This week on the Secret Library Leeds, Leeds’s Singing Organ-Grinder tells how moving to Yorkshire five years ago inspired him to compile a day-by-day historical anthology.

One sunny day in spring 2021, we chugged cheerfully east along the M62 in a removal van on a roundabout route from Hackney to Headingley. The third lockdown was still in force, so we hadn’t even had a chance to visit Leeds, but as we passed Hartshead Moor Services I realised that I did actually know something about Yorkshire.

Long ago, I used to participate in transpennine raids with Lancastrian brass bands, generally returning with a skinful of Tetley’s and little in the way of silverware. At the end of one such incursion, in the early hours of a terribly cold and snowy night, a dastardly deed was committed at Hartshead against a guest snare-drummer from the West Riding.

In 2021, as the skyscrapers of modern Leeds hove into view, I wondered how I could atone for past wrongs and at the same time educate myself about our new home. The result: a day-by-day anthology of Yorkshire past, present and future, my Yorkshire Almanac 2026, Sheep Flavour. The desolation of drummer Dean is told in the entry for April 9.

The bulk of the almanac is formed of 365 such daily well-I-nevers – windows onto the lives of almost as many individuals, excerpted from some 2,000 years of autobiographies, diaries, letters, newspapers, records and tales. Most of my work was undertaken round midnight, which limited access to Leeds Libraries’ excellent facilities. But friends helped source materials, and no one turned down a request to reuse copyright works – although a notable Pakistani-heritage oral history project in Bradford didn’t respond, and I can’t yet afford Alan Bennett.

There’s something for everyone in the book. An English-language learner has been reading one 250-word entry every morning whilst seated on the porcelain throne, and has particularly enjoyed the following: Alcuin of York’s verse lament on the destruction of Lindisfarne – one of various new translations; the Leeds Mercury‘s response in 1826 to requests for cricket reports; and the 1979 Meanwood suspension bridge project.

Several personal favourites: the medieval Catholic mystic Margery Kempe walking over the Wolds at midsummer, consuming cakes and ale, and discussing with Mr whether they will ever have sex again; Wakefield boxer Paul Sykes telling how he fought off sharks in the Straits of Johor; and Winifred Stansfield getting the doll of her dreams at Christmas 1923.

Items I have collected from new acquaintances include a Leeds butcher’s story of the 1969 purchase of his first car – a Ford Escort – following his honeymoon in Benidorm. I’m always on the lookout for more, so get in touch if you’ve got something special.

What’s with the Sheep Flavour in the title? I was looking for a Yorkshire metanarrative that would make the book more than the sum of its parts, and chanced on the Saga of Otis and Silica. This ovine-oriented odyssey of dubious age, origin and veracity comes in twelve short monthly episodes and tells the story of a pair of layabouts from the East Riding. Following difficulties with local shepherds, they move to Leeds, where they revolutionise greens maintenance with a Lease-a-Lamb scheme, take the oratorio We All Like Sheep (Feat. Messiah) on a tour of the Dales’s livestock auction marts, descend into the depths of Semerwater in pursuit of a satanic ram, pedal from coast to Craven in the hoofprints of Anglo-Saxon and Cistercian flocks, do the Otley Run, encounter a Nativity staged by the Republic of Sheep, and confront Odin during Midnight Mass in the new chapel of St Cædmon on Headingley Hill.

The Yorkshire Almanac 2026 is available from me (free delivery on foot in LS1-LS7 and LS16, optional artwork by our daughter, now aged 6) or the usual retailers. If you order from the website before Valentine’s, use the coupon OTIS26 to get a 10% reduction on the cover price. There is also a supporting website, with many more entries, extended excerpts, comments, and links enabling you to borrow, browse or buy my sources.