HARD on the heels of my revelations about Ray Price, managing director of Arriva Trains Northern (ATN), not knowing when his "steel centipedes" were running because of engineering work, my mole, Demic, is still fearlessly digging away.

He sent me this:

"My feedback tells me there is a massive inquiry into our Service Delivery Centre (SDC) about how the information was leaked.

"All calls to the SDC have, for some time, been taped. I guess they are being sifted through as I write this.

"Price may even conclude that it is not just one man with a website and a grudge who doesn't like him, but most of the people who work for ATN!"

There's no stopping Demic... unlike Arriva trains.

MISS Anne McIntosh, Tory MP for the Vale of York, is all heart. The MP, who earns about £55,000 a year from her "seat", has donated one copy of Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets - worth around £11 - to one of her constituency libraries to "promote children's literature in local schools."

Spendthrift Miss McIntosh said: "I am delighted to be donating a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to Poppleton Library."

Her press release trumpeted: "I am very much looking forward to making the presentation at Poppleton Library at noon and to meeting children from Poppleton Ouseburn primary school there.

"I hope the book brings many hours of entertainment to young readers locally, and promote their interest in reading as well as a greater understanding of our wider heritage and culture."

I am popping off to Poppleton to book the book, so to speak.

It should be my turn by 2005...

WHAT a difference a digit makes.

Consider this from the Guardian's corrections and clarifications column.

"In the Best Buys section of Jobs & Money, page 25, January 18, the Lambeth Building Society telephone number listed alongside its Fixed Rate Bonds was wrong by one digit: 0800 028 6929 is actually the number for Fastfix Garage Doors of Selby, North Yorkshire..."

I bet Fastfix didn't mind the mistake opening more doors to business.

I had a tremendous response to my name-five-streets-within-the-city-walls competition just before Christmas.

So here's another one, with a slight twist.

Name nine thoroughfares within the city walls that are not followed by street, avenue, lane, passage, road or gate.

There may be more but I know of at least nine.

Five free CDs to the first correct entry drawn on Friday January 31.

Send your answers on a postcard, with your name, address and daytime telephone to Turpin Thoroughfares Competition, PO Box 29, 76/86 Walmgate, York, YO1 9YN.

My answers will appear next Saturday.

YOU must have had one through the post.

You are a lucky winner of one of the following: £25,000, a computer, a TV set, £1,000, a seven-night holiday in Florida, free blue toilet flushes for life, that sort of thing...

Well Ann Lee of York received her special winning number from the Winners Club and just before she threw it in the bin she read the small print.

Her smiling green eyes flashed sneeringly when she read about the seven-night holiday in Florida.

The rules, in such small print you need a microscope to read 'em, revealed the holiday bookings "must be made before 30/4/03 and holidays taken by 31/3/03."

So you probably have to take the holiday before you book it...

Nowt's for nothing.

TOMORROW is the first day of the first National Faggot Week.

Faggots, from the Latin word for bundle, go back to the Middle Ages when they were called savoury ducks.

They were originally made with pig's liver and offal.

Later they were made by mincing offal, fat, onions and added to bread crumbs soaked in milk plus garden herbs such as basil, marjoram, sage or bog myrtle.

Salt, pepper and nutmeg spiced the little "bundles".

These days quality pork liver and pork is used and Brits are said to scoff more than 100 million every year. Next it could be National Mushy Peas Week.

SIGN at Mirfield Rifle & Pistol Club, near Dewsbury: When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.

MUMMY mole, papa mole and baby mole love their cosy little mole hole just outside Acaster Malbis.

One day the papa mole stuck his head out, sniffed the air and said: "Yummy mummy, I smell maple syrup!"

Mummy mole stuck her head out of the hole, sniffed the air and said: "Nah! I smell honey!"

Baby mole tried to stick his head out of the hole to sniff the air, but couldn't because mummy and daddy were in the way.

Sighing deeply he said: "All I can smell is molasses!"

"To Mrs Winifred Young, deceased:

Dear Mrs Young, we write to inform you that your council tax benefit has now ceased, owing to the change in your circumstances." - letter written by a functionary for a south of England local authority.

There's always a down side, isn't there?

Updated: 10:18 Saturday, January 25, 2003