Someone has to read them!; I thought. I don't normally read when I write them.

A few moments later an old lady came in and sat down opposite me. She nodded "hello" and started knitting silently.

As the train drew up from the station a man in his late fifties came in and sat beside her. "Just made it," he mumbled, "as my uncle used to say; a moving train waits for no one!"

The old lady smiled. I ignored him. 

He turned to the lady and continued, "he always had a saying for everything, my uncle," he said, "always le mot juste, as they say in French!"

She smiled again and continued knitting.

"He wasn't French of course," the man continued, "he was Welsh. I never knew that. I only found out when I got into genealogy ... you know, searching your ancestors on the T'Internet."

"I see ..." she said politely.

"I found out a lot about my parents," he continued unaware that no one was interested. 

He interrupted my reading. I hate it when I'm interrupted by someone; it sets my brain thinking in all directions. 

"Amazing how much I did not know about my parents," he said. 

 "Up to now you believed you were living with a gerbil and a cockatoo!" my brain thought but my mouth said nothing.

"They married three months after I was born!" he went on.

My brain called him a rude name then sought forgiveness from our Lord.

The old lady said something nice and smiled. This encouraged him to go on. "I have searched my ancestry through various generations going back years," he said, "amazing how many people I'm related to. So far I have discovered 56,000 relatives through the ages!" 

"Do they all talk through their backside?" my brain asked and my mouth censored.

By this time my brain was in free-flow having been distracted from my reading. Why would someone search his ancestry up to 56,000 people. I would have thought 100 or 200 would have been the most for me. I certainly would not search for more than that in case they all turned up for dinner unannounced. And would this ancestry program on the Internet go as far back as 56,000? How reliable is that? They could put as many names or relationships as they want and this idiot would be none the wiser. I bet he's got a lot of time on his hands searching for so many.  

He derailed my train of thoughts as he went on full steam ahead.

"Do you know?" he asked her as she nodded politely falling asleep, "one of my ancestors fought at the Battle of Agincourt. Another one died whilst fighting in Scotland. Others fought in a number of wars in Europe, Africa and all over the world! Even in Antarctica."

"They must have been quite an argumentative lot, fighting all over the place!" my brain interjected silently.

"And an interesting array of names I've discovered from my family tree," he bored the old woman, "A great great grand uncle three times removed was a knight at the time of Henry VII and was called Sir Roger Rabbitt, would you believe?"

"And no doubt he bred like his namesake! No wonder there's 56,000 boring farts like you," my brain wittily jumped in, "I wish you were three times removed from this train carriage. Or even once would be enough!"

It was like a comedy duo. He said something and my brain added the punchline. 

"The ancestry program on the T'Internet can also show you old photographs of one's ancestors," he informed the old lady who must have been suicidal by then, but she hid it well with a benign smile, "amazing how many people look the same over the years. It must be in our family DNA!"

"So do they all look like gerbils and cockatoos?" my brain asked, "no wonder you've such a bent nose. Were you born with this nose or did you pick it yourself?"

I had to bite my lips to stop myself from laughing out loud. My brain, which often misbehaves in times such as these, went on with one thought after another which I could not stop.

"Have any of your ancestors died of boredom listening to you or does boredom run in your family?" my brain asked. "Were you vaccinated with a gramophone needle as a child? You've not stopped talking since you came here."

As my brain continued to insult the non-stop-talking amateur genealogist and professional bore the poor old little lady got more and more desperate listening to him, smiling kindly and nodding her head and saying "yes ... how interesting ..."

At one point she put down her knitting needles, opened the train window and jumped out of the speeding train. I managed to grab her by the feet as she hung there in mid-air shouting, "let me go ... let me go ... I can still hear him ..."

I slowly pulled her back into the carriage and settled her in the seat whilst the man continued to regale us with even more tales of his long and never ending family tree which should have been uprooted and thrown out of the train when it was a tiny seed sprouting into eternal boredom for mankind.

(I think that's one of the longest sentences I have ever written without any punctuations).