NEWCASTLE is NCL. London Heathrow is LHR. Manchester is MAN. Oxford is OXF. Leeds Bradford is LBA. Even Penzance Heliport is PZE.

You do not need to be a genius to realise that there is something of a scheme to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) codes for airports which you find wrapped around your luggage handles whenever you fly.

But Teesside International Airport - currently being re-named Durham Tees Valley Airport - is MME.

For which there is absolutely no logic whatsoever.

It is because Teesside didn't become an airport until 1964. By then, TEE had been taken by Tbessa airport in Algeria, TIA had been taken by Tirana in Albana, TSE by, for some reason, Astana which is now in Kazakstan, TSI by the very well-known airport Tsili Tsili on Papua New Guinea and TES by Tessenei in Eritrea.

Even TSS was taken by a heliport on East 34th Street in New York.

"No letters were available to us," says John Waiting, the airport's spokesman. "We were going to use MSG for Middleton St George but we were told that it could be confused with the word 'message'."

MSG has since, incidentally, been given to Matsaile Airport in Lesotho in Africa.

And so Teesside was given, as a job lot, the letters MME. At the time, no one understood it, although it was said that they referred to Middleton St George, Middlesbrough, England.

There are no plans to change the airport's IATA code even though the airport is getting a new name. DUR is already taken by Durban International Airport in South Africa.

APART from the thrills of learning about airport trivia (did you know there were 64 airports in Britain with IATA codes and that Coventry-West Midlands International Airport has the longest name of them all?), it has been a very sad week.

I am 39, and on Tuesday the last pair of my school socks, bought when I was 14 or 15, developed a hole.

Regulation black, rather nylon-y with uncontroversial ridges down them, I once had a drawful of such socks. About a decade ago, my supplies dwindled to just three, with one kept in reserve.

It was called up to the sock frontline about six years ago, but now its service is over. It's partner has a hole, and with no more black school sock back-up, it has had to go.

Sentimental old fool that I am, I said a little ceremony as the pair of them were buried in the bin. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sock to sock..."

These socks represent the stages of man. They have seen me through childhood to university and into married life and fatherhood. They have been washed by my mother, by myself in various launderettes around the country, then as I moved onto the property ladder in my first washing machine, and then finally - thankfully - by my wife.

They have moved every house with me; they have been on every holiday around the world with me.

They may just be nasty nylon-y socks to anyone else, but to me, they were a little living piece of personal history.