Hockey Mom Names kid "Puck"
Rightly so, folk have been having a dig at the daft names US Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has given her kids. I’ve even had a pop of my own over at Celebrity Litigation, (the blog that should by now be ruling the world). Here’s an excerpt of Sarah Palin’s blog from the site:
“There I was, doing what every American Mom does, squeezing out my fifteen wholesome kids, Chip, Buck, Chuck, Champ, Chad, Chimp, Buddy, Trapper, Hawkeye, Radar, Bristol, Birmingham, Newcastle, BJ and the Bear, with not a thought to ever doing anything other than baking cookies and shooting elk. Gee ladies, why, I’m just like you!”
What’s clear to me is that Sarah and Todd couldn’t have living grandparents. It’s always the elderly Grandmas that pour cold water on your baby names and say something so piercing and offensive that your cherished favourite name becomes dust in front of your eyes.
“Gran, I like the name Neil, if it’s a boy”
“Nooo, there was a boy at my school called ‘Daft Neilly’. Smelt of kippers, he did. Peed his pants at the Nativity Play. Whole school saw it happen.Used to eat his bogies….ahh daft Neilly….wonder if he’s dead, now…..”
Or,
“I’m thinking of Skye for the baby”
“Sky? Sky???? That’s not a real name, is it? For goodness sake. The kid’ll not know what it is! Sky?? As in Sky in the (points) …sky? Or TV company Sky? Which is it? I don’t know… you lot. I was just saying to Ella McKinnon the other day ‘What’s wrong with names like Susan or Julie? Or naming after the grandparents’…Hmmm? What happened to THAT, eh?”
All the same, some intervention can be called for. In 1992 there were a set of female twins born in Rottenrow Maternity Hospital in Glasgow called Mercedes and Pocahontas. I didn’t check back the year when the big Disney film was Toy Story but you can bet there were some Woodys and Buzzes.
And then after the birth of Brooklyn Beckham, progeny of David and Victoria, there was a whole raft of kids called after where they were conceived. Records from the Possilpark area of Glasgow show there are five kids called Bench and another six called Shelter. In fact, maybe that’s why Sarah Palin’s kid is called Track. Hmmm? (The filthy cow.) I’d say the same for Bristol except we all know for a fact that Palin has never left the borders of the US.
And what about this year? What’s the out-there baby name for this year? Heath could feature, but that’s passable and inoffensive enough, if you discount the fact that you are naming your kid after a depressed borderline junkie suicidal actor who is most famous for spitting on his hands in preparation for some lovin’ in a tent up yonder Brokeback Mountain. Get over that and Heath would be perfectly nice for a wee toot.
Gwen Stefani may also have started a trend with naming her kid after the exact noises she made whilst pushing him out, but that could lead to some quite nasty surprises, if you follow through with that decision, I’ll wager.
Gwen carrying baby Zuma Nesta Rock
And talking of baby names, as we are. What’s always good for a laugh is asking your parents what their second choice names for you were. Or the name they would have given you if you’d been of the opposite sex. Mine are quite odd, I have to admit (and no offence meant if any have the same names as any of these, btw. I’m allowed to josh, I was nearly called them.).
Apparently I was going to be a Kenneth if I was a boy. What the blazes? My parents were Bob Dylan fans, what’s wrong with either Bob or Dylan? I could have coped with that. But I’m not a Ken, Kenny or Kenneth; I know that for sure. Kenny’s a guy who can fix your guttering or do your tax return. Kenny’s not a windswept and interesting artiste with an eye for the ladies that won’t be tied down and owns a helicopter.*
And also in the running for my girl’s name was Janice. Janice?? Not even cool Janis Joplin spelling, but the uncool -I.C.E ending. Eeek. Janice is a woman who struggles with her weight, has a top-lip hair problem and works at the library. Janice is not someone who wins a Bafta under the age of 21 and then goes on to have a successful career as a reknowned character actress! Not that I’m any of these things, but I’m just saying…
Anyway as luck would have it, my Gran got in there first and ruined both names for my parents. How, I can only guess.
* I know of at least one Ken that reads the blog- so please accept my apologies, Ken, if you are any of these things. And if it’s the helicopter thing, then…cool!
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The Angel of Death
One of the things I’m thinking about as I pack the last of my kids off into the school system is that it’s end of the baby era for us.
Meester and I are closed for business on the baby front and the Flying Martinis are a permanently fixed and complete unit.
One of the more positive knock-on effects of this decision is that we will no longer have to endure visits from our Child Health Visitor, known to us as, The Angel of Death.
The Angel of Death has no kids herself, but knows everything about bringing up a kid since she learned it at college. Apparently.
She manages to do her job despite the fact that all children and their parents are visibly terrified of her.
She is broad country Aberdeenshire farming stock and looks like a big knitted bag that is filled with runny porridge. She has unrestrained, unsupported, massive, pendulous breasts that end somewhere around her waist. The upper front part of her body is not so much a décolletage as flesh-mountain landslide. It’s truly remarkable and may be visible on Google Earth.
Whatever the weather, she always wears jumpers, with a pattern that looks like the vomit you see on a Sunday morning beside a lamp-post outside the pub. She must knit them herself as I have never seen the like on sale in a shop anywhere.
Moving past the jumper area and up to her head, she has a haircut like a bloke, a bit like Roy Castle’s before the chemo. She wears those horrible Reactolite tinted specs. You know the sort; they instantly make someone look sinister. The more light there is the darker they go. They lack the coolness factor of sunglasses and retain all the geekiness of wire-rimmed specs with an ever changing gradient of brown insipid tint. My gran also has a pair and they make her look like Dr Strangelove.
There’s a whole catalogue of incidents with the Angel of Death, but I think our first meeting gives the most succinct impression of her. It’s the occasion of Indy’s 2nd birthday and hence his 2 year developmental assessment. We’ve just moved into the area and have not met the Angel of Death in the flesh yet. Of course, being as it is the day after Indy’s birthday, I have forgotten that she is scheduled to come round.
At that point, I was the only one of my friends to have a kid, so Indy’s birthday party had consisted of our friends coming round for a barbecue, getting pissed and watching the wee fella do cute things for our entertainment.
So at 10am Indy and I are sitting in the debris of all yesterday’s parties eating leftover birthday cake for breakfast in our jammies watching Clifford the Big Red Dog on telly, with me nursing a slight headache and all the barbecue dishes still in evidence.
I spot the not inconsiderable frame of the Angel of Death lurching past my living room window. It’s too late to do anything about the situation. Hiding is futile as she has already glanced through the window giving me quite a start. And as it’s particularly sunny, being May, the Reactolites are in sociopathic full tilt tint.
I have to let her in. Stopping her from entering would look even worse.
Once in, she starts to “assess” my boy, whilst no doubt making a mental note to contact social services as soon as she leaves.
Her assessment is frankly odd. For one she does not speak directly to me when Indy is in the room, she talks through Indy like he’s some kind of parent medium. She also shouts at Indy the way that ignorant people shout at deaf people or foreigners.
“SO HAS MUM STARTED TOILET TRAINING YET?”
“SO IS MUM THINKING ABOUT ENROLLING YOU IN PLAYGROUP?
I have done none of these things. A cross is indelibly marked somewhere on an official sheet as my failings as a parent are recorded forever.
The most hilarious thing about her is her accent; it’s not just broad Aberdeenshire, which is impenetrable enough. No, the Angel of Death appears to have her own language.
“Aye jist wait, we’ll hae Thunner and Lichhtnin‘” she says by way of small talk about the weather as she arrives.
Lichhtnin‘? How does one get from light to liccchhht via making the sound of a cat bringing up a hairball? This is taking Scottishness too far.
I wonder if she wears tichhts on her legs.
If she goes on holiday, does she go to the Isle of Wicchhht?
Does she wear the Reactolites to compensate for her failing sichht?
Is her favourite Elton John number, Saiturday Niccht’s alricchhht for Ficcchttin’?
To this day, if we hear the faintest rumble of thunder we say,
“Aye jist wait, we’ll hae Thunner and Lichhtnin‘”
The Angel of Death goes on to test Indy’s development on ridiculous things that can’t be part of any recognised programme. She gets some little Thomas the Tank Engines out of her big black bag. She then asks Indy to point out which one is “James” and which one is “Henry” .
Now, we don’t like Thomas the Tank Engine in our house, so Indy knows none of these characters and is unable to identify the line-up of our locomotive Ringo Starr-voiced friends. I demand a recount. But given that I’m in mismatched jammies, reeking of Chardonnay, un-showered, hurriedly shuffling around trying to collect what seems like hundreds of wine glasses with chocolate fudge on my face, I haven’t a leg to stand on.
“We don’t really know the Thomas the Tank Engine characters,” I say, “I couldn’t even tell you the answer to that one!” .
She looks at me blankly and puts another mark down on another official form that probably says something like,
As the years went on I had another child to offer up to her. She would give me advice on breastfeeding, despite her ample bosoms never having seen a hungry baby. She would talk me through childbirth, despite never having possibly even seen a grown man naked, never mind getting pregnant. I am unsure if there is a Mister Angel of Death; I suspect not.
So goodbye Angel of Death, we won’t miss you. But as I sit here, I’d like to think of her on her way right now, to terrorise a family with a new baby, trundling along a street in her Vauxhall Vectra and looking out her windscreen at the skies and weighing up the possibility of “thunner and licchtnin”.
******
Over on the Spontaneous Production blog this week, I’m looking at Little Films That Made it Big. It’s got a podcast attached and everything. Now off you go..shoo! Click here
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There’s Something About May
What is it with me and my female relatives that we have popped out sprogs at this time of year? We’re like flipping ewes. Out in the fields there are hundreds of lambs gambolling about (as that’s traditionally what lambs do and who am I to argue). Inside the house there is chaos as the Flying Martinis and their associates go into birthday overdrive. In my house alone there are 4 birthdays this week, with another 2 later on in the month. And they are all our kids. What happens 9 months before (I make it about August) in our social circle that makes us all forget to use contraception? Or where do we all go that the environment increases the sperm count or egg fertility? What house in the moon in?
Yesterday was 7 year old niece- ice-skating, then Pizza Hut. Birthday girl cries inevitably (that song wasn’t written for no reason, you know), kids eat too much crap, parents make mistake of ordering bottle of wine, Pizza Hut employees make mental note to refuse us entry next time. Today is Misssy Juniors 4th anniversary of making the world a better place (in her opinion…). Birthday tea at mine with extended family, two seconds after I get in my front door from a day of 7 hour’s teaching straight with only half an hour break (which I’ve decided to spend blogging, rather than eating).
Thursday is Indy’s 9th, when we will be water fluming with some other high octane kids and filling them full of crap and getting refused entry at Pizza Hut. This is the day that my freelance job starts also. Sunday is Baby Spongebob’s first birthday. Then a couple of weeks recuperation before other niece’s birthday involving going to a indoor ski centre, filling kids full of crap and getting refused entry to Pizza Hut.
You’ll notice that the month 9 months from now (I make it March) is baby free.
