DESPITE one or two breakdowns in communication which even the RAC might be pushed swiftly to repair, the lady of this house is generally very good about being the permanently designated driver.

Usually she will fetch and carry without rancour, offering the dual advantage over the local taxi firm that a) she doesn't expect a tip and b) the taxi driver's not normally there to make bacon sandwiches next morning.

Just occasionally, however, it is necessary to oil the wheels of obligation, as the other afternoon when she was persuaded to chauffeur to the extremes of the Echo's eclectic empire in exchange for lunch at the Feversham Arms in Helmsley. It was very, very good.

Helmsley's in North Yorkshire, an attractive market town on the road from Thirsk to Scarborough and dominated for centuries by the Feversham family.

The Boss has met them, claims even to be on first name terms with her ladyship - "Lovely person, Polly" - and reckons that Lord Feversham looked like the gardener. (His lordship might want to sue as a result; so, come to think, might the gardener.)

The Feversham Arms is next to the church, an exceedingly civilised place with a health club and swimming pool out the back. On a jolly July afternoon, grateful guests lounged beside it, reclined with thanks.

The exterior is handsomely traditional. The logo, an amorous intertwining of the letters F and A, suggests at once an embrace of ancient and modern. Some might think it a bit risque, others Fairly Anodyne.

In the light of recent revelations from Soho Square, the Feversham Arms might simply wish to change its name to The Cricketers, instead.

The lounge - all deep leather armchairs, Mousey Thompson tables and country couth, is piled with books by latter day gods like Conran, Titchmarsh, Jancis Robinson and Rick Stein but not, sadly, with anything by the chap next door.

David Wilbourne, Helmsley's vicar, has written several excellent volumes and contributes an enlivening Church Times column, an' all.

There was also a November Sales catalogue, as thick as a hurdler's hoof plate. Where the column comes from, a November sale took place in the church hall, marked the first appearance of Father Christmas and allowed the purchase of most of the family presents for under a fiver.

Lunch was in the airy dining room at the back, the menu suggesting modern English cooking, the waitress hopping with glee when told it was almost 2pm. She'd been there since 6.30, she said. The staff were uniformly excellent.

Back at table, however, the conversation treadmilled towards working hard, The Boss recalling the high born Romans had slaves to whack them one with a bundle of rods if ever they - the gaffers, that is - showed signs of slacking.

The bundle was called a fasces, the bearers were fascisti. Hence the word fascists; not many people know that.

She'd started with vivid home made fish cakes with buttered spinach and a horseradish veloute, we with a carrot, honey and ginger soup blended with a light and sure touch.

Her seared fresh tuna nicoise salad - the fish van from Hodgson's of Hartlepool still outside - was meant as a main course, charged as a starter, and was generous, nonetheless.

We ordered what the menu called slow roast shoulder of new season lamb with creamed Spring leaves and confit garlic. The lamb was luscious, the rest interesting. A bit like a lamb casserole, really.

Other lunchtime main courses included wild mushroom and local asparagus lasagne with white truffle oil, sausage and mash with caramelised onion gravy and apple chutney, rib-eye steak with pommes lyonnaise and Yorkshire blue cheese.

Sandwiches, served with fries, are around £6; puddings mostly £4.95, inevitably turning to the unfortunate murder victim from that Derbyshire town, an easy-going lady whose nickname can all too easily be imagined. Good coffee in another of the lounges.

The owner's an affable Fifer called Simon Rhatigan, who says in the brochure that he likes to think his hotel is a place at ease with itself and whose cv includes senior positions at the celebrated Mainor au Quat' Saisons in Oxfordshire and with Tom's Companies, owners (among much else) of the richly lauded Seaham Hall Hotel on the Durham coast, where Simon was manager.

Like the miracle of the blind beggar, the scales fell from the eyes and all became clear. This is Seaham Hall on a different budget but with many of the same values, not least in staff training.

The reason that Seaham Hall has defied all the conventions of location, location and location, charged top dollar and thrived on it, is not just because it has been brilliantly marketed but because it does what it chooses to do idiosyncratically but incomparably well.

The Feversham follows: a day with a big, big lift.

l The Feversham Arms Hotel, High Street, Helmsley (01439 770766.) Three course lunch about £20 without drinks, set dinner £30 plus carte. Pint of Landlord bitter, £3. No problem for the disabled.

A DOZEN miles further on, we stopped off at the Crown Hotel, in Malton - known local as Suddaby's and run by the same family since 1879 - after a report in The Times that "Malton Goddess" was being brewed there in honour of a recent archaeological restoration.

It's not. After 20 years brewing in the former stables out the back, production at the Malton Brewery has ceased, brands, recipes and operations transferred to the burgeoning Hambleton Brewery, near Thirsk.

The Crown still sold Malton Goddess in bottles, though on draught it becomes Queen B. B's knees? They've probably brewed better.

CAF Unique has opened in Bondgate, Darlington. What's so special about that, then? Well, the bacon and tomato baguettes were spot on, the filter coffee lusty and the staff attentive.

We spent the best part of two hours there last Tuesday, the same day - coincidentally - that the Schott's Miscellany tear-off calendar devoted its page to coffee shop slang. A "no fun" is a decaff, a "lungo" a long pull of espresso and a regular filter coffee is a drip.

It was all very pleasant. Maybe not Caf Unique, but Caf Prettypromising, anyway.

LAST week's column on the restaurant at the reinvigorated Harperley Hall prisoner of war camp, near Crook, asked where the hell was Hilversum, and why the name appeared on so many old wireless dials. Thanks to all the readers - listeners, too - who located it south-east of Amsterdam.

June Prested suggests that the name "wireless" came about when "cats' whiskers" no longer became necessary to work a radio, John Milburn recalls his long gone days at Fir Tree junior school, near Harperley, when they'd wander at will around the camp - then used by local farmers for storage.

"We even had the occasional song and dance routine in the old camp theatre. Unfortunately, I was no Fred Astaire."

Bob Harbron in Norton, Stockton, recalls that there was also a PoW camp at Kiora Hall, nearby, where the German inmates made wooden toys - "sometimes wooden chickens, which pecked" - which could be swapped for ten Woodbines at Christmas.

The toys, adds Bob, were very popular. "So far as I remember, most of the Germans were supposed to be all right, too."

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew how you get down from an elephant.

You don't, down comes from a duck.