On having a surname that no one can pronounce.
Although people have tried, bless them.
WEE-AY-ELD?WADDLE?WAY-EL-DA?
My personal favourite was something along the lines of ‘valkyrie’ at a poetry reading. My cheeks may have risen to an odd shade of scarlet.
I’ve been asked where I originate from (really the UK), and stopped at border controls (although I feel like this may be more due to my passport photo, in which I look vaguely like a pre pubescent six year old boy with a neat pudding bowl crop).
One of the classic moments was during a school register, with Miss calling out each of our names one by one, calling everyone’s first name and their surname. Of course she reached my name in the list and paused for a moment, gave me a quick glance, and left it at Liv. Sometimes it is clearly better to act blasé and breeze over it than give out an awkward mouthful.
I know plenty of other people experience the same issue, tricky surnames aren’t a rare occurrence. I think mine maybe does climb a little higher than the others, mainly as no one (not even myself) seems to be wholly sure how it is spelt. The original surname includes the German letter A-Umlaut – Ä. Those pesky little dots cause a whole lot of trouble, through the pronunciation, which differs from the standard A to a more stringent AY. The struggle arises when moving across continents, between countries that don’t fully share the same alphabet. The question of how my German surname is translated is a rather tricky one. Some of my cousins have dropped half the lettering anyway for a nice well rounded Wald.
The Ä can traditionally be subbed in with AE in English, for the same sort of sound. However the pairing of these two vowels does seem to be difficult for some to comprehend. Therefore my parents did both occasionally drop even the E for just plain old Walde – as it states on all my credit cards and passports. Unfortunately I’ve been programmed to sign my surname WAELDE, which has resulted in a few sticky situations at visa inspections when travelling, when I’m unable to even sign my own name correctly.That being said, there isn’t a whole lot that I can do now.
Plus my go-to running dad joke involves raising a quizzical eyebrow when asked how to pronounce my surname. The waggish response of ‘it’s like WELL-DONE. Without the UN’, would surely go amiss.I’m just going to continue on my hunt to marry a man whose surname begins with a G.
Who wouldn’t want their initials to be O-M-G anyway?
On other people's pets.
A rather unexpected choice of topic for my first post, you might ascertain. Yet, one which has been playing on my mind for some time now, and is frequently resurrected whenever I’m invited over to a fellow dog-owning household, and am greeted nose-to-crotch over the welcome mat.
Dogs hate kisses. This is a widely known fact.
A word of advice is to be highly cautious of anyone who professes themselves a dog hater. A cat-lover myself, I do see reason in feline-cynicism, as understandably not everyone clasps together their hands and coos at the priceless image of their kitten as it retches up a damp hairball on the freshly folded laundry of their significant other. Not everyone is willing to submit to the prospect of sharpened claws sinking into your new pair of Wolford fishnets, at the abrupt reversal from devoted moggy, to brutal wildcat.To qualify for the title of enduring cat lover, you tend more to side with admiration and amusement at the individually crafted nature held by cats. Dogs, en masse, are renowned for their unwavering love. You can shave them, pluck them, dye their fur a humiliating shade of hot pink as trending in Parisian poodles, and still they will gaze up at you with eyes so wide and brimming with love, they would curve into little heart shaped corneas, were this a cartoonised episode of Scooby-Doo, or Clifford. You only have to glance at the glowering furry eyebrows of Dan Bilzerian’s infamous Smuffball, to know that cats lack this unconditional and yielding infatuation with their owners, specifically when stripped of their hair and left with a running Mohican and chilly little flanks.
Marco showing his displeasure at my unadulterated love and excessive fake tan.
A step behind the subjugation of pets into these two categories, the stereotypes of the slobbering, gormless dog, and the sharp-witted, only vaguely amused cat (sadly rodents and budgerigars haven’t qualified for this post), is the perception of other people’s own pets. Of course we love our own furry adoptees. Admittedly, no dog is ever as loyal as the elated Lassie, starring in her own television series, nor is any cat as humorous as Garfield. Yet arguably, in the same fanciful style of heavily favourited tumblr quotes, and the tone your mother takes with you when sobbing over your acne, it is their little flaws which make them all the more lovable.
Obviously, unwavering obedience would be wonderful. This aside, I can’t help but smile whenever our veteran golden retriever turns a blind eye, and swivels her head away and pretends furiously not to hear the call for morning stroll, in hope of shifting off the middle aged tyre hanging at her sides. Similarly, I’m equally repulsed as gleeful over the trail of dead shrews and dormice, left peppered across the hallway each morning by my feline companion. Although the stains of loose tails and innards and intestines are revolting, and I pity the rising rodent death toll, I can’t help but feel a little appreciation (as according to a vague google search on cat psychology, this is my kitten’s way of confessing his undying love for me, or rather the hand that feeds).
Whilst I can stand these little imperfections in my own menagerie, I do struggle to plaster on a brave face and gently hustle an overfriendly lab away from my privates when greeted at the door. Similarly, it’s hard to see the attraction in a cat that saunters in at breakfast and teatime, and is otherwise absent from daytime grooming sessions, rather fond of roaming the outside gardens merrily under his own superveillance.
Yet, thinking back to my previous English house cats (may they rest in peace in the shallow graves I staked out in the garden, 21 a ripe old age for a moggy), and one habit of yowling constantly at three in the morning, followed by the doting attitude our household took to this custom, all these little shortcomings do make our pets more lovable. Perhaps this isn’t quite so easy to fathom when defending your nether region with a barrier of forearms, or plucking white hairs out of the jacket a friend’s cat has decided to nest and bear kittens within (asking for this garment back, when purposefully selected by the queen to bear her furry blessings, was shot down with a cagey stare). Still, imperfections aside, you love your pets like you would your grandma, no matter how many times one misses the litterbox, and the other snores during Question Time.
On the blog name.
Of course I was deeply enamoured at the thought of plucking out a blog name, eyecatching and teeming with wit or a pinch of great intellect. I could have some lengthy back story at the ready, casually tossing in a tale of extreme benevolence towards the elderly. Or a foreign word, that could stand emblazoned at the top of the blog in an understated and classy font, loosely translating into something that projects my savvy mentality, or on the contrary, gently mocking since can’t we all empathise with someone able to disgrace themselves for a few stray giggles.Alas, sadly the final school year is ticking onwards and I haven’t yet been enlightened with any such slogans, so you’ll have to make do with me and my slaptstick qualities, rather than the blog name, for now.
Following on from that dampening introduction, the phrase does certainly hold an element of truth. I do rather like stars. Now before I bowl you over with that excellent hyperbole (my rhyming talents clearly aren’t going to win your hearts either), let me affirm that it does at least hold an element of truth. Having a fairly loose reining mother, I’ve always toyed with the idea of getting a stellar related quote inked on my back. ‘A metaphor for the night sky; a trillion asterisks and no explanations’ is my diction of choice.
There was some confusion over the author of these words, when my mother requested a short list of quotes for some hand painted, inspirational kitchen tiles. I did taper on the authors of each quote on to my little list, for copyrights sake, yet this was apparently lost in translation through several email inboxes. For quite some time I was certain that the quote was thanks to Oscar Wilde. Later ponderings led to the dramatic realisation that O. Wilde was in fact an adapted version of my own surname, Waelde (no hard feelings, I’m well accustomed to a multitude of misspellings thanks to this ruffian tagged on to my passport). Therefore I’d like to publicly relieve myself of the duties of apologising to Mr. Brault, as the dark cloud of stolen words has been hanging over me to the date. Neither myself nor Oscar Wilde are due credit for this astrological quote. (We tend also to turn a blind eye upon the phallic nature of the feline face, when sipping our tea in the new kitchen).
There we have it. I’m not head over heels, engrossed in every astrology newsletter, able to drawl on for hours to dinner guests over the complex life cycle of the bright little lights in the sky (I can hardly recall my GCSE physics life cycle dip into them as it is), I can’t point out any more constellations than ‘der kleiner Wagen’ (the little wheelbarrow) and I struggle hideously in discerning a man in Orion, or a pup in Sirius. Despite the listed shortfalls in my nebula knowledge, I did experience warm and tingly feelings when browsing a pre bedtime Buzzfeed article on non sexual fetishes, and seeing ‘Astrophile’ leading the pack, as a person who loves stars. Indeed, I can’t tally off impressive memorised figures, of light years, and light distance, and the number of stars which, incomprehensibly, no longer exist even as we peer up at them on clear nights. Yet, the impassive and stately expanse of night skies do captivate me more than your average Joe (or so I’d like to believe).