Formal Family

I was repeating a story my mum told me to a friend earlier this week. It was about a conversation she had with my sister. I got to the bit where my mum said to my sister "no it was Anne McLaughlin who did that". What I did is not relevant to this tale. What's relevant and what had my friend pulling the strangest face in response is the fact that my mum and sister refer to me as Anne McLaughlin. I have pointed out to both of them that they now know me well enough to be permitted to call me by my first name but no, whenever they talk about me, it's Anne McLaughlin. It comes, apparently, of having a large and quite close family the majority of whom are called Anne. Actually that's a bit of an exaggeration. There's my mum's sister "Anne Soulier", there's her daughter in law (my cousin's wife) "Anne Hessinger", there's her daughter "Kerry Ann" (called after Kerrygold butter, I kid you not) and there's my cousin "Ann Purdie".

Thus, when my mother or my sister refer to me it is deemed necessary to give me my full name! My youngest sister doesn't but she's probably got a completely unique name for me that I will never know :-)