Two weeks-ish to go till the arrival of His Imminence and we still have no ideas about what to call him. Or rather, I have no idea what to call him - and Merriol has a list as long as her arm of things we are NOT going to call him (or her). Most of the names on M's list are suggestions of mine that seemed brilliantly, obviously exactly what he was going to be called for at least - oh, four or five seconds?

I am starting to get desperate. I think about this a lot. What is this kid called? I read credits of movies and the small print on album liner notes as a matter of course (I have no idea why, I never remember any of them). Recently I have been paying extra special attention to them, and anything else, containing names, looking for possible candidates. The other day, after reading an article about whether King Canute was a Viking or not, and how his name was really spelt, I decided that Cnut was it! Canute? or Cnut? Cnut definitely. Brilliant name. Cnut. A King's name! and a good king too. Ancient, noble, strong. I like it!

Untill it was pointed out that if the makers of the FCUK brand were ever going to launch another line it would almost certainly be called CNUT.

Any conversation with Merriol at the moment soon degenerates into a cross between Mornington Crescent And I - Spy

Me: Ethelred?

Merriol: No

Me: Egbert?

Merriol: No!

Me: Xavier?

Merriol: Definitely not!

Me: No, I mean as a middle name.... Something X Baldwin. Thundercats X Baldwin. I think it would be great having an X for a middle name. How about just 'X'? Like Harry S Truman? The S didn't stand for anything...

Merriol: No child of mine is going to be called X.


Long pause.


Me: Akira?

Merriol: No.

Me: Toshiro?

Merriol: No.

Me: Ennio?

Merriolv:What?

Me: Ennio!

Merriol: Ennio??

Me: Like Ennio Morricone. The guy who wrote the music for all Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns and Danger Diabolik...

Merriol: No.


Long pause.


Me: I like really like Toshiro... Toshiro X Thundercats Baldwin.

Merriol: NO!

etc.

I'm off to Edinburgh tomorrow to meet some people I only know via the web. Grown up people who read books and have proper jobs. Once a year for the past five years the denizens of Palimpsest.org.uk have met up for a Big Day Out. This year it's in Edinburgh and as I have vague memories of being one of those who ranted a couple of years ago about there being a distinct Southern bias in the venues, I can't not go to this one practically on my doorstep.

I'll be off in the morning and back in the night. It's going to be strange and interesting meeting people I only know from chuntering to them in a forum and occasional pics on Flickr or the newspapers.

I'm not really happy to be so far away from Merriol this close to D Day. But she wants me to go.

Apart from anything else she is quite capable of giving birth and and getting the baby to the Registry Office and called 'Milly Molly Mandy Baldwin' or something equally soppy before I've worked out the time of the next bus back.