THOUGH it is by no means to say that they know nowt, few of this column's acquaintances may be considered academics.

We bumped into one of the few, a part-time university lecturer who once had a dog called Fidel and still has a gold-topped cane, in Durham city centre last week. Within 20 seconds we were in the Shakespeare.

Whilst thoroughly entertaining company - a fellow of infinite jest, as the Bard himself might have observed - Peter is much given to employing long words where short ones would do.

In the space of a Shakespearean sentence, for example, he had used etiolated (pale), cadaverous (paler still) and insouciant (pale, but couldn't give a monkey's).

Whilst scattering polysyllables like November leaves, however, he was asked by a taproom regular how he was doing.

"Like Cockfield band, " said Peter, disarmingly, "just chewing on."

Cockfield is a village in west Durham, known as the home of Jeremiah Dixon - he of the MasonDixon Line - of Billy Gypp, gurning champion, and of a team which in 1928 astounded English football by reaching the Amateur Cup final.

Though until last year the village also had a renowned male voice choir - led throughout by the dedicated Edwin Coates - the band's place in phrase and fable is more puzzling.

Det Chief Insp Nobby Clark, once head of Bishop Auckland CID, was given 30 years ago to the observation that, like Cockfield Band, he was just buggering about.

Frank Watson, long time secretary of the Barnard Castle Games League, talks of domino players "braying away like Cockfield Band."

Why history affords Cockfield's poor musicians such a bum note we have been wholly unable to discover.

Clever folk that they are, Gadfly readers may yet be able to explain the discordancy.

AT Bishop Auckland Grammar there was a chemistry teacher known as Cosher because of the length of Bunsen burner tubing with which he visited retribution upon the recalcitrant and a woodwork teacher nicknamed Isaiah on the spurious grounds that one eye was said to be higher in his head than the other was.

The most ingenious was undoubtedly the billiard bald maths master known as Ichabod - a biblical reference to 1 Samuel 4:21 - "And she named the child Ichabod, saying the glory had departed."

We raised the subject of teachers' pet names the other evening after presenting the annual awards at Parkside Comprehensive in Willington - more of which in tomorrow's John North.

These days, the staff insisted, they just don't have any. What's in a nickname? Old scholars may have memories of their own.

STILL sticking to the scriptural, our last column (October 22) wondered why a 1948 scholars' guide should define a "Sabbath day's journey" as 1,216 yards. Darlington lad originally, Phil Westberg emails the answer from South Africa - it's in Exodus 16:29 and may be more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

ANOTHER curiosity has arisen during preparation for Shildon's first round FA Cup tie at Notts County this Sunday.

When last the Railwaymen trod that giddy stage, November, 1961, they were drawn at Oldham Athletic. Hundreds of the 2,700 men then employed at the Wagon Works took out a free pass to Oldham Mumps.

The Pennine town's principal station is half way between Manchester and Rochdale, one up from Oldham Werneth - isn't that a false teeth fixative? - and not to be confused with the potentially fatal Berry Brow (Huddersfield to Barnsley line) and the equally horrid Hag Fold, between Wigan and Manchester.

Not even the near-omniscient Mr John Briggs has been able to explain why Oldham station came by so painful a name, however.

"Mump" can also mean to sulk, to sponge or even to cheat. In the belief that Mumps can be infectious, we hope to have enlightenment next time.

STRANGER yet, Allene Norris - familiar journalist, broadcaster and author in and around Darlington - reports that her latest gas bill was successfully delivered to Mrs Alien Norris. They blame the computer, of course.

"ALIEN" is defined in the Devil's Dictionary, newly published over here, as "an American sovereign in his probationary state".

An alligator is "the crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World".

The work of the devil was compiled by 19th century satirist Ambrose Bierce - an American, of course - who once described prejudice as a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

A guillotine is a machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders for good reason, a liar "a lawyer with a roving commission" and the telephone "an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance."

Now illustrated by Ralph Steadman, it's very jolly indeed.

Bloomsbury hardback, £9 99.

HOWEVER improbably, our last column also had cause to mention the time that the Sex Pistols played Whitby and lost - paid off at the workmen's club not because they were a load of punk but because the folk in the next room couldn't hear the bingo numbers being called.

It reminded former Redcar and Cleveland Council leader David Walsh of how the Pistols packed the Rock Garden in Middlesbrough - "like a 40 square metre garage with a bar" - in 1976.

In the days previously, the band had been involved in a notorious television bust-up with Bill Grundy in which - horror of horrors - four letter words were exchanged.

Grundy was suspended for two weeks.

In the Boro they chose to play under the name Acne Rebbell and were, of course, spotted.

David was among the first to take half a shift off the steelworks to see the anarchic band; Barry Coppinger was unable to get out and had to wait several months for the privilege.

Coun Coppinger is now in charge of law and order in Ray Mallon's Middlesbrough.

. . . and finally, before Christmas comes any closer it should be recorded that there are only 144 days to Carlin Sunday and that there is now a website devoted to the little grey beauties.

It's run by delicatessen owner Ken Bentley from Driffield, East Yorkshire. His mission, he says, is to make carlins popular once again.

They originated, Ken supposes, in the early English monasteries - "a sort of medieval mushy pea" - though he also acknowledges both the North-East folklore surrounding the feast and the day which Carlin Sunday inevitably precedes.

Clearly a man of taste, Mr Bentley also offers carlins by post - pea-mail, as it were. 250g are £2, twice as many £3. Chittocks in Bishop Auckland sells them more cheaply over the counter. More on www. carlinpeas. tripod. com

Published: 05/11/2003