While other pubs embraced the bank holiday, the column was well fed at the Fir Tree Inn.

GETTING on two years ago we received a letter from Harry Blackwood, then the Hartlepool Mail's recently departed editor and victim of that reinvigorated town's greatest miscarriage of justice - or so he has always claimed - since the unfortunate Napoloenic monkey.

Harry extolled the virtues of the White Hart in Hart village, a couple of miles inland, and particularly of its 18-year-old head chef and alleged Jamie Oliver lookalike David Coulson.

David was a Wingate lad, former schoolboy centre half with Sheffield United, a young man - The Boss had concluded - who ought to be encouraged.

Harry Blackwood had thought it worth holding the front page, too - "but if he cooked like that in Wingate," he added, "they'd think he was a Nancy boy".

GETTING on two weeks ago we received a telephone call from David Coulson, now pushing 20, reporting that his new place of work had had a £250,000 makeover and inviting us to the re-opening. "The food will be fantastic," he said.

It's the Fir Tree in Wingate. A bit Nancy Dan for those parts? "Wingate," said David, "is going to absolutely love it."

UNABLE to make the official opening - fear of crowds, probably - we attempted an evening booking two Mondays ago. "Sorry," they said, "closed all night."

Instead we tried the Red Lion in Trimdon Village - recently reborn, roundly recommended - couldn't find it in the phone book and went on spec.

The landlord stood in the doorway like Horatius keeping the bridge. "Sorry," he said, "we don't open on Mondays."

It was a bank holiday, of course, but isn't that when people are supposed to go to the pub? In the hope of being third time lucky, we headed for the Hare and Hounds, on the A177 between Sedgefield and Coxhoe. It was closed.

Not everyone knows that mayday, the international distress call, is from the French m'aidez, meaning "help me". At the time, whatever the language, it seemed signally appropriate.

THE whole of east Durham unilaterally having decided to skive off in solidarity with May Day, we headed 20 miles westward to the Fir Tree Inn, on the A68 near Crook.

The village is also called Fir Tree, an eponymous conifer in the pub car park - eponymous is like deciduous, only different - standing as further evidence of location and location.

Mr Martin Bell, former television newsreader and virginal MP, blew out like a whiter than white tornado as we breezed in, leaving just two others in the restaurant.

Margaret and Lawrie Stewart have had the place three-and-a-half years, spent a lot of money on it, host a friendly, convivial and attractive pub with a reasonably priced menu and Black Sheep on hand pump.

Last time they were in the paper, August 2003, a Mercedes had contrived to leave the road, crash through the wall and end up in their front lounge. Probably they made the driver feel welcome, too.

Sadly, however, the Black Sheep seemed also to be having a bit of an off-day; nor were they able to find the Arsenal score. "We've 76 channels and I can't work any of them," said Margaret, brandishing the remote control in the vague direction of the television.

We began, incorrigibly, with black pudding in beer batter with an ale chutney - so good it's doubtless bad for you - followed by a huge but slightly flaccid cod with indifferent chips and a handsome sticky toffee pudding from a particularly inexpensive pudding list.

The Boss had a creamy and particularly spicy "mushroom pepperpot" with fried garlic bread which she thought excellent; her freshly cooked salmon was pleasantly flavoured, the accompanying salad much more imaginative and attractively presented than is par for the pub course.

Particularly we were impressed by young Katie Moore, the cheery waitress, which was probably just as well (it transpired) because not only do we know her dad but he's a polliss, an' all.

The bill for two courses apiece, one pudding and one coffee was about £25 the lot. The Fir seal.

STILL branching out, we took Sunday lunch at Fir Tree's other pub, the Duke of York, said to have been built in 1760 and to have been in the Suggett family for four generations.

As if to underline the antecedents, one wall was hung with framed and almost historic notes of complete satisfaction from 60s' celebrities like Owen Brannigan - who famously endorsed Newcastle Brown Ale, too - from Michael Caine, Ludovic Kennedy and from someone who might have been Kenneth Connor, but whose signature carried on up the indecipherable.

We fell to discussing whose sidekick Connor originally was. Was it Ted Ray or someone?

Brown Ale Brannigan and the rest would probably still have recognised the place. Certainly it seemed little to have changed since our last visit around ten years ago, save that the car park had had its wings clipped by a rather attractive new housing development called Priorswood.

Chalked above both bars, the menu offered dishes with suffixes like Morengo, Zacharoff and Normande - it sounded like Chelsea's midfield - and a steak and kidney pie prefixed HM.

On the point of assuming that it was of Her Majesty's - as, for example, is Durham Jail - we realised that "HM" meant home made, instead.

None of them was available. They only do roasts, salads and sandwiches on the Sabbath.

There wasn't really anything wrong with the place. It just seemed dull, unspontaneous, cling-wrapped and time warped in an age when Sunday lunch meant Two Way Family Favourites.

There are doubtless many who would welcome its return, and who still carry an Ever Ready torch for Cliff Michelmore.

The roasts were mainly £8.50, the salads up to £9.50. The Boss thought the beef fine, the accompanying salad altogether tedious. So it was, the sort of salad they used to serve when you still needed three coupons to buy an egg, without a hint of invention or originality.

The roast pork, including comatose vegetables and cloying gravy, had all been plated beforehand. Again the meat, generously sliced, was the best bit. The veg were paraded in little lukewarm mounds, as orderly and as exciting as a preparatory school crocodile.

Again we ordered a single pudding, something called a raspberry and Drambuie cranachan which came, unasked, with cream.

It was the sort of thing which last we'd heard in a West Highland bed and breakfast - probably called the Wee Free - but it is not, alas, another for the frame.

Grand old Duke of York? Old enough, anyway.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what angry rodents send each other at Christmas.

Cross mouse cards, of course.