My wife and I decided to call our son Bo. It was a name chosen for a very simple reason. We like the name Bo. Hugely popular in Sweden and Denmark, there a very few people called Bo in the UK. Perhaps we broke the rules..?

Out for a walk in the park, I would be stopped by people wanting a closer look at this blue-eyed cutie and the conversation would go like this:

“He’s lovely, what’s his name?”

“Bo”

“Right. That’s unusual.”

“It’s a Scandinavian name, very popular in Denmark and Sweden.”

“I see… Are you Swedish?”

“No”

“Is your wife?”

“No”

“Is there a connection to Scandinavia?”

“No, we just like the name.”

“Oh OK…. that’s an unusual name… why call him Bo…?”

“We like the name.”

“Oh I see… OK…”

Later on I realised that there was a far easier way to handle this conversation. My intention was not to mislead, but in fact the exact opposite. I needed others to feel comfortable with the rules I had broken. My mother called this a “white lie”. It’s intention was to conceal the truth in order to make life that little bit easier. “Your grandmother doesn’t need to know we went to London. It will upset her that she wasn’t invited”. That sort of thing.

In short, I needed to show them that I had not broken the rules and that everything was OK. At this point, the conversation when like this:

“He’s lovely, what’s his name?”

“Bo”

“Right. That’s unusual.”

“It’s Scandinavian, my wife’s family are from Sweden.”

“Oh I see. What a lovely name. He’s beautiful.”

“Bo… Yes, it suits him…”

Now let us return to breakfast. In Germany, Belgium or across Europe, do you ever sneak a piece of cheese or ham onto your plate of toast or pastries? Do you order fried sausages and black pudding in London? Or indeed laver bread and cockles when visiting the beautiful Welsh coast?

Do you ever ask yourself why this is acceptable to you now, in this context and not at home? The reason is you have been given permission to break the rules. More to the point, you have given yourself permission to break the rules and the justification for rule breaking to the others around you. No one will look at you like a freak show, because you are among company. For a start, other people are eating this stuff right?