Me and Che Guevara

When you work on your family tree, you hope to come across some interesting characters. For instance, on my father's side is James F. X. O'Brien an Irishman who was sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered but later became an MP alongside Parnell. There is also the Irish playwright T.C. Murray, whose plays were performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. On my mother's side we managed to trace back to an ancestor who was a woolcomber in Mountsorrell who died in 1776. The family moved around a bit and a later ancestor was a bank manager in Rye. 


However my mother then discovered some Irish relatives and it emerged that a relative called Patrick Lynch went to South America around 1750 and became quite successful. A family tree was published online and one of his descendants was Che Guevera. Thus it is that I am a seventh cousin of Che Guevara. Although he died in 1967, he is still a prominent and controversial figure. I can not claim to be like him but it is quite odd to see so many copies of that image of my seventh cousin.

Kylie Minogue on King's Road?

    One afternoon I was walking along the King's Road in Chelsea, London. As I crossed the road I noticed a young man and a young woman walking past. They were both wearing dark glasses. As I neared the pavement I had a side view of the woman who was wearing a black sleeveless top and I thought that her bare arms were very thin. It then occured to me that she looked like Kylie Minogue from the Australian soap Neighbours. By the time I reached the pavement they had gone passed. I paused and watched them for a moment. As I turned to go in the other direction I heard a female voice say "Well he thinks it is Kylie !" and two female teenagers walked past. Clearly there were following the couple to see if it really was Kylie. To be honest I was not sure at the time if it was her, so I did not follow them. I did wonder however how obvious it had been that I thought it was Kylie. I did not expect to be watched so closely.
    I later found out that at the time Kylie's boyfriend was Billy Zane who resembled the young man and Kylie lived in Chelsea, so it probably was Kylie. A few years she said in an interview that she had been learning karate for the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Streetfighter and it had made her arms bigger, so her arms were no longer as thin as before.

©Conor Cotter

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