CORUSCATING as always, last week's column reflected upon Collins Gem Dictionary, umpteenth edition just published.

Via former Redcar and Cleveland council leader David Walsh, we'd also raised an eyebrow at the word "standee", now used by Arriva to mean those obliged to stand - an experience ever more familiar on the pigpen railways but much rarer, happily, on the buses.

When the homeward 27 does occasionally go overboard, it is with mixed feelings that the column - standee grandee - is offered a seat by a youngster.

Numerous neologisms notwithstanding, "standee" isn't in the Gem. Mark Harrington points out that it's in the Oxford English, however - "person who stands, especially when all seats are occupied" - and it's almost identically defined in the Oxford Canadian, as consulted by former Bishop Auckland lad Bill Taylor, now in Toronto.

Clearly, says Bill, a word in good standing.

Peter Elliott in Eaglescliffe had also supposed the term to be an American import - along with retirees and escapees - a theory reluctantly confirmed by Durham City councillor Mary Hawgood.

At municipal gatherings, says Coun Hawgood, they now have attendees as well.

Brian Madden, in Connecticut via Darlington and Stanley, e-mails further evidence: "Americans are always making up new words, as you can tell by listening to Bush."

Over there, he says, a bus's capacity is written on the outside - including the Wing Wah which, with English and Chinese lettering, works Interstate 95 between New York City and Boston.

Near the door, to Brian's pantomime amusement, is the legend: "56 seated, no standees."

ARRIVA shouldn't be blamed for the word standee, says Mark Harrington, any more than they should be blamed for taking over the Eden Bus Company in 1995 - a mistake driven dangerously by the John North column.

Based in West Auckland and run for 70 years by the Summerson family, the Eden was a popular and friendly little bus company best remembered for its loquacious, lightning conductresses.

Though the name and livery have recently been returned to the road by Shildon brass bandsman Graham Scarlett, memories of the old Eden remain elsewhere.

Mark photographed in 1996 a former Eden by the Ouse at Appleton Roebuck, near York, while others are still in service in County Donegal, run by a company called Lough Swilly.

Terry Stapley snapped another of Summersons' finest near Hull - Stockton still on the headboard but, sadly, going nowhere whatsoever.

It's been there since 1975 and becomes ever more overgrown, though not in what might be called the garden of Eden. Sic transit gloria, as probably they say in West Auckland.

AS if the situation were vacant, Elizabeth Steele in Staindrop returns to the subject of job advertisements, filled previously hereabouts. Why, she asks, does Northallerton-based Hambleton District Council seek an Anti-social behaviour coordinator? "Silly me," adds Elizabeth, "I always thought it was spontaneous."

LAST week's column also pondered the problem of train trips from the North-East to London - is a journey to the capital going "up" (as we supposed) or down.

By a narrow majority, readers are also up for it.

"We were always taught that any line running to London was the up line," says career railwayman Cresswell Grisedale from West Auckland, the second last man out of Shildon Wagon Works.

"It goes back to the days when railway navvies didn't know their right from their left," claims Michael Hunt in Pittington, near Durham. "Knowing that the 'up' line was always to London made it less likely they'd be hit by a train."

Tom Cockeram in Barwick-in-Elmet believes it to be a case of cart before iron horse, however. It's a relic, he says - "doffing my cap" - of 18th century toffs who'd go "up" to town for the season before returning, down, to their country seat.

Chris Fahey in Murton and the generally omniscient Tom Purvis in Sunderland insist there are crossed lines, however. Tom quotes the great northern explorer Alfred Wainwright.

"In all published maps, north is generally at the top. The west side is left, the east side right and south is at the bottom. We are so used to this arrangement that any other is unthinkable.

"We are taught to read from top to bottom, i.e. downwards. Anyone travelling south to north, against the grain so to speak, will therefore read upwards."

Mind, adds Tom, Wainwright's Pennine Way companion starts at page 171 and finishes on page five.

Backward point, whatever can he mean?

IT is erroneously supposed, incidentally, that the phrase "kicked upstairs" was coined to describe 20th century football managers with their brains in their boot bags.

Rather, it was first used in the 17th century by the Marquis of Halifax, known for unexplained reasons as Trimmer.

Lord Rochester, said Halifax, had been made Lord President - a post superior in rank but much inferior both in advantage and credit to the one he held formerly.

"I have heard of many kicked downstairs," added Halifax, "but never of any who was kicked upstairs before."

FROM the BBC up or down, every journalistic medium - including this one - is serially guilty of sentences in which the second clause is but a distant relation to the first.

In Sunderland, by way of bad example, someone found a buzzard on the Hill View estate - prey day excitement duly chronicled by the Sunderland Echo.

Forwarded by Mr J Kirwood, a paragraph begins: "An enthusiast who is looking after the bird, who only wants to be identified as David...."

Of the seven deadly syntactical gaffes, it is without doubt the most common. There's even a name for it, which proper grammarians may know.

Readers may have particularly egregious examples of their own - and if anyone's seen a buzzard answering to the name of David...

PROOF from Marjorie Burlison in Darlington about last week's note on the difference between a longboat and a longship. "I was always given to understand," she says, "that you could put a boat on a ship but can't put a ship on a boat. It's the easiest way to remember it."

...and finally, the column is again tempted towards the rocks by the Lorelei newsletter of the Lower Tees Dialect Society.

Plodge, that perfect onomatopoeia, is confined north of the river, it claims. South of the Tees, Redcar and places, the word is "splodge".

Can it be true? Are we to believe the story of the seven foot Boro boy going for a lifeguard's job at Saltburn?

"Can you swim?" asks the council feller. "Nah," says the other chap, "but ah can splodge a long way oot."

Is onomatopoeia, incidentally, the only word in the English language with four or more successive vowels?

More words, and word games, next week.

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Published: ??/??/2003