I Wish I... I Wish I Was In...

Richmond is the most replicated English place name. There are fifty-something (sorry, I couldn't be bothered to Google it again) examples worldwide, but the original (English) Richmond (in North Yorkshire, at the North Eastern corner of the Dales) isn't very well-known. This is an awful shame, as it is a super town, with a huge cobbled market place, an imposing castle, beautiful houses and a military museum that claims to house Hitler's Carpet. It also has sure signs of a real community - the railway station, in the absence of any trains, has been developed for small businesses and includes a little cinema, and the George and Dragon pub (which is admittedly in the neighbouring village of Hudswell – geographically the Richmond upon Thames of Richmond, North Yorks) was saved by its customers in much the same way as the Ivy House, and is a tremendous place for a pie and a pint, with a real-life record player spinning liquorice pizzas behind the bar.

Throw in a few decent shops, a swimming pool, a secondary school that the kids didn't look too unhappy to be walking to in the morning and a tiny hospital that once sewed up my knee halfway through a Coast-to-Coast bike ride (and then gave me an anti-tetanus shot that I got drunk in defiance of, but nobody wants this blog to end up being known as Places Where Tim Has Shat Himself) and you have a town that fits all of my own personal criteria as a Good Place To Live. 

I don’t think I want a city, or even a big and busy town any more. But then I grew up in a village with a population of larger mammals that was more porcine than human. Neither M or the boys enjoy the benefit of such humble beginnings, and so they're unsure of whether Richmond is a bit too sleepy, or a bit too In The Middle Of Nowhere and Nearly In Scotland.

Exercises like this tour sometimes force you to ask yourself difficult questions, such as Am I Just A Selfish Greedy Bastard and Why Does My Life Partner Seem To Hate Me So Much? But nobody said this was going to be easy, and as we pass the three-month mark, Nobody has been proven wrong. On our way from Rothbury to Richmond, the van was clocked at 80 mph in a 30-zone during what was left of the hurricane. The letter that arrived at my folks' house in Suffolk says I could get a thousand-pound fine and 6 points on my licence, but I reckon that's peanuts for driving a huge ugly truck through a built-up area at almost three times the speed limit during a former tropical storm or whatever it was. Makes me almost wish I had. 

It is obviously a computer error, caused, I would guess, by the gusting hurricane-force winds. This van has only once gone over sixty with me at the wheel, and that was on a mile-long steep downhill stretch of motorway. In Devon, if I remember correctly. But will I have to go to court to prove it? Will a magistrate agree to ride shotgun with me while I put the pedal to the metal and show him just what a lot Vanny's not got? Stay tuned to find out.

In order to open this letter and answer these charges, we've had to return to Suffolk, 300 miles from where the crime wasn't committed. After Richmond, we visited...

Ripon - a big cathedral in a little city,

York - a big cathedral that for some reason isn't called a cathedral in a great city, full of pubs and at least one good record shop and animatronic Vikings who are quite impressive the first time around,

Harrogate (again) - where some friends made their home available for a few days in their absence which was very kind,

Knaresborough - where some strangers did their best to make Mother Shipton's home seem even more inhospitable in their presence, which was great fun, 

Huddersfield -  where my pilgrimage to the Magic Rock Brewery Tap left me a little disappointed, but Vinyl Tap made up for it,

Sheffield – where I snapped off part of the awning by driving too close to a telegraph pole. It was just the cover of the hooky bit, but this may have now compromised the aerodynamics such that we will never break the sound barrier. I realised I'm doing what my dad always accused me of with cars - taking the vehicle to the scrapyard, bit by bit.

In the newly-exposed, tuppence-sized hole that I briefly thought may go as deep as the width of the awning, there was some mouldy-looking, fluffy white stuff. I poked it. A lethargic wasp crawled out. I made an alarmed burbling noise. It fell on my face. I screamed like a 1970s Mid-Suffolk piglet. It landed on the ground. I stamped on it. Another came out. I swore at it. It flew away drunkenly. I thought of that book called The Wasp Factory that I haven’t read. I thought that the author was probably Scottish. I thought, again, about how the Scots’ strong and admirable sense of National Identity was inextricably linked to religion, despite the fact that religion is the cause of so much division and unpleasantness within the Scottish people. I thought about the huge and grand cathedrals in English cities and watched the wasp just about stay airborne as it departed. I wondered about whether American cities had to have cathedrals and whether the decline of Christian culture in England has had any effect on my feelings about where I want to live.

Sheffield is a great city, and I would be perfectly happy living there and selling records and coffee and beer. It seems that I have only ever tried to go to Record Collector on a Wednesday before, which is pretty stupid, because that is when it is closed. But this time it was open and it was fabulous. Also the wonderful Wizard Guitars sold me a little amp that made me feel much better about how far technology has come in the last few decades, after the crushing disappointment of the Blackpool Illuminations.

I stopped worrying about sleepy wasps and started worrying about my speeding ticket again.