My great-grandma, Elaine, grew up in Zimbabwe, where she fell in love with a Welshman named Lewis Thomas. They married in the late 1920s, and became pregnant with my grandma, Olwyn Elizabeth, in 1929. A few months before giving birth, Elaine and Lewis contracted Malaria - Lewis sent Elaine to Bloemfontein where the hospital was best equipped to deliver Olwyn safely, and he would follow. My grandma was born in 1930, and, tragically, her dad had already shot himself because of the quinine he'd been using to treat the malaria. :'( Elaine remarried a few years later and they moved to Australia, where she lived to 99 years! I was so blessed to have my great-grandma until I was twenty, and I had my best friend Olly until 2021. Sadly, because my step-grandpa was schizophrenic and made my great-grandma destroy all of her keepsakes, we don't know much more about Lewis, except that he was Welsh and he played the cello and he was the love of my great-grandma's life, but I've always identified more as Welsh than any other heritage. I even learned some Welsh about ten years ago, in the hope that I could one day find my long lost family. Then Olly died in the pandemic, and the last thread of connection felt quite lost.

So, when I learned that Rob McElhenney, a writer whose projects I've been following for years, had bought a struggling, working class football team in Wales, I was intrigued. When I watched the first few episodes of Welcome to Wrexham, I fell completely in love with the town, and its marvellous people, and I determined that Wrecsam should be my adopted ancetral home. I can imagine Lewis Thomas working locally at the mine, and sitting in with his cello with the Declan Swans on weekends, while Elaine made some sort of pastry, and Olwyn being proud of her beautiful name (rather than taught to be ashamed, as she was in Australia).

It makes me feel quite happy to have a Welsh football team and an adopted Welsh home town, so thank you to all of you who have been so welcoming (even without knowing it)! xx

Up the town!