On 20 April last year, I made my way to court, accompanied by a friend. There, in a tiny side room, in the presence of a lawyer, I completed and signed a statutory declaration and swore an oath to the effect that I would from that day forth use Anna as my legal name, on pain of being eaten alive by unicorns.
(OK, I made up the bit about unicorns. Regular readers of my blog will know that I do have occasional flights of fancy. I hope you spotted that one too: ‘regular readers’ – ha!)
So today is my first Anna-versary! *groan* (No, I really didn’t choose my name for the sake of a pun: it only occurred to me a few days ago – honestly!) It’s also the 51st day of spring, but only about the third day that actually feels like spring here. And it comes just a couple of days before I turn 17 for the third time. (Numerologists can go to town on this coincidence if they wish.)
That means that last year was a ‘significant’ birthday for me, and it’s certainly no coincidence that I chose to change my name when I did. I was already using Anna for various purposes, e.g. dealings with the NHS – in Scotland, it’s fine to use multiple names, as long as you don’t intend to defraud anyone – and I definitely didn’t want to begin another decade of my life with the wrong label attached.
Despite what I said in my last post about my next post being of ‘normal’ length, I think I’ll leave this one here. I have other posts in the pipeline, and they’ll pop out when they’re ready. In the meantime, happy spring to those of you for whom it has sprung!