John North: Fine and Danby

DANBY is a single platform station on the line from Middlesbrough to Whitby with a rudimentary shelter, an old fashioned bench and a few flower tubs doing their best in the circumstances.

Everything seems in Sunday parlour order. Were it not so, were so much as a here nor there out of place, Mervyn Walker would be on the track.

We fell into conversation with Mervyn at a do the other night. Happily retired from North Yorkshire County Council, he has "adopted" Danby - his station in later life - under a scheme run by Arriva.

The job involves four visits a month, ticking a few boxes, making comments where necessary. The payment is an Arriva Northern free pass, unlimited travel from Lincoln to Liverpool and up almost to the Scottish border - Chathill, as they used to say, for Seahouses.

Arriva Northern has over 200 stations, each similarly "adopted" and - not entirely surprisingly - with a waiting list. A bit like putting the bairn's name down for Eton, we suggest to the young lady in the press office.

"I'm not quite sure it's quite like that but we were the first in the country to introduce the scheme, in addition to our own inspections, and we're very pro-active about it," she says.

Jobs for the old boys? "Anyone can do it. Often they live near the station, but it doesn't matter. It's another pair of eyes and ears for us."

Envious as eyeballs, we thought of asking to be added to the list but would probably have been allocated British Steel Redcar.

Minimum five days between each visit but otherwise to suit himself, Mervyn travels by train and clipboard from his home in Northallerton, 10.30am from Middlesbrough, a pleasant couple of hours in Danby before the train ambles back towards the Boro.

"It's an idyllic village, surrounded by sheep and daffodils," he reports. "There's a lovely little caf with great bread, then a pint and the paper in the Duke of Wellington and the 13.19 home again." Monday didn't quite go according to plan, however. It poured, electricity supply knocked out by the storm, no hot water at the cafe ("I missed me Earl Grey") and the Welly closed on Monday lunchtimes.

"Even the mobile phone wouldn't work," says Mervyn. "I thought the line might get blocked and they'd find me six months later, huddled up in that little shelter."

The column followed him next day, £9.30 day return from Darlington. The weather was little better, though power restored and pub open. Four fellow travellers occupied the 10.30, one underflowed the return.

Danby station was welcoming and informative, recently painted and not a paling out of place. Mervyn may care to note, however - he probably already has - that the sign advising that there is no public telephone nearby is two yards from a public telephone.

"They don't always seem to take notice," he says.

The village is as attractive as he supposes - castle where Catherine Parr once lived, Trumptonesque fire station, 350-year-old restored water mill which on a day like Tuesday seemed a little superfluous.

What's a little wet to a water mill?

The Stonehouse caf was superb - everything home-made, wonderful spicy tomato soup with croutons and olive bread, a run on Ruswarp pies - the Welly coal-fired and cosy.

They talked of the weather ("lot of watter down't beck"), of someone's pet dog ("barmy owld bugger") and of the state of the economy, though that wasn't so much a discussion as a monologue from the ex-ICI chap in the corner.

The 13.19 arrived perfectly to time. Transport of delight? Fine and Danby, anyway.

* Details of how to adopt a station from Arriva Northern on (01904) 522799.

The Good Book, chapter and verse

THE good news is that the Bible Society - formed in a tavern - is marking 200 years of doing it by the Book, the bad that we had to miss a bicentenary service in Durham last Saturday. The bishop, it's reckoned, was on fine form.

Durham was entirely appropriate. Granville Sharp, the British and Foreign Bible Society's co-founder and first chairman, was born in the city in 1717, baptised in the cathedral, attended Durham School.

He was also a leading anti-slavery campaigner. A memorial plaque is in the town hall.

Son of an archdeacon, grandson of the Archbishop of York, 12th of a family of 14, Sharp became an apprentice draper in London and though without formal education, taught himself Hebrew and Greek.

In the mid-18th century, it's reckoned, England still had 10,000 slaves, "owned" by retired or visiting West Indian planters. Sharp - small space, long story - took on the highest in the land in the battle to win their freedom, succeeding in 1772 in obtaining a declaration that any slave who set foot on English soil would become free.

William Wilberforce also became involved, helping Sharp celebrate world abolition in 1807.

Sharp died in 1813 - "full of years and honours", says a biography. Westminster Abbey houses another memorial. In acknowledgement of a great man and in penitence for missing Saturday's service, the column offers ten things - chapter and verse - which readers might otherwise never have known about the Bible Society.

1. Though a translation can take 20 years, the Bible is available in 2,303 languages.

2.The Society is said to have been inspired by Mary Jones, a Welsh girl who saved for six years and then walked 25 miles to the nearest town to buy a Bible.

3.The Bible Society's first translation was of St John's Gospel into the Canadian Indian Mohawk language.

4.By its 50th anniversary, the Society had distributed 152 million scriptures in 28 languages.

5.By the centenary, 181 million scriptures had been circulated, the Society employing 1,000 "colporteurs" - travelling salesmen and women.

6.A supporter between the wars taught his parrot to say "Give a shilling to the Bible Society."

7.The Society distributed 45 million scriptures during World War II, despite bombing of its London headquarters. "There isn't the slightest reason why our activities should be curtailed," said a report.

8.More than 30 million Bibles and New Testaments have been printed in China since 1987 - lined up they'd stretch 4,000 miles, longer than the Great Wall.

9.In 2002 the Bible Society distributed 578 million scriptures worldwide, including 25 million Bibles and 22 million New Testaments.

10.The Richmond branch of the Society plans a walk to Easby Abbey on the evening of June 20, followed by a short service, and is looking for eight people to read a verse of scripture (John 3:16) in their own language. Details from Daphne Clarke, 01748 822651.

From Confucius to Gordon Brown

LEAVING tomorrow after 18 years as Durham County Council's director of social services, Peter Kemp has produced for friends and colleagues a splendid little book of aphorisms.

Its unwitting contributors range from Confucius - "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day" - to former US vice-president Dan Quayle, who may have been slightly less profound.

Gracie Allen makes it ("They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it") alongside Snoopy ("Two minutes before the party is not the time to learn to dance") and Albert Einstein, who believed imagination to be more important than knowledge.

Gordon Brown's observation that a "strong civil society takes seriously its obligations to the elderly" - March 2000, immediately before putting 75p on the pension - sits on the same page with, unattributed, what might be a local government watchword.

"To err is human, to blame someone else is politics."

Mr Kemp, a 56-year-old Sunderland supporter, says he is looking for "a change of direction".

THE "R3" Tenors play Spennymoor Town Hall on May 7. For Robert Crowe, one of the three, it's a return to remarkable roots.

Born in Hartlepool, former apprentice boilermaker and D'Oyly Carte man, his family tree grows in the Spennymoor area.

His great grandfather was the first Byers Green polliss and was murdered; Dorothy Crowe, another ancestor, was convicted with five feller felons of peeling the bark off 200 elm trees in the Bishop's Park at Bishop Auckland - it was used, apparently, to make an hallucinogenic wine.

Yet another was the unfortunate mother who lost four children in a fortnight, as recorded on a stone in Whitworth graveyard.

Robert's now in Scotland (01764 684535) but would love to hear from others with a family connection and to arouse interest in next Friday's performance.

Tickets are £8, £6 concessions, from the town hall on (01388) 815276.

Several early warning systems were activated by last week's note on the "Baedecker raid" on York engine sheds in 1942. Readers disagree with the suggestion that they were named because the Germans had no accurate maps and had to use Baedecker tourist guides instead. Off the page if not necessarily off the map, we'll have to have more of that next time.

The scout with nowt taken out

Yesterday's death notices included the passing of Andrew Muckley, aged 58, a man whose passions included vintage buses and the Baden Powell Scout movement. Since they were the scouts with nowt taken out, he went all over in shorts. "If there was six foot of snow outside, Andy would turn up in shorts," someone said when last we met, the closure service in July 1999 for Houghton-le-Side Methodist chapel, between Darlington and West Auckland.

Andy lived at Houghton-le-Side, perhaps - we noted - constituting a quarter of the population.

He married Carol Herring only last year, another shorts shift. One of the Aycliffe Bus Preservation Society's vehicles transported guests to the Valley chapel at Coundon Grange, where there was standing room only.

"It was certainly different," notes the Society newsletter, and so was Andy Muckley. The funeral of a memorable man is at St Michael's, Heighington, at 2pm next Tuesday.