Mothers in arms

A couple of brief ditties from last weekend whilst my vital organs continue their (hopefully full) recovery.

First, my grandmother on my mother's side was renowned for getting names wrong. And so at times decided that, rather than risk making an error, it was best not to try.

To illustrate, my nephew Sebastian is special for lots of reasons, one being that he's the first Sebastian in our family. However, unsurprisingly, my grandmother had never met anyone called Sebastian before and therefore had little or no previous experience of saying the name.

So, for ease, she improvised and "re-christened" him.

As Basketball. (I think it's best described as a "syllable thing").

Fast-forwarding to this weekend, my mum is a big fan of Strictly Come Dancing but is not alone in regarding gobby Aussie judge Craig Revel Horwood (pictured) as something of a pain in the hoop. But talking about him whilst watching Saturday evening's show, she proved she was indeed her mother's daughter by getting his name wrong.

She called him Norville Horwood.

And a little research by me has since revealed that this would make him only the second "person" in history to be called Norville - the first being Shaggy from Scooby Doo whose "real" name is Norville (and I'll bet you didn't know that).

The other little nugget I wanted to share with you relates to the son of one of my mum's friends who is currently at medical school. One of the few facts that most of us know about medical schools is that, early in their studies, each student is given either their own complete dead body or part ownership of a complete dead body to cut up into bits (I'm sure there's a less ghoulish way of putting that, but there we go).

But it appears that nothing and no-one is safe from the effects of the recession. Because not only has my mother's friend's son not been given his own full body to mutilate, he hasn't even been the chance to share a full body. Oh no.

He's been given half a body.

And even more bizarrely - it's the bottom half.

Apparently he can expect something more exciting further down the track but, for now, this is what he's left with.

Hopefully, for his sake, it won't be long until he finds out how the other half lived (COME ON!)