HAS ANYONE ever compiled a list of remarkable public benches? When I have retired I may well do so, and one of the first to be registered will be the bench at Byland Abbey, North Yorkshire. It is just a simple, functional affair of concrete and wood from the (I am guessing) 1950s, but the view it provides is far from the merely municipal. I am not just talking about the twelfth-century Cistercian ruins either. As well as the pale stone crescent of what remains of the immense rose window, there is something closer at hand. It was the height of hot summer when I first met the common lizards living in the bench’s dowel holes; now, on a suddenly sunny autumn day, we encountered each other again. I had only been sitting for a minute before the nose of the first one appeared. Cautiously,