CHRISTMAS Eve, and the suspense may be killing. So what about the poor old Hartlepool Monkey - hanged, quartered and now finally drawn as well?

Few in these parts will be unfamiliar with the legend of the sailor-suited monkey, supposedly shipwrecked on the Headland with the crew of a Napoleonic warship and, mistaken for one of them, executed as the sole survivor.

Hartlepudlians, forever Monkey Hangers, have become perversely proud of the French connection. Hartlepool Rovers Rugby Club even uses the unfortunate animal as its motif.

Now, we learn, the monkey's misfortunes have become essential Christmas reading for tens of millions of cartoon fans worldwide.

Gallows humour, or what?

Get Fuzzy is a strip created in the US by former elementary school teacher, animal lover and rugby player Darby Conley and now syndicated to 400 daily publications, mainly in north America.

The outlets include the Toronto Star, from where our old friend Bill Taylor - formerly in Bishop Auckland - calls attention to last Sunday's strip. An estimated 26 million readers will now be anxious to know more. It could do for Hartlepool what the monster did for Loch Ness.

The strip is described as "a wry portrait of single life, with pets", featuring mild-mannered advertising executive Rob Wilco and Bucky and Satchel, described as "anthropomorphic scamps".

Bucky is an eccentric, single-fanged cat who appears (like most cats) to wear the trousers in that eccentric household; Satchel is a dog with a sensitive soul.

So how did the Hartlepool Monkey rise from the dead? Could the ghost ships of Christmas present have something to do with it?

We have e-mailed the syndication people who promised to pass on the questions to Mr Conley and tried to sell the strip. The artist, who now lives in a Boston apartment where pets are banned and is grateful that none of his rugby fractures involved his right hand, has not replied in time for the holiday.

Neither we nor Hartlepool are likely to have heard the last of it, however. Monkey business is booming.

ANOTHER thought for Christmas. The Frankenstein Sound Lab website, run by Kevin O'Beirne in Sunderland, points out that if the Wise Men came from the East - east of Judea - and followed a star in the east, they would not only have been heading in the wrong direction but would have circumnavigated the globe before they got to Bethlehem - "except, of course, that the earth was flat in those days, so they'd have fallen off the edge, instead".

THIS bit's about Operation Blue Moon and, had there been a paper tomorrow, properly belongs to the John North column.

Back in May, that column spent a delightful morning cultivating acquaintances on the Rosedale and Victoria allotments in Willington, guided by 79-year-old former pitman Richie Hunter.

The allotments are regenerated, born again, a re-growth area. Like everyone else, Richie was proud of the transformation. "Ivverybody said it couldn't be done, but ivverybody just mucked in," he said.

His own patch was a sort of allotment emporium - hens to hyacinths - and with a few weeds, too. "I believe that where weeds will grow, other things will grow, too," he said.

Richie was 80, grown-up, at the weekend. Friends in the Allotment Association wanted to take him out for a meal but, since he's not much fussed about such things, Operation Blue Moon planned a surprise party in the association hut instead.

"My dad will do anything for anyone on the allotments and expects nothing back so everyone's delighted at the chance to show their appreciation," said Jean Westmorland, his daughter.

We couldn't make it; the photographers did. Once in a Blue Moon proved utterly memorably. Happy birthday, green fingers.

STILL in that part of County Durham, an apology to Sylvia and Michael Graham of Low Willington, whose letter has been discovered at the foot of the unacknowledged correspondence mountain. It's dated July 2000 and welcomes us back from the DVTs.

The mountain has become a colossal embarrassment, briefly and unsatisfactorily addressed by a few dozen Christmas cards. The resolution for 2004 is that it'll never happen again - a tall order, but we'll try.

AGGRIEVED like many more by the design of the festive postage stamps, especially the second class, Daphne Clarke in Richmond has put her thoughts into verse.

"It seems to me that this is a major example of pushing the faith of this land into a siding," she says.

Though normally there is no room at this particular inn for poetry, we include it because it's neat, because Daphne's a very good sort and, mostly, because it's Christmas:

Could somebody please explain

To this bear of little brain

How a streamer and star of ice

Celebrate the birth of Christ?

Or how frozen egg-box wall

Tells of shepherds and manger stall.

Dung-beetle ball with shards of glass

Welcomes not the Prince of Peace.

Hepworth hole in frozen sod

Says naught about the Son of God.

Pyramids in desert snow

Cannot stars or angels show.

Pagan beauty, stark and cold

Does not a stable birth unfold.

Such as these are winter views

"Christmas" tells of God's good news.

MUCH else clamours for attention in the year's final column, including an American report forwarded by the Rev Tony Buglass in Pickering about a public school teacher arrested at Kennedy Airport for being in possession of a protractor, compass and set square - "weapons of math instruction".

Collins Dictionaries send a list of new words and phrases in 2003, including axis of evil, metrosexual ("a heterosexual man who spends a lot of time and money on his appearance and likes to shop") and Chelski, the Pensioners post-Abramovich.

Chris Willsden in Darlington forwards more Washington Post words with revised definitions - like flabbergasted ("appalled at how much weight you've gained"), negligent ("the condition by which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightie") and willy-nilly ("impotent") - while John Briggs in Darlington has come across an Internet report applying science to Santa.

The upshot is that the old lad's worldwide workload is so heavy that he would need to accelerate from a standstill to 650mph in .001 seconds and would be subject to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's.

A 250lb Santa (which seems improbably slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and reducing him to a blob.

Around here we know differently. With thanks to the very many diligent readers who have seen the column through another year, we look forward with undiminished zeal to Christmas Eve's unfolding and enthralling mysteries, and to returning on January 7.

Published: 24/12/2003