A write of passage

“That just needs your signature, Albert,” I said over breakfast. Albert looked shocked: “But I don’t have a signature.”

Albert has just recently turned 13. This is the age when childhood seems to be officially over nowadays. Once over the age of 12 you pay full price entry to most places, so no more child discount for Albert. In restaurants, he can’t choose from the kids’ menu any more.

And now, it looks like he needs a signature too: “Welcome to the big world, Albert,” I told him.

“But I don’t know how to do my signature,” he said, looking worried. He wasn’t happy just scribbling it any old way, like I suggested.

“Whatever way I write it now, I’ll have to write it for the rest of my life,” he said, panicking. He’s clearly seen far too many news reports about stolen identities and fraud: “I have to sign it in a way that’ll be difficult for someone to forge.”

Ignoring my protestations that no-one would want to steal his identity, he insisted that he was going to do this properly. He couldn’t decide whether to simply put ‘Albert Savage’ or his full name, ‘Albert Wenham Savage’ or just to put one initial, or two.

So he practised writing it out, in various styles, over and over. “This just looks boring,” he said. “I want a really cool signature.”

And so he turned to the internet where, unbelievably, there are now countless sites offering to help you create your own stylish and unique signature. We never had anything like this back in the Dark Ages, when I was a child.

Albert settled on the site that showed ‘How to sign a cool signature’. It offered him valuable pieces of advice such as: “If you are known only by your first name – like Beyonce or Ronaldo – you might consider using just the first name.”

It added helpfully: “If you are a professor who typically goes by her last name, you may just sign your surname.” (Although why a professor would need help from a website on how to sign her name is beyond me.)

Albert looked at other signatures on the website for inspiration: “Don’t be afraid to borrow eye-catching elements from famous signatures and add them to your own,” went the advice.

He liked the scrawled circle above the ‘i’ in Walt Disney’s signature: “Why can’t I have an ‘i’ in my name?” he moaned, glaring at me. He also liked the way Dali did his D and how Elizabeth I did her Z, but doesn’t have any Ds or Zs in his name either - something else I found myself apologising for.

After experimenting with underlining part or all of his signature and adding a flourish to individual letters, he tried encircling the lot with loops: “It says this creates a very regal, official-looking signature,” said Albert, looking pleased with his latest scrawl.

Next, he studied all the different font styles he could use. But then, at the end of the whole process, there was a note of caution about using your signature on legal documents such as a driver’s licence, passport, credit card and bank records.

 Albert looked worried: “It says here that ‘Your signature serves to identify you, and you may arouse suspicion if you sign in a way that doesn’t match the records. Make sure that you can easily replicate your signature. You might want to simplify your design’.”

Now they tell us.

In the end, he settled on A.Savage, writing the ‘S’ so that it looked a bit like an elaborate lower case ‘f’.

“That’s it. I like that, it’s really cool. And it looks very professional,” he said. He signed the form.

Ten minutes later, his coach texted to say the match had been called off because the pitch was waterlogged.

But at least Albert has a signature at last.

MY husband called to visit his mum in Kent when he was working in London last week and brought some ingredients to make tea with him. “He’s creating a real mess in my kitchen,” she told me over the phone. “There’s stuff all over the place.” So I asked her what he was making. “Glaucoma,” she told me. It was only after I’d ascertained that the ingredients included several avocados I realised he was making guacamole, not an unpleasant eye disease.