Ask Taff was an idea conceived by my brother Richie and I, both tired of constantly having to search the whole net for the simplest of information on our local area. We both came
to the conclusion that if we couldn't find the simplest of information we where looking for,
then other surfers most certainly where in the same boat, plus that the information we already had might be of use by others and that others would also have such information that they
may be willing to share. We agreed that it wouldn't be a bad idea to build such a site, however with our work taking up so much of our day the only thing stopping us was finding the spare time to put such a large amount of information together. Our idea was put on hold for the next
5 months.

In January 2000, I found myself on long term
sick leave from my work as a theatre assistant
at the Heath Hospital in Cardiff, and with
plenty of free hours on my hands, having
previously spent 3 years working as a web designer, I decided that if our idea was going
to get off the ground, then now was the
perfect time. While Richie kept up his full time
job I plodded away putting our ideas together,
the local library being a great source, my only interruptions being constant visits to the
doctors and hospital appointments to see a specialist. I had so many damn blood tests I asked if they could fit
a tap. We soon learnt that our original idea of being Newport based was too small a picture considering the vastness of the Internet, we
then decided to broaden our horizons and make
it Welsh based, a bit of a gamble as to achieve this we would need the input of even more visitors to our site being willing to share there knowledge. If all else failed we could revert to the smaller idea.

The next problem was a name for our site. This was by far the hardest decision that we both
had to agree on and one that nearly brought us to blows with the whole idea almost going out
the window. At the eleventh hour we decided what we needed was a familiar name that was easy to remember and one that summed up
the whole idea of our site. We decided to go
back to our roots and figure our dilemma. In
early 1964 with our parents and our three
sisters, Lesley, Linda, Jackie my brother and I emigrated to South Africa. For three years we where part of a large Welsh contingent who
went by the name of the taffy brigade. I
suppose it was those experiences of travelling and living in a foreign land that gave us
both the travel bug having then spending most
of our adult life working in and around Britain
and Europe, but always returning to our roots
in Wales. During our separate travels the one
thing we both found in common was that we became known as taffs, and if anybody had a question that was somehow Welsh related then invariably it was "ask taff". We both agreed instantaneously, that this had to be our site name, and why the hell didn't we think of it earlier, not only did it say exactly what the site had to offer, but it also had a certain
friendliness that we both liked.

In a nutshell ask taff is not meant to convey
one person, neither is taff meant to be male
or female, ask taff is simply a of list of shared knowledge about Wales brought together in
one place from people with an interest in
Wales. Richie and I are just the ones gathering
the information and putting it in some order so that others can benefit and share in this knowledge.

Ron



 A passport photo of my brother and I just
before leaving for  South Africa.  We felt a
recent photo may have scared you off.