The simple act of warmth which gets an amazing response - Christa Ackroyd

Our daily phone calls about this and that, or about nothing at all suited our butterfly minds. And when we met in person you would be lucky to get a word in edgeways.

We would skip from politics to products on offer at the supermarket, ideas for this very column to the latest offerings on television.

The past, the present and plans for the future. What we were cooking and what we were cooking up. We could talk for hours, without so much as catching a breath. And do it all again the next day,

The silence is now at times deafening. And none more so these past couple of weeks.

Two television programmes that herald the autumn and the beckoning of winter were shared with every morsel baked, every step danced. A double punctuation in the week and the dark nights that were to come.

We would start by texting throughout but inevitably call each other after the programme finished. Bake Off would always have us in stitches. Kathy was a great cook but as she used to say mine tastes alright but would never look like that.

Neither of us were blessed with the patience to ice a fondant fancy.

“She’s got promise,” she would text after a particular dancer took to the floor on Strictly, “but he’s hopeless.” And so it went on right through Autumn into Winter until the winners were crowned.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to watch either show with the same enthusiasm, but I can. Though it feels a little out of step, a little less palatable than before.

But if positivity was my friend’s middle name who am I to feel less enthusiastic about something so simple as a TV show. Though I admit I do, which she would be furious about. But she is often on my mind.

Not least because more and more I find myself using words only she would use and emulating habits that were hers and not mine.

Things are now ‘terrific’ not great. Great is a description of size not enthusiasm she once told me and she is absolutely correct, even if terrific does sound like something an Enid Blyton character might say. It feels comfortable using it now.

Just as my father once told me as a sulky teenager when he asked how I was “Christa fine is not an answer, it is a description of a day without rain.”

I love that, though when you lose someone you truly miss you do notice the rain more. For a while at least.

I thought of my friend this week not just as I watched our two favourite television programmes, but as I prepared for an event on Monday with an incredible group of charitable organisations and a keynote speech by the inspirational Chris Pointon.

Hello My Name Is is an organisation set up prior to his wife’s death from cancer which he very much keeps alive in her memory.

It came about when Kate Granger, a doctor, bemoaned the fact that the only person who spoke to her during her months of treatment for cancer was the hospital porter.

The other medical staff seemed to be anonymous. Typically Chris, he told her to stop whinging and do something about it. And so Hello My Name Is was born.

Kate died three years after her campaign began. But her legacy lives on.

Hospitals and health trusts across the world over have adopted the campaign’s name badges with the smiley face and of course bearing the wearer’s name.

More than half a million pounds has been raised for charity and Chris continues to talk about the importance of introducing yourself not just as a common courtesy but as a way of introduction to an often deeper conversation.

My friend Kathy did the same. But in a different way. If someone had been pleasant, helpful, or was just a ray of sunshine on a dark day she would pause the conversation to ask, “ sorry what’s your name?”

No one ever didn’t tell her, or even questioned why she was asking.

She said it to waitresses, taxi drivers, supermarket check out operators, people in hotels, people at swanky dos, to anyone she took a liking for and she would always end the conversation with: “Thank you so and so, you have been terrific” or “cheerio so and so, lovely to meet you.”

A simple act of warmth that I witnessed from her so many times, a way of communication that somehow feels old fashioned yet important. I do it all the time now and it is amazing the response. It is always positive.

Of course I introduce myself too, which many people in Yorkshire find strange especially if they have just seen me being introduced on stage as I will be on Monday with Chris and have been doing this week as part of the World Curry Festival in Bradford.

“Hello I’m Christa”, I say sticking out my hand as my father taught me (hugs are only for the dearest of acquaintances.) Sometimes people look surprised.

“I know,” they say if they recognise me from the telly. But it prompts them to offer their name in response and if they don’t know me and I don’t know them it is the easiest of icebreakers.

Of course there are times when I have bristled when people used my name. Christa, used as one word from mum usually meant I was in trouble.

The subeditors in my first newspaper would summon me, over using my name for all to hear, for a dressing down over some spelling or syntax.

And I had and still have a pet hate when people use it to disarm you, especially those trying to make their point.

Politicians who thought they sounded chummy by overusing my name over and over in an interview as though we were friends, when we were not, were particularly grating.

But by and large I like it when people greet you using your name. It happened only this week when I bumbled into an old school friend I hadn’t seen in donkey’s years at a concert in Ilkley.

And just the sound of her shouting Christa as I walked by rolled away the time since we last met.

Our names are important. They are who we were and who we become. I used to hate mine, or rather not enjoy it.

But I had reason to question whether it would have been easier shortening it to a Chris or a Chrissie.

Coupled with Ackroyd I was always the first in the school register and was usually asked where it came from. My dad, I used to say before having to spell it in front of the class.

I have told you many times that I am adopted and am planning to add the name I was given by my birth mother into mine, Vivienne. Not just because I like it but it is part of my story.

But Christa I am and Christa I will always be. So if you see me in the streets shout it and I will answer. In fact I like it, but don’t be surprised if half way through the conversation, I stop and say “sorry, what’s your name?”

I learned that from a very special friend whom I miss but am a better person for knowing.

Her name is Kathy.