Dorothy

An early morning conversation on Skype with a friend on the other side of the world.  I tell him about my blog and he offers his middle name.  I explain that, as I already know him, it is invalid.  I ask whether his flat-mate is in.  She is and, being called, emerges from the doorway onto my computer.  Both she and my friend have heavy glasses.  She also has a fringe.

I have turned off my video because the connection is weak so I feel sinister and disembodied as I ask my question.  She says she doesn't have one.  There is an unfortunate confusion over the internet waves between the word blank and bland.  She suggests the reason for her lack might be her mother's dislike of her own.  I have my answer.  I ask what her mother is like.  She is short and blonde and a horticulturalist.  Her first name is Wendy and she is married to a man called Peter.  My faceless voice says goodbye and lets the flat-mate return to the darkness at the back of the screen.

(P.S.  I want to retaliate against the aspersion cast on today's name.  She was, after all, a literary giant in the shape of Parker and L. Sayers.  She has entertained generations with her adventures with a lion, scarecrow and tin man as Gale.  As Dandridge, she was the first African-American to be nominated for an academy award and, as Cotton, she is a well-loved chain-smoking resident of Albert Square.  That is not even to mention the fact that you cannot beat the value of her clothes on the high street as Perkins and that she is a good friend of the entire gay community.

Unfortunately, the world is on my friend's flat-mate's mother's side.  From it's heyday in the 1920s as the second most popular name in the USA, it now only just scrapes into the top 1000.)