30 Fate

When I was at school, my occasional nickname was Rasper. This alliterated with my surname, which was enough, but had been picked from the air by a smart kid in the class who had heard of Rasputin who died 30 years earlier. Those who weren’t into history liked the name because it was associated with raspberry, a rude noise made with any part of the body, and slightly disparaging which nicknames usually have to be. There was no truth to the rumour that I had won the Form 4B ‘Long drawn-out fart competition’ leading to this name. I had actually come second, but only because the winner cheated by momentarily breaking to get her second wind at 32 seconds. This was allowed. Some mothers may have been concerned with problems in that week’s wash. ‘What have you been eating dear?’ Actually the winner wasn’t a girl; that was made up.

Maybe if I had been nicknamed Toona or tree or forestry instead of Rasper my path into the future would have been what I wanted. But unfortunately, I was doomed and at that point fate dumped me heavily and pointed me towards distant raspberries and AnneJam.