I must have blinked. Quite suddenly I discovered we were living in York, as illustrated above. Or at least, Jo’s job was. It did that before, only it didn’t in the end—but this time it did, and there she is. Very dashing she looks too, in her new bike hat, sharply pointed at the prow, presumably to cut the wind resistance as she scorches along the lanes of York. The scorching is a bit hypothetical at present ..... we found her bike in the shed under 8 years’ accumulated dust, and took it, coughing, to Cycle Heaven, right by the little house we’re renting in York, and “Nice bike,” they said, “think we’d better change all the cables for starters and,” (prods shapeless strip of rubber formerly known as Tyre) “you won’t want that again, will you?” Ho hum, remarkable what you can spend in a good bike shop. But they’re lovely people and they sell great gear. Just hope I don’t take my credit card in there by mistake, or I’ll come out with titanium wheels and fancy brakes and intelligent clothing that plays Radio 3 while it wipes your glasses, and a hole in the bank balance that’d show up on a seismograph.  (Ed: I could be seriously tempted by something that played Radio 3 while it wiped my glasses. When we left Cambridge I didn’t need to wear glasses for riding a bike, whereas now…).

All part of the nesting, of course. In between bouts of delicious bikery we buy more spoons and try to persuade each other not to spend ridiculous amounts on extra waste bins—I think £1.25 was the amount in question—and phone the estate agent to see whether the shower might be repaired this week, or even the week after next. Our Alter Domus we might name Hi-n-Dri because it stands near the river but on slightly rising ground and we were proudly told that the famous York floods of 2000 stopped all of three houses away. Given the shower problem, the name seems to be oddly prescient, or would be if (a) I hadn’t only just thought of it and (b) I could pronounce prescient.

York is terribly well-spoken after Leeds, and when our burglar alarm goes off it merely clears its throat and requests a little attention, if people would be so kind. Whereas when we first lived in Leeds, one day there was a power failure and every alarm in the street screamed at once, like stepping on the tails of a thousand dogs.

The arrangement is that La Vélocipèdeuse will spend a couple of nights a week in York, or possibly more depending how it goes, and I’ll do whatever takes my fancy, which I suspect will mean hanging out with La V if poss. The house is rented for 6 months and has a spare bedroom. Do come and stay. Either bring own bed, or check first to see whether we’ve got one yet. It’s lovely in York: our first night we went to a concert right on the other side of York and strolled home via the pub and a few drinks and walking down the riverside, with its black, twinkling jolly look, pretending it hadn’t drowned hundreds of Saxons, Danes, Normans, and kittens in its day. Very controlled that river is (both the rivers in fact): no coracles, trawlers, ferries, luggers, bumboats, fishing smacks, coasters, water-skiers, punts, powerboats, or hovercraft were to be seen. I gather that parking a boat is even harder than parking a car—which is hard enough for black market residents’ permits to be a recognised currency for paying gambling debts.

Word-find of the year. Guess what’s the origin of  being ‘marooned’? It’s from Latin for cabbage sprout. Or so the usually humourless Shorter Oxford says. Jo says it’s gained in translation.

Absolute highlight—a week on Fair Isle where the massed Greens and quasi-Greens, i.e. Jo and Thos, and Owen and Sarah, and Martin and Inge, went to stay with Inge’s highly hospitable family. The island  (http://www.fairisle.org.uk) has a population of c.70, so life is pretty different from Leeds (pop. 715,404 in census of 2001). Many people are crofters and everyone mucks in.  We turned to with enthusiasm but a complete lack of know-how that must have been very funny or maybe occasionally a bit dismaying. When we came back we’d had a go at singling neeps (turnips), making a shelter for calves, spinning, building a haystack, baling fodder in great heavy rolls, and most fun of all driving the sheep over the common to be shorn, holding our hands up over our heads as we went among the nesting grounds of the skuas in case they dive-bombed us. All the young people had a go at shearing but Jo and I suddenly got old and feeble and left it to them. Fair Isle deserves its name, of course, and we were really lucky with the weather: it was apparently the sunniest place in Scotland (and possibly in the UK) during August: 204.9 hours of sunshine. One day a full-rigged three-master came past, and as it happened Inge and her grandfather were playing the tune ‘The Full Rigged Ship’ so everybody piled out and the musos played the tune to her and the rest of us admired her as she sailed past. Later that day she paused and sent a boatload of her passengers – cruise-ship Americans – to buy the local produce, including splendid Fair Isle garments.

I never expected to go to Fair Isle, and I never expected to go up Ben Nevis either. But when romantic friends decide to get married half way up, what can you do. Possibly they wanted to get married in the rain and thought going to Ben N would increase their chances? Unlucky if so: the morning’s light storm (well, light for that region) drew breath just long enough for the al fresco festivities, and my concertina found itself playing hymn tunes crouching on a mountainside. Startled sheep stared and oblivious mountain-bikers hurtled past, in the British BMX Championships, a form of suicide by riding down a bumpy mountain side so fast your flesh and bones get turned into Bovril, unless you break your neck first, which is surely quite likely. The hardy guys in our cable car thought it was a great romantic sport. So does the guy in the bike shop in York. If you tilted York at about 40 degrees he’d be really happy.

We got wet in Ireland too, equally unsurprisingly. Googling around for a way to spend a week together we found the East Cork Early Music Festival, and very fine it was too, dawdling through little towns in the daytime and going to excellent concerts in the evenings. There are some very distinctive features about Irish towns. Very few buildings over 2 stories high: if you took a typical English town of comparable size, you’d have to pull out its pompous ugly banks and its overbearing town hall and its hideous office blocks and the unspeakable multi-storey car park, like pulling out all its teeth. Then you’d have to paint all the houses, because all along the main street (there’s usually just the one long street, at least in East Cork) each house is painted a different colour, cheerfully clashing like an orchestra of untuned cymbals. And every small town seems to have its own independent bookshop. Wonderful. Rather less fun, alas, is the town museum, with its mementoes of English oppression and contempt.

First supermarket carol spotted this year? Mine was on 12 November. And Distressing Dish of the year, as advertised in Carlisle: “Bacon, Brie and Black Pudding Baguettes”.

Last year we first came across the ‘Good Gifts’ catalogue: as an alternative to spending hours buying people things they probably don’t want and certainly don’t need, you can buy people in real need things they really do want, and send a card to your friends so they don’t feel left out. Great idea. This year Oxfam and others are doing it—‘Goats for Peace’ etc. I was tempted to make a little remark about the absence of ‘accordions for peace’ but I suppose that people learning the fiddle shouldn’t throw stones.

Madame La Vélocipèdeuse wishes it to be known that contact details remain as below for the time being.  Meanwhile, if you want to buy a really nice house in Chapel Allerton, just let us know.

And now spam poem of the year. (Spam emails often include strings of random words—spam poems—to fox the spam traps.) Guaranteed unedited and exactly as received, even the evocative line breaks.

I we yokuts fourteen

not validate dakar. the miscegenation

is of us we I whimper

from was a the me armadillo

the the an elmsford hausdorff

we coalesce was bagging

is baggage bustle antipode

I cyanate it daly lust ail

All the best for 2004!

The assistant editor (TRGG)

c/o The editor (JMG)

@ Jo and Thomas Green, Oriel House, Leeds LS7 4ND.

0113-226-6687. 0794-700-2581 (his), 0793-984-1749 (hers)

jo@jmgreen.icom43.net, greenery@ntlworld.com