Is a Virtual ‘Thon a possibility?

[Various Artist]

Several years ago I worked for a company that arranged medicals for people who had been involved in car accidents and wanted to claim. They had an automated system for finding people the nearest clinic that they could be seen, which didn't recognise seas or estuaries as obstacles. So we got plenty of people living around Weston complaining about being given appointments in Cardiff - as well as people in Kent getting appointments in Essex.

Hah, oh yes I encounter that sort of thing quite often, though mercifully not in anything like such a problematic scenario. For me it's usually just that I'll go to a given retailer's 'store finder' on their website and receive the invaluable information that there's, say, 3 branches handily within x number of miles of me – the system being blissfully oblivious to the fact that them being located in say Cardiff, Weston and Bridgewater means in practical terms there's no choice at all.

[Sits]

Ahh, that's interesting Sam, so the Bristol side of Weston-super-Mare, i.e. north of the Mendip Hills. As the crow flies that is indeed pretty close to me – I see it's actually almost due east (as opposed to south or southeast) across the Bristol Channel from here, where the channel doglegs past Penarth and Weston to take a more northeasterly direction up towards Clevedon, Newport and the mouth of the Severn. The view from the Welsh side where I am is blocked by hills in that direction, though; as noted I can look across more in the direction of Flat Holm and Steep Holm towards Brean Down.

I don't know that area – i.e your neck of the woods – but I'd have passed moderately close to it three summers ago, when I and friends rented a cottage just the other side of the Mendips for a weekend for someone's birthday. Out the back of the back of beyond, somewhere in the no-man's-land loosely triangulated (rhomboided?) by Burnham-on-Sea, Cheddar, Wookey Hole and Glastonbury; it's an absolutely beautiful corner of the world.

We broke down in Westbury-sub-Mendip once. Summer holiday season, took the AA hours to arrive.

As you were.

[Femme Folle]

Ahh, that's interesting Sam, so the Bristol side of Weston-super-Mare, i.e. north of the Mendip Hills. As the crow flies that is indeed pretty close to me – I see it's actually almost due east (as opposed to south or southeast) across the Bristol Channel from here, where the channel doglegs past Penarth and Weston to take a more northeasterly direction up towards Clevedon, Newport and the mouth of the Severn. The view from the Welsh side where I am is blocked by hills in that direction, though; as noted I can look across more in the direction of Flat Holm and Steep Holm towards Brean Down.

On my trashy reality TV show that I watch, 90 Day Fiance, the guy from one of the couples lives in Weston-Super-Mare. I had never heard of it before. It would be funny if you actually knew him. I can't recall his name, other than Jon. Ooh, it would be even funnier if he turned out to be one of the Jons on OTF. Doubtful, though.

[Jon]

On my trashy reality TV show that I watch, 90 Day Fiance, the guy from one of the couples lives in Weston-Super-Mare. I had never heard of it before. It would be funny if you actually knew him. I can't recall his name, other than Jon. Ooh, it would be even funnier if he turned out to be one of the Jons on OTF. Doubtful, though.

I do have a slight connection to Weston-super-Mare (recent Covid 19 hotspot), FF. My great-grandparents dreamed of retiring there and in fact, they did. But my great-grandmother died soon after they moved there so my great-grandfather moved back to the Midlands. (It is about the closest seaside resort to much of the West Midlands so is a popular place for holidays, day trips, retirements etc).

It was great to see you all and I would definitely be up for it again. Like Etienne, I find the format a little problematic in terms of participating in the conversation. But it's just nice to see everyone and listen in (kind of what I do mostly on the board anyway). Plus, like VA, I don't drink so maybe that adds to my reticence.

[Femme Folle]

Jon I've seen some of the scenery on that show and it looks lovely.

omg, I went googling for photos and found their website. It's full of advice on long distance relationships. hahaha https://followourfairytale.com/

Oh, and he couldn't get a fiance visa to the USA because apparently he glassed someone in a pub.

[Sporting]

I spent the best part of two years in the Cardiff area between 93 and 95. I first rented a small flat in the Danescourt area of Llandaff, then later resided in Llantarnam Road. My girlfriend at the time had a room first in Penygraig, near Tonypandy, before moving to Malefant Street in the city.

While in Cardiff I worked in Farnworths department store for nine days before being sacked.

[Sam]

Ahh, that's interesting Sam, so the Bristol side of Weston-super-Mare, i.e. north of the Mendip Hills. As the crow flies that is indeed pretty close to me – I see it's actually almost due east (as opposed to south or southeast) across the Bristol Channel from here, where the channel doglegs past Penarth and Weston to take a more northeasterly direction up towards Clevedon, Newport and the mouth of the Severn. The view from the Welsh side where I am is blocked by hills in that direction, though; as noted I can look across more in the direction of Flat Holm and Steep Holm towards Brean Down.

I don't know that area – i.e your neck of the woods – but I'd have passed moderately close to it three summers ago, when I and friends rented a cottage just the other side of the Mendips for a weekend for someone's birthday. Out the back of the back of beyond, somewhere in the no-man's-land loosely triangulated (rhomboided?) by Burnham-on-Sea, Cheddar, Wookey Hole and Glastonbury; it's an absolutely beautiful corner of the world.

I almost typed that I could probably see where you lived from the top of the hill, if I knew what to look for, and then it occurred to me that in fact it'd probably be hidden in a valley or something, which is why I played it safe and said Cardiff instead. I used to take my bike out across the moors for a ride to, around, and back from Clevedon most days after school. That particular bit isn't all that pretty (although seeing all the green on visits home now that I've lived in one of the biggest urban areas in the western hemisphere for ten years is gorgeous, of course), but has its charms. As you say, though, a short drive or bike ride south-east into the Mendips and Somerset proper* and you're really talking. The road to Cheddar is gorgeous and there's lots of good stuff off towards Wells and Glastonbury too.

[Sam]

On my trashy reality TV show that I watch, 90 Day Fiance, the guy from one of the couples lives in Weston-Super-Mare. I had never heard of it before. It would be funny if you actually knew him. I can't recall his name, other than Jon. Ooh, it would be even funnier if he turned out to be one of the Jons on OTF. Doubtful, though.

I hadn't been to Weston in years even before I moved here. It's very close indeed to where I grew up, but just a horrible place. Occasionally I'll meet someone who's been there and thinks it wasn't that bad, and I always wonder about them. My mum worked in the ICU at the hospital there for a while, and said the patients were almost exclusively drug dealers who'd overdosed on their own supply. The nurses would have to keep an eye out when family came to visit because their wives and girlfriends would try and hook non-medicinal substances up to their IVs.

[treibeis]

What Sam hasn't mentioned about where he grew up is that it's home to the world's only statue of Adge Cutler, and therefore overrun every day by literally millions of tourists flocking there to touch it.

[Sam]

Bit inland from there.

They did headline the beer and cider festival put on by my dad's Lions club one year, though. My cousins from Barcelona were in attendance, and between not being big drinkers and not having the faintest clue who The Wurzels were and why everyone else knew at least some of the songs, they were rather nonplussed.

[Various Artist]

In the spirit of discussion elsewhere in the last couple of days, I do hope that the legend of 'Los Wurzels' made it back to Iberia subsequently Sam!

[Various Artist]

I spent the best part of two years in the Cardiff area between 93 and 95. I first rented a small flat in the Danescourt area of Llandaff, then later resided in Llantarnam Road. My girlfriend at the time had a room first in Penygraig, near Tonypandy, before moving to Malefant Street in the city.

While in Cardiff I worked in Farnworths department store for nine days before being sacked.

I'd have been in school down the road at the time! I have literally no recollection of a Farnworths department store in town, though. Do you remember where that was by any chance? Mind, the geography of much of the city centre has changed so much since it might be hard to find the spot these days anyway.

[Various Artist]

On my trashy reality TV show that I watch, 90 Day Fiance, the guy from one of the couples lives in Weston-Super-Mare. I had never heard of it before.

It's one of the more memorably unusual placenames in Britain, though I'd never worked out why it didn't simply get called Weston-on-Sea instead of the pretentious Latin version. Turns out it's simply a very old name:

Weston comes from the Anglo-Saxon for the west tun or settlement; super mare is Latin for "above sea"^[7][8] and was added to distinguish it from the many^[9] other settlements named Weston in the Diocese of Bath and Wells.^[10]

Prior to 1348 it was known as Weston-juxta-Mare ("beside the sea"). The name was changed by Ralph of Shrewsbury, who was the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Between the 14th and 17th centuries the "super Mare" part of the name disappeared and it was just known as Weston, although in 1610 it was recorded as Weston on the More; m?r being the Welsh word for sea.^[11]

(Blackadder earworm from the Bishop bit there.)

It's also not a million miles away (visible at opposite sides of this Google map here) along the Somerset/north Devon coast from Westward Ho!, which to the absolute best of my knowledge is the only place in Britain with an exclamation mark in its name.

[ad hoc]

Westward Ho!, which to the absolute best of my knowledge is the only place in Britain with an exclamation mark in its name.

It is indeed. However, Quebec town Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! has two
https://goo.gl/maps/ewkwZvEMYrpdydJN8

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Wait til Elon Musk gets to name the capital of Mars.

[Paul S]

Weston-super-mare was also the end of the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway, giving it the unfortunate acronym of WC and P.

[Various Artist]

Wait til Elon Musk gets to name the capital of Mars.

I'm fairly sure that if a pulp sci-fi writer of, say, the '50s had said that Elon Musk was the capital of Mars, no-one would've batted an eyelid.

[jdsx]

I got married in Weston-super-Mare Registry Office. And John Cleese was born there (W-s-M not the RO, obvs). That's the sum of my knowledge of the place. Sorry, as you were.

[Various Artist]

It was great to see you all and I would definitely be up for it again. Like Etienne, I find the format a little problematic in terms of participating in the conversation. But it's just nice to see everyone and listen in (kind of what I do mostly on the board anyway). Plus, like VA, I don't drink so maybe that adds to my reticence.

Aside from being impressed at Jon's ability to appear, like Beetlejuice or the Candyman, immediately upon his name being invoked here, there's a more serious reply to be made.

For anyone who's similarly unsure about saying hello on one of these chats, or who worries the format is impossible to keep up with, I was exchanging messages last night with another poster who wasn't quite sure about poking his head into the Virtual 'Thons, and the below is from my comments there:

[...] The format works pretty well, in fact, even when there's 12-18 people on. We seem to be a civilised bunch: by and large there's no talking over each other, everyone's very patient! Some people even mute their microphones until they want to contribute, which helps keep things even quieter.

Crucially, too, some (like ursus, Sporting, Rogin, Jah) are more natural conversation leaders while others of us tend towards the observational, so for much of the time most people are just watching while the discussion pings back and forth between relatively few speakers, until there's a lull or a change of subject to something you have things to say about, or until someone asks you something directly.

And there's text chat, so you can conduct a side-conversation simultaneously – it's like passing cheeky notes around the classroom, you suddenly see people giggling on camera without anything having been said out loud.

I'd recommend giving it a go if you're curious and just seeing how it suits you. [...] Some people are there for hours straight, some drop in and out, some are making dinner or drinking homebrew while chatting, some just like to watch quietly, some roll in drunk three hours after it's started, say hello then disappear to bed five minutes later. You don't even have to turn your camera on, if it comes to it, you can just let us 'watch' a blank black rectangle where your face would be while you eavesdrop...

[sw2borshch]

It's one of the more memorably unusual placenames in Britain, though I'd never worked out why it didn't simply get called Weston-on-Sea instead of the pretentious Latin version. Turns out it's simply a very old name:


(Blackadder earworm from the Bishop bit there.)

It's also not a million miles away (visible at opposite sides of this Google map here) along the Somerset/north Devon coast from Westward Ho!, which to the absolute best of my knowledge is the only place in Britain with an exclamation mark in its name.

We live on a street named after a bishop of Bath and Wells, but I haven't been able to find out if he ate babies.

[Sporting]

I just love pebble's smoking style. And the way tactical genius is always looking upwards.

[Various Artist]

I just love pebble's smoking style. And the way tactical genius is always looking upwards.

Yes, pebble's fashion sense is red hot, and TG is incredibly optimistic.

[Sporting]

I'd have been in school down the road at the time! I have literally no recollection of a Farnworths department store in town, though. Do you remember where that was by any chance? Mind, the geography of much of the city centre has changed so much since it might be hard to find the spot these days anyway.

I think it was in Queens Arcade but maybe it closed down (or I'm misremembering).

[Tactical Genius]

Yes, pebble's fashion sense is red hot, and TG is incredibly optimistic.

Hahahahha. That's because I have a three screen setup.
I have my laptop open on the table (with the webcam) as well as two larger external screens higher up where the Zoom window is.

VA, tell your mate to join, I need more material.

[Various Artist]

Wow, that's the way to do it! So you can see like 20 people at once?

I did try to encourage our wavering member to pop his head in next time, we'll see...