Couldn’t be a Bank Holiday, could it? Hardly. September had just turned into October. Last Bank Holiday, spent in a sea-side convalescent home, had been at the end of August. No more till Christmas, by which time the rest of the European Union would have had another half-dozen. Faintest sniff of no matter how obscure a saint’s day, and them buggers were parading idols, wrestling bulls and throwing donkeys off the Eiffel Tower. No wonder we had to win their wars for them!

He came out of his Europhobic reverie to discover that, despite being well ahead of the clock, his automatic pilot had directed him via his usual short-cut along Holyclerk Street in defiance of the sign restricting entry ‘within the bell’, i.e. into the area immediately surrounding the cathedral, to residents and worshippers. And now his suspicions about the lightness of traffic began to take on a more sombre hue.

There were people walking towards the cathedral with that anal-retentive demeanour the English tend to adopt when trying to look religious; not great numbers, but a lot more than he’d have expected to see at this time on a Monday morning. Mebbe during his absence there’d been a great conversion in Mid-Yorkshire. In fact, mebbe his absence had caused it!

Slowing to the pace of a little old lady clutching a large square volume bound in leather, its corners reinforced by brass triangles that gleamed like a set of knuckle-dusters, he leaned over to the passenger side and wound down the window.

‘How do, luv. Off to church, are you? Lovely morning for it.’

She turned, fixed him with a rheumy eye, and said, ‘My God, how desperate must you be! I’m seventy-nine. Go away, you pathetic man!’

‘Nay, luv, I just want to know what day it is,’ he protested.

‘A drunkard as well as a lecher! Go away, I say! I can defend myself.’