A short break in York, where the Ouse can't contain itself and is lapping over the cobbles and flagstones outside our hotel on Queen's Staith. This causes amusement for the tourists who pack the capital of the north at all times of the year, though the burghers seem to take it in their stride, especially those with homes and businesses on the banks. Instead of panic, the mood is weary resignation and the order of the day to find the crank that operates the flood barrier.I have been going to York for nearly 30 years. The first time was as a wet-behind-the-ears lower sixth-former. Gruppo Sportivo and The Ruts were in the charts as well as on the radio in the coach my school had laid on to facilitate an "improving" itinerary, which included the National Railway Museum and the Minster. It must have been a very long day, but all I seem to remember is that most of it was spent supping ale on the sly. Since then there have been day trips, weekend breaks, overnight stops and even a honeymoon, though the less said about that the better.
This time, the girls and I took the train: 20 minutes to Peterborough and then just over an hour on a Glasgow express from King's Cross - a service that would make it possible to have elevenses at home and lunch at Bettys, of which more in due course.
As always, our wishlist includes a walk around the city walls - "2000 years in two miles" is the slogan employed to promote an ancient monument so grand and beautiful that it speaks for itself - and the Minster grand slam - undercroft and treasury, tower (275 steps up and 275 steps down), the choir, with its statues of kings from Williams the bastard to Henvy VI, and the Chapter House.
I had forgotton, though, how beautiful is this last. The Dean and his pals sit on stone seats running around the inside circumference of the room, which has a medieval domed roof with much carving. There are name plates afixed to the wall above each seat - Canon Suchabody, Prebendary of Wetwang, the Ven So and So, Bishop of Osbaldwick, etc. It must be quite sight when all those prebendaries, precantors and chancellors sit down to jaw, jaw, jaw in their vestments. Do they talk of the constant struggle to raise the money needed to keep the Minster upright - £2.50 for every 30 seconds, apparently - or do they, as I suspect, talk about whatever the latest bit of clerical gossip is: who is engaged in the laying on of hands, and to whom - and will the Sunday papers find out? Poor fellows... perhaps they can take in some port to pass around. They can certainly rest their feet on the grille over a circular channel in the floor from where air warmed by dinky radiators reaches the parts their Catholic cousins are not supposed to reach. What a blessed relief that must be in the winter.
I don't believe in God but deem myself a sympathic agnostic. I am always moved, though, by great churches and enjoy services in them - and none more so than here. While we are still in the Chapter House, the Blonde gets going on career opportunities: "How do I become Archbishop of York?"
Me: "Well, you'd have to start by being Christened and then opt for Anglicanism rather than the other things you could do. You'd also have to actually believe. But even if you did all that and then had a theological training, your chances are limited by being female."
Blonde: "Well, how about being Pope?"
Me: "You have an infinitely greater chance of being Archbish."
Blonde: "Ah, but can the Pope become the Archbishop of York?"
Me: "I suppose it might be theorectically possible, but he already has a better job and, anyway, it's not like playing for Man U and then going to City. It doesn't work that way."
The discussion turns to supper, and it has to be the Swiss patisserie heaven that is Bettys. They'll let anyone in, but the prices are such that the Filthingtons and their like stay away. Little old ladies can spend hours among the potted palms and mirrored pillars listening as a gent in a white DJ strums harmoneously at the piano. The maitre has a little moustache and a suitably subservient manner - drummed into him at the University of Bettyology, or wherever they train the staff - and recommends fish and chips. We demur: Lucifer and the Blonde want to munch the club sarnies and I have kaeschnitte...er, a ham and cheese toastie conceived in Alpine pastures and costed by the gnomes of Zurich at £9.50 per slice. My kids are at the age where no amount of food fills them for long. We'd had a huge lunch and now they were at it again, ordering with the sort of abandon the middle-aged can only dream of. L, for pud, picked the Bettys sundae, which came with the most perfect strawberry I've ever seen and whipped cream like shaving foam. Too good to eat, actually.Day two brought some retail therapy plus a ride on the ferris wheel at the railway museum and - most terrifying - a go in a simulator that replicates the 51-mile train journey from Victoria to Brighton in four minutes from the viewpoint of the front of a stream loco. It was done with time-lapse photography but the equivalent speed is 765mph - faster than sound. Yes, sound. It was only yesterday but I cannot remember whether there was sound, so awful was the experience of being jolted up and down, tipped over and wondering if the bridge or train or set of points coming at you would be the last thing you ever saw.
Afterwards felt very peculiar and had to sit down. All I wanted was a breath of air but you couldn't go outside into the diesel yard on account of the whole place being overrun with screaming kids pestering for a ride on Thomas the Tank Engine which had pitched up for half-term to fleece their parents. Make that Thomas the Twat.