The West Country - where does it begin?

[didds]

The West Country - where does it begin?

[swill453]

Well Edinburgh is further west than all of those...

Scott.

[OLTB]

Gateway to the West Country is Portishead (so I'm told by my colleagues here in Zummerzet).

Cheers, OLTB.

[AleisterCrowley]

Dummy...

[bungeejumper]

Anywhere in a westerly direction that's more than an hour and a quarter's commute from Paddington. West Wilts (from Marlborough outwards) is probably about right.

Settle for just "Wiltshire", and you're including Salisbury, which is about as South as you can get. You're also east of Oxford, which really isn't West at all. (Correction, no it's not. Oops, my bad. )

Heck, the West is a state of mind. Generally woolly-liberal**, generally unaffordable, generally friendly, generally full of people who don't tend to move away from the area once they've arrived. As Louis Armstrong said, when somebody asked him what jazz was: "Man, if you have to ask you ain't never gonna understand".

We like it that way.

BJ

(** Apart from Rees-Mogg, naturally.)

[todthedog]

Hammersmith

[bungeejumper]

Hammersmith

I like your style. I used to know the late, lamented John Diamond, who would enjoy winding up the wurzels by telling them that the only purpose of the countryside was to give the city dwellers something to look out at when they drove through it. He half-meant it, too. But only half.

BJ

[stewamax]

There is a folk-song that starts:

"Be I Dorzet? Be I bu**ery,
I comes up from Wareham.
I know a girl with calico drawers,
And I knows how to tear 'em"

which, since Wareham is in Dorset, does not say much for Dorset schooling but everything about local fecundity.

[bungeejumper]

"Be I Dorzet? Be I bu**ery,
I comes up from Wareham.
I know a girl with calico drawers,
And I knows how to tear 'em"

which, since Wareham is in Dorset, does not say much for Dorset schooling but everything about local fecundity.

Also sung in Berkshire, except that it's Fareham.

More authentically, perhaps:

"Tossing hay upon the May
We was working gaily.
She ups and slips, and summat rips,
And I were there twice daily"

(Adge Cutler, of course.)

BJ

[tjh290633]

There is a folk-song that starts:

"Be I Dorzet? Be I bu**ery,
I comes up from Wareham.
I know a girl with calico drawers,
And I knows how to tear 'em"

which, since Wareham is in Dorset, does not say much for Dorset schooling but everything about local fecundity.

The version that I know uses Sarum, otherwise Salisbury.

TJH

[didds]

Hammersmith

I like your style. I used to know the late, lamented John Diamond, who would enjoy winding up the wurzels by telling them that the only purpose of the countryside was to give the city dwellers something to look out at when they drove through it. He half-meant it, too. But only half.

BJ

I'm somewhat assuming todthedog is in Devzies Constituency - new Tory MP Danny Kruger lives in hammersmith!

didds

[bungeejumper]

I know a girl with calico drawers,

And the version I've heard doesn't say girl. More like "who're", but not quite so politely punctuated.

BJ