In being vulnerable to words of wisdom

Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture - as in cereal, presumably - with more feasts than most of us have had bowls of Sugar Puffs.

Little is known about the others, though the Dictionary of Saints Days, Fasts, Feasts and Festivals - written by North Yorkshireman Colin Waters and published tomorrow by Countryside Books at £7.95 - records that Remigius was an Archbishop of Reims.

St Leger has tomorrow all to himself, but must not be confused with the race of that name. That was Colonel St Leger, a not overtly pious 18th century toff.

Then there is our very own Venerable Bede, whose feast day is May 27 but who is acknowledged throughout the year - except by dear old BT, who may once again have their lines crossed.

Colin Waters's book recalls the legend that Bede, when old and blind, preached to a pile of stones after mistaking it for his congregation. Even with 20/20 vision, latter day clergy may understand the feeling.

Bede's words were so apposite, however, that the stones replied "Amen, Venerable Bede, Amen."

BT, at any rate, is developing a "Citizenship workshop", described as an "educational programme" for schools.

A Press release last week listed those taking part. It included the Vulnerable Bede school, in Sunderland.

Hartlepool, which Hilda and all the saints preserve, is among the most vibrantly reborn of all North-East towns. If only it weren't so hard to get there. Six days a week at least, neither bus nor train service runs directly from Darlington. Bus passengers can change at Stockton, rail travellers at Thornaby.

Even if the train connection's punctual, which half the time it isn't, the journey can take up to an hour and a half.

Despite the latest cuts, however, the new winter timetable reveals that one weekly direct train service still survives in each direction between Darlington and Hartlepool.

Usual peak period stuff, it runs there and back on Sunday lunchtime.

Still hoping to let the train take the strain, we planned last Saturday to watch Frickley Athletic - Wakefield way - against the mighty Shildon in the FA Cup.

The most convenient station is Moorthorpe, home of the Martial Arts Academy of the Seven Golden Dragons. Frickley's ground is about a mile and a half away, past the Bill Sykes Enterprise and Resource Centre.

Moorthorpe's on the line from York to Sheffield. Unfortunately, however, the first train of the day from York is at 11.09 and the second and last leaves York at 15.17.

It arrives in Moorthorpe at 16.01, not only missing most of the second half but almost two hours after the last train of the day has headed off in the opposite direction.

Yet further travelled - "the southern outposts of the empire," he insists - Peter Hale in Scorton, near Richmond, came across the gloriously named Oxfordshire village of Kingston Bagpuze and what presumably is the local equivalent of happy hour. It's called Attitude Adjustment Hour.

Last week's column explained the meaning of the hokey-cokey, thus keeping one step ahead of Cassell's Dictionary of Word Histories, which feebly supposes the origin to be unknown.

Anne Gibbon in Darlington confirms the original Latin Mass liturgy - "Hoc est emin corpus meum" - whilst That Bloody Woman (as another correspondent prefers to be identified) also invites explanation of the term "left footer".

Hereabouts, at any rate, it's an affectionate term for Roman Catholics, supposed in the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms to have originated in the Navy.

In Evenwood, and similar places, there's thought to be a connection with peat digging spades.

Anne Gibbon, meanwhile, recalls something on the radio about the meaning of the Twelve Days of Christmas song - "but maddeningly I can't remember what."

Before anyone else decks the halls like those festive folk up Consett way, readers may be able to assist.

'I'm very surprised after your attacks on the aberrant apostrophe that you haven't noted the Emerging Exclamation Mark" - letter from Dave French in Hartlepool!!!

Last week's column compared the death wish evident among extremists in the Church of England hierarchy with the zest for life in so many of its parishes.

In plunging the depths, however, we overlooked the Rev David Holloway, Vicar for the past 30 years of Jesmond, Newcastle.

Mr Holloway is low church, evangelical, call it what you will. In a speech at a Blackpool conference he called for the "Jezebels" - by which he was taken to mean homosexuals and their supporters - to be "disciplined".

A Church Times columnist supposes him to mean that the homosexuals whom the Nazis murdered alongside the Jews were every bit as morally repulsive as those who killed them.

"The charitable assessment," he adds, "is that David Holloway is quite mad."

Last Saturday morning, meanwhile, we addressed a nine o'clock gathering of ladies from St Andrew's parish church in Haughton-le-Skerne, Darlington, and from the daughter church on Whinfield. Three of the menfolk cooked a splendid breakfast whilst the ladies sat back and laughed in the right places, even at the Fred and Ginger joke.

The event was to raise money for Whinfield church, though St Andrew's, mainly Norman, needs over £80,000 for major rewiring and redecoration and is closed until Christmas while the job's done.

No cause for alarm, though. Whilst the church nationally seems intent on self-immolation, the good folk of St Andrew's have raised almost all the money already.

....and finally, whilst the new Bishop of Durham has locally been keeping his head down until his enthronement on October 12, he made a speech at the same Blackpool conference as the Vicar of Jesmond.

It was at Winter Gardens. Whilst Dr Tom Wright was holding forth at one end of the building, the sounds of Love Me Do and Que Sera Sera blasted from the Victoria Bar at the other.

What will be will be? Maybe the juke box was right all along.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/gadfly.html

Published: ??/??/2003