Laura Craik on her (slightly) European DNA

Maybe it’s a Brexit thing, but suddenly London seems obsessed with DNA testing: not the Jeremy Kyle kind, but the kind that lets you know your true ethnicity. To my knowledge, I have not mothered any unsuspecting children — I think I’d have remembered — but I’m well up for discovering some exotic blood. We may not know where we’re going (off a cliff, clearly) but the desire to know where we came from is strong. If we are to be cast out of Europe, perhaps the consolation of having European blood swirling around our veins is a cheering fragment we can shore against our ruin.

I send off for a DNA testing kit. I choose 23andMe, on the basis that it was namechecked in The Kominsky Method by Alan Arkin. I spit into a test tube, send off the sample to some lab in North Carolina and wait six weeks for the results. During this time, I receive breathless emails informing me that ‘we’re genotyping your DNA!’, which would be exciting if I knew what it meant. Nonetheless, I am excited. One of my friends recently discovered she is partly Indian; another is delighted at having Danish blood. Despite looking more Scottish than the lovechild of Jimmy Krankie and a Highland cow, I’m determined to be French on the basis that a French person once told me that I looked French. He was drunk. It was dark. But I’ll take it.

Six weeks later, the results come in. Oh, balls. I am 85.2 per cent British. Only 1.5 per cent of my ancestry is Scandinavian, although 5.6 per cent is ‘French or German’. Just as I’m starting to feel enthused (the drunk bloke was right!) I click on the ‘interactive ancestry composition map’ and note that only Germany is highlighted. Far from being distantly related to Alain Delon or Marion Cotillard, the report claims my ancestors are from Lower Saxony, ‘a modern and high-achieving location for industry and science’ and ‘a leading business and trade show location’, according to one website. It is the ultimate ‘computer says no’. Oh well. At least I’m European. Although I didn’t need a DNA test to tell me that. It’s in my soul.

Just when you thought Stan Smiths could withstand no further permutations, along comes Raf Simons with another remix, this time a vintage one. I’m no great fan of the #faged (fake aged) look — I’m still recovering from seeing a £215 pair of deliberately dirtied Converse All Stars in Harrods — but this is Raf and, Raf being Raf, he has drawn on archive sneakers from 1984 to 1992 as inspiration, employing advanced 3D technologies to superimpose creases and stains. Debuted at the Paris menswear shows, the new RS Stans (of which there are three) will be available to buy in April. Or you could root around at the back of your wardrobe and see what dusty, knackered old creps you can find.

In honour of Burns Night, I’d like to join every other person in Britain in extolling the virues of Andy Murray, who is not Rabbie Burns, though if the idolatry keeps coming it seems likely that future generations will be celebrating Murray Night and eating ice cream (his favourite food) instead of haggis. Happy as I am that he’s finally getting the respect he deserves, I wish the love-bombing had started earlier, and not just now that he’s injured and approaching retirement, ergo exonerated from the shallow love/hate narrative that defines the world of sport. It wasn’t so long ago that some pundits were criticising him for being ‘dour’ and ‘duller than a weekend in Worthing’. Joni Mitchell was right: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.