SPECTATOR has never thought for one moment that any of his colleagues might be a dodgy character.

But proof that Neighbourhood Watch is working in at least one North Yorkshire village just over the border from Darlington comes from a colleague who has been the subject of a brief police inquiry - from which, it may be said, he has emerged with his reputation unscathed.

His offside rear tyre having suddenly deflated as he crossed the A66 bridge over the Tees shortly after 8pm on Sunday, Spectator's colleague decided that the best place to effect a wheel change would be the well-lit car park of a pub on a secondary route half a mile away rather than the hard shoulder of a fast moving main road.

To reach the spare wheel he and a friend had to remove all the travelling clutter which inevitably accumulates in a car boot and then pack it all away again before resuming their journey.

Fourteen hours later, Spectator's colleague was visited by one of his local North Yorkshire bobbies who asked whether the car in question had been at the place stated at the approximate time given on the official message form.

Spectator's colleague - who incidentally had to reverse when he found that a road apparently leading off the village green from the pub car park was actually a dead end - was able to give an entirely satisfactory explanation in reply to a call from someone who thought that the movements of two people packing things into a car boot might be suspicious.

Whether burglars would choose to operate in the full glare of a pub car park is another matter, but the episode showed that someone had been keeping their eye on the ball.

And Spectator's colleague concludes that, given the content of recent letters to the D&S Times, it was somehow reassuring to meet a policeman, even if it was on his own doorstep when he was least expecting it 14 hours later.

Not a word

SEND a text, write a letter or compose an e-mail because Mr Blair wants to know what you think about his party's plans.

Whether you think it is a "conversation" or, as one Sunday paper put it, a "con" anyone who reads the list of topics up for comment will notice one glaring omission: rural life, which has thrown up so many of the bigger problems. Not a word.

Maybe we could sneak a comment in on rural depopulation under the housing heading; maybe the buzzword "environment", which does appear, could be stretched to mean the landscape as shaped by farming. Could we fit windfarms in anywhere? Transport is mentioned, there's scope for comment there. Have a go.