This week marked
the return of Wonder Husband (WH) and me to ‘God’s own county’. For friends abroad,
I’m talking about Yorkshire, in the North of England.
For great friends in Scotland (you
know who you are), Scotland
is a country not a county; it is indeed God’s own however, I agree with you!
As is the wont of
many embarking upon a phase of life somewhere wonderful, WH and I resolved to
‘do all the nice things tourists do when they are here’. We had actually resided
in Yorkshire for twenty years before living abroad
in recent times. Our children grew up with impressive Yorkshire
accents and deep local knowledge. Like so many before us however, we went to
work, the supermarket, the doctor/dentist/vet but never found the time to
engage with the wonders on our doorstep; a tragedy in God’s own county!
Within days, we
are reversing our wasteful ways! We spent the weekend (both days) in the
glorious city of York.
I can safely say, there is no city more beautiful (I really should have realised
that at some point during the twenty years when we lived here before).
The Shambles and Stonegate sucked us back into sixteenth
century with cobbled streets, ghostly tales, the world’s best tea rooms and a
little red devil. The street performers, especially the chap with the glass
balls, held us transfixed to a (Yorkshire)man.
The Palm Sunday
service in the Minster, parts of which (beneath the current building) date back
to Roman times, was incredible. Slow off the mark, following a sumptuous feast
of local Yorkshire fare on Saturday evening, I
allowed WH to progress my nomination for ‘official seat-saver’. The rest of our
party of fellow worshipers followed the choral Palm Sunday procession through
the streets.
When the
procession, headed by a real donkey arrived at the minster, the congregation
descended en masse, in need of respite. A seat-saver was the very last person
the returning pilgrims wished to encounter. I had unchristian thoughts about
WH, who had sponsored me for the Sisyphean seat-saving task. I was as welcome in
the minster as were the Parliamentarians in 1644 yet fortunate that (on this
occasion), my adversaries had no instruments of torture to hand!
Author site https://www.facebook.com/clara.challoner.walker
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