THE wonderfully articulate Bishop of Jarrow, three of his books in the top ten at the SPCK shop at Durham, writes in the diocesan newspaper about his daughter Nicola's wedding.

"Our house is buzzing with it," says the Rt Rev John Pritchard, "apart from Amos the cat who is in denial."

Imbued with curiosity, which may have killed the cat but is no bad thing for jobbing columnists, we have e-mailed Bishop John: "How came the cat by so splendid and distinguished a name?"

His reply is almost immediate: "He's dark and good looking and very Godly - that's the reason."

That his daughters when younger thought Amos a nice shortened version of Amadeus ("which name they liked") is, of course, altogether irrelevant.

SO why should curiosity have killed the cat? So innocent a question is ignored by the quotations dictionaries and by Brewers' Disappointing Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Care, it supposes, may have been the real cat killer.

Rather unsatisfactorily, we are left with the words of the American humourist Dorothy Parker:

"Four are the things I'd have been better without,

"Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt."

SPURIOUSER and spuriouser, as Alice almost observed in Wonderland. On August 6 we incredulously observed that a survey among Honda owners had voted the western bypass around Gateshead and Newcastle as Britain's third favourite road and the yet more charmless A19 between Thirsk and York into seventh place.

The survey had been conducted for a public relations company and "endorsed" - doubtless for a lot of money - by Jeremy Clarkson.

Last week another survey appeared, conducted by yet another PR firm for yet another car company. "Over 1,000" Caterham 7 owners thought that Britain's best drive was the road between Invergarry and Skye, the whole exercise a meretricious miasma which not only warranted a quarter of a page in The Guardian but a leader comment as well.

Only the splendidly scenic road between Penrith and the Tyne Valley appears to have been common to both polls. Whilst urging car drivers to beware such nonsense as vigilantly as they watch out for speed cameras, we record one small note of gratitude. At least Caterham 7 owners aren't in an illicit relationship with 20 miles of the indiscriminate A19.

BACK in Scotland, if not quite the roads to the isles, we reported last week on a few days on Orkney and a few beers with Stuart Laundy, the Darlington born news editor of The Orcadian.

The newspaper's published from somewhere curiously called Hell's Half Acre, formerly the Hatston naval air base. Married to an Orcadian, Ian Andrew in Lanchester wonders if it might have been a forces nickname for the parade ground - "or glasshouse" - or, earlier use, a farmer's term of disaffection for a particularly unproductive field.

Jake Spence, an Orcadian exiled to Brompton-on-Swale near Richmond, has a different theory altogether.

For 25 years after the war, he says, wooden houses at Hatston were taken over by the council to let to the "tougher elements".

"They were good, honest, earthy folk but you could almost guarantee that bedlam would occasionally break out, usually on a Saturday night. It was the constabulary who first called it Hell's Half Acre."

Jake's in North Yorkshire after the small, family owned salmon hatchery first prospered but was then wiped out by disease.

"The business went belly up," he says. So, unfortunately, did the salmon.

ANOTHER outlaw school suggests that Hell's Half Acre was originally the name of Jesse James's grave. Deeply but in vain, Tom Purvis in Sunderland has dug for corroboration.

Though the renegade was widely believed to be buried at St Joseph, in his home state of Missouri - shot in the back of the head by Bob Ford, a member of his own gang - residents of Granbury, Texas, claimed vehemently that James had escaped, died aged 103, and was buried there.

In 2001 the Granbury body was exhumed. It wasn't Jesse.

Tom also recalls Lonnie Donegan's Ballad of Jesse James, in which Ford is described as a "dirty little coward". Old Jesse had been living under the name Thomas Howard; it rhymed rather conveniently.

A latter day James gang still visits the house in St Joseph where Ford pulled the trigger, primarily to view the feather duster Jesse was said to have been holding at the time and to pinch a piece of the bullet hole.

The hole's now over a foot wide. Little wonder the poor feller copped it.

TERRY McCabe, who kept wicket for Cowpen Bewley near Billingham, is now one of the 100 or so souls on the Orkney island of Eday and may find it rather harder to raise a cricket team.

A former airman and rigger, he keeps Aberdeen Angus, activates the airstrip when necessary and helps when the power lines go down.

Terry's mate Martin Birtle also points out that "award winning" journalist Roger Hutchinson, who in 1999 wrote "A Complete History of Sunderland Football Club", lives on Raasay, another Orkney island.

The book's called "Into the Light", though Martin supposes it penumbral. Apart from some glaring factual errors, the book also supposes that ten freight trains were once used to get Sunderland supporters to a match.

"I know fans were treated like cattle," says Martin, "but that was usually inside the ground."

FROM Orkney to Shetland, and a Sunday Times report that a Shetland pony has been found in a second floor flat in Copenhagen.

It may sound familiar, for shaggy dog read Shetland pony. In the dear old days of the Bishop Auckland office, generations of journalists were reared on stories that ragman's horses - often in St Helen's Auckland, memory suggests - lived comfortably in back bedrooms.

The Danish cuddy also had its own shower, as probably they had at St Helen's.

Certainly the hoss couldn't have had a bath. That's where they kept the coal.

....and finally, replying to a front page story in the Darlington and Stockton Times that the bus service between Darlington and Richmond is the worst for 40 years, Arriva North East operations director Ian McInroy offers several reasons for staff shortages - "sickness, absences, holidays and personal issues".

Personal issues? Perhaps he had in mind the driver of the last bus to Richmond the other night who shared his vehicle with a lady friend, her dog and the column.

The driver clearly suffered from personal issues. For much of the journey he was dictating to the lady behind him a text message for the woman who had recently ended their relationship. The bit about him always having a soggy shoulder proved particularly poignant.

Finally it all proved too much. Three miles from home, he pulled into a layby and for five minutes finished the text message himself. Since Arriva needs all the drivers it can get, it is to be hoped they are reconciled - and why did curiosity kill the cat, anyway?

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Published: ??/??/2003