Hey, come on - Leeds only the second happiest place in Britain? Where have the people behind today's nonsensical poll on the UK's happiest city been?
My city is unquestionably the happiest and best place in the country. Brighton better (which is what the poll, carried out by 02, says)? Pah!
Have you ever tried to sunbathe on its beach? It's like being a fakir on the proverbial bed of nails. The flint doesn't just sit there so that, eventually, you can get comfortable. No, it works its way up all the time, needling into your soft bits.
Anyway, we have a beach in Leeds, too (unlike our Northern so-called rival, Manchester). Ours is called Sandy Lobby, and it's just up from the central railway station. The River Aire's water is so delicious that an otter lives there. And kingfishers. And you can tell from the name that the beach isn't made of Brightonish dagger stones.
Leeds is big but small, a city but green, Yorkshire but every bit as diverse as London. We have Britain's best links with Ulan Bator, for instance. When Mongolians think of England (which I admit may be seldom), they look to Leeds, not London.
We shine brightly in contrast to other cities, too. London is just one huge pile, while Manchester and Liverpool merge shapelessly into one another so that signs greet you every few minutes, welcoming you to Trafford, Salford, Tameside and back to Trafford again.
We, in contrast, have a girdle of distinct and, in their own way, noble places - Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax, Dewsbury, and they serve very well as jewels round the one, really socking diamond.
You needn't believe just me. Come to Leeds and I'll show you my collection of references to the happiness of Leeds in world literature.
Here are just two: Arthur Ransome began an address to the children of Leeds in the June 1937 issue of the Chimney Corner, Leeds public libraries' magazine for children, like this:
My Dear Children, You and I share a very good thing in common. We had the luck to be born in Leeds. Now, for all kinds of reasons, Leeds is one of the best places in the world in which to be born ...
Jean Giraudoux, a Frenchman who dexterously combined careers as a diplomat and dramatist, wrote a Crusoe story in 1921 about a French girl called Suzanne who won a world cruise but was wrecked on a Pacific island.
Here she lived in bliss until rescued by an inspector of weights and measures, as I recall, and not a lot happened.
Except that, one day, the body of a British seaman was washed ashore and on his arm was a tattoo. What did it say? "I am a son of happy Leeds." Case proven.
