I loved a news story that I read this week on the Daily Telegraph’s website.

Eight months ago, three-year-old Lily Robinson wrote to Sainsbury’s to point out that the company’s tiger bread actually looks more like a giraffe than a tiger. A fantastic response from the company arrived from a customer manager who agreed with Lily and wrote a very child-friendly letter, enclosing a gift token, and signing off “Chris King (age 27 & 1/3)”. Lily’s mother uploaded the letter to Facebook and started a campaign which went viral. Sainsbury’s has now sensibly changed the name of the bread and deserves a lot of praise for this shrewd marketing move.

According to the BBC, Mr King has now left Sainsbury’s to return to university to train as a primary school teacher. Good for him. I think he’ll be a great teacher.

My daughter’s class is looking at persuasive writing at the moment. I wonder if they’ve heard this story.

My paternal grandmother had her 100th birthday a couple of months ago. We always said she would get there as her mother died the week before her 100th birthday, but sadly, Nana doesn’t really know what’s going on.

I am incredibly proud of her. She has always described herself as a simple country girl and her life has been a lot more difficult than mine (so far). She didn’t have the type of education which we take for granted now and went into service at the age of 14, eventually becoming a cook. When my grandad died 25 years ago, she had to learn to do things she never thought she’d have to: write cheques, look after the house, pay bills etc. In fact she only moved out of her house five years ago. I have fond memories of nature walks and her asking me questions about subjects which for her would have been hitherto taboo, such as living with someone before marriage and childminding. My parents gave my brother and me a book when we were children called How a Baby is Made and Nana read it afterwards, announcing, “I learnt a lot from that book”!

For her 90th birthday, I compiled a book of things that had happened in those 90 years and updated it for her 100th birthday, mainly for her great-grandchildren to see the magnitude of what has happened during Nana’s lifetime. It includes family events and also world events. Women didn’t have the vote 100 years ago and her century has witnessed the sinking of the Titanic, 23 prime ministers, 4 monarchs, 2 world wars, the break-up of the British Empire and the arrival of numerous inventions, including television, computers and many of the home appliances we take for granted. In fact when I looked back at developments of the last decade, it was dominated by advances in technology which is odd when you think that in 1910, electricity wasn’t really commonplace in homes. When you realise that Nana’s lifetime has witnessed the use of the gramophone, record players playing vinyl records at 331⁄3, 45 and 78 rpm, cassette decks, CDs and now MP3 players and iPods, it really is incredible.

Clothing was incredibly different; not even the zip had been invented when she was born (it was invented in 1913). Do children even know what petticoats are these days? I’m sure that most of them haven’t heard of corsets or liberty bodices. My daughter has been fascinated by the recent TV programme Downton Abbey and so have I, because my grandmother would have worn the clothes and done the work of the girls downstairs. My daughter also started Brownies last year, just in time to celebrate Girl Guiding’s centenary which also puts things into perspective.

In the year that Nana was born, Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, was first published in Rewards and Fairies. It made me realise how much our language has changed too. Words, such as gay, have taken on completely different connotations and no doubt some words have become obsolete, just as new words have been coined. Susie Dent, probably best known as the lexicographer from Channel 4’s Countdown, put together The Language Report, a list of words which define the spirit of each year between 1904 and 2004. Lists of these words can be found here. They really define the eras: the list gives entries for 1923 as Charleston, 1934 as Gestapo, 1949 as Big Brother, 1972 as Watergate and 1998 gave us the verb to Google while another list contains entries such as teddy bear for 1906, racism for 1935, psychedelic for 1957, toy-boy for 1981 and text message for 1998.

Nana will never get to read this but I am in awe of her achievement in light of all the things that have happened in a century and also slightly scared at the speed with which things move these days. Congratulations, Nana.

Like Harper Seven. I loved this cartoon from the Paul Thomas of the Daily Express. It’s so clever.

In February 2009, TheBabyWebsite.com came up with a list of the most unfortunate names in the UK:

Stan Still, Helen Back, Doug Hole, Terry Bull, Tim Burr, Rose Bush, Pearl Button, Will Power, Barry Cade, Mary Christmas, Chris Cross, Teresa Green, Ray Gunn, Jo King, Sonny Day, Justin Case, Lee King and Max Power.

Apparently a list of names in the USA came up with some more: Bill Board, Anna Prentice, Annette Curtain and Carrie Oakey.

Some countries are strict about children’s names. In July 2008, the BBC reported that a New Zealand judge had made a nine-year-old girl a ward of court so that she could change the name which embarrassed her: Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. Apparently other names which were not permitted were 4Real; Yeah Detroit; Stallion; Twisty Poi; Keenan Got Lucy; Sex Fruit; Fat Boy; Cinderella Beauty Blossom and Fish and Chips (twins).

These abominations were allowed: Violence; Number 16 Bus Shelter; Midnight Chardonnay; and Benson and Hedges (twins). And only this week it has been reported that the country’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been cracking down again, ruling out punctuation marks such as . (Full Stop), * (Asterisk) and / (presumably “Slash”), as well as Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight and Mr, which were all deemed too similar to titles. Messiah was also turned down, as was 89, the single letters, C, D, I and T, although q and J were accepted after being queried.

According to Yahoo! Lifestyle, the following countries are very strict:

Sweden is very tough on unusual names, banning Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, as well as IKEA, and Veranda and Q. But the authorities allowed Google!

A Chinese couple tried to call their baby @ because it seems that in Chinese characters it looks a bit like ‘love him’.

Germany has rejected Miatt because it is difficult to determine the child’s gender and Stompie, Woodstock and Grammophon, while allowing Speedy, Lafayette and Jazz.

Denmark is really picky. It gives parents a list of approximately 7,000 names to choose from and changes in spelling, ethnic names and compound names need special permission. Luckily for one child, Anus was denied.

Portugal also has a list of banned names and refused permission for Ovnis which means UFO.

And finally, apparently the Pope also weighed in on this debate in January of this year.

There’s a very appropriate blog post at http://clever-bitch.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-not-to-name-your-kids.html which gives advice on what not to name your kids. I particularly like points 4 and 5 which say exactly what I would say, but better:

4 – The Misspelled Foreign Name
A girl I know named her daughter “Channelle”. Yes, that’s right. Like Chanel, but with some extra letters thrown in so that the child can feel individual despite her obvious namesake. (In fact – this one breaks the surname rule as well – but I guess it’s preferable to calling a child Coco. Are you reading this, Courtney Cox and David Arquette?). Another friend of mine, apparently shying away from all the boring normality implied by Chantelle introduced me to her daughter Shontel. I weep for the future.

5 – The Name You Invent Yourself
Mnemonics are bad enough (think “Taome” – The Apple Of My Eye), but the worst of the worst must be the laughable attempt of those bastions of elegance and understatement, Peter Andre and Katie Price (AKA Jordan) to create a name for their daughter. Princess Tiaamii, the poor brat’s name, is a merging of the names of Andre’s mother (Thea) and Price’s mother (Amy), with “Princess” whacked in front for good measure. In the words of Price herself; “we added some extra letters to make it unique, and some accents to make it look interesting”. A class act all the way.
Apologies – My computer does not seem to have the functional capacity to include the various accents over vowels in Tiaamii.

 I think I’ll stick to my old-fashioned names.

France is a lot more expensive than it used to be; we really noticed it in the supermarket. But some things were free, which was refreshingly unlike rip-off Britain: children under 10 went in to see the Bayeux tapestry for free, a lot of car parks were free and we only paid for parking, not entrance fees, at Mont St Michel.

We had some linguistic treats too. We were invited for an apéritif of Calvados by our landlord who showed us his amazing collection of antiques. The children were very well behaved and had a go at speaking French. Monster had us in stitches as his pronunciation of pain au chocolat came out as pain au choco-ah and morphed into pain au choco-oo-ah!

It was a good job we didn't see similar signs...

But the pièce de résistance has to be that on the penultimate evening, my daughter made friends with a French eight-year-old who was holidaying in the gîte next door (we didn’t even know there was anyone living there!) They were able to communicate despite neither knowing any of the other’s language thanks to the joys of childhood. Madam somehow managed to explain to her new friend how to play a Nintendo DS game which was in English (amazing as she doesn’t have a console herself). I have tried many times to teach her French but she has a burst of short-lived energy and loses interest, despite having a fantastic accent. When she was small she used to shake her head if I spoke to her in French but when we stayed with a French friend, her toddler-speak turned from “la la la” to a French-style guttural rrr!

Maybe, now that she has exchanged email addresses with someone of her own age, this might change. Watch this space…

Five seems very important: it is after all, half a decade and a real unit of measurement as lots of things come in fives, such as toes, the Famous Five (my favourite books from childhood), five Olympic rings etc. We even have a terrestrial TV Channel 5, not to be confused with Chanel No. 5. And of course, I’ve found a couple of bloopers (which seem appropriate as we’ve had toys similar to this) on www.failblog.org:

And then came the end of the school year. My son has come on in leaps and bounds in reception. He was late to start talking, preferring to sign, and had speech therapy which has most definitely paid off. (Where’s the off switch?) We thought we had bypassed nursery rhymes (the week after the speech therapist saw him for his penultimate appointment when she asked if he was singing nursery rhymes, he came out with Queen’s We Will Rock You). His wonderful teachers have helped to extend this development and we even had “Rain in a Manger” at Christmas. He struggles with words like competition and says “comtepition” but comes out with “interactive whiteboard” and “independent learners”. I was so surprised to hear the latter that I thought he’d said “in the pink pyjamas”! What a difference a year makes and in a few short weeks he will progress to year 1 and his sister to year 4.

Oh my goodness, where has the time gone?

When engineers started searching for a suitably absorbent pulp to lay on the M6 toll motorway in 2003, they found it at an unexpectedly slushy publishing company. The pulp was needed to strengthen the tarmac and create a long-lasting soundproof layer, and the books they found most suitable were Mills and Boon romantic novels.

About 2,500,000 old copies were pulped and mixed into the road’s top layer – that’s about 45,000 books for every mile of Britain’s first pay-as-you-go motorway. Mills and Boon were chosen because of the books’ super-absorbent qualities. “They may be slushy to many people, but it’s their ‘no-slushiness’ that is their attraction as far as we are concerned,” Brian Kent from Tarmac told the BBC.

The BBC account is told here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/3330245.stm. It points out that books used are usually end of line or damaged novels. I’m all for recycling, but I do feel sad at the prospect of only having electronic books in the future. There’s something nice about curling up in bed with a good paperback (thank you for the great idea, Penguin books!) and the feeling of luxury if the book is hardback or a notebook is leatherbound.

According to cbrd.co.uk, the Department of Transport used to issue booklets to mark the opening ceremonies of new roads.

And here’s a classic from English Fail Blog.com

American democrcy

• Spelling

 Doesn’t a big company such as Victoria’s Secret use proofreaders? From Red Pen, Inc.

• Grammar
•  Punctuation

• Sense

From Failblog

• Consistency

  

  Whoops!

Both from English Fail Blog

My children and I watched it and my daughter and I celebrated by painting our toenails red, white and blue with some friends, including an 8-year-old boy who when they were 3, wanted to marry my daughter and have 5 children (my daughter was totally in agreement with this). He had it all worked out: they were going to live near Legoland and he was going to go out to work so that she could stay at home and look after the children (until his mum pointed out that might not be what his wife wants out of life).

I was glad the children wanted to watch the ceremony as there was a royal wedding when I was just a little bit older than my daughter which we watched, followed by a street party, and my grandad collected all the newspapers and books — he was a staunch monarchist who stood up for the national anthem even when he was 80 and made us wait for Christmas presents until after the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day.

I loved all the pageantry, which is something we are very good at in Blighty and I was proud that my children had been learning the national anthem at school, even Monster. I loved seeing all those flags waving in London and the party atmosphere. I concur with the rest of the world in thinking that the dress was beautiful, most of the outfits were spectacular and some of the hats were a bit odd. I’m delighted that the rain held off (especially as we had a barbecue in the afternoon with all the participants of our sweepstake-style quiz about the morning’s events). The best bit for my children was the kiss (believe it or not) but there is a lot of talk around here at the moment that if you kiss someone on the lips, you have to marry them. Watch out, 8-year-old boy from paragraph 1!

I was also very proud that in my capacity of professional nitpicker, I didn’t see any grammatical howlers. The only mistake I have seen in the run-up to the wedding was this one on a commemorative mug:

To all my friends who enjoy a tipple: according to Redhill and Reigate Life, Surrey County Council has issued a warning that fake bottles of Jacob’s Creek wine have been found on sale in the county. Apparently the bottles are easy to spot as they have spelling mistakes on the label. Twenty bottles have been found with labels on the back stating that the drink was a ‘Wine of Austrlia’ instead of Australia.

A Surrey County Council spokesman is quoted as saying, “The abysmal spelling gives new meaning to the phrase ‘thick as thieves’. Another sign that the cheap plonk is a smuggled counterfeit, thought to be from Asia, is that it tastes foul.” He also said, “What really staggers me is that they’ve got the winemaker’s signature perfect, but they couldn’t spell the word ‘Australia.’”

It seems that in this instance it isn’t much of a bargain to pay £2 instead of the usual £10ish.

But it did remind me of these two pictures from one of my favourite blogs, Failblog:

I always feel a bit nostalgic around my children’s birthdays about the anticipation of the birth and the elation of their safe arrivals and also about their achievements to date. My daughter was determined to stay up until the time of her birth (20:47) as her brother was born at 01.35 so has already aged by the time he wakes up on his birthday.

The pyjama party went very well with lots of girly activities such as dancing, painting our nails, colouring in door hangers, making our own pizzas and watching a DVD while eating popcorn. I was pleased that there was still a request for pass the parcel, musical bumps and pin the tail on the donkey though, proving that she isn’t too grown-up yet.

My daughter decorated her own birthday cake beautifully (and did another one the next day with her cousin). But what would I have done eight years ago if I had been presented with a cake like this? What a shame – all that hard work and no spellcheck facility!

From a fantastic blog: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com