The Name Game

Okay so this one comes with a hint of self promotion, but evidently millions of bloggers solely blog to drum up some trade, so why should I be any different!?

Joking aside I am still solely blogging for fun (as if anyone actually clicks the adverts!), but I’m tweaking this one a bit, to help the one who lets me spend hours writing them!

Baby Names

So what will be the most popular baby names for 2014? Top of their respective trees for 2013 were Olivia and Oliver (no, really!), but trends dictate that they may not stay there for too long.

Does one go for a traditional name? Family names still come into play in the decision making process quite often…or maybe an outlandishly unique effort? The omnipresent Peter Andre recently told Magic FM’s Jo Parkerson in an interview that his eldest daughter is fed up with her given name of ‘Princess’ and already wants to change it. Hopefully she won’t though – the more unique an individual you are, the better. Why be normal?

Being a child of the 80’s, it’s been quite funny over the last few years engaging with people that are approximately 15 years younger than me called Kylie, Jason, Scott and Charlene – proof (if ever it was needed) that television influences our choices in life on so many levels. For my younger readers, please click here to see what those above names relate to!

How many children born this year will be named after Game of Thrones characters I wonder? Khaleesi Daenerys anyone? Surely not Joffrey though…

So once you’ve chosen a name for your precious little one, and you’ve registered their birth with the authorities, how do you go about celebrating it?

Traditionally, Christenings or similar have been the rite of passage for babies, but in these modern times, other options are available – such as Naming Days. An increasing amount of families are choosing to formally celebrate in such a non/part religious, modern or alternative way. The beauty being that you can tailor the event to exactly how you want it to be, and make it much more personalised than perhaps traditional methods have historically allowed for. For example, Naming ceremonies are being hosted to welcome adopted children and step children into families. It can even be done for pets!

Earlier this year, though not due in any part to being ‘anti-religion’, but more about being ‘non-religious’ in our own beliefs, my wife and I opted for our daughter to have one of these Naming ceremonies. We’d both been Christened ourselves, but we did some research into alternatives and decided to choose something that would allow our child in the future to take a route in life or spirituality that she herself wanted to pursue.

A Naming Celebrant conducted the ceremony in our back garden in glorious sunshine amongst many friends and family, and it just felt so much more comfortable and relaxed that way. Similar to how Christenings work, we selected Godparents and let them choose readings and poems that they felt summed up the role they were about to accept. Candle lighting, sand ceremonies and music were also all included at our request.

Godparents you say? I guess it sounds a bit contrary, given that the ceremony was deliberately religion free, but the point is that it was entirely up to us what we called them. We could have chosen Guide-parents for example, but we went with a bit of tradition after all – because that is what WE wanted to do. Flexibility rules!

So pleased were we with the positive response the ceremony received from those attending, my enterprising wife decided to launch her own mini-business as a Naming Celebrant within days of our daughter’s big day! She’d done a few similar ventures herself when she was a trainee teacher, and felt it was something she would really enjoy doing for other families.

And what a response she got!

Enquiries came flooding in and already she has performed a number of ceremonies, all individually styled to how the recipient family wanted it to be. Even local BBC Radio got involved with popular presenter Sarah Gorrell hosting a live on air interview.

Clearly it’s a booming option, but more than anything else, it simply offers a different route for something that had seemed set in stone until very recently.

Don’t join the revolution, join the evolution: Brighton Baby Naming

When Technology goes Missing

A missing child is always big news, and rightfully so. Some cases attract more attention than others but staggeringly over 140,000 under 18’s go missing every year – and every 3 minutes another missing child report comes in to the Police.

One of the positives to modern technology and social networking is that news of a missing child invariably gets to millions of people rapidly, therefore increasing the chance of a happy ending. Speed of communication has not always been so present though.

Strangely enough during the summer of 1978, I managed to become a missing child for a short period of time…well a short period in my mind, and probably only a few hours in real time, but in all likelihood a lifetime for my Mum.

Evidently my Mum was chatting in the front garden to a neighbour. I was milling about and my baby brother was in his buggy. She took her eye off me momentarily and within seconds I had gone.

The rear gardens to the houses backed onto woods which bordered the old Hove Golf Course, and thankfully not the A293 (A27 link road) that opened in 1992, so onto the lawns was really the only direction I could have gone.

Having discovered me missing, my Mum naturally ran around in a panic and got neighbours up and down the road looking for a blond (yes blond) 2 year old boy.

 

Bear in mind back then not everybody had landline phones, and NOBODY had a mobile cellular phone, so Mum had to find someone somewhere with a landline phone to make the call to the Police. She couldn’t call my Dad as he was at work driving his bus and therefore totally uncontactable, so having called the Police and given details they said they’d pop along shortly. She then went onto the golf course with a few of the neighbours to ask the golfers (of which there were many) if they’d seen me.

No joy.

From my point of view I can just about remember walking along a stretch of grass (supposedly the golf course) and subsequently walking up the A270 Old Shoreham Road towards the junction with Hangleton Road, which is a distance of just over half a mile.

Albeit the Old Shoreham Road is far busier now than it was then, it was still a major road back in 1978 due the Brighton by-pass having not yet been built.

I couldn’t have been on the roadside long though before I was approached by two young girls who had got out of a bronze car and started to speak to me.
In fact the photo below (taken in 1987 Dave Denyer - with thanks) shows exactly the spot where they picked me up! 

I have no recollection who they were or what they said, but evidently they took me to a Police box* in Olive Road, Hove

*#tardis

Soon enough the Police bought me home to my relieved Mum. When my Dad got home, oblivious to what had happened, he asked my Mum if she’d given me a bloody good hiding for running off!

It’s fashionable to knock modern technology at the moment – and in particular mobile phones – but in some cases, what would we do without them?