I've just returned, reluctantly, to the City of London after a glorious week in my native Yorkshire.

We were at Runswick Bay for three days when the weather was everything you expect of the east coast: a force eight gale off the sea and visibility down to 30 yards.

It was only because of the roar of the waves and the fact that I am well-acquainted with this lovely stretch of coast that I could say for certain the sea was there at all. We walked along the cliff, from Runswick through Port Mulgrave to Staithes, had a cup of tea in the harbour cafe and walked back to Runswick for the best fish and chips in Yorkshire, ie in the world.

Everything goes at such breakneck pace in London that I'd forgotten how friendly people can be. Everyone we passed on the cliffs exchanged a laugh and a stoical north country joke with us about the summer weather. The homely accents were a nice change from the slovenly, abrasive London sound. You felt welcome, and that added to the restorative aspect of the holiday. You could relax among folk who looked and sounded like friends.

By the time I got to Leeds, the sun had come out and I walked around Roundhay Park Lake with my grandson, Zack, in his pushchair. This is the lake my uncle Alan used to push me around back in the Fifties. There were rowing boats in those days, disappeared now owing to the stultifying health and safety rules. Uncle Alan used to take me out in a boat and, when we were in the very middle, announce in his Bela Lugosi tones: "It's deep, lad. You could get York Minster under water and not see the top on it."

I hadn't time to go back up to the coast before I was due back in London, so I broadened my experience of life by staying, for the first time, at an airport hotel. The room was tiny, like a capsule. It was like entering the whole-body scanners they have at the hospital. I sat on the loo and my knees touched the door. And I hardly dared push the shiny futuristic flush button for fear of being shot into space.

The clientele lumbered around the place like the undead. They were looking for food and drink - then more food and more drink. The restaurant was serve-yourself and the food was piled high like ziggurats.

I chose what turned out to be something like chicken in a paint-stripper sauce. At the table next to me were two ample ladies "eating owt", as Mike Amos would say. One looked rather like John Prescott and the other was a dead ringer for Les Dawson. They were drinking suicidally, pints of lager and Guinness and a bottle of white wine.

The Les Dawson one bent over (with an oath) to retrieve her gong-sized earring and revealed an acre or so of tattooed backside. It said "Jo & Dekka" between the T-shirt bottom and the voluminous pink knickerline. From their conversation, it seemed they were heading for Tenerife. When I was leaving, I said: "Have a nice time in Tenerife, ladies!"

One of them grinned and replied: "We don't care where we're (expletive deleted) going, darling. We're just going to get (expletive deleted) p****d!"

Runswick and the airport hotel: you'd think they were in two different countries - perhaps even two different universes.