Different but the same

Strange the experience of revisiting places you know very well and finding that in your absence things have changed. I lived most of my life in Bradford and knew Leeds very well indeed. As a child, I went there with my grandparents. They had a car, which not many people did have then, and it was my grandmother's greatest joy to go shopping in Leeds. From being very small, I went with them. Later, and for many years, I was to go to the city on a regular basis, for a number of reasons.

When I return after a lengthy absence, I find myself disorientated. Buildings seem to have moved, roads are not where they used to be. One change can trigger chaos in the memory banks. And then one bit of recognition and it all fits back into place. Funny thing the memory.

Some things that don't change, well not really, are the lions outside the Town Hall. I loved them when I was a child and apparently we always had to go and see them, so my mother told me anyway. Added to the building in 1867, they were made of Portland stone and, although weathered and looking a bit weary now, they don't seem likely to move. But maybe they do . . .

. . . sometimes, my grandfather told me, the lions get up and move around. No one has ever seen them, but they have noticed changes in their position or expression, as if they have stretched, walked around and then got back up again. Today I read this in a book, so it must be true. And apparently it happens when the big clock strikes thirteen. I am so pleased to find, after all these years, that my grandfather wasn't just telling me a story!

Wet and windy in Leeds today. Not the best weather for cricket!