Stella

Before Max was born I had a worrying couple of months. What was troubling me was gender and names. I was dreading the prospect of having a daughter, not for some male, first born having to be a boy kind of shit. A little bit of my worry was that I would be a crap dad to a daughter, ie she wouldn't be allowed out until she was thirty and even then it would be with a chaperone, I know terrible but I believe that that is only a slight exaggeration of how I would be. But what vexed me even more than my potential crap parenting was the choice of name for the apple of my eye, L had her mind set on Stella and I was none to keen on calling my first born after a premium strength Continental lager, as that's what people in these parts would have believed. We already knew of someone who had named her daughter after the spiced rum she had been drinking the night said daughter was conceived. Anyway on 31st October 2003 my fears came to naught when Max made has emergency entrance to this world.

A few years later I was to thank my lucky stars again that Max had been indeed a boy when a rather splendid song by a Norwegian nutter based in Stockholm came out entitled Stella, telling the story of a "forty three year old hooker from downtown" who God was offering the world to if she spent the night with him.

A close call, I'm sure you will agree.

Ida Maria - Stella