MY fingers just typed the word ‘Trump’ without me asking them too. I do wish they would stop doing that.

The scary thing about Trump; hang back a minute, one of the many and endlessly scary things about Trump, is that he has become a sort of virus – a rampant bug spread by Twitter.

Whether you love to hate Trump, hate to love him, or take the sensible option of hating the man outright, you just can’t escape him. Trump is everywhere, and deadly orange atoms of Trump-ness float into our lives, never mind if we close all the windows and hide under the bed.

Much of this is down to his rampant and unrestrained use of Twitter. In the hands of a saner president, this might be beneficial; a chance to look inside the president’s mind as he goes through his decision-making process. Perhaps such an experiment could teach us something.

But in the (little) hands of Trump, what it teaches us is that Twitter should never have been invented (and I like Twitter). With Trump, the non-stop Twitter commentary, the endless barbs and slights, the appalling misjudgements, the rudeness and the undertow of racism – all this adds up to a bully kicking up a fight in a tin box.

So, it is easy to feel sympathy for Theresa May as she tries to react sensibly to the latest news from Trump-ton. Mrs Maybe told reporters that it was ‘wrong’ for Trump to have re-tweeted anti-Muslim posts from the far-right group Britain First. And ‘wrong’ doesn’t even begin to cover the President promoting a vile mini-collective of Brit fascists with a tap of his finger.

Yet for all her welcome criticism of Trump, Mrs Maybe seemed unwilling to really go for him. That’s because she decided early on that Britain was going to be Trump’s friend. The trouble is, who wants a friend like Donald? That’s a devilish pact you’ve sealed there, Theresa.

When Trump heard of Mrs Maybe’s criticism of his tweet, he took to Twitter and stabbed out: “Theresa May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

The Trumps are due here sometime for a ‘holiday’ with the Queen. Mrs Maybe spurned demands for his trip to be cancelled, saying: “An invitation for a state visit has been extended and has been accepted. We have yet to set a date.”

Ah, is that a tiny crack of hope I see there? We have yet to set a date… well, just commit to a bad case of social forgetfulness. As with any other loud-mouthed moron you’d rather not have to stay, accidentally overlook the unguarded invitation. Or find that all available weekends are already booked between now and, I don’t know, doomsday.

It is difficult to find a light moment in this latest twitter atrocity from the fascist-friendly president. But there is one. At first, Trump accidentally tweeted to @theresamay, believing he was sending a message to Mrs Maybe. Instead, he was attacking an innocent woman from Bognor who has six Twitter followers. But I do have a bit of an exclusive here: I’ve just looked and she now has seven.

Theresa May Scrivener told the Press Association that she’d been bombarded with messages. She said it was “amazing to think that the world’s most powerful man managed to press the wrong button”.

Yes, Trump and buttons – now that is scary. Let’s hope he never mistakes his mobile for the code to fire off nuclear missiles.

SOBRIETY is the new drunk, apparently. I’ll address that in a moment after issuing a heartfelt an apology. My efforts yesterday to write about two people getting engaged were  woefully inadequate. A measly 550 words against the Daily Mail’s 42 pages.

Yes, you read that right: 42 pages just because Prince Harry and his girlfriend, Meghan Markle, are going to get married sometime next year. The date has been announced and the venue, but I lack the energy to look them up: sometime in May in the Windsor Castle register office, something like that.

Thanks to the New Statesman’s Media Mole column for alerting me to that superfluity of pages. The mole’s coverage begins as follows: “There are 42 pages in a daily newspaper about two humans getting engaged. Two human beings deciding they like one another enough to both write their names on the same piece of paper. 42 pages about this. Forty. Two.”

When I complained about the BBC News rolling out lickspittle sticky-backed velvet by the yard, I wasn’t yet aware of the Mail’s even more sterling efforts at saying a lot about little.

That, by the way, is often the role of royal correspondents: speculating, bluffing and fluffing about bugger all, while also drinking deeply at the fountain of obsequiousness.

Anyway, 42 pages. That’s at least 41 more than I  wish to read. As Media Mole points out, backed up by a YouTube film flicking through all those pages, the Mail’s coverage is daft, weird and more than vaguely creepy, as it features family snaps of the teenage Markle and pictures from her Instagram account.

Oh, and some “very tame screenshots of a mildly saucy Suits scene – or, “TV ROLES SHE’D RATHER FORGET… AND THE ONES HE’D RATHER FORGET.”

I hope you will accept my apology for not being inventive or weird enough to come up with such a pile of “Stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.”

That, by the way, is the dictionary definition of ‘bullshit’, should you be wondering. Incidentally, with the Mail in mind, at what point does fawning become stalking?

On now to not being drunk. It’s the latest thing, according to a report in last Sunday’s Observer, which claimed that millennials are discovering the joys of “mindful drinking” as the party season begins.

Everything is mindful nowadays, and I would warn you to be, ahem, mindful about anything which is being sold to you under that banner.

“Mindful drinking” is basically just not drinking; abstinence reinvented; temperance for trendies – that sort of thing. It’s all the rage in London, according to the Observer, where alcohol-free party nights are the latest thing. One of those quoted in the report is journalist Hannah Betts, who says she has been sober since September 2014. Hannah uses a phrase I have never encountered before – “sober-curious”, which embraces people who want to know more about sobriety. She also admits to a degree of what you might call sober scepticism about the ‘bandwagon element’ in all the books being published about people giving up drink.

My message on this is simple: cutting down alcohol, being careful around alcohol, perhaps not having that extra glass of red (that’s a note to self, by the way); all of that is sensible, in the same way that eating less meat is sensible.

But I do hope that (sensible) drinking is here to stay. My claim to sobriety isn’t as strong as Hannah’s. Will ‘since last Saturday’ do?

I do realise that alcohol can be a serious problem in society; it can also be one of life’s great pleasures. Finding a balance is  the trick for many of us: more alcohol-free days than drinking days, in my case.

Chacun a son gout, as the not always entirely sober French say.

WHAT’S a half-arsed republican to make of the latest royal distraction? Hard to raise much enthusiasm when you don’t really believe in what’s being rolled out by the lickspittle yard on the BBC News. Then again, complaining makes you sound churlish.

Such are the niceties of writing about the royals while moving your shoulders in a shrug-wards direction.

Let us first consider the positives. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle came across pleasantly in their interview on the BBC News last night, although it is true that by the 15-minute mark I was beginning to feel the twitch of despair. My God – can there possibly be more of this guff? Oh, yes; months and months of it, for sure; endless yards of sticky-backed velvet to be measured out by the BBC and the more dutiful newspapers.

Over on Channel 4 News, the engagement was further down the running order and introduced with a throwaway man-meets-woman line from Cathy Newman. The C4 Twitter account ran the views of passers-by, ending with a young woman saying: “I guess it’s a piece of nice news in a world that’s got a lot of horrible news.”

So, a nice-versus-horrible story. A non-political story to divert us from all that politics; a side-show to pull our eyes from the main stage.

Another side to this royal relationship is that Meghan Markle is a mixed-race divorcee, and an actress, too. Those who know or care about these things will tell you that such a union would not have been countenanced in the past.

In the Spectator, the engagement was greeted by the crusty cruel observation: “Obviously, 70 years ago, Meghan Markle would have been the kind of woman the Prince would have had for a mistress, not a wife.”

I am guessing the “kind of woman” hinted at here is someone not fully white, whatever that condition might be. Harry has complained about a racist undertow in the press coverage of his girlfriend. On this evidence, he has a point. But it’s all a concertinaed crush too. Some of the same newspapers Harry now complains about conferred a sort of sainthood on his mother. Although that was only after first dishing the dirt and then morbidly obsessing over her death for years.

As for Markle, she has proudly proclaimed her personal heritage, having a black mother and a white father. Perhaps one day we won’t even have to remark on such things. I didn’t notice that Markle was mixed-race. That either says something about my lack of attention, or something about why this shouldn’t matter to anyone.

Anyway, that’s what this ageing white guy thought. Then I read comments online from mixed-race Britons who felt that at last the royal family would contain someone they could identify with. A fair point and one which hadn’t occurred to this half-arsed republican.

On the simple level of two people who seem to be very fond of each other, good luck to them. Other than that, I may be wearing this shrug for a while yet.

EURO bouncers have been put at the door – “You’re not coming in here dressed in that tattered old flag.”

Yes, the European Commission has decreed that the UK won’t have a turn at hosting the European Capital of Culture after Brexit.

Two British cities have held this honour: Liverpool in 2008 and Glasgow in 1990.

To many, it was a surprise when Glasgow had its turn at wearing the cultural crown. Back then cliché demanded that Glasgow was a rough-edged city where drinking was the only available culture. And a Glasgow kiss was not something you puckered your lips for.

I recall an episode of Taggart from the time, back in the day when Mark McManus played the Glaswegian cop, his pale face looming like a pickled egg in vinegar. “And to think they call this the city of culture,” he said, peering at a body in a skip, or some such murderous misfortune.

The joke was on Glasgow in the end. It’s a cultural place nowadays, as the Scotsman noted two years ago on the 25^th anniversary of the award, saying: “Glasgow has in recent decades established itself as a cultural centre of unrivalled prominence and productivity.”

Leeds had been hoping to grab the European culture crown, having reportedly spent £1m on preparing its bid. Other British cities jostling in that queue included Nottingham, Belfast/Derry, Milton Keynes and Dundee. But now the Commission has withdrawn its offer and set the Brexit Bouncers on us. If you care about these things, which I do, then you can hardly blame Europe for taking its bat home.

John Glen, Tory MP and culture minister, might well tweet: “Crazy decision by European Commission over Capital of Culture 2023. We’re leaving the EU – not Europe! My team at DCMS are speaking with the 5 cities right now on the way forward.”

Never heard of John Glen before, which makes me wonder if he’s been pulling his weight. He’s throwing it around now instead, but almost certainly to no effect.

Why on earth should Britain still have its turn when we are pulling out of Europe? John Glen might well say: “We’re leaving the EU – not Europe!” but it feels like we are leaving Europe.

It feels as if we are putting up the shutters and shouting at the world through the slats. It feels as if the whole country has been infected by a terminal virus, the Batshit Brexit Bug. The main symptom is a crushing inability to do, think or talk about anything other than Brexit – a sundering from sense that has reduced our national conversation to a bitter shouting match. And made us look incomprehensibly stupid to the rest of the world.

Well, at least that’s off my chest. Leeds could easily have made a case for the honour, although the traffic might have been a problem. Yesterday the drive to Horsforth took bloody ages – an hour and 20 minutes. Perhaps they should spend some of that money sorting the traffic instead.

I rarely concur with the Daily Mail, but after yesterday its “GRIDLOCKED UK” splash today rings a peal of bells loud enough to make my ears buzz.

“How Britons waste up to six minutes per mile in ever worsening road jams,” the sub-heading says. Not sure how that calculation was made, but however you add up the figures, I can tell you that sitting on the Leeds ring-road for ages while bursting for a pee is not a fun start to the day.

As for the Europe setting the Brexit Bouncers on us, what do you expect? And if the bouncers say to Theresa May, “You’re not coming in here in those shoes”, that would be understandable, considering her outré taste in footwear.

I’VE been following with half an eye the story about Paperchase apologising for doing a promotional deal with the Daily Mail.

Half an eye is probably all it’s worth. But something lodged behind that partly attentive eye.

In case you missed what happened, last Saturday the Mail had a promotional banner on its front page. This offered readers two free sheets of Christmas wrapping paper, said to be worth £4.75.

Hardly controversial, you might have thought. But complaints were stirred online, partly by the anti-tabloid pressure group, Stop Funding Hate. This group puts pressure on companies who advertise with tabloid newspapers, arguing that the money they spend funds nasty stories about women, gays, Muslims, immigrants and possibly ageing politicians called Jeremy Corbyn.

After customers complained online, Paperchase issued an apology, saying: “We’ve listened to you about this weekend’s newspaper promotion. We now know we were wrong to do this – we’re truly sorry and we won’t ever do it again. Thanks for telling us what you really think and we apologise if we have let you down on this one. Lesson learnt.”

The Mail was out of the outrage starting blocks, spittle-flecked and red of face. It spat out a statement, saying Paperchase had allowed itself to be bullied into apologising “to internet trolls orchestrated by a small group of hard-left Corbynist individuals seeking to suppress legitimate debate and impose their views on the media”.

Wow – all that from two sheets of wrapping paper. There is no yelp lounder than the sound of a bully being bullied. The Mail is a proud supporter of the free market, and yet it complains bitterly when a small pressure group uses the free market as a weapon. Stop Funding Hate clearly scored a hit in this skirmish, but whether it will ever win the battle is another matter.

Interesting, though, that the Mail should call the people who complained “internet trolls”, as that term is usually confined to nameless cowards who lurk at the bottom of online stories. Do they not understand this, or was the misuse of the expression deliberate?

Seemingly small issues take on a totemic significance in the cultural wars of our day. Where you stand on an issue of the moment, or even the minute, as we do live in fast-moving times, says something about you. What a comfort, then, to read that Piers Morgan – a one-man cultural war all by himself – had tweeted: “I hope @FromPaperchase understand that British people don’t like snivelling little cowards who let themselves get bullied into virtue-signalling bulls**t. I’ll buy my cards from @ClintonsTweet in future.”

When Piers plants his bovver-brogues in the opposite camp, you know you are keeping good company.

Campaigns such as Stop Funding Hate can be conflicting. I admire the aims, and willingly use what little power I have in the free market to choose never to buy the Daily Mail (although I sometimes glance at my mother-in-law’s copy).

I don’t like anything about the Mail, but I wouldn’t want it banned. It’s never encouraging to ban things. But using the free market to sabotage a proud supporter of the free market seems a smart enough approach.

Incidentally, there is a pleasing irony here in the name of the apologetic purveyor of expensive wrapping paper. Yes, Paperchase – for that might, if given a hyphen, be a name for a whole new anti-media pressure group: Paper-chase.

The headline says: “A new York state of mind”. This suggests that The Guardian still employs at least a few sub-editors who can spin a song title into a headline. Billy Joel in this case, with the demotion of one upper-case ‘N’ doing the job nicely.

The inky version of Tony Naylor’s feature about York’s “vibrant arts, music, food and bar scene” appeared on Saturday, but it was being widely shared online for a few days before that.

I was thinking about this article as I went for a soggy run this morning. My route began like this: into town and down Micklegate, over the river, along Shambles, Petergate and to York Art Gallery, where I spotted the entrance to the Christmas fair or whatever it is in Museum Gardens behind the gallery.

I ran along the side of the building to discover the usual collection of tasteful sheds set up for selling food. Many more of these festive huts have appeared in the middle of York already – all this and we’re not yet out of November.

As I carried on through Museum Gardens, blissfully empty so early, I thought about how York has changed since we arrived in 1988. Just about nothing mentioned in that Guardian feature was here back then, when York was different to now. In those days, Micklegate was the chosen location for an old-fashioned piss-up; nowadays the whole of central York seems to be dedicated that that pastime, which is progress of sorts.

That lovely, tippling street contains some of the attractions Tony Naylor mentions, including Skosh and The Falcon Tap. Oddly, there is no mention for Rattle Owl, a great restaurant, but then these exercises can never please anyone; no mention, either, for Brigantes, where the beer is always good.

Based on nearly 30 years of living here, I’d say York is livelier, more interesting, culturally richer than it was back then. People who have lived here for ever may disagree. Progress doesn’t happen without something being lost along the way; but lack of progress is another sort of loss anyway.

Progress often comes in a trendy wrapping, and sometimes people scowl at that trendiness, or they moan – as many have done in York – about old shipping containers being turned into a food court. Yet any city needs such new ideas, and other towns and cities have got in there first.

My blog about what York could learn from Altrincham Market – a fabulous foodie haven – was read by more people than just about any other. This suggests that people are interested in such modern foodie developments; either that or they’re irritated and want to scratch that rash.

All the trendiness reinvigorates a city, and even somewhere as fine as York needs rejuvenating occasionally. True, the downside is that house prices rise and then the same young people running these new foodie places, or visiting them, can’t afford anywhere to live. But progress is always a paradox.

Same but different – that’s York now compared with 1988. The timeless essence of the city is the same, but it seems more modern, too. And that suits this ageing incomer very nicely.

Tony Naylor is a northern-based writer and he knows his York, although his list is almost exclusively devoted to newness – which was the point, I guess. Top marks for including Los Moros, the fantastic street-food stall in Shambles Market – one of the best meals to be had anywhere for seven quid.

Naylor ends with Brew York – which he says makes up for the lack of “hip, innovative breweries” in York. Old-style York would have shrugged off the thought of anything hip and innovative, and maybe some still do. But Brew York is a true modern marvel of York, making many styles of beer, all of them great. And the riverside warehouse is a smart location, if sometimes chilly.

Good, as well, to see a a reference to my old colleague Gavin Aitchison, onetime Pints of View regular on the Press, who shares his enthusiasm for Pivni near the market. And pleasing, too, to see innovative gallery According To McGee in there. But no mention for the much-improved York Art Gallery. Yes, you do have to pay to get in nowadays – and boo to that, even though I just renewed my annual ‘ticket’ – but it’s now a world-class location.

Such are my thoughts as I head west to the outer reaches of this city I am happy to have adopted. Mind you, there’s nothing trendy round here yet. Perhaps the hip contagion takes a while to travel from the centre.

Half-way to Hull – it’s not the catchiest slogan. Maybe that’s why Howden hasn’t adopted the label, but the town is welcome to have it for free.

The 40-minute drive has been part of my life, twice a week, for a year and a bit now. On another two days, I drive in the opposite direction to Horsforth.

Different roads, a different life. Working in Howden is linked to my past life, as editing is involved; working at Horsforth is linked by journalism, although the teaching is new.

The drive to Howden is pleasant enough, down country lanes mostly, across the flatlands, then on the horizon you see Howden’s half-ruined Minster with its coppery green roof.

A large office in the town is full of journalists, many of whom used to work somewhere else. In this smudgy trade, you are lucky to survive in one place for long.

Yesterday, a colleague came over and told me something that brought everything back. He worked for a while on the Press after I left, doing parts of my old job, and now he edits pages for the Daily Telegraph.

“There’s more jobs going in York,” he said.

We chatted, I felt a lurch, but reminded myself all that was a while ago now. He told me one sub-editor was going: that’s one of two. Years ago, there was a full team of people working on those pages; now there are two and soon, impossibly, there will be one. Worryingly, it is hard not to quote Agatha Christie at this point: And Then There Were None. A group of strangers are lured into working for a newspaper on Ink Island, and then – one by one – they are finished off by a blank-faced murderer called progress

That was all I knew for a while, then a friend on the paper sent me a message. Another job is going, belonging to someone I worked with for 27 years. I don’t want to name this cruelly dislodged person just yet, as I don’t think the redundancy has been made public.

Losing your job, especially one you have done for a long time, is dislocating and can take a while to surmount. You feel rootless, cut adrift, unwanted – and clueless in a real-life game of Cluedo when Mr Pink the accountant has just knifed you from a distance and without ever once seeing your face. It’s not personal; and yet it feels deeply personal. After all, you are a person and another person has done this to you, done you in for the balance sheet.

I’ve learnt much in the past two-and-half years. I’ve learnt that I couldn’t make a living as a freelance feature writer/novelist/blogger, although all three impecunious occupations still take up my time. I’ve learnt a new skill in this busking life: teaching students at university. I’ve built on old editing skills. Mostly, I have survived, a bruised banana but still in one piece.

Do the relentless redundancies suggest that newspapers really are heading for the end; do they indicate that journalism is a shit-bucket trade with no clean water left in that leaky bucket? Well, I hope not. An optimist might see this as a period of transmission. I try to be an optimist but it’s not always easy.

I hope newspapers survive in some form; I hope the Press survives in some form, although each diminishment takes something else away, another chip in the china until all that’s left is a broken cup.

Anyway, good luck to those who must leave. There is life on the other side of the fence, but you might need a compass. That’s me done – I need to take the road to Howden for the late shift. A life shift in my late-shifting life.

“Here is the Snooze,” said the Sun’s front page yesterday. A weird splash in which members of staff on BBC News 24 were shown sitting at their desks with their eyes shut.

In the self-serving way of the Murdoch tabloid, this unpleasant ‘story’ was used as – hey, would you believe it – proof that we shouldn’t be spending our money on a public service broadcaster. Instead we should give it all to Sky and Rupert Murdoch.

I haven’t read the whole story, so I don’t know for sure who crept around the News 24 newsroom, snapping pictures of BBC staff members having a snooze. I don’t really know what this story was trying to say. It’s easy to imagine that working on a 24-news station is hard work, and if you are working all hours it must be tempting to shut your eyes in a lull.

To be honest, I am having trouble keeping my eyes open first thing in the morning after another unmoored night, but there you go. Years ago, a sub-editor at the newspaper in York used to nod off at his desk, mid correction. Everyone else would consider this to be a running joke: oh, look, he’s off again.

Another colleague, still there, used to slump forwards sometimes, but that was because he chose to work stupid hours; almost certainly still does. Sometimes I imagine him in the lonely hours when he shouldn’t be there, eyes shut, furious fingers stilled.

A friend admits that in his management job, he would retreat to his office, shut the door and have a mid-afternoon snooze. Good job he didn’t work for the BBC and fall victim to a spot of industrial espionage sponsored by the Sun’s wide-awake club (whose members never nod off in the office or misbehave in any way).

Sleep disruption is something many people carry with them throughout the day, an invisible deficit duvet. Fully paid-up members of the red-eyed clan who sit down in a lull are almost certain to fall asleep for a blissful moment.

Returning from the lecturing part of my this-and-that life yesterday afternoon, I had a mug of tea, and lay down on the sofa in the conservatory and listened to music, although Seth Lakeman was wasting his time. I was gone in minutes, barely one track into Ballads Of The Broken Few (top album, by the way). Falling asleep so quickly in the day is said to be a sure sign of sleep deficit, but there you go. Or there I go again

Members of the BBC staff responded with wit to the Sun, the best way. Quentin Sommerville, who had been reporting from the streets of Raqqa – “the lazy sod”, as the New Statesman puts it – posted a snap on Twitter of him having a snooze in battledress: “It’s true @TheSun we do sleep on the job. Our work is a bit taxing at times. @BBC News doesn’t do lazy journalism. How about you?”

The BBC press office was awake enough to respond with some statistics on trust – “Even with our eyes closed it’s good to know the public trusts BBC News more than the Sun… 57 per cent to 0.3 per cent. Tiring work.”

This was a reference to 2017 Ipsos MORI research into public trust in the UK media.

It seems a shame to me that the Sun should use its might in such a pathetic way: couldn’t its clout be used for real journalism, rather than underhand point-scoring against the BBC? If those Ipsos MORI findings are to be believed, readers of the Sun must trust the BBC more than the newspaper they hold in their hands.

Anyway, the day awaits – a day on which a surreptitious snooze is out of the question.

HERE are words I didn’t expect to write: sometimes I don’t understand the world any more. And no, this bit of crankiness does not touch on such catastrophic miscalculations as Trump or Brexit.

Here are my two pieces of evidence pointing to the incomprehensibility of life.

One: The letters page of the Radio Times – oh, look, we all hang out in disreputable places occasionally – is full of complaints about the music in Blue Planet 2.

Two: no one eats bread any more (‘Is bread toast? Young fall out of love with loaves’– The Guardian, November 11).

Not sure which of these is most shocking. For so many people to complain must indicate I’ve gone deaf and didn’t notice the music; or that some people will complain about anything.

Moaning about the music in Blue Planet 2 is to find fault for the sake of finding fault; it is to whinge because it is your right as a true Brit to look at something marvellous, and go: ah, but…

Fancy sitting there to behold such deep-sea marvels and fathomless oddities in a wildlife masterpiece, and then just complain about the music. “Seeing red over Blue Planet” says the headline above the letters. There are quite a few, and a note below the last one says: “RT had a big postbag on this subject.”

Clearly, I am not cranky enough to read the Radio Times.

Complaining about the music or the sound on TV programmes is a bit of national pastime. Usually the ‘guilty’ programme is aired on the BBC. This gives the Mail or the Telegraph something to moan about, and just the other day the Telegraph found a few deaf old colonels – or possibly a few dead old colonels ­– to complain about the sound quality in the new BBC1 adaptation of Howards End.

I think the call must go out from the news editor: “Anyone got a deaf old maiden aunt didn’t hear something properly on the BBC last night?”

All this began three years ago when the BBC’s adaptation of Jamaica Inn was accused of being ‘muffled’. Rightly so, in that case: pretty sure I gave up after the first mumble.

It is true that the music on some dramas can be a bit much, especially some of those European crime dramas on Walter Presents. This is the Channel 4 offshoot along whose blood-stained corridors I can often be found wandering.

Now to bread being toast. According to a Harris Interactive poll for the Grocer trade journal, only 25% of people aged 16 to 24 eat bread every day, compared with about half of those over 45.

Bread has been hit by carb worries, gluten worries, the rising price of wheat, the fall in the pound – and, it should be said, by the quality of what is mass baked by the speeded-up Chorley Wood method of production. This short-cut doesn’t allow the gluten to break down, and could have contributed to the rise in gluten intolerance (that and gluten intolerance being a bit of a fashion, alongside a serious problem for a very small minority of sufferers).

As an old grateful bread head who only eats his own homemade loaves, I am less than typical; I get that. But how did we get so picky about bread? According to The Guardian report, Kingsmill – a brand said to be worth £500m – is operating at a loss, despite having invested heavily in new low-cost bakeries.

A cultural change that sees people no longer eating bread seems to be a great shame to this lover of loaves (often served with fishes: peppery mackerel fillets from a tin).

But if people are spurning mass-produced sliced white bread, who can blame them? Nasty, pappy stuff that’s good only for plumbing tasks and possibly summer pudding.

If you have the money, the answer is to buy decent bread from a proper baker (York has three that I can think of); if you have the time, make your own. I love making bread, the rhythm of it all, the kneading, the slow rising. There are two loaves resting in the fridge right now.

I’ve had my disasters, still do sometimes (raisin baguettes, we are looking at you), but the seeded sourdough I made last week was a triumph.

Perhaps the flat tyre was an omen. We are inside the car because the wind has howled into Yorkshire on a holiday from the arse-end of Antarctica or somewhere. First there is one knock on the window, then another – “You need some air in that back tyre.

We get out and see that our friends’ car does indeed have a deflated back end. A compressor is borrowed for later, and off we go.

Walking with friends is one of life’s great pleasures. Tim Dowling in his Guardian magazine column described this just yesterday, and here we are doing the same, only Tim was on a soft walk along the Thames and we are up on the North York Moors in a gale.

I have a lot of time for Tim as he answers annoying questions from part-time journalism lecturers. Unlike other well-known, Jay Rayner-shaped people we could mention who prefer to make you look stupid on Twitter.

Tim describes in his column how on a walk you often have the same conversation, first with one friend, then another. That’s how today starts, although we are shouting against the wind. And the wind cries, “What are doing out here on a day like this?”

The wind knows more than we do, you see. We take the moorland route that follows the high rim. The wind is strong and icy, but the sky is clear and the views tremendous. One friend asks how to make sourdough bread, so I bellow instructions against the gale. News about offspring is sprung against the wind, too.

The wind dies, we bump into other friends out for the same walk, then carry on, dropping down towards Levisham, where we stop at the pub. Early for a pint at 11.45am, so coffees are ordered. We stand outside and chat as the sun dies away.

The sky above the Ginger Pig farm opposite the pub inks a threatening shade. That farm now has butchers’ shops and stalls across the south, having started by taking carcasses to Borough Market and doing the butchery on the stall.

On the Ginger Pig website, it mentions raising native breeds of cattle “across our unforgiving patch of North Yorkshire”. As the set off, we are about to walk into that unforgiving patch, but for now we chat, turning away from the village and into the path through the woods.

“Might be muddy down here,” someone says.

The rain starts as we prop up against a bank to eat our sandwiches. Other walkers trudge from the opposite direction, their boots thick with mud, and soon we are slipping and sliding, grabbing tree trunks as we stumble through the muddy trough of a path. This is takes a long time and is tiring. After that we reach the valley with the path that winds back up to the car with the flat tyre.

This is where the walk goes downhill just as it goes uphill. The rain pours down, the icy gale blows strong enough to knock you over, and the art of conversation is blowing in the wind. Soon we are soaked and silent.

I spurned the waterproof trousers and everything below the waist is drenched. There is an unpleasant hazard peculiar to male walkers, as I now discover. The rain runs off your waterproof jacket and goes straight into your pants. The icy wind then blasts your soaked trousers and your manhood takes a cruel beating. I then fall over sideways, hitting my head on the muddy earth.

As we climb the last stretch back up to the top of the rim, the sun comes out and the afternoon seems benign. Ten minutes later, we are in the car park, the tyre is being inflated and rain and sleet pelt us as we change out of our boots.

You always get something from a walk. This one has had its moments; mostly it was miserable, in a companionable way. Still, the best part was getting home, throwing off those soaked clothes, stumbling into the shower, dressing in dry clothes and drinking lots of hot tea.