Here’s what happened. I was at school aged around 8. My brother was at the same school. He’s 3 years older than me and at the time, he and his mates took greater pleasure in making fun of me… I can see the appeal. Anyway, one day at PE class, the PE teacher was surrounded by a homogeneous crowd of around 100 kids in their white t-shirts and navy blue shorts sitting cross-legged on the grass. He points arbitrarily at one of the kids and says, “Oiy, you, Fred, go and get the rugby balls”. And my brother’s friends thought that this was a funny nickname to use… Thereafter, the usage of Michael or Fred depends on whether a pathway of associations can be traced back to that moment, or whether the chain was broken by a change of institution where people insisted on using the name written on the application form. Exeter was Fred, Oxford was Michael, Winchester was Fred, UCL was Fred, Birkbeck was Fred … until someone joined *called* Fred and then I became Michael … until someone joined called Michael, so maybe I now have to become Thomas…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s what happened. I was at school aged around 8. My brother was at the same school. He’s 3 years older than me and at the time, he and his mates took greater pleasure in making fun of me… I can see the appeal. Anyway, one day at PE class, the PE teacher was surrounded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-748","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Here’s what happened. I was at school aged around 8. My brother was at the same school. He’s 3 years older than me and at the time, he and his mates took greater pleasure in making fun of me… I can see the appeal. Anyway, one day at PE class, the PE teacher was surrounded…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/748\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/dnl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}