The above was my name for about 40 years, not that I used it all, all the time. In fact, day-to-day, I have always used Candy.

Candida came, via my mother, from a play by George Bernard Shaw. The play is about a woman, Candida, married to a clergyman. If that’s what my mother wished for me, she was badly let down!

Call is my paternal grandmother’s surname before she married. When she met my paternal grandfather, she was already married – SCANDAL – but, luckily for my father and his twin, the scandal was resolved several years before they were born.

Jeffers is the surname I was born with, as it was for my father and his father before him. My paternal grandfather was the poet, Robinson Jeffers. He married Una Call Kuster after she and her first husband divorced, amicably. Several years later my father, Donnan, and his twin, Garth, were born. Much of their story is known in the US and the home Grandfather built for Una and his sons is open to the public in Carmel, California. Apparently, my grandfather’s poetry is/was studied in American high schools.

There are quite a few videos about Robinson Jeffers on You Tube, in some of which you can see the house and tower he built over-looking the sea. There are other videos in which some of his poems are read. (Looking down the YouTube page that starts with Jeffers, I came across some videos that have nothing to do with poetry or Jeffers. Maybe someone can explain that! It’s like looking along a book shelf about maps and finding a load of books on wrestling, pop music and carpentry! Why?)

Last year, Medea, a play written by Euripides in Ancient Greece and translated by Robinson Jeffers in the 1940s, was staged in London. My half-brother, Lindsay, who lives in America, was invited by the play’s producers to attend and he invited me and ‘Veronica’ to join him. We all met in the restaurant of @Soho (a very new theatre in London) and saw the play together. It was the first time I had seen the play, though I knew the story and it was superbly done! If I had lived nearer, I would have gone back to see it every week it was on! Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels brought the story to life on a circular stage. We were in the row nearest the stage and we could have reached out and touched the actors as they walked by. I just hope that a video of the play was made and that I can see it again!

So, as you can see, my name came from various places. I’m quite glad to bear such a grand name but am also pleased to have my married name which I wrote about a while ago! Lucky me!