Really enjoying the name solomon

I went for a walk at the weekend to let Sol have a sleep. My idea was to go to starbucks in Hounslow and hope he would fall asleep on the way so I could do a few emails. The plan looked like working but I only got one email off before he started to wake up.

Meanwhile I had said hello the the lady at the nearby next table who was asking about my boy. It turned out she was from Somalia. A guy went past and seeing the pram and not Sol, and thinking me and the Somali woman were together asked about the colour of the baby. How nice it is to discuss colour in such a matter of fact way. We laughed about us not being together and had a long chat. She ended up playing with Sol and I ended up having a long chat with a Somali chap whose grandad was called Solomon (or ~Soollamon is more how they said it). It stuck me that we would not have made this connection without Sol's name, and that was very cool.

In the end I asked them where I could eat good Somali food and got some restaurant names and an invitation to dinner.

How splendid to make such an easy connection with people in this way. It makes me think that choosing a multi-purpose biblical name was not such a bad idea!

Just back from a holiday in Brittany

We had an awesome time in Brittany with Pete, Carole and Mattis and their very very exceptional house - a petit manior. So nice to have such good friends scattered about even though we don't meet up very often. Sometimes I wish all my friends lived in the same village so we could go to the pub now and then!