A family history, stitch by stitch

Who do you think you are? Alan Perrott goes on a quest to find his forbears on the Bayeux tapestry.

Every family has its legends, the sort of tale that gets dragged out once the weather has been done to death and no one's quite ready to grab another bowl of Christmas trifle. Traditionally, ours have revolved around cousin Martin's days as a disco dancing-push up king and my grandmother's knack for boiling peas to a lovely shade of grey. This is the stuff families can bond over forever.

But of late we've taken to looking for new rellies to chew over. It's a part whakapapa/part Kevin Bacon game really, an exercise in seeing how far back we have to go until we can link ourselves to a fair dinkum celebrity.

To date we've dipped out completely on newsreaders, so we're having to make do with this vague idea that a way-distant Perrott remains immortalised on the Bayeux Tapestry. For the historically confounded, this is an enormous tea towel some English biddies whipped up 1000-odd years ago to thank William the Conqueror (formerly known as William the Bastard due to being an illegitimate son of Robert the Magnificent who was, in turn, brother-in-law of Knute the Mighty and cousin of Edward the Confessor - and no, I'm not making this up) for slaying their king, boring old Harry Godwinson.

Our supporting evidence is there for anyone who can type Google to see. Oh, you'll never be bothered so here's the gist: our excessively consonated surname has been around for a fair while, since the 950s anyway, when William de Perrott built a castle in Brittany (that's in France). The important bit - and where the tapestry comes in - is that his great-grandson, Sir Richard etc got all enthused by the invasion plans and promptly provided some ships and soldiers before popping on his armour and grabbing his pointiest stick to help give the Poms a right sticking. This probably came as some surprise, as the notion of being attacked by Normans conjures images of cardy-wearing stamp collectors with male pattern baldness.

All the same, our Richard's sense of derring-do was reputedly impressive enough to have got him stitched into posterity. It's a great yarn, as long as it's true.

If I was going to find some solid evidence I was going to have to take a look for myself ...

Now, if you haven't been to France, let me just say it's a rather queer place. How can a leading light of the First World have such rubbish roads? I've worn wider flares. Then there's the mud houses and their habit of shutting up shop just as you're looking for lunch. Still, anything sounds cool in French, particularly when accompanied by wild sideburns and wine that is as cheap as frites.

So, from our base near the micro-village of Triqueville - a place so proud of its pristine red gravel carpark that no one ever parks on it - we make our way to Bayeux via a succession of high-speed burps between toll booth queues. I recommend some serious korero before we commit to that notion. Our destination is easily as charming as the place we left, if sorely lacking in similarly empty carparks. If we prefer our towns sprawled out with legs akimbo, your average Gaul likes to keep everything cheek by sideburned jowl with street plans the Romans would still recognise. Walking is the best option.

And walk we do. Over, around and under the town's rather forbidding cathedral, before enjoying some recently uncovered crumbly ruins and a quaint waterwheel that's in even worse nick. Where are the gaudy souvenir shops? For a town boasting such an important relic, they don't make much of a fuss over it. Other than the little direction signs to steer us, it's all kept nicely on the down-low.

I wasn't even sure we were in the right building when we got there, as the only outside feature was a small rowboat Vikings used to go to church. Maybe they'd just arrived and the jammy buggers had nabbed the only empty parking space? Inside, we line up and collect our commentary handsets. I subtly drop the family name to the lady behind the desk to see if we're still famous about town. Maybe it was my poor French but she immediately directed me to the toilet.

Undeterred, if much relieved, we enter the darkened room where the monster wall carpet has been concertina-ed into the U-bend shape needed for it to fit. As I study the first few metres, the commentary reels off a lot of Perrott-less yada yada about how dastardly Harold had done the dirty on dear old William, a top bloke who apparently only wanted to help. Despite my growing impatience, I tried to pay attention but couldn't help staring at the enthusiastic, not to mention impressive, naked men and women randomly stitched into the borders above and below the main story. Why were they there? No idea, the commentary skipped those bits. I might ask my auntie, she's into quilting and I suspect it's an arts and crafts thing.

Finally we get to the important bit, the boats. Hmmm ... there's an awful lot of people, and given the absence of dogtags or anyone brandishing a big pointed stick, there's no way of knowing which is ours. You'd have thought there'd at least be a small scene of William offering our Richard a hearty handshake for all of the help. Not a dickie bird, ungrateful bastard.

Okay, time to get my CSI on. Our family has a distinctive nose, so I tried looking for one of those. Sadly, the skill of those olde worlde matrons didn't extend to facial nuances, unless the person being stitched also had an arrow sticking out of his head. In such cases, and there's an awful lot of them, the poor bugger is given a slightly aggrieved frown. Second thought, if he's knightly and owns a big castle, surely he'll have some of those naked groupies in the borders hanging around him. Well, there's one bloke who seems to be getting the come-hithers from a particularly handsome horse and a bunch of carrots ... we'll let that one lie.

Actually, I don't think this one will be easily solved. Never mind, my commentary says that back in day the whole thing used to be dragged out every year for a fortnight to entertain the peasants. No doubt there would have been minstrels singing about tales of heroism and such and I'm sure that's where our name would have featured.

Until those songs come online, it looks like we're going to be needing a new tall tale for Christmas. I hear there are some pretty impressive paleolithic cave paintings in southwestern France. There has to be a relly somewhere amongst them, poking a mammoth with his stick.

I think an investigative visit is in order.