The pock-marked intruder was chewing on a cabbage leaf from my vegetable patch. There was no indication of how he had scaled the high wall, and I was certain that he had not come through the house, so it was a complete mystery as to how he had managed to gain entry to my garden.
As I asked the stranger about the purpose of his ‘visit’, I saw that the small spiral notebook in his left hand was opened on a page where three different spellings of ‘Haydon Bridge’ had been tested. I wondered if – rather than a former student or work colleague – this man might be a genealogical researcher.
I was right. He was pretty certain that we were connected to family D. When I told him emphatically that we were not, his face dropped. He has been hoping that we would be the final piece in the jigsaw to explain his deadly inherited disease.
Dreamaticus 