Family history research & St George's Day in The View from the Terrace

I recently did the Ancestry dna test and I got the results back last week. Nothing very exciting turned up; no half siblings or cousins that I hadn’t known about, no dna links to someone famous. There were lots of dna matches, mostly 4th-6th cousins but those I have been able to look at simply matched my research, no one had got further back. Still, at least it verifies my research. I now know that about 80% of my research is correct.

Yesterday was St George’s Day. It’s supposed to be England’s national day. I’ve never understood why it isn’t celebrated and isn’t even a bank holiday. Scotland, and Northern Ireland have Bank Holidays on their saints days. Wales doesn’t have a bank holiday on St David’s Day but they have been campaigning for it.

This reminds me of when I was in London in the 70s. I was living in a hostel at the time and on St George’s Day at breakfast I expressed these feelings. Somehow during the conversation it was decided that we would all go out and celebrate by having a drink in every pub we could find called the George. We started, appropriately, at the George in Southwark, opposite Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and had a great time wandering through the city finding other George pubs until we reached home. I can’t remember how many drinks we had but the funny thing is I was the only English person. There was an American, a girl from New Zealand and a Scottish lady, but we all celebrated St George’s Day.