AFTER "two years of intensive idling in Mid Wales", York poet, artist, songwriter, sage and raconteur Rory Motion has returned to his old stamping ground to perform two gigs.

The first was a Pay As You Feel show at the un-Rory hour of 5pm in the Shed at the Great Yorkshire Fringe, drawing a full house to his whimsical wondering and wandering.

The second will be a fundraiser – with half the proceeds going to Candlelighters, the children's cancer charity – at 7pm tonight at the Pig & Pastry, Steve Holding's swell café in Bishopthorpe Road, where myriad Rory Motion paintings in oil pastels bring bright colour and surrealist worldly wisdom to the walls.

A publicity picture of Rory can be spotted there too, not far from the one of Lance Armstrong, signed "Stay Clean" by the disgraced cyclist. On the opposite wall, the blackboard menu lists a "Rory Motion" among its panoply of toasted paninis, and it is this culinary concoction that gives Rory's new show its name: My Life As A Cheese And Sticky Onion Sandwich.

Rory left York after the death of his mother, since when he has turned 60, "dyed his hair grey" and seen the purchase of "six sensible Germans from Aldi" bear fruit for his beloved Huddersfield Town with promotion via the play-offs to the Premier League. "Wembley was so large, the pitch had a different postcode," he said at yesterday's show.

So where has Rory been? "I bought a camper van and set off," he says. "I went to France to try to live there but France has died. The supermarkets have killed it."

Instead, as he has done before, he found his way to Wales, to Llanfyllin to be precise, a small market town in a sparsely-populated area in Powys, whose population in 2011 was recorded as 1,532, of whom 34.1% could speak Welsh.

Rory loves the language, not least the Welsh slang for "microwave": popty ping, as featured in his new poem Under Pant's Spell, so named after the village his family passed through en route to Pembrokeshire from York on childhood holidays of yore.

What might be on the Motion menu tonight at the Pig & Pastry? In the words of his poster: "Upon receiving the ultimate accolade of having a sandwich named after them, most people would retire and consider their life's work complete. Rory, however, is cut from a different loaf. Following two years of intensive idling in Mid Wales, he returns to York with a tasty side salad of fresh material served on a gluten-free smorgasbord of wholemeal classics."

From talking to Belgian Blue cows and a caterpillar called Susan, to dismissing Damien Hirst's artistic merit, from the "spoon of pain" that accompanies supporting Huddersfield and England down the years, to his eco-warrior conversion on the road to Domestos, an hour in Motion's quizzical company puts the world to rights.

Tickets for tonight cost £10, which includes a bite to eat at half time, spicy food apparently. To book, go to thepigandpastry.com