PLETHORA OF MARTINS

It’s been an oddly surreal week. Not only do two of the celebrities who I’ve always considered to be far too intellectual to be bothering themselves with messy things like “personal relationships” announce that they are getting m--m--arried (I still struggle with the “m” word…), but it then turns out that they have got engaged to each other…!

Still, good luck to them, I suppose, but I can’t help but wonder about the levels of sarcasm that will be achieved over the bowls of Frosties in the morning. It might turn out to be hazardous to passing traffic. Mind you, from my point of view, they do both seem nice enough people, even though I’ve never actually met either of them of course, so I can only hope (to give all of us cynical folk out here some light at the end of our own peculiar tunnels) that they can make a go of it.

Her brother, of course, seems to have the greatest job in the world: Being paid to eat and write about it afterwards. He also seems to spend a lot of time getting drunk in the company of a well-known gay lady which, rather sadly, has far too much that is familiar about it for me to want to follow that particular train of thought...

More oddness prevailed as I drove home listening to reports from the Leveson enquiry. I’m completely convinced that one particular edition of the Media Show kept referring to a witness called “Dick the Dog Show” but that couldn’t be right, could it? The harder I listened, the more certain I became that it was indeed “Dick the Dog Show” that they were saying, so much so that they even said it again on “PM” afterwards. So whatever it was that “Dick the Dog Show” said to the enquiry has completely escaped me, because I was far too busy obsessing about his rather bizarre name. Maybe he was some kind of an entertainer...?

Names seemed to be much on my mind because, later on in the week, and for various convoluted reasons far too shallow to go into here, a quick bout of “type your own name into Google” at work not only dredged up the fact that all of the other people dragged down into the mire by having the same name as me seem to be far more successful than I am, or are, at least having a lot more fun than me, but I also (re)discovered the sad fact that this version of that particular brand name doesn’t seem to exist at all, at least not in the first twenty pages or so, and so anyone who was feeling daft enough to want to track me down is going to have a pretty hard job unless they can remember my middle names and, to be fair, who generally remembers those...?

This inevitably led to much discussion of middle names and the strange phenomenon of people we know who prefer to use that one and are therefore known by different names to different sectors of their social circle. Equally there are those whose middle initials represent nothing at all, and those who consider their middle name so very horrendous that they never admit to even having one. I myself have two, one of which was supposed to perpetuate a certain surname (fat chance!) and one which seems utterly superfluous as I cannot see any circumstances in which I could ever consider myself to be “matey” enough to be an Andy.

Sorry Andy.

Actually, “Andy” brought up the other tricky matter of diminutives. I’ve known several people who were known more by the shortened version of their name, and several more with whom it was made absolutely clear that they were never, ever to be known as anything other than the full-length version. A “James” never a “Jim”, A “Michael” never a “Mike” and so on. I’ve written before about the strangeness and arbitrariness of names, of course, but the subject will insist on reappearing upon my personal radar screen every so often. “Clint” however doesn’t seem to conjure up too many variants, although I do have a couple of 1950’s films on my shelves where even he turns up uncredited. It’s strange really. Old Clint seems to have been around forever, and seems to have had a hand in just about every film that I’ve watched recently. I’m beginning to think that if you look very closely at the Bayeaux Tapestry you might just spot a tall, squinty eyed figure somewhere on it, standing in the background looking mean.

More troubling from that long list of all those other versions of what I still think of as me was the 22-year old “aspiring writer” in Hull who shares my name and actually blogged this week about sitcoms. That just felt a little spooky, as if there was a little photocopy of me running around about to be given the life I should have wanted when I was that old. I know that I’ve often thought that it might be wise to keep a photocopy of your life in case you lose it, but to find him alive and well and living in Hull was rather strange, to say the least.

Unless, of course, it’s me that’s the photocopy...

I’ve already come to terms with the fact that there’s already a recognised playwright bearing my name so that, in the unlikely event that I ever managed to become successful at it, I would probably have to publish under some kind of bland pseudonym. But to now find that I might be in some kind of a race with someone I’ve never met but who is half my age, well... I might just as well retire to Sussex and keep bees.

I bet there’s never been a Holmes that’s done that before!

Ah... Well apart from that one, of course.

Then there is the motor racing version who also writes a lot of books about it, thus slamming that publishing door in my face, or the other one who writes rather a lot about Conservative governments. There are quite a few Doctors scattered about the United States also bearing my name, and a positive wealth (and I use the term advisedly) of lawyers. There’s also a smattering of builders, and the town my father grew up in seems to be almost run by businesses bearing his surname. Maybe I should return like a character in a 1970s BBC Sunday night drama series and claim my inheritance…?

Meanwhile, in a final surreal twist, and to perhaps remind me that writing might just not be my forte after all, these tales from Lesser Blogfordshire continue to go from whatever the opposite of “strength to strength” is (I know... I tried “from weakness to weakness” but it just didn’t seem to cut it...) in the fact that last March was the most looked at month ever and this March... isn’t. Perhaps I finally have bored everyone to distraction...?

The bees in Sussex really are calling out to me (maybe it’s spring?) or perhaps I should just change my name. Unfortunately, I really don’t think that I’m cut out to be a “Clint Granite...”