what's your middle name?

Someone once told me that you should try to learn something new every day.
With this in mind, each day of 2012 I will try to discover the middle name of someone I do not know.
This blog charts my progress.
Richard M. Crawley


Monday 10 December 2012

Jane

'Fuckin' hell', says the woman standing beside me on the traffic island.  She looks at me.  ''Scuse my French', she says.  Her hair is cut in a bob, she has on gold earrings and she is wearing glasses.  'It's too cold', she says.  We comment on the number of cars.  I take advantage of the heavy traffic to ask my question.  As she answers there is a break in the traffic flow and we cross together.

I ask whether or not it is spelled with a 'y'.  'Without', she replies.  'Unfortunately for me'.  She tells me she thinks it is boring.  'I don't like my first name either', she says.  It is Amanda but often shortened to Mandy.  'It sounds babyish', she says stopping at a cash point.

She asks why I am doing this.  'Is it some sort of university project?' she asks.  She tells me that her daughter is at university.  She is studying Architecture at Canterbury.    She says she is worried that her daughter will build a dream house and send her mother to the servant's quarters.  'Only joking', she says.  'She wouldn't do that to her mum'.  She has four other children, the youngest of which is two.  She has tried to give them more interesting names than her own.

She takes her cash and we walk down the road together.  I tell her my brother is an architect.  She asks if he's doing alright.  Suddenly she stops.  'I'm supposed to be going the other way', she says.  'I don't know why I'm walking down 'ere with you'.  We shake hands and she walks off briskly in the opposite direction.

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