york

I had to be in York on Thursday, and arranged to stay overnight because I wasn't sure about what the snow might do to the last train home. There wasn't much snow in the city - that makes it easier underfoot, but it was a bit of a disappointment because the Minster is breathtaking in it.

One of my favourite places is Betty's, and I treated myself. Sipping hot mulled wine,looking out across St Helen's Square, I could see an old-fashioned lamp-post, and a broad street ending with an elegant Georgian house (or is it Queen Anne? not sure). It was so like being in the past - then it hit me that it isn't, it's the persent, and it's real. It's something preserved, and worth preserving, from the past, so that people like me, and all the other 21st century people in Betty's that day, can sit in that elegant tea room, cross that square by the light of the lamp-post, and walk down towards that house, the art gallery, the theatre, and the Minster. York never loses its magic.

On a very different note, I am already starting to think about Comic Relief on 13 March. I've bought noses for all the family, and one for the car, and a bouncy thing that laughs (no, not a baby.) I'm trying to come up with original ideas for events - red knees day? I think my after school club might like something very wobbly to do with jelly. Yuck.