The Lune Valley, Westmoreland

Another wonderful series!

Thanks. Despite an inauspicious start (Friday traffic at its worst and a forecast of cloud and rain for the whole weekend), the sun did come out occasionally - by luck at the right moments - and my trip to Westmoreland turned out quite productive, photographically.

Like you, I prefer to stay with the old county names and boundaries. I used to live in Middlesex, for example!

I still do (or in what used to be Middlesex) and am just old enough to remember a Middlesex accent - a rolling country burr - sadly now extinct.

Perhaps Middlesex, or what remains of it, should be preserved for the benefit of transgender people.

I used to hear a Buckinghamshire burr and can even remember a Surrey burr from around Farnham (admittedly close to the Hampshire border) which would have been as recently as the late 60s. I have been listening to recordings of voices from the '20s and '30s which show accents from Hampshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire sounding like typical Somerset or even Devon accents today! But then I recall John Arlott sounding very 'West Country' and he was born and bred Basingstoke which has to be less than 50 miles from London!
All very interesting if a little sad!

Yes. Having traveled to somewhere or another from Ealing Broadway Station all my life, I've heard the accents of the station announcements move with the times, from (until the mid-1960's) a Middlesex burr (trains going via "Burrrnham, Taplowe and Tyoiforrrd") to West Indian ("Di train now standing..") and then Eastern European ones, and finally to the announcements of today, pre-recorded in an accentless but simpering female voice.

Do you still have ladies and gentlemen in Ealing?

I used to work there, so I doubt it!

Signs of the times!

I was referring to Sad Khan having banned them on the tube.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40591750

Yes. Although most of the public conveniences that we once had have disappeared, there is still one that I can think of, in the main shopping precinct. Why do you ask? Are you coming to Ealing??

Thanks for the invitation, but I'd rather stay at home.