What’s in a title?

Last week I bought a train ticket online.  As I entered my details into the website, a list of possible titles dropped down: Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Dr, Lord and Lady.

Quite what the last two titles were doing on the c2c Trenitalia website, I’m not sure.  Did their marketing director think …if it looks like the landed gentry frequent our trains, we can charge the plebs more?  Or could it be that the grubby man sitting opposite you on the 9:26 to West Horndon, legs wide open, shit music blaring through his phone, is actually Lord Ponsonby-Smythe of Epping?

(When people play music loudly through their phones, it’s always shit.  The louder it is, the shitter it is.  I’ve always thought that if you play music in a public place, you should at least be prepared to take requests.  It’s only polite).

(Also, doesn’t “Trenitalia” look a bit too much like “genitalia” for comfort?)

Titles tell you certain things about people, don’t they? 

You assume one and people suddenly start expecting things of you.  You’d expect a certain level of neatness from Lord Ponsonby-Smythe of Epping, because lords are supposed to be smart.  You’d expect your doctor to take your sciatica seriously, not launch into an improvised rap half-way through the consultation.

A title also implies certain emotional short-cuts, no more so than in families.  Back in my dark days as an HR manager, I worked with a gruff, shiny-headed director who wouldn’t allow his staff to take bereavement leave unless it was for immediate family.  “Parents and kids, and that’s it,” he rumbled.  “And I want proof.  I need copies of birth and death certificates.”

I tried explaining that some families don’t work like that, using myself as an example.

“My mum and have no relationship,” I told him, “so her dying would have next to no effect on me.  But if my best friend died I’d be in bits.”   This cut no ice: to him, titles – and everything they imply – were all that mattered.  So I had to resort to explaining, gently, that he was being an unreasonable arsehole instead.

The same kind of thing always happens when I tell people (which I only do rarely) that my mum and I have no contact.  They will tell me, eyes gleaming with confusion or outrage, that they could never not talk to their own mother, or how sorry I’ll be when she’s gone.

“You’re confusing my mum with your mum, or the mum you see on the shelves in card shops,” I’ll sometimes say.  “The title is the same, but the people aren’t.”

Does that have any effect?  I have no idea.  All I know is that titles don’t tell whole stories.  As a writer, I suppose that’s a useful belief for me to have.

When I got married, I chose to be known as Mrs. Jervis-Green.  “I thought you didn’t want to be a ‘Mrs.’,” said my husband, who is (very) well acquainted with my feelings about names and titles.

I told him that I didn’t, really.  But I also didn’t want to have to explain to the whole world why I’m not a Mrs.  Some battles aren’t worth fighting.

That said, I selected ‘Lady’ on the c2c Trenitalia website, and then I bought my ticket.