What's in a name?

 

What was that? We were driving back home from East Yorkshire when we saw it. We were on the Shropshire border where you see all types of wildlife. Sadly, some are in great danger, I am seeing a lot more badgers, hedgehogs and strangely squirrels on the road. I suppose they have had a hard time in the extreme hot weather but are out hunting for food now that it is a little cooler. What we saw this time on the road was something very different. It was a fish. Quite a big fish. I looked around. There were no lakes, no rivers and well, no water at all. Where had this fish on the road come from? Had it fallen off a seafood transporter? Had it fallen from an osprey’s talons? It is a mystery.

There was a mystery for me too when I first went to school. You see, everyone at home had always called me Vicky. But when I was five and about to start school, my dad sat me down to tell me that my real name was Victoria. I cried. My life was changing from playing on our farm every day to having to go to school and have a timetable of lessons. Now Dad had added to my dismay by telling me that the name I had always been called was not my real name.

Having two names still haunts me. Last week I went to the dentist and they could not find my appointment. I had given my name as Vicky and as soon as I suggested they look for Victoria, they found me.

One of the receptionists told me that she too was told that her name was not Meg but Megan when she first went to school. She was quite startled, as I had been all those years ago.

I sat down to wait and the person next me said that her niece was called Victoria. I said that I was named after the day I was born. It was Victory Day at the end of the war. She had an even more interesting story about when she was born.

Her mother was booked in to give birth at the Liverpool hospital in 1941 when The Blitz started. Her mother’s birth pains also started but there was no ambulance available because they were all down at the docks where bombing was severe and people were injured. So, the doctor came to her mother and she gave birth at home. Afterwards they learnt that the hospital had been hit and many mothers and babies died. The hospital where she should have been born was destroyed and they would almost certainly not have escaped.

She was always called Miss Blitzy, until she went to school.

(Taken from my column in The Star)