John North: Mayor from the fair

THE mayor's parlour is in a caravan at the far end of an industrial estate, next to a domestic waste disposal site and to a place selling tyres and things.

Neither he nor the mayoress has ever contemplated bricks and mortar. "It's a free country, I just don't want to live in a house," says John Culine.

"Our Victoria has a lovely house in Rhyl but I honestly don't envy her," says his wife, Davina. "I love it here, a place for everything and everything in its place. I've never thought about a house. I don't think I'd be comfortable in one."

Properly pronounced Cue-lean, the Culine name is familiar, usually fleetingly, throughout the North-East. Generations have been showmen, travelling fairground operators. Now John, 57, is Mayor of Spennymoor, too.

Fifty other showmen and women from across the north crowded into the mayor making; The World's Fair joined The Northern Echo in the press box.

"It was the proudest moment of my life," he says, hailed in the nomination speech as "a kind, thoughtful and caring gentleman".

He thought they were proposing someone else, he says.

The family tree, which assiduously he has long cultivated, reveals that his Tudor forebears were mummers and jesters and that in the 19th century they were rope dancers, equestrians, shooting gallery proprietors, smart bar acts, clowns, strongmen and circus owners.

One even threw knives at Buffalo Bill, when the Wild West Show came to Durham. The Culines, it might be said, knew every trick in the book.

Though they'd performed in front of Queen Victoria and other crowned heads of Europe, the circus show was introduced a little more humbly: "We're not kings or queens, we're the marvellous Culines."

"Mademoiselle" Alice, the mayor's grandmother, was a celebrated tightrope walker who, though unable to swim, attempted in 1890 to cross Bridlington harbour. "Great interest was manifested in the anticipated exploits," reported the Bridlington Free Press.

Unceremoniously dunked at the first attempt, she succeeded the following day, raising 17/6d for the lifeboat fund on a rope so fine it was kept in her husband's waistcoat pocket.

The Culine caravan, horse drawn at the time, first rested at Spennymoor in November 1884, the circus's last booking before the winter break.

William Cullen - "Culine" was deemed to have a "better ring" for circus crowds and was later changed officially - had throat cancer, died two months later and is buried in Holy Innocents churchyard.

It gave the family a reason to return. They spent World War II camped behind Queen Street - older Spennymoor folk still remember the "black-out" fair, when Granny (Alice) Culine let soldiers ride for free - and were back for the town gala in May 1947, when John Clifford Culine was born in a caravan in Jubilee Park.

"It's on my birth certificate, I'm very proud of that," he says.

They moved onto their present site - where Tudhoe colliery once stood - in 1977, when there was no road, no electricity and no trees. Now they own the site, and are permanently settled, after selling their rides.

Though the Fantasia Funhouse and Super Waltzer are in vans nearby, they belong to others, simply resting between engagements. "I miss being on the road when the sun's out, I miss sitting on the grass talking to the lads," says John, a self-taught computer whizz.

The caravan has three bedrooms and a bathroom, handsome living quarters and an overflowing office. The new mayor is also full-time northern section secretary of the Showmen's Guild - originally the Van Dwellers' Association - one of the men who ensures that the shows must go on.

"Like Spennymoor and other places around here, fairground operators still have a bit of an image problem," he says. "Neither is justified."

The Guild so strictly controls its members' activities that it can fine them up to £5,000 if an employee misbehaves - even away from the fairground.

"The Newcastle Hoppings were always good business and we can get a week's keep from the village greens but there are so many other forms of entertainment now," says John.

"We have too many gaps in the schedule. We need more town centres."

Fairground folk are also incredibly close, one family often marrying into another. "We're a funny lot," says the mayoress. "Hit one of us and we all fall down."

She's from a Sheffield show family, met her husband in 1967 at the Town Moor fair in Newcastle - "you'd be surprised how many do". They have five daughters - "I'm certainly surrounded by women," grumbles John, genially - two of whom have already married into other showground families.

There'd be a long way to travel, insists Davina, before they'd even consider leaving Spennymoor. "People look you in the eye here, talk to you in the paper shop, tell you what they think.

"I'm still a show woman but in Spennymoor, you're accepted for who you are."

George Tuby, another showman, was mayor of both Whitby and of the borough of Scarborough. Jim Lambert was mayor of Durham. John, a Labour town councillor since 1999, is the first in Spennymoor, hopes to raise £10,000 in his year of office for the children's cancer appeal at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle and promises all the fun of the fair-minded.

"Spennymoor councils have always been very good to my family and I just want to give something back. We might have moved about a bit but I'm a Spennymoor lad and proud of it and I'd really love to make my mark in promoting the town, putting it on the map, and not just because of my colourful background.

"It's a place with great potential, there are houses going up, the market's improving. I know people grumble about the shops, but they won't get better unless customers start spending money there." He's a very nice man, they a very nice couple - a Culine break for the mayoralty, and an invigorating one, too.

Rambling ride to make the senses reel

HERE is a plug for Arriva buses, which they will neither expect nor appreciate. (Appreciation would come in the form of a ticket to ride, or even - from one or two of the drivers to distraction - a half-civil word.)

At 9.30am every summer Sunday, and on August Bank Holiday Monday, a service runs directly from Darlington to Hawes Countryside Museum, travels up Swaledale to Thwaite and then across the beauteous Buttertubs into Wensleydale.

Triumphantly, the timetable lists Buttertubs Summit. Probably it stops so that passengers can enjoy the stupendous spectacle, as the West Highland Railway does on Glenfinnan viaduct.

The return's at 6.10pm from Hawes. We caught it 35 minutes later at Gunnerside, thus doubling the number of passengers throughout the journey.

The other guy sat cowering in a corner at the back, like a mouse in a state controlled cattery. The bus stopped occasionally, as if it were Mr Whippy, or maybe because someone might take pity on it.

It really is a case of cruise it or lose it, which would be a great pity. Over the hills and far away, service 830 is truly a transport of delight.

AS part of the Swaledale Festival, incidentally, "Art in the Pub" continues at the Kings Arms in Gunnerside until July 13.

This includes, framed in the gent's but with 8x6in copies available for £2.50 over the bar, a rather revealing 2004 painting called "Cheeky girls naked karaoke."

Whether this all took off in the Kings, or whether the Swaledale Festival considers naked karaoke to be an art form, we have sadly been unable to discover.

WALKING the wooded former railway incline between Stanley Hill Top and Esh Winning the other day, we came across a curious construction - a bit like a metallic bird table - with the number 92 painted upon it.

By the roadside between Croxdale and Spennymoor there's an identical sign, except that the figure has decreased to 70.

Is this a Durham County Council competition of some sort? Is there a prize for collecting the full set? Can anybody play? Perhaps readers can explain how it all adds up.

...and finally among these travellers' tales, the Daily Telegraph reports that Annette Howard - she of Castle Howard, near Malton - has completed a 24 day charity horse ride from Edinburgh to London. Only one of her 22 horses proved troublesome.

The journey offered surprises. "Milton Keynes has some beautiful bits. I was expecting only concrete motorways," she says.

After meanderings perhaps even more beautiful than Milton Keynes, the column returns in a fortnight.