Eating Owt: 'Driven by people, not profits'

IT'S A fairly roundabout route by Green Bus to the Eating Owt column, but in suggesting that they might have a Green run to Marrakech, last week's piece on African cuisine got there pretty successfully.

Green Bus, it should be explained, is the sapling company which reaches the parts other buses cannot reach, at least in the extensive borough of Darlington.

"People said we wouldn't last three weeks," says managing director Richard Cranmer, delighted so improbably to have been flagged down - or possibly, come to think, flagged up.

A week today, with balloons and party poppers and a certain gentle satisfaction, the company celebrates its first anniversary.

There's a direct service between Bishopton and Royal Oak - one end closer to Stockton than Darlington, the other just a couple of miles above West Auckland. There's a two-hourly route through Houghton-le-Side, among the smallest microdots ever Ordnance Surveyed, and links between parts of Darlington thought no less irredeemably off the map.

They are driven by people, says Richard, not by profit.

"We provide an important service to the people of those places. There are two or three regulars in Houghton-le-Side, but I don't really know why we go to Royal Oak because I don't think anyone even lives there."

He was a former manager at Stagecoach, began Green Bus as a subsidised limited company, insists they're heading in the right direction, if only at around 20pmh.

The term "Green" may be misleading, however, since they also have red buses and white buses. "Green" is a reference to their avowed environmental friendliness, though they aim to be accommodating in other ways, too.

"We provide a different type of service from Arriva and Stagecoach, we specialise in the smaller stuff," says Richard. "There's no reason why anyone in Darlington should ever use the car for a short journey."

A Scot who lost his accent (he says) in a chemistry laboratory accident when he was 16, he now lives in Heighington, claims that they want to be more personable and more approachable and always to have the customer as top priority.

Though Green Buses sometimes seem to have as many passengers as the Marie Celeste at chucking out time, there are still moments when the corporate sap rises.

"You can't begin to appreciate how excited me and the drivers get at a full bus," says Richard. "We've had quite a few recently."

Since all of this may be considered a little tangential, we suggested he be photographed with a sandwich. It's not Eating Owt for nowt, after all.

THE people at Durham Cathedral have placed a sits vac for an evening cleaner, thus providing an additional and much appreciated source of income for this company and prompting a senior cathedral lady there to suggest we buy the Dean a sumptuous lunch by way of compensation.

The Very Rev Michael Sadgrove appears a man of more modest tastes, however. We lunch at his suggestion in the Undercroft restaurant in the cathedral cloisters - eagerly open to all but for men like him a sort of ecclesiastical works canteen - and are recognised by the manageress. The Dean may need a long spoon, she says, or something to that effect.

Dean Sadgrove is also one of that distinguished band of Anglican clergymen who is something of a railway buff. Not only did he bless the opening of the Weardale Railway but he arrived in Durham in the cab of a GNER 225, a perk available only to the Very Reverend.

Tradition, he believes, also allows Durham's deans the right to flag down any train they fancy catching as it heads through the city's station. Perhaps wisely, he sticks to the timetable.

The Undercroft is busy, inexpensive, self-service and hung with watercolours for sale. There are two bottled beers, Cloister and Evensong, from the admirable Durham Brewery. One of us sticks to Adam's ale.

From a short menu we have carrot and coriander soup - the present passion for carrot and coriander is not easily explained - and a pleasant chicken korma; the Dean has the sweet and sour roast vegetables which he considers splendid. The cakes are said to be no less enjoyable.

The Dean has also been scouring the North-East, so far unsuccessfully, for a pair of blue suede shoes. No Elvis impressions, no drain pipe trousers, just a man who dresses in black all day and likes to put a different foot forward when off duty.

He's size 11 or 12, would like to pay less than £100 and we'll enthusiastically pass on suggestions. It beats the cost of an advert, doesn't it?

THERE was another ecclesiastical connection two weeks ago when, reporting a short holiday on the North Yorkshire moors, we noted a pleasant pint in the Blacksmiths Arms in Lastingham, near Pickering, and the truly extraordinary church nearby.

The link, recalls Tim Grimshaw in North Shields, used to be even stronger. In 1993, unemployed graduate Peter Frost - whose parents had the Blacksmiths - began the Lastingham Brewery with real ales like Church Bitter, Curate's Downfall, Choirboy and Confession.

Francis Hewitt, then the vicar, blessed the enterprise and - recalling the parable about water and wine - enthusiastically patronised it, too. The Prince of Wales gave it an award, the House of Commons ordered supplies, young Peter was named North Yorkshire businessman of the year.

By 1995 he was producing 6,000 pints a week and employing three staff. Two years after it began, however, the brewery suddenly closed. For Steeple Bitter, Festival Bitter and the mischievously named Bell End, it was sadly the long Amen.

ANOTHER passing pint, that same column reported a quickie in the Fox and Hounds at nearby Sinnington - where we noted four dogs and several smokers in the bar. Landlady Catherine Stephens asks us to point out that the rest of the pub is smoke, and dog, free. "The bar is mainly for the locals. Unlike a lot of gastropubs, we still like to look after them."

IT remains one of the best remembered opening paragraphs in almost 40 years at the ink well: "It wasn't just the walls which were fresh plastered at the refurbished Bridge Inn at Ramshaw; so was the chef."

Among those with particular reason to remember that disastrous evening in September 1972 is Angela Seagrave, encountered in the Bridge last week.

It had been her first night as a waitress. The new chef, a former merchant seaman, had been heavily on the grog. "We just stood there with our hearts in our boots," Angela recalls. "Every time something went wrong, the chef would say 'Shiver me timbers' and have another drink."

Ramshaw's a hamlet in west Durham, divided from Evenwood by the bridge in question - under which much water has flowed since then. Word is that the upstairs at the Trotters Arms - one horse but two pubs - is about to open as an Indian restaurant.

From a lengthy menu, a Bridge paella suggested that things have much improved, though it was a bit hard to discern the squid, pollock and sundry other queer fish said to be floating around in it. A good span, nonetheless.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's yellow, brown and hairy.

The cheese on toast they'd just spilled on the carpet.