You could be a trainee astronaut – if there is such a vocation – or have a Gary Kasparov-level IQ, but if you’re blessed with a thick West Country accent you just sound … profoundly thick to me. The dialect is essentially someone throwing up all over their vowels. Horror show.
Home of John Cleese, a.k.a. the lankiest goose-stepping mustachioed Python in history, Jeffrey Archer (cunt), and … Jill Dando, the highlight is the pier, scene of quite the transcendental moment in The Remains of the Day (1993) when Anthony Hopkins’ loyal butler realises his life was a waste of oxygen. He could have married Emma Thompson but nah, he instead opted to polish ornaments for James Fox. A truly tragic movie in the most understated way. The pier aside, the town is a shithole that makes Edinburgh look like Athens in the age of Aristotle.
I am reminded of that Rust Cohl quote in True Detective when he rocks up to a hick village: “This place is like somebody’s memory of a town, and the memory is fading.”
But it was still better than Blackpool.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 