The Clerk in the Country

Friday 11th December 2020

Traditions, old and new

Regular readers may have guessed that an absence of blog entries means that a newsletter has been in production.

The YPS newsletter has its own long traditions.  Although the number of paper copies sent out is now declining in favour of email distribution, “filling the envelopes” has always been an opportunity for a loyal team of volunteers to gather in the Lodge for a morning’s work, fuelled by conversation, tea and cheese straws.

Not this year!  The new routine involves a solitary trudge across rain-soaked (yes, every time!) Museum Gardens with a trolley-load of paper and envelopes, shrouded in black plastic bin liners.  Encountering an IT problem is another new tradition.  This time a modem failure and the delivery of a replacement turned a November newsletter into a December one.

The result is, I hope, worth the wait, with fascinating contributions from members as well as news of our forays into online talks and activities.  If you would like to know who invented the equals sign, what is the oldest living thing in York, or how you can get to Mars without leaving Earth, click here.