There may have been no Charlie Dimmock but the people of Bishop Auckland had plenty to celebrate at the launch of thier community garden.

THE delightful Ms Dimmock perhaps being unavailable, we were invited on Sunday to open a community garden in Bishop Auckland. It is a growth area, undoubtedly.

Two years ago, the South Church Lane Allotments Association was in danger wholly of losing the plot. Had they done so - examples abound - a wad of developers waited to build on their discomfiture.

Now all is transformed, smart as a carrot, though what is so particularly smart about carrots we have never fully been able to understand.

With help from Groundwork West Durham and other agencies, they have heavy and light rotavators, hedge trimmers, a new car park, a roadway and a water line, the delightful community garden and, after years of steadily going to seed, a complement of 75 tenants and a waiting list.

On Sunday, the flag flying open day - "Oh aye, we're a patriotic lot," said Doug Hatton, the secretary - there was also a produce show, a barbecue and a raffle with about three dozen bottles and a plant.

The bairns were invited to guess the weight of a huge pumpkin, a sort of gourd almighty, the men drank ale and looked chuffed, as well they might have done.

The Bishop boys had heard about the remarkable regeneration of the Rosedale and Victoria allotments in Willington, where the column had also been asked to open the community garden in May and, digging deep before that occasion, might reasonably have exhausted every horticultural pun on earth.

"Willington were really enthusiastic, a terrific help," said Doug. "We weren't getting enough out of our allotments and people were drifting away. There was no community spirit, no team work, just a fast increasing number of empty and overgrown gardens."

Weed killers united, most willingly mucked in. Jim Blenkin, the treasurer, reckoned they'd filled 40 skips with rubbish as the clean-up continued. "It was unbelievable, but we knew if we didn't do something it was prime land and the council could sell it for housing."

They also joined the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners dedicated to preserving "a traditional way of life."

Gardening, says the Society, is "a recreation for the mind and body as well as a source of economic wealth both to the individual and to the nation." They say much the same thing in Bishop Auckland.

The modern allotment also sprouts notices. Though nowhere near as many as at Willington, there's information about grievance procedure, bonfires (lighting of) and fixing hoses to taps. Another notice inquires if they're on top of their weeds.

The allotments are on the town's southern outskirts, across the road from Denys Smith's former racing stables. The community garden, in the centre, is enhanced by garden furniture made from recycled polystyrene - mainly CD covers and coffee cups - by a nearby company called Evershed.

"It isn't rocket science, but it's an amazing process," said Ron Drennan, one of the partners. Seventy per cent of their work is from local authorities, none has been from Wear Valley, where the company is based.

Now that a grant has arrived from Northern Electric, the community garden will soon become a sensory garden, too - a haven for the whole area and for gardeners, as gardeners should, to sit and get their pipes.

Wilf Etherington, 76, had been putting his back into South Church Lane for 30 years. "It had got really bad until these lads took over and now it's gone from mediocre to excellent," he said.

"There's a new friendship about the place, too. We go for a drink together; we never did that before."

Never noticeably green fingered, the poor man's Charlie Dimmock recalled allotment pottering and the electrifying episode of the lawn mower and the live cable, cut a ribbon and wished them well.

They'd done magnificently, everything in the garden's lovely.

THE same day as the story of Gordon Peters's life finally survived the post, another autobiography arrived from Roy Maddison - former Hartlepool Mail apprentice compositor, Shields Weekly News editor and now, coast to coast, in St Bees. It's dedicated to Great British Hacks.

Roy was a West Hartlepool lad - "West Hartlepool, Co Durham," he properly insists - who wanted to be an England cricketer but settled for journalism instead.

This, though, is perfect holiday reading. We'll hack it again in September.

WE recalled just over two years ago the infamous incident of Jimi Hendrix and the stolen guitar. The story, if not the instrument, has surfaced yet again.

Hendrix and the Experience, then number four in the charts with Hey Joe, played the Imperial Hotel in Darlington in February 1967. Punters paid ten shillings; Hendrix - his mother a Cherokee Indian, his father a municipal gardener - got £90.

Half way through the show, however, one of his guitars was smuggled from an upstairs kitchen and down the hotel fire escape. "He went berserk, really kicked off about it," Darlington-based comedian Dave Adams recalled in 2001.

Rumours persist that the bent Fender is still in the town, though changed colour at least twice and stolen, again, on the High Row.

Now digital television channel BBC 6 Music is coming to the old Imperial - "a place in rock and roll history," insists producer Verity Watts - to reprise the guilty party.

They're filming on August 29 for something called Slap My Plaque, a feature on the Liz Kershaw show. The column, unfortunately, has had to decline Ms Watts's invitation to be interviewed about the theft. We denied all knowledge of it.

...and finally, yet more on Page Bank, the now vanished village by the River Wear near Spennymoor about which memories continue to flood.

Derek Adair of Dorlonco Villas, Meadowfield, near Durham - Dorlonco was Dorman Long and Co - recalls playing for Brandon School at Page Bank in a 1949 friendly, supposedly 35 minutes each way.

"There was a decent sized crowd," he remembers. "To say they were anything other than partisan would be a distortion of the truth."

Brandon led at half time, held their single goal lead until the end of the second 35 minutes. The referee played on. Forty minutes passed and then 45. Finally Page Bank equalised and the referee remembered his whistle.

No buses, few cars, the Brandon boys trudged the five miles back pondering the meaning of home advantage.