MANY an oddity has drifted, zoomed and flapped its way into York's airspace.

Fragile biplanes, football-sized flying saucers, fireworks like mortar shells - they've all crossed our particular scrap of heaven.

And balloons have been a regular sight above the city for a century or two. So when Ivy Eden's grandson Ben exclaimed: "Look, there's a bird pulling balloons!" she thought he was referring to a fancy design of the hot air variety, complete with passengers in a basket.

But when Ivy looked skywards she saw exactly what Ben had described. To make it clear, she sent in this drawing "because if I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have believed it."

She witnessed the strange scene while enjoying a barbecue in her Huntington garden.

"A stunt perhaps," she mused. "But it did look like a real bird, size of a seagull, and it was very happy flying along connected to the balloons. I should like to know if it was tangled and, if so, has someone set it free? Or has it been blown or flown across to France by now?"

We should love to hear from anyone else who saw it. And can anyone turn this from a UFO into an IFO - an identified flying object? Ivy craves an explanation. "Thanks a million if you can find out," she said. "It's driving me and my grandchildren dotty not knowing."

OUR recent memories of York rag and bone men brought a letter from Mrs B M Bradford, of Hull Road.

Mrs Bradford remembered Stan Deere, and also Billy Deere who "I think was Stan's son, also a rag and bone man with a pram.

"A friend of my husband once asked him to collect a cast-iron oven from his top storey flat in The Groves," Mrs Bradford recalls. "He was on nights so left it outside his door, only to be woken up by an almighty crash.

"Billy had called for it, and thrown it over the banister down the stairwell. He said, 'You didn't think I was going to carry it down, did you?'" She also recalled Knocker and Noosey who "lived somewhere down Cherry Street and they treated their little pony appallingly.

"I attended Mill Mount School, and we often used to shout on seeing them whipping it into a lather."

Mrs Bradford also has some observations about the conditions on the night of the Minster fire, prompted by a previous Diary item, and we'll pass these on soon.

TODAY'S epitaph comes from Ripon Cathedral (thought: if a Welshman dies, do you write his epitaffy?).

"Her lyeth ye body of Margaret Lupton, Late ye wife of Mr Sampson Lupton, of Brantywood in Netherdale. Who departed this life the 2nd of November, anno dom 1718, in the 74 year of her age, and lived to be mother and grandmother to above 150 children; and at the baptising of her first grandchild the child had the grandfathers and grandmothers there present."

Updated: 08:59 Wednesday, July 20, 2005