Well, we've been busy. Too busy to write here. Not that we've not had much to write about.

I took Philipp to the Circus. We liked the acrobats and the Bouncing Boxers but couldn't really see the point of the horses.

We painted the bedroom a shade that was supposed to be Sugared Almond but is actually a bright girly pink. Susanne wanted to get a nice lampshade. She came home with something that looked like it came from the Janet Reger shop. I pointed out that it would make the room look like a tart's bedroom. Definitely not. Right out.

So we compromised by agreeing to buy the lampshade.

Well, I figure there will soon be two females in the bedroom and I'm going to be outvoted by two to one, so I better put up with it. I insisted on keeping my tool box in the bedroom for the moment though, just in case.

Still no progress on the name front.

For entirely unrelated reasons, two of the names I particularly like are Carmen and Miranda. (No banana jokes, please) However, Mrs B insists that Carmens have to have dark hair, and fair hair runs in both our families. So we could have to wait a long time before deciding on that one.

Meanwhile, from Popbitch comes this information:

More and more parents in America are naming their children after luxury brands. In 2001, there were 273 boys and 298 girls called Armani; 269 Chanels
(all girls); 24 girls called Porsche and six male Timberlands.

Also popular were Nike, Chivas Regal, Champagne, Nivea, Evian, Fanta, Guinness, Camry, Cobra Pepsi, and Lexus. (One father called his son
"Lexxus", insisting on the extra x to make the name "more original").

So we could call our baby after our favourite brand. I just hope little Kost Kutter doesn't mind.

Since I've complained on a number of occasions recently about poor service, it's only fair that I update some of the stories.

After I sent of an angry fax to Whirlpool UK about the money I had to spend waiting on a helpline, I got a call from the company admitting their helpline was understaffed and offering to pay for the cost of my calls. They didn't offer to pay me for my wasted time, but it's better than nothing.

I also got a letter from Thames Water (as did everyone else in the area) apologising for the loss of water for four days. It offered compensation of £50, which meant that my total bill for the last six months was about £3. I thought of offering to go without water for another four days next month, and not have to pay for water at all....

Their website is still rubbish, though.

About a month ago, one of my comments was a note from RTE Radio in Dublin. It said:

hi, Jack Murphy from the Marian Finucane programme on radio 1 here, we're interested in doing an item on web-logs and would love to hear from you. please get in touch via e-mail whether interested or not, we'd love to hear from you.

I emailed to say I was interested - I remember the Marian Finucane programme from when I lived there, and it was actually quite good.

Jack never did get back to me, which did not surprise me, from my experience of the media. The fact that I lived in London possibly put them off. Apparently, two Irish bloggers did eventually appear. Both of them were from blogs on the P45.net website (which is actually quite good and worth a look). Interestingly, Jack appears to have left similar messages in the comments of two other blogs, neither of which appeared.

Oh well. The world is going to have to wait a bit longer to hear my brilliant insights into the madness that is blogging.

I went down to my local electrical shop to buy a bulb for our fridge.

As I got closer, I was getting a bit worried because I knew it was nearly five pm and I was not sure what time they closed.

My heart sank because it was a bit dark and I figured it was probably closed. Then I noticed that there were still some people inside and the sign said 'Open'.

So I went in. Or rather, I tried to. To my surprise, when I pushed the door it shook but did not open. There were two women inside, talking. One of them came over to the door.

She gave me a broad, friendly smile, and reached for the door.

And then she turned the sign around so it said, "Closed".

So. The name.

There are so many names for girls around. Susanne and I bought a book and borrowed another one from the library.

After long and detailed consideration, including sensitive comments such as, "No bloody way!" and "Ach! Du Scheisse!" we concluded that there are, in fact, no useable names for girls around.

(Ach Du Scheisse, by the way, means "oh you shit!", but not in the way it would in English. At least, I've heard Susanne use it while talking on the phone to her Mum, so I figure it's relatively ok.)

We managed to develop a number of rules to filter out names that would not make it to the shortlist. The filters were so effective that there is, as of now, not much of a shortlist.

First rule: euphony.

A lot of names can be ruled out on the basis that they sound silly. All names ending in 'een' or 'ine' have to be excluded because, say, "Aideen Breen" rhymes. Rhyming is not good. I had lots of Aunties with 'een' names - it's a diminutive in the Irish language - but none of the names were suitable (Eileen, Noreen, Maureen). Anyway, 'een' names are mostly very dated (see rule 2). Except Aideen, which is not too bad. But it rhymes, so, no.

Second rule: no outdated names.

Ethel, Florence, Thelma, Edith - these ladies all live together in a house in Eastbourne, and keep cats. Nobody has been called Ethel since at least 1899.

Some names are really dateable. Myra, for instance, went out of fashion in 1966 when the Moors Murder case was in the news. Shirley and Dorothy both probably date from the 1930s when Shirley Temple played in The Wizard of Oz. Cheryl is 1970s. Stephanie is 1980s. And Kylie - oh, please...

Rule Three: Irish names

Irish names are fine, in fact I'm lobbying heavily for an Irish name, of which there are lots of fine ones. My current favourites: Aoife, Aislinn, Áine, Catríona, Niamh, Maeve.

One plus with Irish names is that lots of them have accents, like Áine and Catríona. I always wanted an accent when I was a child. There are other names, like Zoë and Chloë, which have accents, but they've been done to death in the 1990s.

Rule Four: Bad Irish names

Fiona is quite a nice Irish name, but unfortunately in England, girls called Fiona all have sticky-out teeth, are more comfortable with horses than people, and marry city bankers who cheat on them with more attractive girls called Jennifer or Alison.

Some Irish names are just bad. Eithne, for example is a nice quiet Catholic girl. Bridget is her even quieter friend.

And Gobnait. No child of mine is ever going to be called Gobnait.

Rule Five: fake Irish names

A lot of Irish names are not even Irish. Shannon, for instance, is a river. Colleen just means 'girl'. Very few children in Ireland are called these.

Then there are appalling alterations of Irish names. Katelyn, for example. Or Brianna. Poor, unfortunate mites.

Anyone called Brianna is sure, sooner or later, to appear in a low-budget porn video.

Rule Six: German names

I'm all in favour of a German name, but whenever I suggest one that sounds nice to me, I get "Ach! Du Scheisse! That's an old ladies' name!". I quite like Lorelei, but a friend of mine has got there already, and besides Lorelei Breen sounds like a rubber banana.

Rule Seven: Surnames

Apart from those already excluded under rule Five (Casey, Sullivan, etc), there are some nice names that are surnames (eg Meredith, Cameron). But these have been ruled out by Mrs B. Actually, Sheridan would be excluded under rule 5, but I would be prepared to fish it out again. But Mrs B is putting her foot down, so, no.

Rule Eight: Welsh names

My daughter is not going to have a Welsh name. It's not that I've got anything against the Welsh, it's just that I'm Irish and we have enough of our own names, thank you very much. Which is a pity, because some Welsh names are nice - Anwen, Eirys, Iorwen. But some are not. Gladys is already out because of rule One, and Nerys is going to remind everyone of Nerys Hughes from the Liver Birds (or The Nanny, if you're a bit younger.