By REBECCA SPARROW
A photo of cutlery has caused me angst.
And not just any cutlery. Zoe Foster’s wedding cutlery.
When I heard that the tremendous Zoe Foster (I don’t use the word tremendous often but really is there any other word to describe Zoe?) had scooted off and married that charming rogue Hamish Blake – I did a big WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP and then I did what millions of other people did. I broke my ‘never buy a magazine’ rule and rushed off to buy the weekly mag that had their wedding pics.
The venue! The guests! The dress! The food! The happy couple looking deliriously happy! And then that goddamn cutlery shot.
The photo that set me into a spin.
Pourquoi? (Little bit of French there to impress you …).
Because that crafty minx Zoe Foster had had her wedding cutlery engraved with Mr and Mrs Blake.
And I swooned. And then I felt a little pang of regret.
Because somedays I really, really regret not changing my name to my husband’s. Patricarchal bullshit aside, the fact is that now that I have kids I sort of wish we all had the same name.
So that when I get our totally naff personalised family calendar made every year, I could genuinely call it ‘The Robinson Family Calendar”.
So that when I go to help at Ava’s kindy, the teachers wouldn’t have that momentary look of confusion. Do the kids (who are instructed to call adults by their surname) call me Ms Sparrow? Or Mrs Robinson?
So that when Ava – on a whim – decides to clock her baby brother on the head using, I don’t know, say a Peter Fitzsimons novel I can say, “In the Robinson family, we don’t assault family members with novels over 100 pages … )”