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Yorkshire mentioned again! I hope you don't think you're in with a chance of becoming an honorary Yorkshireman.
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I thought it a bit snarky and possibly a not-so-thinly-veiled insult. Here is what I replied:
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Tasker, you obviously missed this post of mine from 2016 including its comments stream.
It's all right. I forgive you. Lao-Tze (not Confucius) said 'a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' and that's enough for me.
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It is true that through my father's maternal grandmother, Bloomy Jane (Cleveland) Johnson, I may be descended from a Yorkshireman. But even though our family is related distantly to President Grover Cleveland, there is no truth to the rumor (British, rumour) that the Clevelands are descended from Anne of Cleves, fourth wife of King Henry VIII.
She was one of the lucky ones (think 'divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived') in that not only was she not beheaded, her marriage to the king was not even consummated. She was summarily dismissed after about six months. She could have been the mother of a Duke of York if only she had stayed. You can read all about her in the link if you like.
Here she is as painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1539.
Flippin’ eck.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly wasn't intended as a not-so-thinly-veiled insult, or an insult of any kind. It was merely an observation that you had mentioned Yorkshire several times recently. I've never mentioned Georgia. Nor had I seen your 2016 post (I only started inn 2014). Apologies if my comment offended.
DeleteOh! I have mentioned Georgia, as in the song, Marching Through Georgia. Had to search my own blog to discover that.
Tasker, apology accepted. I probably am the sneakier one so I apologise in return for the tone of my post. I think it was early in the day and I had not yet had any coffee, a dangerous time to be blogging. You can mention Georgia. I’m not a native although I have lived here for 42 years now. You can mention Texas too, if you like, as I didn’t move there until I was six. But don’t mess with Rhode Island, where I was born (because I wanted to be near my mother and she happened to be there at the time). Rhode Island is the smallest of all 50 states, but Rhode Islanders are feisty.
DeleteOops, predictive text got me. I meant to say snarkier, not sneakier. A thousand pardons.
DeleteSometimes life can get really confusing.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I sincerely hope that I am not contributing to the confusion.
DeleteFamily ties can be complicated.
ReplyDeleteEmma, and the bigger the family the more complicated they can get. I was an only child and things were far from simple. I became the middle one of five children at age 17 when my widowed father married my stepmother, who had four of her own. And my stepmother was one of 10, so things grew complicated rapidly. For example, the wife of one of her brothers was actually the aunt of the wife of another brother. Also, her youngest brother and sister married a sister-brother pair from another family, so all their children were “double first cousins.” It’s enough to make one’s head swim!
DeleteDear Bob,
ReplyDeleteGiven your bright intellect, your debonair fashion sense, the ferocity of your self-defence mechanisms, your handsomeness, your family loyalty, your righteousness, your personal hygiene and your musical ability - it is very easy to believe that you have Yorkshire blood in your veins. You should consider dropping the American accent in order to take up a Yorkshire one. Mrs Brague will surely swoon - her heart all a-flutter.
Dear Neil,
ReplyDeleteOne wants to believe one, but one went a bridge too far when one included handsomeness and personal hygiene in one’s list. The first is obviously untrue and as for the second, well, let’s not even go there. Besides, I believe the applicable phrase is “damned with faint praise”…. but I definitely have ancestors from England, Scotland, and Wales. So the swoonability factor is high, and the likelihood of fluttering is always present.