Chapter 1: Offa

Bugger Offa

"Bugger Offa," said my wife.

"That's it!" I exclaimed, leaping on to the coffee table and executing a neat, if I may say so, Irish jig thereon.

"That's what?" my wife asked.

"The title for the book," I explained mid-jig. "It's perfect. Just what I've been looking for. Slick. Racy. Post-modern. Catches the eye. Bugger Offa. It's perfect."

"The Women's Institutes won't like it," my wife pointed out witheringly. "So you can forget about them inviting you to speak to them. And I don't expect your publisher chappie will be happy with it either. Anyway that wasn't what I meant."

My spirits, so recently heightened, were already beginning to droop as I climbed from the table.

"What did you mean?" I asked.

"I meant I'm fed up with you rabbiting on about Offa," she explained. "All I've heard for the past year is Offa, Offa, Offa. I'm fed up with him. What's so special about him anyway?"

"Rex Anglorum," I began. "The very first person to proclaim himself so. King of the Angles. "

"Sounds more like a snooker player to me."

"But don't you realise," I continued, well into my stride now and ignoring her feeble attempt at humour, "all those England football fans, with their shaven heads and large wobbly bellies, chanting 'ANGLE-LAND, ANGLE-LAND, ANGLE-LAND', owe their origins to Offa."

"You mean those clowns who get drunk on German lager and drape themselves in the flag of the Turkish St George?" my wife asked. "Anyway, I bet half of them aren't even English. I hate all this phoney patriotism that comes with football. We're a nation of immigrants anyway, aren't we?"

"Well, I used to think so too till I came across this research from University College in London. They compared a sample of men from England with those from an area of the Netherlands where the Anglo-Saxons are thought to have originated and found the English had genes that were almost identical. It seems that even nowadays a large part of the genetic profile of the English is Anglo-Saxon. But, and this is a big but, they found that the Welsh males studied had a different genetic profile, suggesting that the Anglo-Saxon invaders were responsible for a sort of ethnic cleansing of Britain and that they drove the original inhabitants into Wales."

"So that's why Offa built his dyke?"

"Exactly," I concluded. "It's quite likely that the dyke acted as a genetic barrier as well as a physical one. That's why Offa matters. That's why I'm fascinated by him."

"So when are you going to walk the Dyke?" she asked. "It's a bit tougher than the walks you've done before, isn't it?

"I've cleared my diary for the end of June. And yes, it is tougher. And that's why I have to get into training for this one," I replied. "From Easter I need to be out every day, building up my strength and stamina."

"And then going to the pub every lunchtime to ruin it all." My wife knows me well.

"No. Strict training. Not a drop will touch my lips from now till then," I boasted.

"It doesn't have time to touch your lips the way you drink." I ignored this cutting remark

"But if I'm going to walk the Dyke, then I have to know more about Offa. That's why I'm reading all this stuff."

"Okay," she said. "But if you're going to write about it, please don't call your book Bugger Offa."

I sighed. It had seemed such a good idea.

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