Thursday September 18th 2025 "Have YOU ever wished you were a monk, or a nun? Well, think again haha!!!"

We've all done it, haven't we! Thought about becoming monks or nuns, and not just at fancy-dress parties!

Well in this morning's Onion News, you can read the gist of what it's all about - and it's just a 2 minute read, which is nice if you're busy! Just turn to page 94 !!!

Poor Davis !!!!! 

But at least that 2-minute "taster" has saved him perhaps as much as 50 years "hard slog" if he'd been rash enough to "sign up" for a job as a working monk - read the small-print terms of conditions, there's no "get-out clause", which comes as a shock once you decide you've had enough 'monking about' haha!!!!

At least the story brings a chuckle to the mouths of me and my light-to-moderate wife Lois tonight, as we watch the latest instalment of "Yorkshire Great and Small with Dan and Helen".

my light-to-moderate wife Lois and me - a recent picture

This light-hearted new series from Dan Walker and Helen Skelton is tonight, amongst other things, looking at the lives of the medieval Yorkshire monks who spent their lives at Mount Grace Priory on the North Yorkshire moors.

I'm particularly interested, for personal reasons, in Dan and Helen's visit to Mount Grace Priory up on the Yorkshire moors, because as a student, for a whole week, I helped excavate about 0.00001% of the priory, back in the late 1960's with my cousin Lyndon, so it's nice to see how it's looking now, in it's semi-restored state, in 2025.

I actually dug something up in the week I was digging there - a piece of a metal strip with the Latin word "anima" (soul) on it. Of course I'm hoping the presenters of tonight's programme will give the discovery a quick mention, but sadly no, they don't.

But is it still there, maybe, on the cutting-room floor?  I think I should be told, don't you!

You've got to feel sorry for those medieval monks to put it mildly. There was accommodation for 22 of them at any one time, and they were taken on at an early age, spending their whole lives there.

Apart from tending their individual herb gardens, the monks didn't have to do much work other than praying, because there was a system of "lay brothers" who also lived in the priory. It was the lay brothers who worked in the fields, and  provided the monks with everything they needed in the way of food and drink.

In tonight's programme, Helen and Dan play a game of "monks and lay brothers", when Dan dresses up as a monk, and Helen brings him a soothing cup of mint tea. However she's not allowed to enter Dan's cell so she has to deliver the tray of tea through his little window.

What madness!!!

Speaking personally, I might agree to becoming a monk some day, but I'd want Lois in the cell with me, obviously! Prison-style "conjugal visits" wouldn't be a substitute, especially if they were only delivered through a little window.

What madness !!!

I wouldn't mind having to do without chips and biscuits, but I'd demand a full range of other foods.

Just last night Lois made use of her newly acquired Jamie Oliver book "Eat Yourself Healthy" and started with his "speedy kedgeree" -  the left-overs of which we finished off today at lunchtime.

Before agreeing to become a monk, I'd also demand free wifi and a shiny new laptop, like the one delivered today to help us cope with Windows 11 or some-such nonsense!

[I don't think you've quite got the idea of being a monk, Colin! - Ed]

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!