Whats in a name...

Friday 16 November 2012

Was reading a report in the freebee evening paper about a kiddie who was sleeping in her cot and was bitten by a rat. Not a very nice thing to happen to a child. Mother was horrified. I became more horrified as I read further in to the article. Horrified that this poor little girls name was Lolly. She I one of twins and her sisters name is Lilly.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/baby-girl-attacked-by-footlong-rat-while-she-slept-in-her-cot-8323139.html

I thought the rat was bad enough, but fancy naming her little girls Lolly and Lilly. Sounds like a bad joke to me. Can you imagine how much flack poor Lolly s going to get when she gets older, the name callers will have a field day.

It beats me why people call their kids peculiar names. Celebrity parents seem to be the worst at it. Take Bob Geldof’s children. Can you imagine BEng called  Fifi Trixibelle Geldof, or even Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof, though it seems Pixie Geldof got off lightly.  

That set me off on a search for other oddly names children .One website had a top 20 list, how about these, then?

Some of the TOP 20 MOST UNUSUAL NAMES.

1.    Shy              2.    Unity             3.    Bean              4.    Zowie     5 Puppy 

7 Victory            8POirsche              9 D'Andre           11 Porsche    12  Diesel13
12 Cobain         13 Stone                  14 Bowie            15 Bowie        

It makes Johnny Cash’s old song ‘a Boy names Sue, sound quite reasonable to me.

Foggy...

This morning was very foggy and it looks like it will be the same again tonight.

Too many late nights and fighting off a cold are taking their toll and I feel pretty tired tonight. I almost when to sleep on the train on the way home. So no prizes for guessing that we will be having an early night. That accounts for the fact that I am nor posting much on the blog tonight.

The Man is head down in the book about Life in The UK. He will have to know it inside out and upside down. And probably know more about the UK than the average bloke on the street.

We made him an appointments for Wednesday next, so bring it on. The Man is ready. We have another multi page form to fill in. They want to know just about everything about us except the size of our shoes.

We're looking forward to a quiet weekend, though we will have a long multi page form to fill in. After the Man passes his test. He will have to go to some exam centre to sit it and is supposed to get his results immediacy. And at £50 a to take the test he'd better pass, Not only that it takes seven days from the time you book until he time you side, so if he is unfortunate enough to not pass then we would have to wait another seven days before he can take it again.

As I write The Mna's online doing practice tests. Ooo he got 91% for that one. A definite pass ,

I wonder who made these rues up.

Serious and funny...

An update about The Man’s visa.

So we go to the local office, stand patiently in the queue, then we were directed to a counter to hand over his documents. So far so good.

So far so not so good.

Woman behind the counter says, this visa has expired you cannot use the premium service if it has been expired by more than 28 days.

So we ask to see her supervisor, No can do she says, we stand our ground she tries to direct us away from her counter. ‘There is a queue’ she says. The Man points out to her that it is a tiny queue of four people. Her counter is one of several. We point out to her that The Man has been allowed back into the country twice recently with this expired visa so a precedent has been set. We continue to stand our ground and she eventually agrees to tell her supervisor that we want to see him/her, and wait where she directed us.

After about ten minutes one of the attendants comes and asks how we have been getting on. When we explained our circumstances and he looks at The Man’s passport. Aha he says leave it with me for a bit.

He goes away and when he returns he gives us very good advice about how to proceed with our application and what to put in our application and that on humanitarian grounds The Man’s application should be accepted.

 That made us feel so much better.

And now for something completely different

We read this article in the local paper. How on earth would anyone be able to identify the characters in these things?  I ask you?

Numbers ...

Today one of the clients at the clinic I work at phoned me. He was an inpatient at a local hospital and wanted to know if we had his NHS number in his file. As we are a private healthcare facility, the answer was, no we don’t.

Any idea how I can get I he says ‘cos the hospital I am at will not treat me without it

Hmmmm. I would have thought that the hospital would know how to access it. Well back in NZ, all the numbers are issued from a central point and with the right authorisation number finding a client’s number is easy. 

So good old Google to the rescue. I typed in the question, ‘How do I find my NHS number?’ and then followed the direction. Which were, phone your local Primary care Trust. OK back to Google and type in the chaps address to find the PCT.

That done I phone the correct one and, Hello… Sorry we cannot give anyone the number over the phone. The hospital will have to send us a fax, here’s the number, requesting it. Then we will send back to them by fax.

So I send the chappie and email with the instructions, and about an hour later I get a phone call from the ward administrator ( ward clerk in NZ speak) asking for the details. He didn’t seem to know how to find out what patients NHS number was even though I know that my client had passed on the details. 

Not only do hospital patient here have a nationwide NHS number, each hospital also has its own hospital number. And they bear resemblance to each other.  How confusing is that. It’s like have a licence plate for your car and another one for the area that you live in, so which one would be the right one.

I don’t beleeeeeeeeeeeeeve it.

Do you know Victor Meldrew’s catchphrase?

Well The Man and I used it over and over last night. If you’ve read previous blogs you will remember that The Man has had a spot of bother getting an appointment at the local the UK Border Agency. The only time new appointment times are realised is at midnight, so we have been burning the midnight oil repeatedly logging onto the site to try to make a booking. Did the same thing last over and over and……I don’t beleeeeeeeeeeeeeve it.

Yes, he really has an appointment, and not only that it is for Wednesday of this week. I think we must have just been on at the time that somebody cancelled theirs.

We have been short on sleep for a few weeks now and last night was no different. In fact even after the successful log on we still couldn’t get back to sleep. A warm milky drink and a bit of boring TV didn’t help much either. Hopefully tonight’s trip to dreamland will be uneventful and rapid.

 I seriously doubt that the letters of complaint have had anything to do with it. In fact I am going to ask the people who I sent emails to, to persevere with their complaints on our behalf. It must be pretty hard for folks who only have daytime access to computers in public places such as libraries.

Remberance Day...

Today is Remembrance Day here in Britain. At home we honour the veterans on Anzac Day in April.

My father and his father served in the Essex Regiment in WWI and   and my maternal grandfather served in the merchant navy in WWII.

There have been poppy sellers on the stations for weeks now. And I read a newspaper article that said in some areas the poppy sellers would need an escort because culturally some were against honouring the occasion.

Hang on a minute there. In the book that The Man is studying to sit the exam about Life in The UK, this day is discussed as being important.

Now that really gets me when incomers to a country, not just this one, don’t approve of the traditions of the new country. Along with the rights of immigrants comes the responsibility to respect the traditions observed in that country.

Here in Britain and in New Zealand too, many different religions and cultures live side by side, and a few diehards think that they can impose the traditions of the incomers over those of the country they have come to. So just who do those people think they are?

There are mosques and synagogues, temples and churches of lots of different religions in this country. Britain doesn’t say they cannot observe your own traditions, so why do those fundamentalists think that they can do just that.