What's in a name?

Apparently the most likely names for the new Royal Baby are Alexandra for a girl, or George if it's a boy. The only reason I would be remotely interested in William and Kate's choice of name for their first-born would be if I had placed a hefty bet on it. I haven't, so I'm not.
Nevertheless, names do mean so much, don't they? I'm not sure how this works in other cultures and I would be most interested to hear from any overseas readers on this topic, but here in good old Blighty, you can definitely tell a thing or two about a chap (or chapess) from the name they have.
When we were choosing names for our first (and last) born my choice was definitely limited due to having been a teacher for so long. Every name seemed to have some sort of memory associated with it and more often than not it was a negative one. One of Geof's suggestions was 'Kyle'. Now I am really sorry but every Kyle I have taught has been trouble with a capital K. It's a name I associate with small children being yelled at in supermarkets (Lidl, not Waitrose of course). My dear husband also suggested 'Jamal', a gorgeous name I am sure, but possibly one which would result in him being stopped and interrogated at airports on a regular basis. Why not go the whole hog and christen him 'Death to the Infidel' just to be sure.
However, we both liked 'Bryn', each having separate but happy memories of holidays spent in Wales. Phew! Sorted and at only 20 weeks pregnant. Ah, but what about a middle name? I really wanted it to be 'Morgan' my mother's maiden name. At least that way I would always be able to answer the security question to reset my password. However, Geof thought that 'Bryn Morgan Harrison' sounded like an accountancy firm.  He had a point I suppose so we went for a bit of biblical with 'Reuben'.
You can have a lot of fun with names too. I'm sure you've all worked out you film star name using your middle name plus a park near to where you grew up. Mine would be 'Kathryn The Rec'. Mmmm maybe not. A recent one doing the rounds was your rock band name. For this you used the colour of your underwear plus the last food you ate. Following on from my 'Inner Baptist' post you won't believe this but mine was 'Black Quiche'!
I work in a Catholic school, and when the new pope was being elected we had a great time deciding what our 'Pope Name' would be. I know, we don't get out much. To do this we looked at the saints' names calendar, looked for our birthdays and selected a name. I went for 'Pope Casimir Humbert'.
So, names do mean quite a bit. That's why we are unlikely to ever see a 'Queen Chardonnay' in our green and pleasant land.

A nice bit of British classism

As you all know by now I have what some may consider an unhealthy obsession with the relative merits of local supermarkets. I do particularly like the posh one up the road from me and when I go there I feel all middle class and grown up as I choose between the chargrilled artichokes and the olive and manchego platter. However, on a recent visit I was left feeling quite shocked and confused after spotting a customer buying a copy of ‘The Sun’ newspaper. Now I don’t like to be judgmental but I’m going to be anyway. To explain to anyone from a different country who may be reading this, ‘The Sun’ contains pictures of scantily clad ladies, no news and could easily be accessed by someone with a reading age of 7. In a nutshell, it is not what you expect ‘Waitrose’ clientèle to be buying.

When I relayed this dismaying news to a friend, he asked if I was sure they weren’t buying  ‘The Sun’ in a kind of post-modern ironic way, a bit like people who send their children to fee-paying schools buy ‘The Guardian’. (Kerrching! I have now managed to alienate the remaining 50% of my friends, the ones who were smugly chuckling about ‘The Sun’) I assured him that this was not the case as I had overheard them talking and they didn’t even know how to pronounce ‘cous-cous’ properly. I grabbed my elderflower and raspberry terrine and practically ran out of there.
This story takes me back to the early days of my marriage. A semi-
famous soap star had died in an accident and the only paper covering in was ‘The Mirror’. I asked my husband Geof to buy a copy on his way home so I could read about it. He said he would, but that he would have to divorce me afterwards!

(Disclaimer – I love all my friends and family. I don’t care what newspaper you read, where you shop, where your kids go to school. You are all lovely, warm, caring people and that is what matters!)

One to scare my hetereosexual male readers: PMT

When we lived in the great metropolis that is Wakefield we came across an unusual phenomenon, namely supermarkets being open outside the hours of 9-5. Whilst I am in no way an advocate of the 24/7 society, I must say that being able to go shopping outside working hours is quite useful.
Our local store (not the posh one) opens at 8 o'clock and one day I went in before work for a few items. I think I had managed to beat the pensioners on this occasion so my visit was a fairly speedy affair. However, I did have time to spot one young man who was unloading his goods behind mine on the conveyor belt. Flowers, chocolates and a 'feminine hygiene' product. The poor man. The breakfast things were barely off the table and he had already managed to upset a pre-menstrual woman to the extent that a mercy dash to Sainsbury's was necessary. I wonder how that one turned out...?

ASBO Mum

It has often been said that your best parenting is done before you actually have children and I for one hold my hands up to this accusation. Before Bryn was born I was determined that he was not going to have a dummy and that he was going to be well and truly breast-fed. Both of those assertions lasted approximately a week, though to be fair the breast-feeding thing was rather out of my control.
Next comes food. My child was going to be the one eating lots of fruit and veg, asking me for hummus and organic, unsweetened yoghurt in the supermarket and turning his nose up at white carbs and processed foods. He was going to be brought up firmly, with strict routines, no shouting and limited TV.
Forward a couple of years and he is a toddler. I am out in the street screaming like a banshee and stuffing him full of crisps and sweets in an attempt to calm him down because he is overtired on account of staying up to watch The Exorcist last night. It was following a similar scenario (by the way Social Services I lied about The Exorcist) that I gave myself the nickname 'Asbo Mum' and I have done a pretty good job of living up to it ever since!
No, on the whole Bryn is very little trouble and we get on really well. However, one day a few months ago I had clearly done something to upset him as he did not speak to me for ages. He broke his silence to inform me that he was looking for a new mummy on ebay. When I asked how much money he was able to bid and could she make chocolate brownies like mine he said "£1.76" and looked a bit crest-fallen. Needless to say he decided to stick with me, for all my faults, but at least I now know how much it would cost to replace me!

Supermarket Turf Wars

Food shopping in North Walsham can be a frustrating experience especially if, like me, you are not blessed with a huge amount of patience. I tend to do my main grocery shops on-line, which perhaps makes me even more irritable when it comes to actually going into the store.
Until recently there was only really one supermarket in North Walsham and whilst I like their products, their customer service leaves much to be desired. As I normally only pop in for a few items I do not consider it wholly unreasonable to expect that such forays would last a matter of minutes rather than hours. Not so. (Ok, allow me a little poetic licence please)
Let's say, for argument's sake, that I have bread, milk, eggs and wine (or Mummy juice as Bryn used to call it) in my BASKET. As I have a BASKET I make my way to the BASKET only checkout only to be greeted with a queue of more mature people with TROLLEYS. There is only one, single, solitary BASKET only checkout in this supermarket. There are 7 or 8 TROLLEY checkouts. Why do you do it? Can you not read or do you just choose not to?
On one or two occasions, God forgive me, I have been persuaded to use the 'Self Checkout' tills. Now that's a mistake I will not be making again. It is quicker to queue behind the trolley pensioners believe me. 'Unexpected item in bagging area'. YES! THAT WILL BE THE SEVERED HEAD OF WHICHEVER GREY-SUITED MIDDLE MANAGER THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO INSTALL THESE ****** THINGS!
Then, just before Christmas last year a new more 'upmarket' store opened just down the road. Very polite staff, lots of basket only spaces and so convenient for those few bits and pieces I always forget. OK, you need to re-mortgage the house or sell a kidney to shop there but it's worth it!