No Q's, No Pack Drill...

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We went over to Ynys Môn today for a drive out with Carol & Kev who are staying in the cottage for a few days before the next paying guests arrive; fetching up at Pringles - one of the most godawful retail experiences imaginable and to which coach-loads of ageing and aged people [don't say a word] flock in their hundreds every day during holiday seasons. Needless to say it was not my idea, but a pint in the pub opposite before was sufficient fortification to soften the blow. I simply studied the many shelves of fine whiskeys on offer, decided that all were far too expensive for my current pocket and went and sat in the car as the sun turned to showers, listening to Radio Four.

We had previously paid a visit to Hooton's farm foods, passing the fields of sunflowers on the way, and bought some veg for tonight's soup; and then went and ate our sandwiches in the car-park of Plas Newydd, before deciding that the café there was effectively a no-go area of similarly old people, clogging up the tables and aisles, scrumming for coffee and cakes at the struggling-to-cope counter. Jane and I both agreed that even having the longest [albeit partly confected for the Victorian tourist trade] place name in Britain - Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch can't quite save the town from its own limitations. But then again, banking on such slender laurels as a largely made-up name really can't cut it in the twenty-first century, although it kind of presaged today's ready acceptance of fake content and copy by well over a hundred years, didn't it?

By the way, only the first seventeen letters of the name are its real name, the rest of it was concocted, and it is usually referred to as simply Llanfair PG. And if anyone suggests that the real name actually consists of twenty letters? Wrong: this is the Welsh alphabet [Yr Wyddor Gymraeg], which has 29 letters including Ch, Dd, Ng, Ll, Ph, Rh, and Th...

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