The Ravelled Sleeve

No explanation needed: you’ve all seen this one before.

1. Some of my nearest relations (by blood and marriage) do odd things to watches. My father and his mother both stopped watches, for no detectable reason, within a few days to a fortnight of acquiring them. My father couldn’t wear a watch at all until the advent of digitals, and even now can only wear the cheapest kind, with plastic componentry. We still don’t know why this happened, but I can promise you neither of them were abducted by aliens.

And my husband has super-corrosive sweat, which eats through the metal backs of watches — unless they’re the most expensive kind, made of unreactive metals like, oh, platinum. He also plays a brass instrument, and over time his supersweat has chewed through the lacquer on that too. He has to play wearing gloves.

2. I have a collagen disorder which makes my joints and skin hypermobile. This is useful for yoga class and moments when I need to scratch my own back, but also predisposed me to spontaneous dislocations when I was a small child, which was not very enjoyable. My parents had to be taught how to reduce elbow dislocations, so that they could do it at home.

3. I have five university degrees (plus a certificate) in three separate disciplines, and have studied in six universities, in five countries, on three continents. In my family, we call this chronic education. So much interesting stuff to learn, only one life to learn it in.

4. I’m descended, though my paternal grandfather, from first cousins who married. This is legal in England (and in many other places).

5. I’m also descended (maternal side this time) from a man who was told by his mother that he was the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm I. Who knows whether this was actually true (he did look a bit like the Kaiser, and his mother had been in service in the household of an army friend of the Kaiser’s), or whether it was just a bit of romantic gloss on an old scandal?

6. I have three citizenships (and passports): one by birth, one by descent, and one (indirectly) by marriage.