It's that day of the year where every other cunt pretends to be Irish.

I recall getting to that point in my early teens as my parents were also reaching that age of seeing older family members start to give up the ghost or fade into obscurity, and suddenly everybody was obsessed by lineage and ancestry.

I remember how my family turned out to be a dull, puritanical bunch who'd been spending much of the few centuries plodding around West Country orchards or working in banking. Dull. The other side were the more of the same, except in Kentish hop fields, but they were exceptional because there was likely a Jew in the history somewhere.

Then my father came up with the idea that because of the free yet mild and unremarkable landowners dominating the tree, the family must have been Norman, and assigned land after the conquest. I was embarassed to admit, that for some time, I took the whole Anglo-Norman angle of a unique definition for myself too far. I could say I've grown out of it for good, but seeing elders behave much the same way supports the glum conclusion that everybody undergo cycles of existentialism.

/r/britishproblems Thread Parent