Some very clever friends managed to find us this wine for a wedding gift. We were pretty amazed when we opened the box to find half a dozen bottles of “LA LINDA” inside. We were even more delighted when we sampled a bottle and discovered it to be delicious. (The friends who sent the wine will have a pretty good notion of our glee at finding a box full of wine in our dining room.)

Sadly, the present was a joint gift from two friends, one was able to be with us but the other had commitments that could not be broken. So, when we quaffed our first glass of “LA LINDA” we raised a glass to absent friends. We’re hoping to see our absent friend again before not too long an interval.

Of course, if I’d opened the box a few days before, you could have said that it was even more accurate….DM often referred to me as LA in our pre-wedding pbase life. (Though never in real life.) So, I decided to doctor a bottle and convert the A to an M – rather badly I’m afraid.

Then, we were sitting chatting yesterday evening and David mentioned that my “signature” on my pbase shots was still “Alstead”. I must confess, it was completely accidental in as much as I’ve got a little photoshop “action” that creates a text layer and signs my pics for me. Believe me, this is something beyond my capabilities but it was done for me, along with a resizing action by DM ages ago. I hit a button, the thing goes away and creates my text, then all that remains for me to do is change the colour and location to suit my pic’s needs. I’d not even noticed that it was still Alstead, feeling jolly comfortable with the name as I am and slightly gawky about Mingay as is also true. I do feel extremely clumsy when I try to sign my new name and have barely started the tedious process of changing it with all of officialdom.

Despite my awkwardness at using my new name, it is still very thrilling when I do get to use it. I think, though, sadly, it’s going to take me ages to get used to it as in these times of pin numbers and chips, I rarely sign my name any more. It tends to be only on “official documents”, which I rarely need to sign and not in day-to-day life anymore.