(diaryland) June 19, 2001 - 9:38 a.m.

I wondered what it would be like if one of my distant ancestors came over to visit so I could show them what life is like for one of their descendants. But I got caught up more in the, �How would they cope with sudden time travel?� semantics. Say I wanted one of my English ancestors to appear. They would be from the Manchester area. They would be short. They would probably be a serf. One of my ancestors, or at least a brother of one of them, from about the 1500s, was a bishop (the Bishop of Lincoln, incidentally) so perhaps I�d be lucky and get an ancestor that could read Latin. Not that I can read Latin at all, but I do have a Latin dictionary and I feel like I�d have more of a chance communicating with them in Latin than in what they would have spoken at the time.

The ancestor would appear and shout something incomprehensible like, �Ooh � ooh � eeeeecummin!� They would be confused and disoriented so they would be even more difficult to understand. They may jump or run. They may step on some of my CDs strewn on the floor. I would be shitting my pants. Shit, a crazy serf just appeared in my room, I�d be thinking. I�d pick up my lamp, and hold it as a weapon, just in case. The ancestor would either think that I was a witch, they themselves were a witch, or even both of us. The ancestor may get violent. I might hit the ancestor with said lamp. The ancestor might be knocked out cold and disappear again, leaving me in a nervous sweat of fear and remorse. I would eventually end up nuts because no-one would believe me and get bogged over with regret for rendering them unconscious with a lamp. The ancestor would end up trying to keep it all a secret, but then finally would have to tell someone in the village, and then would get drowned in the local lake for telling fibs. It would all end in tears, my friend.

And all I wanted to do was show them what TV was like. About how their descendant was able to eat delicious oven-baked chips made from potatoes. About computer games. About how Sonic Youth sounds. About microwaves. About personal hygiene. About how they made a ripple in the world. Oh, well.

Thems crazy Saxons.