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Sunday, July 2, 2017

Ancestry DNA Surprises!


                                                                                              Image Credit
                             By Lestat (Jan Mehlich) - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1048337



The news is in my friends.


My Ancestry DNA results arrived yesterday and as I was at a reunion with my family yesterday, it was the perfect time for the big reveal.


“I’m 19% Polish which means you must all have Polish in you too!” I screamed whilst miming playing a piano accordion.

So ecstatic at the exotic heritage revelation, last night we all danced around doing the polka, eating sausage and generally celebrating the fact that I had 19% Polish DNA (which was a bloody surprise let me tell you). 

“Hey Pilchowski!” someone would call out in a Bronx accent. “Pass the sausage, Werkonski!” someone would holler amongst various other names that end in ‘ski’ which were thrown back and forward with gusto all night. This went on incessantly as we told Polish jokes, shared war stories about the German Invasion in 1939 as if we had actually been there and basically celebrated the Fatherland in joyous patriotism.

The unfortunate thing was that I had been forced to read the results of my DNA test on my phone as my laptop carked it just before I left to go on holidays and I read the wrong results because the stupid phone screen is so small. This morning, however, I realised I’d clicked the wrong button and I have NO Polish DNA whatsoever.

Nary a scrap.

I have 19% Western European DNA, which is the Belgium/France/German/Swiss combination and nothing at all Polish in me, apparently.

Oh well. It was nice being a one fifth Pole for one night anyway.

So, as I predicted, I am 43% Great Britain, 21% Irish and delightfully 13% Scandinavian (which explains why I seem to have turned into a blonde over the last six months and it’s nothing to do with Stefan Hairdressing salon visits. It’s all natural.

It seems my ancestors liked to hang around Western Europe and not move about very much.

I’ve decided to completely ignore the 43% British component in my DNA but I do like the Irish element. I’m almost a quarter Irish so that means I can celebrate St Patrick’s Day with some authenticity now instead of faking it like all the other drunks.

The Scandinavian bit must be from the Vikings when they raped and pillaged the Celts and Saxons. I’ll have to get one of those little hats with horns and start naming my pets after characters on Vikings instead of Game of Thrones.

The Ancestry DNA people also send you the names of close and distant cousins who have undergone the testing process.

My closest match was my uncle! I haven’t seen or spoken to my uncle for about twenty-five years (no one in the family has) and it shocked me how accurate these tests must be for them to identify us as a very close match. There are over three million profiles and they matched me with my uncle!

Anyway, yah, I’m off to the spa, yah. I’m going to eat some pickled herrings and meatballs and listen to ABBA songs yah!

Top o the morning to you. May the wind always be at your back and may you be at the gates of heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead! It’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love.

Fiddle-dee-dee potatoes!