I Joined my clan society

[gilmore]

As well you should. Being English we don't have clans or this sense of history. I might be a distant relative of the Harmsworth newspaper barrons from the turn of the last century and likewise the Harmsworth Trophy. Then again if I am then I'd be related to a nazi sympathizer at a time when Dad and his two brothers marched off to war. Would I be prepared for those skeletons?

As we say in genealogical circles, you can pick your nose, and you can pick your relative's nose, but you can't pick your relatives.

It could be worse.

I have an American-born friend, whose parents are both from Lithuanian families, but one is gentile and the other Jewish. It is not at all unlikely that some of her father's relatives murdered some of her mother's relatives in the Holocaust.

Last week I discovered that we are 8th cousins twice removed to Lyndon Baines Johnson. None of my relatives so far has been impressed. In fact they kind of moan on hearing the news. One calls him "that man from Texas."

Earlier this year I uncovered something scandalous about my grandparents and made the mistake of sharing it with a cousin who I thought was level-headed. She hasn't spoken to me nor my immediate family since.