ALLEN Armstrong is one of the nicest men around: grey haired, getting on a bit, pony tailed and proud of it.

He is also warden of the south-west Durham churches of St John's, Lynesack and St Mary's, Woodland, and it was at Woodland's splendoured centenary that we bumped into him on Sunday.

Very gently, Allen had a bone to pick. Last time he appeared in these columns there'd been a misprint, he said. We referred to him as Alien Armstrong.

Allen is definitely not an alien but an admirably down-to-earthling and we wish to apologise. The misprint happened nine years ago. As they used to say in the lager commercials, some things take a little longer.

STILL seeking forgiveness - and today's is an incredibly mistaken column - At Your Service 11 days ago reported on a memorable Songs of Praise occasion at New Brancepeth Methodist church, west of Durham.

Among the hymns was the wonderful Love Divine, All Loves Excelling - sung, we said, to the tune Blindworm. We were mishearing things.

The tune, as several more musically minded readers have pointed out, is actually Blaenwern. "I was a bit surprised, what with your wife being Welsh and everything," echo Margery Burton from Shildon and Clarice Middleton, from Richmond.

Tim Stahl in Darlington not only recognised the egregious error but - blind leading the blindworm - conducted further research with a friend who plays organ in a Welsh crematorium.

"Blaen", they conclude, means at the front or on the edge of; "wern" - rather curiously - means "swamp" or "alder". Blaenwern, all loves excelling, is thus the place on the edge of a swamp.

A blindworm is neither blind nor a worm. Apart from that, as they almost said to Mrs Lincoln after the theatre, we were damn near word perfect.

ACKNOWLEDGING the column's all-time favourite word, Mr Stahl also points out that in Ohio there's a racehorse for sale called Serendipity, with siblings called Dennis the Menace - an altogether different threat across the Atlantic - and Supercalifragilisticexpialidotious. The great Bishop Auckland trainer Denys Smith once told the column that the maximum allowed for an English racehorse was 18 letters, including spaces. Here it would simply be Supercalifragilist, and probably run yet faster.

ANOTHER wrong note, or so Mrs Lynn Briggs alleges, last week's column supposed - after the 1951 musical Paint Your Wagon - that the wind was called Maria.

It wasn't, says Lynn, it was called Mariah - and quotes a great gust of Internet sources in support.

Maybe so, but why Black Maria? For her force four effrontery - ill wind - Lynn was set on to find out. She has proved invaluable with other aspects of today's column, too.

The term is undoubtedly American, whatever the Metropolitan Police might erroneously, feloniously, suppose. The Oxford English cites an 1847 Bostonian reference, though the Black Maria probably had a captive audience rather earlier.

Theories about the fearsome Boston landlady Maria Lee - said to help local constables to escort drunks to the cells - and about the society lady in Victorian London who dressed all in black, may both be discounted.

The most likely etymology is that Black Maria was a successful American racehorse around 1830, before they gave them daft names like Supercalifragilist.

These days prison vans are white and look like horse boxes, anyway. The wheels may have turned full circle.

LAST week's column also claimed that "Between a rock and a hard place" was an American colloquialism. Ian Forsyth in Durham was so convinced it was biblical that he hastened, tappy-lappy, to a concordance. Pearl beyond price, it was one we got right. As Ian scripturally observes, "Oh ye of little faith."

YET further proof that the Gadfly column is very far from journalism's cutting edge, we suggested that it was Lilly Borden who took an axe (and gave her mother 40 whacks.) The defendant, of course, was Lizzie.

Ian Forsyth knew that, as did Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool. Lizzie was tried in Massachusetts, home of the Black Maria, in 1892.

Ian also recalls the "popular" 1950s song "You can't chop your mama up in Massachusetts", which still haunts the Internet:

But you can't chop your mama up in Massachusetts,

Not even if you're tired of her cuisine,

No, you can't chop your mama up in Massachusetts,

You know it's almost sure to cause a scene.

Still better known is the version:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother 40 whacks,

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her mother 41.

She was tried before the Boston supreme court - Mass murder, as it were. Like many more of her sex, she got off.

RICHARD Eddowes, Chris's admirable old feller, also seeks to amend the assertion in last week's column that death is nature's way of telling you to slow down. A heart attack is nature's way of telling you to slow down, he says. Death is nature's way of telling you to stop.

WRITING on the wall, that last bit followed a note about London Underground graffiti. It reminded Ed Southgate in Stockton of a wartime cartoon character called Charlie Brown, devised to warn of black-out dangers in the capital.

Actually it was Billy Brown (of London Town) - none of us is perfect, Ed - who first saw the light when more Londoners were being killed in road accidents than by German bombs.

A typical Billy Brown poster is reproduced here, a wake-up call to dim wits.

Ed recalls travelling on the wartime Underground when carriage windows were criss-crossed with adhesive tape, in order to lessen the dangers of flying glass. The accompanying poster read:

Pardon me for my correction,

But this stuff's here for your protection.

Beneath it, Anonymous had struck again:

Thank you for your information

But I can't see my ******* station.

A Billy Brown carriage print sold for £30 at a railwayana auction in Malton, North Yorkshire, two months ago. Sixty years on, muses Ed, isn't it amazing what you remember?

NONE has satisfactorily explained why, for so long in the North-East, Conservative candidates wore red and Labour green. Former Redcar and Cleveland council leader David Walsh thinks it may have been something to do with Lord Londonderry and not (as the column supposed) Lord Lambton. Anyone else wish to show their colours?

SPREADING her largesse liberally of late, Janet Murrell in Durham points out that the University of the Third age conference at Leicester in August includes "afternoon tea" on Sunday morning and that "it must be for the White Rabbits amongst us".

This, of course, is a reference to Lewis Carroll and the Wonderland where - since the clock was always stopped at six o'clock - it was always time for tea.

"I told you butter wouldn't suit the works," reprimands the Mad Hatter.

"But it was best butter," the March Hare meekly replies.

So it is, so it is, and the column now takes a short tea break of its own in order to re-engage with Blaenwern and with other places in the land of her father's.

We return on June 22. As they used to say in the lager commercials, some things take a little longer.

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Published: ??/??/2004