YOU'VE got to admire the Liberal Democrats. Their fortitude makes Indiana Jones look like Walter the Softy from the Beano.

Not one, or two, but three members of the governing group on City of York Council have crocked legs. Yet they are rattling about their official duties as if nothing has happened.

Lady Mayoress Janice Hall, executive member for housing Sue Sunderland and Skelton, Rawcliffe and Clifton Without representative Richard Moore only have three good legs between them at the moment.

Richard left council offices on Blake Street one lunchtime last week and "there was a popping sound and a searing pain".

Yet he still went on to chair a Rawcliffe parish council meeting in the evening before finally hobbling to casualty at 9.40pm.

After a three-hour wait, he was found to have torn a calf muscle in his leg. A day later, on crutches and wearing two Tubigrips, he was making half a dozen site visits to weigh up proposed developments in his role as the chairman of the east area planning committee.

That was despite doctors recommending RICE - rest, ice, compression, education. "I elevate it at night when I'm asleep," said Richard. "The only rice I'm going to get is on my plate."

He is even turning his injury into a positive for York pedestrians.

"One advantage of being on crutches - you do a very good survey of the pavement. You find out which ones are uneven, which ones are slippy and which ones slope.

"I have already had a chat with Ann Reid."

Both Councillors Hall and Sunderland's impairments stem from altercations with stairs. But they too are still hard at their civic work.

The other day at the council, Richard said, "there was Janice on crutches, me on crutches and Sue with a walking stick. Three of a kind."

CALL up our excellent website www.thisisyork.co.uk and, as well as the editorial content, there are many flashing links and advertisements.

A juxtaposition of two of these last Monday saw this message briefly displayed: "Your essential guide to... Jo Haywood".

Every other commercial news website has similar banners. Some even offer business links which are supposedly relevant to the news story.

But this can be perilous. Take the online version of USA Today, for example. On the anniversary of coalition victory in Iraq it carried a long story about the subsequent death and destruction headlined: "One year after Baghdad capture, fighting rages on".

At the bottom were two "Related Advertising Links". One promoted "Holidays In Iraq", the other "Cheap Flights to Baghdad".

AN email drops into the Diary in-box advertising the unusual places licensed for weddings in Scotland.

"Why not say 'I do' in a zoo?" it asked.

With York's panther on the loose, it might be the safest place...

VICAR in foul mouthed outburst shock. In The Porch, parish magazine of St Edward the Confessor, Dringhouses, York, the Rev Martin Baldock reveals his darker side.

"When trying to take a notice off the notice-board with one hand, while carrying a load of books in the other, I discovered it is possible to drop the notice behind the wooden screen, thus losing it irretrievably...

"The Confession: when the notice dropped out of sight, an inappropriate word escaped my lips."

Write to: The Diary, Chris Titley, The Evening Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN

Email diary@ycp.co.uk

Telephone (01904) 653051 ext 337

Updated: 09:55 Tuesday, April 20, 2004