Friday 29 January 2016

My Thoughts On.... Names

This week, Wayne and Colleen Rooney welcomed their third son into the world.  Whilst the birth of a child is a wonderful thing, it's a serious undertaking. So is naming your child.  Their three sons are Kai, Klay and Kit.  From here on in known as KKK..  as one twitter user succinctly put it:


In the summer of 2013, Katie Hopkins caused absolute uproar because she candidly said she judged parents and children alike because of their names.  She went too far saying she wouldn't let her children play with others whose names she disliked.  But, whether we all like it or not, we judge on looks and names. As adults, if we went to school with someone who wasn't always so nice, we are pre-dispositioned not to necessarily warm to another person of that name immediately.

Choosing a name for your bundle of joy can be a tough experience. If you don't know what gender to expect you have two lots to get it down to.  MrM and I spent hours on names.  With the 10 year old we didn't know gender. We had a book of baby names. Night after night I called out names and we both wrote separate lists of what we liked. then we compared lists and only kept it to names we had on both lists.  That whittled it down to about four. Then it was haggling with our favourites.  I'm pleased to say 10 years on and I'm still happy with it and he seems to quite like it too.

The 6 year old was a lot easier. We started with the list we'd made four years previously. Did we still like those names? Was there any we wanted to add? Did it fit with the rest of the family?  You see; I think that's fairly important. You can't have two children called Bert & Ernie and then another called Hendrix.

Some countries have baby naming laws.  Germany, Sweden & Denmark to name just a few.  Often it's to ensure you can recognise a child's gender by it's name,  that traditional names are kept and that your child is not going to grow up embarrassed having been named after a piece of pottery or fruit.

There's also the question of being able to spell your name.. or can anyone else spell your child's name?

It's Marc with a "c"

I have a coffee shop name.  It makes life easy. I don't have a particularly difficult name but people struggle to say it or spell it right.  I blame it on three vowels in a five letter name.

The top 5 baby names of 2015 in the UK were these:

Are there any surprises in there?  How did you choose your children's names?

Monday 25 January 2016

Go Green - It's Shrek The Musical. A Review

For some reason the Shrek films kind of bypassed us in our house. I had definitely seen the first two and I'd seen Puss In Boots.  The 10 year old had seen the first one but couldn't remember it.  In the run-up to Christmas, they were showing on BBC so I recorded them. We were going to visit Shrek's Adventure in London so I wanted the children to have an idea of what they were going to see.

Whilst flicking through the "What's On" at Wimbledon Theatre, I saw Shrek The Musical was coming to town.  I love a musical.

The New Wimbledon Theatre is a beautiful Edwardian building built in 1910. This does mean small seats, creaky toilets and a heating system possibly set to boil.  But don't let this put you off visiting; the transport links are great and there is plenty of parking available.

The musical follows the film accurately. The show opens with a little back story on Shrek and Fiona that you don't get from the Dreamworks film. They are both made to leave home at the age of seven and fend for themselves. Shrek in his swamp and Fiona banished to the tower to wait for her Knight in shining armour.


The costumes are fabulous, the acting is magnificent.  I won't give away how Lord Farquaad is on stage but Gerard Carey the actor playing him certainly stole the show and was a triumphant baddie in my opinion.  The 6 year old was either in peals of laughter, (especially when Fiona and Shrek were belching and trumping). or she was dancing in her seat. She was on the edge of her seat constantly. Although she was so hot by the interval she was actually topless!  Shrek is not just for the younger ones though.  There's plenty of adult jokes delicately positioned without taking any shine from the children's enjoyment.

If you are looking for somewhere to take your children and maybe introduce them to theatre then I can't recommend this highly enough.  We had an amazing evening and I think my children will be talking about this night out for a long time to come.