#north somerset

[pinkchunder]

[simplycrazyhunter]

Modern Exterior - Roofing

Large modern white two-story stucco exterior home idea with a tile roof

[jordangarciafoto]

Boat At Portishead by RGW-Photography

[don-lichterman]

Travellers parking unauthorised on land in Bristol and surrounding regions up by two-thirds

Travellers parking unauthorised on land in Bristol and surrounding regions up by two-thirds

Dozens of caravans were counted on unauthorised sites in Bristol and the surrounding area this year – as campaigners fight to increase site provision for Gypsy and Traveller people across England. Figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities show that in January, 6 caravans were on land not owned by Travellers, and another 31 were on sites that they did own – but did not…

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Stop telling people who live in the westcountry things are good down south challenge.

And this is just the permanent population, in summer this will double or treble.

[the-busy-ghost]

Dear God, Westminster was always bad but lately it’s like the Tories have been engaged in a secret contest to see who can come out with the most absolutely rancid takes in the Commons

[georgia-stanway]

Put radio Bristol on and they're talking about fucking Leeds. Gas, city and bears are all playing and that's what they're fucking talking about. No wonder my grandad hates them.

[conandaily2022]

North Branch, New Jersey teachers Jeffrey Grossman, Steven Grossman held in Bergen County Jail

Jeffrey Grossman, 65, and his son Steven Grossman, 24, live in the same house in Tenafly, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. They are both teachers. For several years, Jeffrey taught college. He became a lawyer and worked for New York City, New York, USA before returning to teaching at Northern Highlands Regional High School in Allendale, Bergen County and the Norwood Public School in…

[ancestorsalive]

Happy Somerset Day! Every year at North Cadbury Court we celebrate how wonderful our county is to live in and to visit. The landscape is so magical, especially Cadbury Hill - with its mythical links to King Arthur.

📷 @robingoodladphotography

#somersetday #somerset #flytheflagforkingandcounty

[goalhofer]

2022 Washington Nationals Famous Relations

#30 Paolo Espino: Cousin of former Somerset Patriots C Dámaso Espino.

#73 Hunter Harvey: Son of former Florida Marlins P Bryan Harvey and brother of former Altoona Curve P Bryan Harvey; Jr..

#59 Evan Lee: Husband of SEC+ analyst Sydney Parr Lee.

#3 Alcides Escobar: Nephew of former Utica Blue Jays SS José Escobar and cousin of Yokohama DeNA Beisutāzu P Edwin Escobar; former Los Angeles Angels P Kelvim Escobar; Kansas City Royals SS Maikel García & Atlanta Braves DH Ronald Acuña; Jr.

#2 Luis Garcia; Jr.: Son of former Nashville Sounds SS Luis Garcia.

#9 Devaris Strange-Gordon: Son of former Arizona Diamondbacks P Tom Gordon; Jr., nephew of former El Paso Diablos P Anthony Gordon & former Nashua Pride 3B Clyde Pough and half-brother of Minnesota Twins SS Nick Gordon.

#68 Josh Palacios: Nephew of former Rochester Red Wings C Robert Palacios and brother of Cleveland Guardians LF Richie Palacios.

Bullpen catcher Brandon Snyder: Son of former Oakland Athletics P Brian Snyder and cousin of former Sioux Falls Canaries P John Younginer IV.

1B coach Eric Young; Jr.: Son of Atlanta Braves 1B coach Eric Young and half-brother of actor Dallas Young.

[noirandchocolate]

RICE Alzheimer's Research Institute

Terry died on 12 March 2015, having given his PCA a run for its money.  Open about his diagnosis, he has helped to unlock the secrecy and stigma that often surrounds dementia.  His legion of fans is undoubtedly grateful that despite the inevitable progression of the PCA he was able to fight his ‘embuggerance’ and continue to produce a number of both well-received and well-reviewed books.  Terry was also a great example to me in emphasizing how important it is that, in caring for people with any type of dementia, we always look for what people with a condition like PCA can still do, rather than what they can’t: by maximizing what is possible, a person can still live well with dementia for a significant time.

–Professor Roy Jones, Director of RICE (taken from “Terry Pratchett: His World”)

I wanted to post something for the Glorious 25th about the Research Institute for the Care of Older People (RICE) in Bath, where Sir Terry Pratchett received treatment for Post-Cortical Atrophy, the type of Alzheimer’s disease that eventually took his life. From the organization’s website:

RICE established one of the first memory clinic services in the UK in 1987 – a service which has since been widely replicated and is now considered standard and best practice by the NHS. In fact, RICE now runs the NHS Memory Clinic in Bath and North East Somerset on behalf of the local clinical commissioning group and local authority through a sub-contract with HCRG Care Group. To date, we’ve assessed, diagnosed, treated and advised 12,000 people with memory problems and their families in our memory clinic. 

Most of RICE’s clinical services and research activities take place in our own purpose built, specialist centre located on the Royal United Hospital site. The building of the RICE Centre was possible as a result of generous donations from major donors, trusts and foundations, and members of the public. RICE moved into the ground and first floor of the centre in 2008. Following the success of the DementiaPlus Appeal and further generous donations from major donors, trusts and foundations and members of the public, RICE converted the attic floor in 2019 to create more office space. This has given us access to much needed additional rooms and offices which will enable us to grow and run more services and activities. We’ve worked hard to ensure that the areas of the centre visited by our patients meets their needs and we regularly receive feedback on how much our patients enjoy their visit to our centre.

RICE not only provides clinical services to patients, but also conducts research into aging and dementia, including performing clinical trials for new drug treatments for memory-related diseases and developing other “techniques for diagnosing, managing, treating and understanding dementia and memory changes in older adults.”

Lady Lyn Pratchett is the patron of the organization, and the website includes a page about how people can donate funds or volunteer at the clinic and participate in fundraising events.

SO, if you’d like to help fund Alzheimer’s research on this Glorious 25th of May–or at any time–in honor of the Man in the Hat, take a look!

[partialsun]

My favorite bird moments of 2022

[terastalungrad]

Sometimes, you’re a comedian with a touring show to promote, so you do an interview with a regional newspaper.

I think that’d be the funniest possible time to reveal a big scoop, wouldn’t it?

Stewart Lee is currently touring, and to promote his Yeovil performance, gave an interview to Blackmore Vale Magazine.  According to Wikipedia, the Blackmore Vale is an area of north Dorset, south Somerset and southwest Wiltshire.  According to the comedian Jake Baker, the magazine would cover his school sports day as he grew up in Dorset.  That’s the level of news you’d expect.

The questions are friendly and easy, from a journalist clearly familiar with Lee’s work and history.

The first question is about the show’s angle.  Lee describes the nature of the show, and here’s an excerpt:

So it looks like stand-up, and sounds like stand-up, but it’s actually a kind of character piece about a desperate person who’s frightened and trying to organise the world in a way that puts them in control. And I guess you could argue that’s what a lot of stand-ups are doing anyway. Ricky Gervais to me looks like a very frightened man. He’s frightened of transgender people coming after him, the act is a defensive wall.

Fun!  This is a Ricky Gervais hate blog, so it’s nice to see a sudden, unexpected attack in an unrelated promotional interview.

Lee mentions Gervais again in response to question four.

Sometimes I become bitter and think ‘I get all this good press, why can’t I get 10 million quid for a TV special like Ricky Gervais?’ But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want that audience, it wouldn’t allow me to be better.

And then again to question eight, where Lee explains why he spends six months running new shows in the relatively small Leicester Square Theatre (as opposed to arena comics who might do 10 warmup shows followed by 60 tour dates).

You can still run it like a club gig, you can interact with people in real time. Also, you wouldn’t get better at the show because you wouldn’t have done it as many times. You can see this with an act like Gervais. Those shows have not been run in, they’re not fluid, they’re a succession of inflexible statements that would snap like twigs if the pressure of an unforeseen event was applied to them.

The journalist finally addresses this head on.  It really is worth reading the entire article - there’s a lot more than I’m quoting, including an interesting story about Sean Lock:

But here are my favourite bits:

[Gervais] still kind of copies me though, which is the weird thing. There’s still a lot of cadences of what I do but they’re used in the service of evil. In Star Wars, he’s Darth Vader and he’s taken the force, which is me, and used it for evil purposes. He was a fanboy, he was actually the booker at University of London and used to book me and Sean Lock all the time. And when he became famous for the Office, he wrote an hour-long act that was so indebted to us it was awkward. [...] If he’d come up through the circuit that would have been rubbed off him because you find your own voice doing club gigs. It took me two years of gigging five nights a week to come through the mesh of things I liked. But he didn’t have that experience in the same way. [...] Funnily enough, in his first show there were bits I’d never recorded that he’d do almost verbatim. He’d clearly remembered them. I went to see him at the Bloomsbury – on his invitation actually – with my then girlfriend and she was very concerned for me. I’d given up at that point due to lack of interest, and she was concerned for what it felt like to see my act being done to hundreds of people, it was quite weird. On the other hand, that sort of did make me think I don’t want it to be consumed into someone else’s vocabulary. And also, I think because he had a residual sense of guilt, he would always credit me in interviews as being an influence – that helped me in 2004 to get the audience back.

This is, to my knowledge, the first time Lee’s ever claimed that Gervais stole his material.  He’s certainly talked about Gervais clearly taking influence from him (though in the past, he downplayed this compared to the account given in this interview).

It’s a pretty big thing to accuse a comic of stealing material.  That’s a big taboo.  I reckon this is partly because Lee wants to discourage fans of Gervais from coming to the show.

Anyway, let’s finish by quoting the end of the interview:

It must be strange to have that level of financial remuneration and those audience figures but not really a single good review. And I expect what that does for you is create a cognitive dissonance where you have to manufacture a worldview by which the whole world is wrong and you’re right. Which can’t necessarily be very good for your mental health, although I expect the money’s nice.

[unsubconscious]

Martin Salter, Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset, 2021

[centuriespast]

Parsley's Tower, Weston-super-Mare William Brownell (active 1874–1890) North Somerset Council