To North Yorkshire, for Ann’s and my annual escape from Civilization As Others Know It. Whilst the sheer weight of English history often pins this country’s social and political evolution to the ground, there are few spinethrills to compare with strolling around a castle erected three centuries before the original North Americans watched Columbus’ fleet appear over the horizon and thought “Damn, there goes the neighbourhood”.
Our yearly exodus to the Dales began three springs ago, when I was still managing to eke out a meagre living by freelancing for a series of sf/film magazines which promptly folded with the regularity of Italian parliaments. In view of our joint desire to gafiate totally from the Rat Race, spending a week in a converted 1841 stable on a working farm in the tiny village of Harmby (a couple dozen houses, one pub) seemed the ideal solution; my wisewoman wife has even pondered whether the building might be haunted, given several slightly odd incidents since our first visit, though I’ll remain unconvinced till I hear spectral hoofbeats in the night.
Leyburn, the nearest town (around one mile distant), is mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book (William I’s post-invasion stocktake) and assumed the role of local capitol when neighbouring Wensley became a ghost town following an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1563; fortunately, the Black Death is all but eradicated these days, and the few remaining pockets in central London are easily identified by raven-robed monks waving handbells at major road junctions. Across the valley lies Masham (site of two breweries and birthplace of one of the chief traitors against Henry V on the eve of Agincourt) and Spennithorne (birthplace of an 18th Century eccentric who tried to assassinate George III); this healthy local disrespect for royalty may be one reason I feel so much at home here.
As always, my major joys on vacation mix archaeology and bibliophilia. For the first, a visit to Richmond Castle (erected at the order of William I and damaged by general neglect during the 16th Century rather than the usual internecine warfare); for the latter, various expeditions into musty caverns to unearth such delights as an 1888 guide to Yorkshire (hardly cheap at #25.00, but which launched itself in my estimations when a 1939 road map slipped loose from a pouch at the back) and, er, a pair of Robert Lionel Fanthorpe hackworks from his penal servitude at Badger Books in the ’50s. The former obsession speaks for itself, but on behalf of the latter, a priceless quote from Perilous Galaxy (written under the pseudonym “John E Muller”): “He looks far more like an earthling [sic] than any of you. He looks more than an Earthling — he even looks English!”
Be honest, what more could any sentient alien lifeform strive for?
[Extracted from my ‘Fannish Memory Syndrome’ column for Apparatchik #65, published August 1996]