IT'S one of the region's most cherished, most memorable and most stirring traditions: bands and banners marching proudly through former pit communities on their way to Durham Big Meeting.

Now, however, the coalfield tradition is being seriously undermined - for fear that someone might twist an ankle.

"It's all because we live in a litigious society," says Ferryhill Town Council executive officer Jamie Corrigan. "More than 250 men died at the two pits in this town and now we're being told that we can't even remember them properly."

Demands of new legislation mean that in Ferryhill Station, for example, the band leading the Mainsforth and Dean and Chapter banners can play outside the workmen's club and the Surtees Arms a week on Saturday - but will have to travel by bus between the two.

Until the town council agreed to meet an insurance and traffic management package, the only march police would allow in Ferryhill village would have been from the Post Box to the Market Place - fewer than 100 yards.

"The world has gone crazy," says march organiser and town council vice-chairman Valman Woods. "They told me that if anything went wrong, I'd be personally responsible and might have to sell my house to pay for the damages.

"It's been going on for 120 years without so much as someone cutting his knee. People in Ferryhill village are over the moon that it's continuing, but we just couldn't afford to cover the Station as well."

Many more colliery communities, says Mr Corrigan, will be unable to march because they simply can't afford to meet the new financial demands.

Now, however, there will be a Friday evening parade from the Aged Miners' Homes to the market place after the town council agreed to meet the £5m public liability insurance, to advertise road closures and provide barriers to close side roads and to provide the necessary workforce.

Mr Corrigan insists that it's worth it. "I'm not blaming the police because they're only applying the rules, but it would have been a good example of getting involved with the community.

"The council's motto is 'The past we inherit, the future we build'; maintaining this tradition is part of that."

And the present? "All I can say," adds Mr Corigan with municipal diplomacy, "is that it's blooming annoying."

STILL with miner matters, we were delighted while walking through Horden on Saturday to spot in a window of the former colliery terrace that is Third Street the following hand written notice: "Damn right I'm good in bed. I can sleep for days."

I CATCH the bus most mornings at Scotch Corner, probably the region's best known road junction. If the bus shelter were a pig sty they'd call the RSPCA, prosecute North Yorkshire County Council and have us photographed for a shock issue of an animal rights magazine.

While the bus shelter grows daily more sub-human, however, the authorities are busy elsewhere.

Once a year, or so it seems, they slap more paint on the roads around Scotch Corner roundabout than onto the Forth Bridge. Each time the markings are changed; no-one seems to know why.

It's also about once a year that a lorry overturns while negotiating the southern slip road, spilling its heavy load and blocking A1 access for half a day.

It happened again last week, causing endless delays, tying up several traffic policemen and adding immeasurably to atmospheric pollution. As before, the camber gamblers at County Hall are likely only to address the problem with a paint brush.

Might they not take the brush to the road signs, too? Shouldn't it be Botch Corner, instead?

LOCAL authorities have always been perverse, of course, as last week's column noted when discussing Barnard Castle Town Council's outrageous attempts to stop members speaking to the press.

Back from holiday in Pembrokeshire, we compared it to the national fight by Frank Mason - editor of the Tenby Observer in the Edwardian era - to overturn a ban on his paper attending meetings of his local council.

In 1914, we now learn, Mason - by then a councillor himself - finally resigned in disgust. "Their ideas of what is likely to prove beneficial to Tenby vary widely from mine," he wrote.

Tenby's still a favoured holiday spot, but what seemed to Mason to be the last resort concerned street lighting.

In September 1913, a Bristol firm had successfully applied to install electric lamps in Tenby. Four months later the council changed its mind, Frank Mason the only dissident.

The council, unenlightened, insisted upon gas instead.

STILL Welsh dressing, last week's column referred to the "Land of her father's" - a phrase used hereabouts several times in the past.

Playing on that stirring song of Welsh patriotism, it was intended simply to suggest that my wife's only male parent was thoroughbred Welsh - as, very proudly, is she.

Clarice Middleton in Richmond insists that the word "her" is possessive enough, that the apostrophe is superfluous - "I keep wondering, her father's what?" - and sends the sheet music as witness for the prosecution.

"Wales! Wales! Land of the mist and the wild." How very true that was two weeks ago.

We replied, explained, pleaded. Clarice, among the column's most learned correspondents, is unmoved. Would it have been the same, had it been the land of her dads?

The latest from the Welsh borders, alas, is that Sharon unequivocally agrees with her.

KEN Spearen in School Aycliffe, near Darlington, draws attention to the ad in last Wednesday's paper for a £20k+ "Young persons participation worker" to operate in Teesdale and Wear Valley.

Other vacant situations included a "Lean facilitator", presumably not suited to upright citizens, and an "Inclusive activator" for Middlesbrough Council.

It's the job description which particularly interests Ken, however: "To develop initiatives to involve young people between the ages of five and 13 in decisions about service delivery."

In favour of catching them young, he's aghast, nonetheless. What experience of life, he asks - or of service delivery come to that - does a child of five have to be able to comment?"

"I'm beginning to wonder," adds Ken, not unreasonably, "if anyone has a real job any more."

T'OTHER end of the age scale, the ever-vigilant Janet Murrell in Durham discovers an ad for a "fitness trainer" for the elderly.

"As these third age, silver-surfer, have-it-alls want the joys of youth - dance, drink, recreational drugs, sex - they'll need to train up for it," says the job description.

"A touch of T'ai chi, a fillip of Feldenkrais and a hint of Pilates will set them up nicely."

...and finally, Steve Leonard in Middleton Tyas, near Richmond, notes on his return from holiday in Switzerland an interesting sign on a litter bin at Newcastle Airport. "Foreign object debris only," it says. Does it mean, ponders Steve, that you can no longer bring in all that rubbish from aboard?

Published: 29/06/2005