Last updated 11:23, Thursday, 27 November 2008

I HAVE been called many things in my time, but “erudite” has never been one of them until now.

One has always pictured an erudite person as being professorly and studying the likes of Homer and Milton in his university rooms while coming up with the answers to most of the world’s ills.

But now the word has been used to describe my ramblings in these weekly columns. It comes in a new book by former newspaper editor John Hurst, View From A King Street Window, which features his own pertinent comments, past and present, about Cumbrian life.

It’s a book which I highly recommend. However, having called me erudite, Hurst proceeds to dismantle an argument I once advanced about the future of local shops. Ah well, damned with faint praise, as they say.