Life In The Nineties

Alice and Loudon will both be turning nine in the year 2017. We entertained them to a Christmas meal in 2016. Loudon walks around to the shops to get a newspaper every day and claims to play squash. Alice goes out to visit the doctor but spends most of the day upstairs in her comfortable white bedroom watching TV. Robert visits regularly. The wonder of the modern age is that Alice and Loudon can talk to America and see everybody on screen. Daughters are Laura in London and Clare in California (nicely alliterative that - helps me remember who's who and who's where). Alice and Loudon both have sticks to help walking and they struggle up the steps. Here are some lovely photos of them still laughing, as always.

8 The names Adeline, Alice, Albert, Loudon, Malcolm, Robert, Parkin

Adeline
Alice's mother was called Adeline, like the song Sweet Adeline.

Alice
Wikipedia says:

Alice is a feminine given name used primarily in English and French. It is a feminized form of the Old French female name Alis (older Aalis), short form of Adelais, which is derivation from the Germanic name Adalhaidis (see Adelaide (given name)), from the Germanic word elements adal, meaning ″noble″ and haid-, meaning ″heath(land), heather″.^[1]

Alice was the most popular female baby name in Sweden in 2009 and has been among the top 10 names given to girls for the past five years.^[2] The name ranks in the top 100 most popular names for baby girls in Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland. It ranked as the 172nd most popular name for baby girls born in the United States in 2010. Alice ranked as the 51st most common name for women in the United States in the 1990 census.^[3]

The name was most popular in the United States in the Victorian era and at the turn of the 20th century. It has been popularized by Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. It was also popular in the Victorian era due to The Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria.

Albert was the husband of Queen Victoria.

Loudon was named after the doctor who assisted at his birth.

The name Malcolm is Scottish and in Shakespeare's Macbeth the king has a son called Malcolm.

Robert

According to Wikipedia:

The name Robert is a Germanic given name, from Old High German Hrodebert"bright with glory" (a compound of hruod "fame, glory" and berht "bright"). It is also in use as a surname.^[1][2]

After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form Robert, where an Old English cognate form (Hrēodbēorht, Hrodberht, Hrēodbēorð, Hrœdbœrð, Hrœdberð) had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto.

Three Scottish kings were called Robert:

Robert I was known as Robert the Bruce.The other two kings were Robert II and

Robert III.

Parkin
Parkin or Perkin as a family name comes from the Middle English as a pet name for Peter, used in the Yorkshire area.
Parkin or Perkin is a gingerbread cake traditionally made with oatmeal and black treacle,^[1] which originated in northern England. Often associated with Yorkshire, particularly the Leeds area,^[2] it is very widespread and popular elsewhere, notably in Lancashire. Parkin is baked to a hard cake but with resting becomes moist and even sometimes sticky. In Hull and East Yorkshire, it has a drier, more biscuit-like texture than in other areas. Parkin is traditionally eaten on Guy Fawkes Night,^[3] 5 November, but is also enjoyed throughout the winter months. It is baked commercially throughout Yorkshire, but is mainly a domestic product in other areas.