Unfortunately for me my father had combined diplomacy with a study of Anglo-Saxon history and, of course with my mother's consent, he gave me the name of Alfred, one of his heroes ( I believe she had boggled at Aelfred ). This Christian name, for some inexplicable reason, had become corrupted in the eyes of our middle-class world; it belonged exclusively now to the working class and was usually abbreviated to Alf. Perhaps that was why Doctor Fisher, the inventor of Dentophil Bouquet, never called me anything but Jones, even after I married his daughter.