Two cycle trips into York took up part of my day yesterday. Once at midday for a coffee with my wife, then again at night to meet friends at the new Brewdog pub (lovely beer, but the industrial look has been taken so far in that place it is possible to wonder when they will get around to finishing the job).

On both occasions, I used the road. At least that’s what I thought I’d done. The transport secretary Chris Grayling has different ideas. He wasn’t watching my progress or anything like that. But he did say yesterday morning that cyclists don’t count as road users.

The Labour MP Danial Zeichner questioned Grayling about saying in an interview late last year that the new protected cycle lanes in London “perhaps cause too much of a problem for road users”.

Zeichner asked if cyclists were not road users too.

Here is what the never knowingly reasonable Grayling said in reply: “What I would say to him, of course, is where you have cycle lanes, cyclists are the users of cycle lanes. And there’s a road alongside – motorists are the road users, the users of the roads. It’s fairly straightforward, to be honest.”

Here are three things worth knowing about Grayling: 1) He’s a bit of a berk – it’s fairly straightforward, to be honest. 2) Last month he suddenly opened the door to his ministerial car in Westminster and knocked a cyclist off his bike; 3) when he was justice secretary, he tried to ban prisoners from being sent books – a spot of mean-mindedness that was later overturned in the courts.

In the incident of the car door, Grayling did get out to quickly check on the cyclist, but left the scene reportedly without giving his name.

Luckily for the cyclist, Jaiqi Liu, film footage of the incident – from another cyclist’s helmet, by the look of it – was published by the Guardian. Grayling may face a private prosecution over the incident.

The transport secretary’s latest brush with cyclists and cycling has stirred up what newspapers like to call a storm of protest. And quite right, too. What a charmless twerp that man is, forever confidently striding forward without being properly armed with a clue.

Zeichner later retweeted a section of the 1888 Local Government Act, which formalised the status of “bicycle, tricycles, velocipedes and other similar machines” as what were then still known as “carriages”.

Cycling groups and others were baffled by Grayling’s remarks, but then he does spread general bafflement wherever he goes, raising what must be a common question: How does that man keep getting new jobs in government?

Among those amazed by the transport secretary’s comments was Chris Boardman, the former Olympic cyclist and now policy adviser to British Cycling. He said: “I feel embarrassed for him. If he truly thinks the roads are not for cyclists, then what am I paying my taxes for?”

Boardman also pointed out that despite committing to doubling cycling levels, the government was still spending less than £1 per person per year on making that possible – compared with more than £20 in the Netherlands and Denmark, nations where bikes are more accepted.

Boardman said that Grayling should get out on a bike to discover the true state of our cycling infrastructure. “I’d be delighted to go on a ride with him,” he said. That’s a good idea. How about starting at the top of a steep hill in the Yorkshire Dales after his brakes have been ‘adjusted’? I know just the one on the road past Pen-y-Ghent.

After Grayling’s careless moment with a ministerial car door, a letter writer to the Guardian pointed out that in Holland car drivers are trained to open the car door with their opposite hand. “This forces the body to swivel, and your eyes to look backwards, thus spotting a passing cyclist. Drivers must demonstrate this to pass their driving test,” wrote Henry Stewart of London.

What an excellent idea. Well done to those cycle-friendly Dutch people – and why don’t we do the same?

As for Chris Grayling, perhaps he could train himself to swivel round and have a look the next time he is about to open his mouth.

I CAN’T get that Donald Trump press conference out of my head. It was horribly compelling or compellingly horrible, like a motorway accident where you feel obliged to look while worrying about the casualties.

Trump held these affairs all the time until five months ago, when his thin skin got the better of him – because “we were getting quite a bit of inaccurate news”.

Even viewed via the safety of the television screen, a Trump press conference is an extraordinary event, a little like that old improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway. Trump makes stuff up with insane, self-glorying gusto, firing off insults and crazy ideas while prowling about like a villain in a Batman movie – and even his familiar name of ‘The Donald’ sounds like a comic baddie. Can the Caped Crusader end The Donald’s presidency with a kapow? Sadly not.

Perhaps Trump improv show should really be called Whose Lie Is It Anyway. Maybe this grisly genre needs the coining of a new word: Trump-prov: making up a presidency as you go along.

The weird thing is that Trump was meant to be good at all this stuff, the reality TV president who could ride the media wave with ease. Instead he fell off and kicked about in the surf and had a tantrum, lashing out at “shameful” news and the “disgraceful” behaviour of the intelligence agencies. He complained, again, about fake news – surely the worst case of the biter bit in modern American memory. Trump was the prime peddler of the fake story that Barack Obama wasn’t an American; he was happy to spin that lie for all it was worth. And now he wants to act offended.

Trump had gathered the world’s press together to show how he would avoid any conflict of interest between Trump Inc and his public duties. He even got his lawyer to ‘prove’ this by dumping a pile of files that he said represented assets that were being separated from him. And handed to his sons.

This, again, is not what normally happens and falls far short of fully divesting his financial assets or putting them in a blind trust, which is what presidents usually do.

The press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower really fell apart because of overnight reports that the FBI had been handed unverified claims of Trump’s alleged sexual impropriety in a Moscow hotel room.

All that may well not be true at all, but the potential for embarrassment with the next president seems huge. But never mind. Trump has the answer to everyone who worries that Russia might have influenced his election victory and other Russian angles on American life.

It’s all fine because he and Russian president Vladimir Putin are best buddies. “If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability.”

With Trump, it’s always all about Trump. And in a week this vainglorious rant merchant will be president of the US. How scary is that?

And how different to Barack Obama’s graceful and moving farewell in Chicago earlier in the week. History can argue over how successful Obama’s presidency was; and history will also see how much Trump wrecks that legacy. But one thing, sadly, is unarguable: Donald Trump is going to be a very different sort of president.

CINDERELLA at York Theatre Royal is the panto that might never have been. It is also a fine advert for our National Health Service.

In August, Berwick Kaler suffered dizzy spells and was rushed to hospital where doctors found that his heart was almost completely blocked. They fitted an emergency pacemaker, and without that there would be no Berwick and no panto, or at least not as we know it.

At the time, Berwick told my old paper: “I think it was a shock for everybody who just thought I was a machine. Well now I am.”

The previous August, Berwick told me during an interview for the Yorkshire Post that he was as fit as a flea, and never mind all the smoking and drinking. Shortly after that his cameo appearance in The Railway Children was cancelled due to a different illness.

Just before Christmas, Berwick showed me his pacemaker when we were chatting in the street, pulling down his jumper and unbuttoning his shirt. It sat there under the skin of his chest, a compact battery pack, hopefully fitted with the medical equivalent of Duracell batteries.

If Berwick can give thanks to the NHS for keeping him alive, his regular panto sidekick Martin Barrass can give equal praise to our health service for picking him up and putting him back together again.

Martin was knocked off his motorbike in September and received such critical injuries that he is only here thanks to the NHS – and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. After a rough and mortally dangerous patch, Martin is on the mend.

As you might expect, at least if you attend every year, Martin’s recovery has a small role in this panto, although the actor himself had to miss the show after 32 years of playing dame Berwick’s put upon son. I won’t say more as it would be unfair to spoil the surprise.

This isn’t a review as such because you can go elsewhere for those. It is a tricky show to write up, something I have done in the past, because you don’t want to give too much away. A review that gives away too many secrets is like those annoying movie trailers that condense a whole film into two or three minutes – removing the need to see the film.

Berwick Kaler now has a pacemaker, and he has always been a pacemaker, too. He co-directs and writes this show, and this year had to rewrite it around the absence of his usual sidekick. Cinderella also doesn’t have a dame, but does have a plot: the York panto is big on the dame and is usually untroubled by plot.

Without too many spoilers, here is a condensed account. Cinderella is the most glittery Theatre Royal panto yet, and dangerously close to being a proper big production number, with great sets, fantastic music and enough of the usual rubbish to please those who return every year hoping for a happy sort of repeat.

Berwick is lower key than in some years, but still delivers a fine and funny show, while David Leonard attempts to sweeten his usual high-camp villainy by playing nice as Cinderella’s step-mum.

AJ Powell continues his Brummie charm offensive and is promoted to the slapstick scene, which features an icy tank of water – and Berwick’s ugly sister sporting the silliest falsies known to man. Or woman. Leonard’s fake bosoms are made of firmer stuff, while AJ cuts a slim dash in a panto frock. The big musical number where the three of them do a falsie waltz is priceless.

Suzy Cooper is the other pacemaker on stage this year. She romps with gushing gusto and glitters more than that set. Even if Berwick’s Ugly Sister does tell a young cast member early on that she can’t be Cinderella “as that part has already gone to a middle-aged woman”.

There are plenty of surreal touches, as you might expect, including a film role for a Suzy with an ‘i’. Anyone who had wondered what Harry Gration looks like in women’s underwear won’t go home disappointed either.

It’s a surreal affair this panto, and not to everyone’s taste. Berwick is not to all tastes either, but we love him and his panto in this family. Let’s thank the silly heavens for the NHS. And boo the really villain of the piece, health secretary Jeremy Hunt (apologies, a bit of politics sneaked in there).

HERE is a cut-out-and-keep guide to Tory views on society. For Margaret Thatcher, there was so such thing as; David Cameron liked his big; and now Theresa May tells us that she prefers her shared.

Mrs May has been prime minister for six months now – and all everyone wants to go on about is Brexit.

That’s because Brexit is a giant boulder on her shoulders, weighing her down and making her a little bit bad-tempered seeming. “What the hell am I going to do about this?” her mind screams. She leaves her mind to it and calls on the power of her brittle half-smile. That half-smile has seen off bigger problems that this; that half-smile was found buried between David Cameron’s shoulder blades when his political body was removed from Number Ten.

Her first speech on the steps of Downing Street tried to embrace the forgotten people and those just-about-managing – and it’s a detention for anyone at the back caught mumbling about people being forgotten by her party and jamming because of her lot’s priorities.

Mrs May returned to that theme on Monday while delivering a speech to the Charity Commission. It was a dull speech, but then Theresa seems to have skipped political oratory classes. Exciting and interesting doesn’t really suit her; steady as she goes on and on is more her way.

Her speech was an attempt to swipe the Labour Party’s social justice cloak. Or social justice crumpled jacket in Jeremy Corbyn’s case. She promised that her government will tackle “everyday injustices” faced by working-class Britons. And she pledged to build “a shared society” that respects the “bonds of family, community, citizenship and strong institutions”.

As she played this game of drones, it was hard to see how the shared society was much different to the big one David went on about until he was pink in the face. Or even more pink in the face than normal. David stopped working himself up about the big society because no one else knew what he was on about.

I suspect the shared society will fall down a similar crack in the nation’s collective consciousness. What struck me most was the thought that Mrs May had perhaps remembered going into a Co-op shop when she was a girl and seeing that slogan about “caring and sharing”.

It was all very vague and most of it could have been said by politicians of any persuasion. You couldn’t object to her well-meant homilies – but you couldn’t get excited about them either. Or believe that any of this will happen.

A journalist at the speech annoyed Mrs May by asking her about that boulder. The prime minister turned testy. Why did people insist on going on about Brexit when she was offering them fresh waffle?

Her speech did contain a welcome commitment on mental health, but that too was vague. And was the money new money or the same money that David Cameron promised a year back?

As the prime minister finished speaking, a siren tore through the air and reminded everyone that the National Health Service was in crisis again, as always happens, whether society is not there, big or shared.

Frontline doctors belonging to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine warned that patient safety was at risk at A&E units across the NHS because hospitals were overwhelmed. Never mind, health secretary Jeremy Hunt had the answer. It was all down to people going into A&E when they should have stayed at home – with as many as 30 per cent of those who attend not really needing to see a doctor.

Hunt then announced in Parliament that the four-hour target to see a doctor in A&E might have to be downgraded. How that man stays in his job is a mystery as weighty as that boulder on Theresa May’s shoulders.

JULIAN – I think you’re not angry enough. This is not me talking to myself, but words lifted from a comment on Facebook about my last blog.

My observed lack of crossness was in relation to the speeding ticket I picked up just before Christmas. I mentioned this penalty in passing to draw comparison with the comparatively lenient sentence imposed on the woman whose careless driving saw York panto star Martin Barrass come off his motorbike and suffer a horrible litany of injuries.

Was I angry about my ticket? In a way, yes. It seems so easy to get a ticket nowadays. The system operates like a reverse lottery: it might be you and – oh, bugger – look it is (again). I certainly seem to have more ‘luck’ with speeding tickets than with the lottery.

Broadly, I suspect there are two types of speeding: 1) stupid idiot speeding; and 2) momentary lapse speeding. My feeling is that most people caught and fined probably fall into the second category. While those in the first category are more likely to cause accidents.

You see, on a journey it is possible to drive sensibly and within the limits for 300 miles, and to accidentally break the limit for 300 yards. And if those 300 yards contain a camera, then you’re done for.

The commentator who ticked me off for not being angry enough made a sensible point, saying that the system should “allow some pragmatic discretion in the matter of appropriate speed (and that includes driving too slowly and holding up a stream of traffic)”.

It is common in roadworks – and how common they indeed are – to see signs warning drivers about the lower speed limit, adding that their average speed will be taken into consideration. This seems fairer to me, and it’s a shame there isn’t a way of checking all speed limits like that. Well, there probably is, but it would involve having some sort of GPS device in your car so that Big Brother could get in the passenger seat, as it were.

The comment on Facebook set me thinking about the uses of anger, and how some people are more furious than others. Some of us are like a kettle with a stuck switch, always steaming and spouting; others let their anger bubble quietly away – or maybe they just aren’t made of the cross stuff, not fully stuffed with crossness.

I am quite taken with this notion of not being cross enough. Perhaps this is true. If I had been crosser in life, would I have reached higher up the ladder? Anger is, after all, a useful propellant.

It is hard to gauge your own personality, but I suspect mine is level and calm, and sometimes too accepting.

Was I cross when I lost my long-term job 18 months or so ago? More bewildered at the time, for as anyone who has been through that miserable experience can report, you just feel too bruised and confused to be angry. Later I was angry – quietly seething rather than boiling over, but angry, yes for sure.

But I never was an angry young man. Not that I am not so young, I am still not angry, and have no wish to descend into cantankerousness as time passes – as it almost certainly will.

There are those who are angry almost without interruption. I have worked with some of them down the years. Others just get on with life, stay calm and maybe bottle things up (not always healthy).

Is it too late to join the other team? I understand there are anger management classes for people who have difficulty controlling their temper. With that in mind, perhaps there should be anger management classes for those of us who aren’t angry enough, with useful advice on how to flip your lid. Just like that kettle with a stuck switch.

WHAT’S a fair punishment for knocking a man off his motorbike and causing chest injuries, 17 broken ribs, liver and ligament damage and a fractured ankle? Oh, and that account overlooks the two heart attacks that followed.

There is no simple answer to the way motoring fines work and the system seems to contain many contradictions.

The York actor Martin Barrass, stalwart of the York Theatre Royal panto, was reported to be disappointed that the driver who left him fighting for his life had been fined £115 and given six penalty points.

Magistrates at Northallerton were told earlier this week that Raghvir Kaur Toor, who is 61, drove her car in front of Mr Barrass as he rode his motorcycle on the A59 towards Harrogate in September.

A report in my old newspaper quoted Mr Barrass – oh, let’s call him Martin, as he is such a familiar figure around here – as saying after the case: “It’s nice to see that justice has been done but I’m very disappointed at the leniency of the sentence. I think many people hearing of this will think: is that it? But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Martin, who is 60, reportedly said that civil action was being pursued in relation to the motorist.

To illustrate the vagaries of motoring punishment, I would like to bring in evidence the speeding ticket I got just before Christmas.

Returning home after we had a shopping stay in the city, I was clocked doing 51mph on a dual carriageway where the limit was 40mph. I had no defence other than not knowing Leeds well and being a little lost. And the road felt faster than that.

But I am not here to defend myself. I was caught and paid the fine over the phone and sent off my driving licence in the post (unreturned to date).

I nearly always stick to the limits nowadays. Two years ago, I had to attend a speed-awareness course. On that occasion, I had been photographed doing a little over 60mph on a downhill stretch heading north out of Skipton. The camera van was parked at the bottom of the hill, a big fish waiting open-mouthed for foolish flies.

The only reason for repeating all this is to state that my recent offence cost me three points on my licence and £100. That’s £15 and three points less than the driver who knocked Martin off his motorbike and nearly cost him his life.

I realise there isn’t an equivalence here. These two motoring offences are not connected and are off a very different order; but the punishment wasn’t as different as you might suppose. Or as different as Martin might have hoped.

Perhaps the thing here is that anyone of us is only one mistake away from causing an accident. The roads are full of idiots and sometimes we are idiots, too. All of us have the potential to drive badly or make a mistake. It is hard to assess your own driving skills. I would say mine are good with occasional moments.

The driver who pulled out in front of Martin admitted driving without due care and attention at the first opportunity, and apologised through her solicitor for her misjudgement.

Martin is back on his feet now and recovering, although he had had to forego his usual sidekick role in the panto. The show had a difficult genesis this year as Berwick Kaler, who is the dame, writer and co-director, collapsed earlier in the year and had to have a pacemaker fitted.

I know this because I read about it. And because Berwick showed me the pack under the skin of his chest when we were chatting in the street.

We are off to see Cinderella on Tuesday, keeping up a family tradition that goes back years. I will be driving into town, slowly and carefully. Just in case they’re behind me. The police, that is.

DUSTY, she thinks our house was dusty? This thought rolls in my head for a while, so I find a duster. I do know where those things are kept, you see.

I begin in the shower room downstairs, then start on the stairs, moving jugs and ornaments, and then running the cloth over picture frames, before dusting the top of the old clock that no longer ticks. Or tocks.

Then I go into the guestroom and dust the picture rail and other places she almost certainly didn’t see. She was quite short and could only have seen the picture rail by standing on a chair. And if she’d done that, she could have peered on top of the wardrobe, and – hands up – that is dusty. The dust up there has friends. Come friendly dust. It’s a dust party up there.

Dust has never been mentioned before. This explains why I feel cross. Mostly people remark on the house being clean.

After perhaps half-an-hour, I shake the cloth outside, then pop it in the washing basket in the for now less dusty shower room.

We always clean before guests arrive. We cleaned before the last one was due. That’s why the comment about dust stung, and then made me feel guilty.

I was meant to be preparing a lecture for next week, and doing some writing. Or looking for freelance ideas. But instead I was worrying about dust.

One of the strange aspects of Airbnb is that you rate your guests and they rate you. Most of our ratings are positive, and I’ve rarely had cause to give guests anything other than a ‘good’ score.

Sometimes you rate them before they rate you. That’s what happened here. I said something bland but pleasant about the young woman from India. In return, she mentioned dust. This isn’t entirely fair. She said something bland but pleasant about the house (one-all on that front) and mentioned that we are quite far from the centre of York (two miles from Micklegate Bar: it says that on the website), but that the buses were good. And that she enjoyed her stay. And we enjoyed her stay, too. She was a very pleasant young woman.

The passing comment about dust came in a section that could not be seen by anyone else. It was private – until I started going on about it just now.

There are people who give up with dust, admit defeat and let the dust to its own thing. We’ve never done that, but dust does always finds a way. Our attic bedroom is the worst. The hard floor is perfect for furry friends. Not long after you have vacuumed, dust gathers again, seeking out the corner by the radio. David Attenborough should come and film those fuzzy grey curls. I am sure their mating rites would be of general interest.

Here are two passing thoughts on dust. First up in my mind was the bit about ashes. When did ashes and dust first get it together? I wondered if it was from the Bible, but it’s not, or so a Google search suggests. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is from the funeral service in the Common Book of Prayer.

That’s all we are, ashes and dust. What a cheery thought for a morning in January. I am not a religious person, but wonder for a moment if whoever is in charge keeps a final tally. If so it’s probably done online nowadays, and perhaps there is a section about dust. And ashes.

My other thought was simple enough: what is dust? Little bits of anything and everything, or so it seems, and containing various microorganisms. Dust looks dull but harbours all sorts of microbial life, apparently.

Online again, I find an American study with the title, “The ecology of microscopic life in household dirt.” The findings are too complicated for me to absorb or repeat here. But indoor dust is different to outdoor dust – and my dust is different to your dust.

The report said by way of introduction: “In particular, the female: male ratio and whether a house had pets had a significant influence on the types of bacteria found inside our homes highlighting that who you live with determines what bacteria are found inside your home.”

Personally, I blame the cat for the dust, but then I blame the cat for many things. In evidence I will ask you this: when does that cat ever have a duster in her paws?

OH, leave Hull the hell alone. The East Yorkshire city can look after itself and doesn’t need any support from me, but here it is anyway.

As any fool now knows, Hull is UK City of Culture. This honour initially brought a few guffaws of a “you must be kidding” nature, followed by plenty of genuine interest in the city. And then as Hull launched its cultural year, two London newspapers decided to spoil the party.

And as any other fool knows, there is nothing the Sun and the Daily Mail enjoy more than spoiling a party.

The Mail went with: “Welcome to the UK’s Capital of Culture: Hull descends into drunken carnage just hours before it marked its new status as Britain’s ‘art city’”. And the Sun went for “SCRAPITAL OF CULTURE”.

Both used lurid photographs of people engaging in drunken misbehaviour, and Mail Online included a tagline saying: “But on Twitter some people have been very skeptical about the city’s new status.”

Well, there is a lot to be sceptical about here – including the Mail Online’s ability to spell the word.

Yesterday, Press Gazette, a journalism online magazine, reported that the Sun was “baffled” by the backlash.

A spokesman for the newspaper said: “The Sun ensured our piece was an accurate account of events in Hull on New Year’s Eve, based on the testimony of the city’s top police officer, eye-witness accounts, and live photographs sent by picture agencies and posted on social media.”

Oh, yeah? There is accuracy and then there is going out looking for mischief. What’s depressing about the Mail and the Sun on this occasion, as so often in the past, is that they have spotted something positive – in this case the often overlooked but proud city of Hull being honoured for its culture – and decided to go and fling some dirt.

Photographers could have snatched pictures of people caught in drunken misbehaviour anywhere in Britain on New Year’s Eve, but they chose Hull so they could poop that party.

The Sun’s statement talks about the “testimony of the city’s top police officer”. Another Hull officer, Chief Inspector J Glansfield, wasn’t impressed with the tabloid assault, tweeting: “1day, 2 events, 20k + visitors, 0 incidents, 0 injuries, 0 arrests, One Hull of a city. #Hull2017.”

The Hull Daily Mail, having itself reported on New Year’s Eve rowdiness in the city, then turned against the Sun, writing: “After last night’s brilliant UK City of Culture opener, which saw more than 25,000 people marvel at the fireworks and light displays, the London-based tabloid opted to write about ‘lashed-up louts’ who apparently sparked New Year ‘carnage’ in the hours leading up to the event.”

Press Gazette reported that former Hull MP John Prescott drew parallels with The Sun’s coverage of Hillsborough on Twitter saying: “People don’t buy The Sun in Liverpool for its smears. I predict the people of Hull will do the same for this hatchet job.”

A hatchet job of a much lower order, it must be said. But Hull and Liverpool are joined by more than the M62: both are coastal cities that can seem a long way from London, and London ways of thinking.

I have no brief for Hull, having been to the city only three times: once to visit the Deep when it opened; then twice last year, the first time to write a feature for the Yorkshire Post, and the second for the launch of a book by crime writer Nick Quantrill.

This year I plan to return and feel excited for the city. Hull has not had an easy time since the Second World War. Between September 7 1940 and May 21 1941, Hull was, after London, the city hardest hit by German bombers. Thanks to its docks, the city was badly damaged, with 95 per cent of houses damaged and much of the city centre wiped out. Yet that Blitz somehow remained hidden or at least little discussed. Many of the decades that followed were tough, too.

That, of course, was a long time ago, and now Hull has an exciting year ahead.

The way national newspapers view the north can sometimes be a mystery and an annoyance. Only last week, the Sun reported that York was flooded again when it wasn’t, and used old photographs as if they were new – to back up their ‘story’.

York got off lightly compared to the duffing Hull received. But then the road to Hull is paved with bad intentions, especially if it runs out of London media-land.

Anyway, I hope Hull enjoys its year and I will pop over to say hello sometime soon.

NOW I hadn’t heard of Lake Superior State University until the other day. But that’s fair enough as Lake Superior State University almost certainly hasn’t heard of me either.

Each new year, the university in Michigan compiles a list of words that deserve to be banished. Here is a paragraph corralling some this year’s proscribed words…

You, sir should focus less on your Bête Noire and step outside the town-hall meeting echo chamber, leave off making that historic listicle, cover up your dadbod and stop talking so bigly about your selfie-drone. And while you’re about it, please don’t get your dandruff up or we shall ghost you…

The university provides a glossary for these words.

“You, Sir” is said to hail from an era when duels were still fought; today’s pistol fights take place online, where this phrase has found new favour.

“Focus” is a good word overused when “concentrate” or “look at” would do fine.

“Historic” is “thrown around far too much” say the compilers. And they will get no argument from me on that score. “Bête Noire” is also invoked too often – “After consulting a listing of synonyms, we gather this to be a bugbear, pet peeve, bug-boo, pain, or pest to our nominators.”

“Town hall meeting” is out of date as candidates seldom gather there anymore – “Needs to be shown the door along with ‘soccer mom(s)’ and ‘Joe Sixpack’ (banned in 1997).”

Me and my three-pack agree with that.

“Echo chamber” is dismissed obliquely – “Lather, rinse, and repeat. After a while, everything sounds the same.”

As for “historic”, the compilers suggest that is “thrown around far too much” and its use should be left to “historians rather than the contemporary media”.

“Listicle” is a bullet-point list designed to attract clicks on the internet, while “Dadbod” is the “flabby opposite of a chiselled-body male ideal”.

“Bigly” – now this is as interesting as it is irritating. Its use is thought to have been promoted by Donald Trump as he thumped a hole in that tub during his woefully successful presidential campaign. Was he misheard saying “big league” or did he “utter this 19th-Century word that means, in a swelling blustering manner? Who cares? Kick it out of the echo chamber!”

The “selfie drone” hands the “irritating habit of constantly photographing and posting oneself to social media” to a flying camera. “How can this end badly?” say the compilers, putting on their irony overcoat.

The committee was puzzled why the malapropism “Get your dandruff up…” was nominated this year. Another comical mishearing, this time of “get your dander up”.

As for “Ghost”, that is to “abruptly end communication, especially on social media”.

I came across all this at work on New Year’s Eve. Some of the words and phrases were familiar, some not: ‘ghost’ was new to me in its modern sense, although not to a younger colleague opposite.

The story I was editing mentioned a parallel survey at Detroit’s Wayne State University which aims to exhume words that have fallen out of favour. It end-of-year list included “absquatulate” – which means to “discreetly and abruptly leave a place, such as a gathering or party, without informing the host”. In short, an old-fashioned version of “ghost”.

The Lake Superior word-watchers also mention “post-truth”, the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year – “To paraphrase the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we are entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts.”

How true. I am glad to have discovered this list of words we should lose, and will look out for it next year. But now it is time for me to absquatulate.

THAT’S 2016 out on its arse. And who among us can be sorry about that? Let’s just hope it doesn’t end up like that old song by the Who – meet the new year, same as the old year.

Maybe the slating of 2016 has been overdone. It wasn’t the greatest of years, but that sound you can hear is 1916 knocking on the door to complain about all the noise – you think you’ve got it bad?

In self-absorbed times, it’s not a bad idea to remember that other years have been awful. The main stated arguments against 2016 are that an unusual number of celebrities died, or so it appeared. And that we saw two political shocks: the Brexit vote and the triumph of Trump. Both have been over-examined and over-interpreted. The Brexit vote was a narrow squeak of a victory that has been wilfully misrepresented in some quarters as the verdict of all the people, rather than the verdict of some of them. A victory, yes. But not the full chorus.

It was the same with Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton cleared 2.7 million more votes than Trump, but lost because of the eccentricities of the American voting system. So again, the people didn’t speak as one.

But I don’t wish to spend New Year’s Day thinking about all that. Here’s one passing thought, though: it is often said that history is written by the victors. Well, yes. The trouble is that the Brexit and Trump contingents are writing their history right now, dashing it off on the hoof with vainglorious abandon. It is possible that history might have other ideas up its sleeve.

Years ago, too long gone almost to remember, grandparents used to deflect questions about dessert by saying that it would be wait-and-see-pudding. It strikes me that Brexit is like that. We just don’t know what we are going to get and must wait and see. In honour of the man who got us into this situation, perhaps it will be wait-and-see Eton Mess.

I started my New Year with a Sunday morning run. It rained but I was glad to be outside, even if any athleticism I might once have laid claim to has deserted me. As I laboured up Holgate Hill, a young man on the other side of the road was returning from what must have been the longest New Year’s Eve. He wove and staggered upwards. Later today he will no doubt be “hanging” as the daughter puts it.

Let’s hope this new year doesn’t start with a bad hangover from that just gone. Meet the new year, hopefully not the same as the old one.