Rural rudies

Christopher Chittell - Eric Pollard of Emmerdale - officially unveiled the 2002 Women's Farming Union Calendar of farmers' wives and daughters in risqu poses.

Models include Judy Bell of Shepherd's Purse Cheeses, who is pictured naked in a vat of milk, and Rosie Robinson of Just Puds, who appears tastefully covered in vine leaves, holding a live snake in her hand. All 12 models are members of the Women's Farming Union.

Most of the models are involved in farm diversification businesses and are pictured carrying out these activities in the calendar.

The calendars cost £7.99 and are available from Barkers Depart-ment Store in Northallerton and at Dacre Son & Hartley Estate Agents across the country.

Order forms are also available by logging on to the WFU website www.wfu.org.uk

As me auld grandad would have said: "All that meat and no gravy!"

- Just what is BBC North playing at? Twice this week I perused items on its Ceefax pages relating to York. The first time it referred to the city's river as the 'Ooze' and the second time it reported our Labour MP Hugh Bayley as the Conservative member for the city!

Methinks I should take a ride over to Leeds and give them a good talking to.

- PETER Smith fears there may be a resurgence of slavery in the York sugar beet factory. He says: "Please investigate the plight of over-worked York citizens by British Sugar. A report on page eight of the Yorkshire Post of October 1 suggests that these poor people have to work '24 hours a day, seven days a week, including Christmas, until February'."

Reminds me of the cruel old song I used to sing in the Boy Sprouts' Gang Show: "We're sliding a gong on the chest of a slave..."

Nuff of this nonsense.

- MORE barmy signs...

Ad for donkey rides in Thailand: Would you like to ride on your own ass?

The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong: Guaranteed to work throughout its useful life.

In a Swiss mountain inn: Special today - no ice-cream.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen: We take your bags and send them in all directions.

On the door of a Moscow hotel room: If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it.

On the door of the Waggon and Horses, Lawrence Street, York: New karaoke machine - 4,600 songs to torture!

- APPARENTLY I'm quite a hero with Yorkie David Wardell, formerly of Price Street and Drake Street. He tells me: "Turpin has always been an historical figure who has interested me ever since I was a young boy.

"I don't say I know all about him, but I have studied him over the years. I visit his grave often. My interest in him grew from the visits our school made to the Castle Museum. I would be about eight then and the school was St Clements in Ebor Street - now, sadly, demolished.

"I can't remember the name of the woman who took us around the museum, but she was the picture you would have of such a woman - grey hair done up in a bun, grey tweed suit, a white blouse and a small sort of dicky bow, and a large purple glass brooch on her collar.

"Isn't that your idea of a female museum guide of years ago?

"She was a lovely woman no matter what she looked like. I have never forgot her... not even after 45 years ."

So who was this the Grey Lady of the museum?

Information please and picture, if possible, to Dick Turpin the living leg-end. It will make David's Day and he's not even Welsh... so far as I know.

- WHAT a load of management-babble from the Sirius Development Corporation in the US of A.

"As a resultant implication, initiation of critical subsystem development adds explicit performance limits to the management-by-contention principle. Similarly, any associated supporting element is functionally equivalent and parallel to the subsystem compatibility testing.

"To approach true user-friendliness, the fully integrated test program is further compounded when taking into account the philosophy of commonality and standardisation.

"On the other hand, a constant flow of effective communication requires considerable systems analysis and trade-off studies to arrive at possible bidirectional logical relationship approaches.

"However, the incorporation of additional mission constraints maximises the probability of project success, yet minimises cost and time required for the total system rationale."

If you know what this tripe means send your answers on a £20 to me, Dick Turpin, corporate little mugger, at Dunshootin, Walmgate, York.

- An anagram, as we all know, is a word or phrase made by transposing or rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. These tickled my fancy:

Dormitory = Dirty room

Desperation = A rope ends it

The Morse Code = Here come dots

Slot Machines = Cash lost in 'em

Animosity = Is no amity

Snooze Alarms = Alas! No more z's

Alec Guinness = Genuine class

Semolina = Is no meal

The Public Art Galleries = Large picture halls, I bet

A Decimal Point = I'm a dot in place

Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one

Contradiction = Accord not in it

Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler

Or this from Hamlet by Shakespeare: "To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Which becomes : "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."

And the grand finale from first man on the moon, Neil A. Armstrong, who said: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." This becomes: "A thin man ran; makes a large stride; pins flag on moon, left planet. On to Mars!"