The Yorkshire Almanac 2026, Sheep Flavour, by Leeds’s Singing Organ-Grinder (paperback)

Price range: £14.99 through £15.99

What was Charlotte Brontë like on her first day at school? How does a true Yorkshireman handle a shark attack? Who didn’t really kill Robin Hood at Kirklees Priory?

Leeds’s Singing Organ-Grinder answers these and a multitude of other perfectly reasonable questions in an anthology of 365 daily serendipities, plucked from two millennia of autobiographies, diaries, letters, newspapers, records and tales (bibliography).

With feast-days and customs, astronomical and meteorological data, and the recently discovered Saga of Otis and Silica.

A cracking gift for natives and newcomers alike — served with a splash of sheepish humour.

Optional inside-front-cover artwork is hand-crafted by Rosa (6) at £1 a shot. Some previous work, aged 4¼ (script, scenography, still photography):
If you’re ordering multiple copies and want different artwork in each, get in touch.

If you select a value other than None for Tithe, I will give 10% of gross (excluding Rosa’s contribution) to the association in question.

If you live in the LS1-LS7 postcodes, you can opt for free delivery on foot by the almanacker. (If I’ve got time, I may deliver to further-flung districts – ask.) Pickup in Headingley is also available

The latest batch has gone and I expect to fulfill new orders around 16 December. An additional bottleneck is formed by Rosa’s capacity to draw to meet demand, while also performing in the Nativity play, etc etc.

Description

FAQs:

  • Why isn’t the book for sale on Amazon or in bookshops? Selling on this website and via friends is more amusing, my margin is better, and Rosa gets to be that rare bird – a paid artist.
  • How can I stay up-to-date and in touch with Yorkshire? There’s a daily Yorkshire Almanac email on the website.
  • I bought the 2025 almanac. Are the entries different in the 2026 one? Some are, but most are not. Improvement is also continuous: an almanac bought in October 2025 is different from one bought a month later. One day I’ll get the machine to spit out a change log.
  • Are you going to do other flavours? I have found the synopsis of an apple- and cider-based saga from the 1990s, but that new flavour may not appear till 2027.
  • Have you thought of doing local editions? Yes. Slicing and dicing a Leeds one is easy and might happen in 2027.
  • When will the 2027 almanac appear? Probably in July/August 2026.
  • How do you find time? Maynard Ferguson has the answer (and watch the fingerwork at the beginning):
  • Do you sing Yorkshire songs as well? Yup! Book The Singing Organ-Grinder to perform (sometimes with monkey) an instructive and amusing musical programme containing great tunes and great doggerel relating to the idea of Yorkshireness, taking you from the mythical beginnings of Yorkshire, via Viking berserkers, Civil War beer excesses, encounters with Robin Hood (in Yorkshire, obviously) and the Grand Old Duke of Pork, the Dragon of Wantley, an 18th century steelworker-turned-poacher, 19th century caricatures and serious inventions of Yorkshire character, fairs and fun, 20th century advertising songs, machine music about industrial decline, to a new song about the physical and philosophical nature of Leeds’s ginnels!

Additional information

Dimensions 228.6 × 152.4 × 20.5 mm
ISBN-13

978-0-9956883-2-2

Page count

361

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