Finding a match

You don’t come across many Donkins. There are some people I know who would regard that as a good thing and I don’t blame them. But there are one or two Donkins I have met over the years, such as this chap. There is even a town called Donkin in Nova Scotia.

This week I’m sad to report the passing of two Donkins, one quite well known and one, my uncle Cyril, who would have been known by all those on his Bradford postal round before he retired.

As a young child I thought uncle Cyril was super human because of his handkerchief trick. He would hand over a matchstick that he would ask me to place inside his handkerchief. He would then ask me to snap the match within the cloth. Opening the handkerchief in a flourish, he would reveal a whole matchstick. This trick (it's great with very young children) had me puzzled for years. Uncle Cyril had a great sense of humour and I’m sad that he’s gone.

I was also sad to see that Mike Donkin, the BBC journalist, had died. Many, many times over the years people have asked me if I was related to “that Mike Donkin” on the TV or radio. We spoke on the phone once or twice over the years when our reporting interests had coincided, but we had no relatives in common.

We did, however, share a love of news reporting. He was a good journalist as this obituary testifies. The BBC needs people like Mike Donkin.

Enough of Donkins, I’m thinking, but I have one last note. I was contacted a week ago by an Alfreda Doonkeen who lives in Oklahoma City in the US and who wanted to know if I was descended from a cattle farmer in South America.

Some time in the 19th century, she says, an Alfred Donkin arrived in Mexico. She is wondering if he might have been related to her grandfather, Alfred Doonkeen and whether I might be “sharing some of his DNA.” I have no idea. I haven’t found any Donkins in my family history who have lived outside Yorkshire, apart from a few of those in my generation, not that I’ve looked very hard.

But this Alfred Donkin intrigues me. I can imagine him turning up in Mexico, to be greeted by the locals as Meester Doonkeen. As a Donkin (anything to make life easier could be a family motto) he most probably changed his name to go with the flow. I can see him now sitting in the dust with his poncho and sombrero, a handkerchief in one hand, a matchstick in the other.....