The Full English

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been drinking Guinness and eating olives

when I did the swab test for my DNA. The results confirmed

what I had long suspected, a dearth of Englishness.

69.6% Irish and Scottish? No surprises there, I suppose.

A Mc in the name is a sporran stuffed with shamrock.

But 12.5% Spanish, Italian and Greek?

A Roman soldier, centurion I imagine, sweeping my great, great

great, etc. granma off her feet after a ceilidh in Connemara,

with promises of sea, sand and sunshine? Hardly.

Quickie on a peat bog in the pouring rain, more like.

Only 17.9% English? I can’t believe it, that’s only half a buttockful.

What polite hostility kept my forebears at a distance?

Immigrants over here under sufferance.

Mass-goers with a propensity for large families

and drink. Accents that goaded the neighbours.

But let me be thankful for this heady genetic cocktail.

A pinch of Plato, a sliver of Virgil, a little Lorca

and a cement-mixer full of cheek and blarney.

Unable to face the Full English, I push the fry-up aside

And, taking out Grandad’s little tin whistle put it to my lips.

Failing, as ever, to get a decent tune out of it.