Name: Welsh grandmother.
Age: hard to say.
Appearance: possibly Welsh-looking.
Whose Welsh grandmother are we talking about? We don’t know. But we do know people have been searching for her all week.
Where? Downtown Cardiff? The Brecon Beacons? Snowdonia? On Google.
Is she all right? She appears to be a matter of conjecture. Google searches for “Welsh grandmother” hit their highest level ever last Friday.
Why? The spike coincided with Wales’s stunning victory over Belgium in the Euro 16 tournament, courtesy of England fans suddenly keen to claim a bit of Welsh ancestry.
I see. Wait, what? England suffered a humiliating exit from the tournament, while Wales have reached their first ever Euro semifinal. Fickle fans are jumping on the bandwagon.
How could somebody not know whether their own grandmother was Welsh? Maybe she died before anyone could ask her.
Even so, it makes no sense. Why would Google know if you had a Welsh grandmother or not? Google knows many things.
But searching for “Welsh grandmother” won’t get you anywhere, unless you want to know how to say grandmother in Welsh. They say “nain” in the north and “mam-gu” in the south.
When I type “Welsh” into Google, I’m offered “corgi”, “flag” and “rarebit”. No grandmother. Yes, but by the time you get to “Welsh g …”
“Government”, “girls’ names”, “gold”, “guards”. OK, but surely when you type “Welsh grand …”
“Grand national”. Why are you trying to rubbish this cute story? What’s wrong with people loving football, and their nains?
Exactly how many people performed this idiotic inquiry on Friday? Searches reportedly rose fivefold between kick-off and the final whistle.
Yes, but how many is that? According to Google Adwords, searches for “Welsh grandmother” average about 50 a month – not quite two per day. It comes at a time, however, when nobody seems to want to be the nationality they are. Thousands of Britons have been investigating their ancestry in hopes of applying for Irish or other EU passports in the wake of the Brexit vote.
Not Welsh, though. No, there is no Welsh passport. This is just about football.
Do say: “Good luck against Portugal on Wednesday!”
Don’t say: “You’re not my real nain, but if you drop by the pub at half time, there’s a tenner in it for you.”
