LAST Saturday was St George's Day, latterly much trumpeted, though more than a quarter of Englishmen still can't name their patron and only one in five knows when the great day falls.

For an "English" saint, in truth, old George is remarkably cosmopolitan.

Though he may never have slain a dragon, rescued a damsel in distress or been within 1,000 miles of this green and pleasant enough land, his services remain much in demand.

George is also patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Germany and Greece; of Moscow, Istanbul, Genoa and Venice - a sort of reserve Venetian saint, behind St Mark - of soldiers and scouts, cavalry and chivalry, farmers and field workers, riders and saddlers, those who suffer from leprosy and skin diseases and of the United Reformed Church in Hartlepool.

It was the latter organisation which we addressed last Saturday evening. Cry God for Harry, England and Hartlepool URC.

IT was 20 years since we'd been on parade for a St George's Day do, invited with barely a week's notice to speak at the annual roast beef and ribaldry of the North Durham Conservative Association in Chester-le-Street.

First, the chairman had explained, they'd asked a few cabinet ministers; none was available. Then they'd asked as many Tory MPs as they could find within 100 miles of Chester-le-Street. With one consent they began to make excuse.

"Finally," the chairman added, "someone suggested yourself." There's a similar story in Luke 14:23, the bit about going out into the highways and hedges.

Hartlepool asked months ago, a lovely crowd who also laid on what the churches call a faith tea - a meal to which everyone's expected to bring something - and which previously was known as a love feast.

Though the title may be a little deceptive, memory suggests that they still have an annual love feast at Eggleston, in Teesdale.

Faith can move mountains, it's said, and doubtless it can. What may be even more remarkable is that every faith tea which these columns have ever enjoyed offered a richly varied repast, not eight stones of egg and tomato sandwiches and nothing else whatever.

RACONTEUR services rendered, the generous folk of St George's presented a splendid book called The Stories of English by David Crystal, billed as a sort of Bill Bryson guide to the history of the English language. Still barely skimmed, it adds to the list of definitions from Dr Samuel Johnson, the 250th anniversary of whose dictionary we noted last week. "Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities." Poor Sam had suffered, too.

THE penultimate train from Hartlepool to Middlesbrough leaves at 7.43pm, due to arrive in Thornaby - change for Darlington - at 8.07.

The train from Thornaby to Darlington departs at 8.04, the one after that 55 minutes later. This is doubtless what the Government, and the railways, know as integrated transport.

There are still, incidentally, two direct trains a week between Hartlepool and Darlington. Peak period, both run on Sunday afternoon only.

Time to kill and nearly an hour to fill, we wandered unknown into the vast new development on the other side of the tracks at Thornaby, known simply and egregiously as Teesdale.

Most of us might have supposed Teesdale to be the wonderfully scenic area of High Force and Cauldron Snout, of Cow Green, Raby Castle and Romaldkirk.

In Thornaby, Teesdale is home to the Wolfson Research Institute, the University of Durham Queen's Campus, Cleveland Health Care, Petroplus House and "TFM Radio Magic 1170".

Since it's Teesside, there's also a Bell's store and a lone kid orbiting aimlessly on a push bike.

It's not unattractive in an eerie, urban, artificial sort of way - but if there are all these clever folk about, did they really have to hijack the name of an area more appealing altogether?

AGAIN on Thornaby railway station, the eye fell upon an improbable poster for the de Vere Arms at Earls Colne, billed as "15 minutes from Colchester".

Though it was getting dark, the poster appeared to show three different photographs of ice cream dishes - they might have been mashed potato, or something - above the single word "Tempted?"

Don't ring here, ring (01787) 223353, and see if it pays to advertise.

BACK in time for the Britannia, where the splendid Sue served roast beef and Yorkshire pudding gratis, the conversation turned - or may shamelessly have been led - from faith teas to cricket teas.

The Cockerton CC Old Boys XI recalled apples and oranges at Eryholme - the skipper was a fruiterer - a packet of biscuits between both teams at Lindene, near Coxhoe, and cabbage sandwiches at Spennymoor.

"In those days, anything was possible at Spennymoor," they said.

Readers may care to submit further tales from the tea room before the infant season gets much older - but only after a decent interval, of course.

INCORRIGIBLY seeking Italian alliteration, we stumbled last week upon the hitherto undiscovered word "iterate", meaning to do or say again.

Thus its meaning is exactly the same as "reiterate" and makes reiterate not just nonsensical but redundant. (I say it makes....)

Like "inflammable", which means precisely the same as "flammable", it apparently crept into the language by what's known as hypercorrection, putting right what's not wrong in the first place.

We are also grateful to Mike Clark in Middlesbrough for adding to the debate on "Morris" - minor and otherwise - that it was also a verb, meaning to walk briskly or get a move on.

Thus, says Mike, the Artful Dodger orders Oliver to morris, in order to get them out of a sticky situation. More...

....so swiftly and finally, last week's column recorded hearing - in a pub in Preston - a rather sad and very lengthy ditty about Lord and Lady Barnard and the unfortunate Little Musgrave, who perished at his lordship's hand.

Though the recording was by the 1970s Irish band Planxty, the song itself is centuries old - a sort of medieval Lady Chatterley's Lover, we supposed. It may not have been the half of it.

A reader in Staindrop reports that while one long gone Lady Barnard was "rather flighty", another member by marriage of the Vane family was "definitely flighty".

She was Frances Hawes, whom grammarians may suppose to be pretty close to a homonym and blunter folk to be close to something else entirely.

Next week, with luck, we may discover rather more about Ms Hawes.