it’s a resonably well know fact among people who know me – but when we got married I took Ruth’s name and became a Jump.

It wasn’t until about 3 years later that I realised that as a Man you don’t actually have the legal remit to change your name when you get married. the marrige law doesn’t actually say anything about changing your name (even if you are a woman). although i do remember stumbling on something that said a woman took a mans name not the other way around.

When I found this out I scrabbled around the Internet to find out if I had made myself a fugitive from the law, it turns out I didn’t because you can call your self what ever you want, just many places don’t let you change things without documentation.and while the deed poll site now says that from 2005 the passport office accept marrige certificates for the change of a man’s name, I can tell you they where doing that in 2003.

Getting it changed

Changing your name on things held by companies is suprisingly easy, at first my bank said they needed the marrige certificate, but then when i turned up with it, told me that was wrong and changed my name on all my accounts without looking at it.

Work wanted to look at something – don’t know why but they did, like they didn’t trust one of their own employees got married.

the passport office just accepted the birth certificate and marriage certificate without question

Dealing with it

Since then I’ve had no trouble, the few CRB checks I’ve had haven’t had any problem with me filling out ‘maiden name’ fields. my doctor got confused when she looked at the screen on the computer they other day, but didn’t say anything.

In reality, most people don’t even know, it’s only if i mention it do i get strange looks, and if people know me at all, they just add it on to the list of oddioisities that are the jumps, with their baby-wearing, home educating, bread in the microwave lifestyles.

I like been a Jump, it gives me a better sense of me because it’s a bit quirky, less common, and well it’s been my name for ages now, so it’s me.

We’ve had terrible trouble with hovers over the last few years. for a while we had a quite dreadful but incredibly cheep goblin hover that was really good at moving the dirt about, and if you left it on the same spot for a while it would eventually pick up some dirt.

then we replaced that with what i think was our worst purchase ever, the Vax, with it’s so powerful it would blow the fuses engine, and spiny thing that ate the carpet.? I said at the time, this is because in many households hovering is the mans job, so they try to sell you manly hovers with more and more powerful engines.

After a very short while, and an inordinate amount of fuses, the vax blew something internal, so we used that as an excuse to give it to bulky bob, and replace it. and this time, we went for a Henry on the (possibly flawed) grounds that they use it in schools and offices everywhere so it must be good value for money.

Now we’ve had it 3 months, I do think it’s the best vacuum we’ve had. It’s not to powerful, it’s not to heavy, it doesn’t do any fancy tricks, and in fact it still gets stuck in doorways and at the end of the bed, but what it does do that no other vacuum does is smile at you.

I’ve just hovered the house and has the same wrestling match I use to have with the goblin hover, which if I am honest use to end up with me kicking and throwing the hover around in the secret hope it would break. the difference this time however was two fold, fist it is slightly easier to undo a stuck Henry because it’s round, but really, It’s really hard to get angry when it’s smiling at you.

Now I know that makes me weird, but I have been reading a lot of books about how our mind works and studies have shown that the act of smiling can make a physiological difference. I just don’t think the’ve extended the study to hovers yet.