Last time I blogged I talked about the dangers of Lincolnshire's roads. I have to say that the dangers are real. There are usually about a hundred people killed every year in accidents, usually through sheer idiocy. A few years ago my cousin's husband was killed on Christmas Eve by someone pulling out onto a main road and more recently my wife's nephew was killed when the man giving him a lift decided to overtake on a bend and hit a lorry head-on.

At least three of my mother's brothers had serious motorbike accidents, one of them almost fatal. It's one of my earliest memories, my mother's father appearing at the house to tell us about Uncle Dick. It's funny, it was always my father who was needed when there was a problem of some sort.

I wanted to talk about widening the gene pool as well, especially my own contribution.

My first wife was Shirley, Shirley Anne in fact, named so because her father was a fan of Shirley Anne Field, perhaps best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Shirley's father was Bill, son of a Lt-commander in the Royal Navy. I don't know whether was a regular sailor, but he certainly served in the Navy during the war. I believe he sailed in The Hood, but fortunately was transferred before she met The Bismarck. It seems that he met my mother-in-law while stationed in the Navy base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, for she is an Orkadian. Incidentally, Orkadians are not Scottish, whatever region of the UK the civil servants place them in, and always vote against 'Scottish' independence or devolution when given the opportunity. It's back to the Viking heritage.

My second wife, Carolyn, is the product of a Lincolnshire woman (surname Louth) and Cecil Bower. She met Cecil in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the war. Cecil, obviously named after Rhodes, had grown up in Mozambique. His family's name had originally been 'Bauer', having come from the Alsace-Lorraine region on the border of France and Germany. During the First World War they anglicised their name, just like the Mountabttens (from Battenberg) and King George V himself.

Not a bad mix, in all.