I am anthlogised

A day off. It's just gone seven a.m. and I've given up trying to sleep. Mel is laying in the bed over there. She's rehearsing some of her repertoire of grunts, honks, whistles and snorts, all modulated through a strangulated viscous phlegm.

I am taking my repose under the beautiful old trees in Victoria Square in Clifton. I forgot my bottle opener, so I approach a group of four girls and one lad, who were popping open the midday prosecco. We have a little chat. They'd all just qualified as actuaries and are celebrating the end of their exams.

A woman comes and sits on the bench next to me. It's pleasant at first, talking about dogs and the weather. Then the group light up a barbecue. The woman starts tutting and saying "dear me", and looking towards me for support. Which she is not going to get.

She was really getting on my nerves and spoiling the atmosphere. At the back end of a couple of pints, I said "why don't you go and have a word with them if it's pissing you off so much? They've just qualified as actuaries -- they deserve to let their hair down a bit."

She decided to leave, but not without making a big thing of leaning on her stick and gripping the bench and said "I hope I don't fall." I kept my thoughts to myself this time.

For the first time, something from here has appeared in an actual printed book, painstakingly compiled and edited by The Singing Organ Grinder, who as well as being one of the longest-suffering readers of this unwieldy wordpile, has now turned his versatile hands to The Yorkshire Almanack.

One marvels at the discipline and patience needed to produce such a widely-sourced, 350-page book. Clergymen getting weak at the knees, factory owners objecting to even a slight amelioration of the conditions for the children doing exhausting work for them, fugitives, ghosts, botanists and stink-removers, and a long queue of drunkards and thieves, fraudsters and magistrates, are only some of the colourful Yorkshire folk summoned from Saxon times onwards to illustrate the days. A shoplifter and blogger peeks in during October, too.

Each month is prefaced by a chapter of the saga of Odin and Silica, supported by bus and train itineraries, interviews with chefs, farmers and quotations from Honourable Foreigners (e.g. Jacques Brel), underpinned with generous dollops of an imagination which skips across the centuries.

The ensemble is a miscellany of the most entertaining kind, with a variegated cast of characters performing their pieces. No prior knowledge of Yorkshire is required, thanks to the notes, which will help you out should you end up stroking your wawks, (1) confused by, say, the entry that assumes a good knowledge of Linnean botanical taxonomy. I'm pleasantly surprised that the author is putting himself through it all again for 2027, and if you get in before the end of June there's a £2 discount on an already very reasonable price. I ought not to raise the issue in May, but it would make an excellent Christmas present.

[1] wawks: the tips of a moustache