I'm not a particularly religious man. I believe in Shamanism, animism, the living spirit in trees and rocks and mountains.
But Holy Island is the birthplace of modern Christianity in Britain, and the monk Eadthrif's beautifully illustrated works s
hould be on display where they were created. Not in the British Librarary.
The Monks left Holy Island as it was vulnerable to attacks from the North Sea and moved down to Durham.
The Gospels were taken to London either from the Cathedral City or seized by Henry VIII's commissioners at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. No-one is entirely sure.
But they do know that Holy Island is the spiritual home of the nationally important document.
A family of four travelling from Alnmouth to London by train, staying overnight in a hotel, dinner, supper – it all mounts up to a small fortune to go down to the Capital to see this little piece of Northumbrian history.
Think of the benefits to the local economy if the travel was in the opposite direction, with southerners coming to Northumberland.
It's worked at Alnwick. But then it's just as well that they can't move our castles, mountains and beaches or they would have them as well.
We were supposed to rejoice as a nation that we'd clinched the 2012 Olympic Games. Celebrate what?
More money pouring into the capital? Newcastle may get the boxing, and good as it would be to see the legendary Cuban fighters in action, there will be no golden goose for our region.
Why lavish millions on building the new Wembley in London when it would have made more sense to have it in a geographically central position like, say, Sheffield?
But then my mam always told me, as a Northumbrian, that "The English don't want us and the Scots won't have us". Or as they used to say in the county: "No prince but a Percy."
Several kids from the island went to Thomlinson's school and stayed in the boarding wing at Rothbury in the early '80s and one was married back on the island a few years ago.
It would be nice to see the book restored to it's rightful place for them, if not just to stick up two fingers to London and take back what is righfully ours.
But until it returns, at least we still have the Mead. Give us back the Gospels.
