Gorilla tactics

FOREVER out in the cold, last week’s column resurrected the splendid English word “brumal”, meaning “wintry”. Tim Stahl in Darlington wonders that we didn’t mention Brumas as well.

Remember Brumas? Offspring of Ivy and Mischa, she was born at London Zoo in the distinctly wintry November of 1949 – the first polar bear successfully to be reared in Britain and no matter that, unaccustomed to such arrivals, the keepers for several months wrongly assumed that she was male.

All manner of souvenirs were produced, from soap bars to those Dean’s Rag Books, now worth a small fortune. Zoo visitors increased by a third.

The truth of the matter, however, is that Brumas wasn’t named because of the Arctic conditions but after her keepers, Bruce and Sam.

Much mourned, she died in 1958.

LONDON Zoo has always counted on its celebrities to weave a bit of animal magic, right back to Guy the Gorilla who arrived on November 5 1947 holding a tin hot water bottle and a very large audience.

Best remembered for talking to the sparrows he held in the palm of his rather hairy hand, Guy died in 1978 after having a tooth out.

When the zoo’s golden eagle – called Goldie, unsurprisingly – escaped in 1965, vast crowds caused traffic jams around Regents Park; Winnie, a black bear which arrived in 1914, was immortalised by AA Milne; Belinda, a bird-eating spider who lived until she was 22, is said to have helped cure many humans of their arachnophobia but may not have had the same effect on our feathered friends.

Particularly, however, the column is taken by Eros, a wild snowy owl which in 1950 collapsed – off course and exhausted – onto the deck of the Royal Navy vessel HMS Eros when off the Azores.

Taken back to the zoo, the old bird had three mates and fathered 57 chicks. Eros had lived up to his name.

WE’D also mentioned that Brumaire – from the French for fog – had become the name of the second month in the French revolutionary calendar, which began on September 22.

Year-round helpful, Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool offers the others.

The first was Vendemiaire, from the Latin for grape harvest, the third Frimaire from the French for frost.

Thereafter followed Nivose (Latin, snowy), Pluviose (Latin, rainy), Ventose (more Latin, windy), Germinal (Latin, germination), Floreal (Latin, flower), Prairial (French, pasture), Messidor (Latin, harvest), Thermidor (Greek, summer heat) and Frutcidor (Latin, fruit).

The cynical old English, alas, mocked it all by calling the winter months Wheezy, Sneezy and Freezy, followed by Slippy, Drippy and Nippy, Showery, Flowery and Bowery and Wheaty, Heaty and Sweety.

It didn’t do the French much good, either. What goes around comes around, as probably they said in the Revolution.

NORTHALLERTON, said a damning report in Monday’s paper, is the country’s oldest prison. For some reason we appear not to have been invited to the 225th birthday party, in 2008.

I remember just visiting when it was about 190, a pot boiling feature on how people in different walks of life would be spending Christmas Day.

Back then they even had lighthouse keepers.

It was an all-age jail in the Seventies, not the Young Offenders’ Institution it is today. The Home Office allowed access to an elderly chap – old lag in penal parlance – who’d spent many Christmases similarly incarcerated.

With hindsight, he was pretty much like Old Man Blanco, the Porridge character played by a young David Jason – he who didn’t murder his old lady but saw off the bloke that did it. What would he most miss about spending another Christmas Day inside, I asked? “Walking 100 yards in a straight line,” the old boy replied.

It remains the most profound thing I ever heard.

PORRIDGE, it will be recalled, was filmed at the fictional Slade prison – in reality a disused wing at Maidstone but supposedly in the wild west of Cumbria. It’s always been mildly surprising that one of the episodes allowed a free plug for The Northern Echo – said to be the local paper – though in truth we’ve historically found the Pennines insuperable.

By coincidence, Paul Beken in Durham emailed last week to express pleasure at another Echo reference in a repeated episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.

Whatever happened to The Northern Echo? We’re still ubiquitous, as usual.

FURTHER talk hereabouts of North-East places with distinctly transatlantic names prompts John Ingham in Lanchester to recall the “North American pub tour” they undertook in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election.

This one embraced everywhere from California in the south to Klondyke in the north and, of course, without ever leaving the region.

California’s in the Eston area of Teesside, and also in Witton Park.

Klondyke – it transpires – is part of Cramlington. There’s even a Klondyke Social Club.

Other calling points on the two-day itinerary included Toronto, Philadelphia, Belmont, Hartford (somewhere near Wideopen), New York (near North Shields) and Quebec.

By way of research, they also asked someone behind the bar at each pub who they thought would win the race for the White House. It finished dead level, 6-6 between Bush and Kerry with three floating voters.

A few days later the real thing was equally close, which just shows what can be achieved on 15 pints of Guinness.

Next up, the admirable Ingham and friends plan a World Tour, again without leaving the North-East. There’s the Australian in Howden-le-Wear, the Egypt Cottage next to where Tyne Tees Television once broadcast in Newcastle and, if it still stands, the Rock of Gibraltar in Tynemouth.

Someone even reckons there’s a Soviet Union bar in Consett and, of course, all sorts of exotically named clubs. Other global suggestions welcome, after which they envisage an inter-galactic tour – Half Moon and Rising Sun first on the list.

FURTHER to last week’s note on an attempt by a 19th Century canon of Durham Cathedral to persuade the Pope of the error of his ways, our attention is drawn to Shildon FC’s programme.

Published earlier this season, it quoted findings by “researchers” at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, which may greatly have troubled the present Vatican incumbent.

Pope Benedict XVI, they had concluded, had a 45 per cent chance of dying before the end of 2008 because Wales had won the rugby Grand Slam.

Eight pontiffs have died since 1883.

Three were in years when Wales won the Grand Slam, another two when the Red Dragon won the tournament but not the Grand Slam.

Dr Gareth Payne, of the University Hospital, passes it off as an “intriguing”

urban legend. “Every time Wales win the rugby Grand Slam a pope dies, except in 1978 when Wales did really well and two popes died.

“Using the Six Nations data for 2008, our model for the general theory of papal rugby predicts that 0.62 of the Pope will die this year.”

Benedict XVI – most of him, anyway – happily lives to dispel the tale.

…and finally, the problems facing the retail industry clearly aren’t affecting the Next group which last week sent me eight copies of the same press release in eight different envelopes and with eight different frankings. They all ended up in the same place, though. Next week’s column?

More Brumas? Mischa already.