FIRST time in ten years, we went to Beamish Museum on Saturday. It was almost entirely enjoyable. The £12 admission may seem a bit steep, but the meanest mind can enjoy a full day's diversion there and much is new - in a historical sort of a way - since last we went back in time.

The guide, which costs £3, is altogether more misdirected. It was published in 1998, when Peter Lewis was museum director, and before major attractions like Beamish Waggon and Iron Works were even forged.

It's not so much as mentioned. Goodness knows in what others ways Beamish has moved on while the guide lives resolutely in the past.

In polite terms it's the old, old story. More bluntly, it's a swizz.

AMONG Beamish's most welcome attractions, about which much more in next week's Eating Owt column, is the born again Sun Inn - rebuilt from the pub of the same name in Bishop Auckland.

Formerly landlord of the renowned Beamish Mary, up the road at No Place, Sun lessee John Taylor now finds himself working day shift only, with time to pop out for a pint at night.

"The phrase that comes to mind about this job is 'Like a polliss in a park'," he said, jovially.

We'd not heard it, though "Bobby's job" has come to mean a sinecure. The Police Federation may be able to explain further.

THE Oxford English Dictionary will have nothing to do with "Bobby's job", though there's bobby dazzler, bobby pin - a hair grip, apparently - and bobby sox, of youthful memory.

Other words, like bob-tail and bob-veal, stem from use of the word "bob" meaning to cut.

What, however, of "Bob's-a-dying", traced back to 1829, sometimes corrupted to "Bobsy-die" and defined as "A great fuss; pandemonium."

R O Heslop in Northumberland Words (1892) wrote: "'What Bob's-a-dying they made' means 'What a great fuss they kicked up'." A friend in Prudhoe shortens it still further: "Giving it Bobsy."

Why so great a commotion should attend little Robert's last moments, none has satisfactorily been able to explain.

THE Collins English Dictionary, meanwhile, annotates its sixth edition this week with 5,500 new words.

The second edition, in 1986, introduced cellphone, desktop and HIV, the third had Big Mac, Eurocentric and (honest) rumpy-pumpy, the sixth adds appledrain - a southern word for a wasp - SARS and Al-Qaida.

There's also an extended list of northern words. Croggy has got there at last, though on offer in Shildon since John Dunlop was a bairn, nither - as in "Why man, ah'm nithered" - is finally in from the cold, "mafted" (qv) goes to the opposite extreme and "clarthead" is defined as "a slow witted or stupid person."

Many "northern" words may have suffered altitude sickness crossing the Pennines and had to turn back, however. Readers are invited to define the following, the spellcheck is invited to take a holiday. Answers at the foot of the column:

a) antwackie, b) brussen, c) ennog, d) nimps, e) ockodols, f) powfagged, g) rammel, h) thronner, i) trabs, j) yoker.

LAST week's reference to Tarzan and to Cheetah, his sidekick, stirred improbable memories for Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland of the day in September 1996 that Sunderland played Arsenal at Highbury.

Though Sunderland may have been the main attraction, Cheetah - now 71 and living in a monkeys' retirement home in Palm Springs - had an exhibition that weekend at the National Gallery. Paul and his friend Peter Sixsmith not only went, they bought badges, though Cheetah was the world's wealthiest chimp long before that.

He doesn't look a day over 40, they reckon, despite a fondness for cigars and pink champagne from which animal-loving Ms Brigitte Bardot has only recently been able to wean him.

The match, at any rate, ended 2-0 to the Arsenal after Sunderland had had Martin Scott and Paul Stewart somewhat contentiously dismissed in the first half and manager Peter Reid sent to the stands with a suggestion from referee Paul Danson he mind his language. Cheetah, or a homophone thereof, may have been the least of it.

New badge notwithstanding, Mr Sixsmith could be seen at half-time trying to kick lumps from Highbury's marble urinals - Gadfly was also at the match - immediately after which he retired in a huff to a hostelry in Lamb's Conduit Street.

In the following Monday's sports pages, Peter Reid called for the introduction of professional referees, who at £35,000 a year plus £900 a match duly arrived. He continues to call them, nonetheless.

MORE overmatter from last week's column, including a contender from Richard Jones in Darlington for the title of England's longest pub name.

Henry J Bean's in Chelsea, he says, is correctly called "Henry J Bean's, Though His Friends All Know It As Harry's Bar and Grill."

"Good pub," adds Richard, kindly.

Jack Amos in Willington was much taken with the piece on jam and bread king Ken Tyers, from Consett, since he'd worked with him at Wooley Colliery, near Crook, during the war.

"A Bevan Boy and a great lad," says Jack. "Most miners ate jam and bread in those days but Ken loved the stuff, even then."

Three days after we declared it to be the English village furthest from a railway station, Saturday's Times devoted a page to the inappropriately named Hartland, in north Devon.

It didn't say anything about train connections, but there's a bus from Barnstaple, anyway.

BACK with Sunderland FC, we are grateful to Robin Smith, ever-genial manager of the Ramside Hall Hotel in Durham, for a copy of last Thursday's "Caribbean night" programme for cricket Mike Roseberry's testimonial.

Food embraced Jamaican red pea soup, Caribbean reef chicken and sausage chilli gumbo, auction items included a Michael Owen shirt and a trip on the Orient Express, raffle prizes might have been a magnum of Moet and Chandon or a cricket bat signed by England's 2002 Ashes team.

Particularly, however, Robin draws attention to item number eight: "Two tickets to a home Sunderland Premier League game in 2003/04."

"Subject to availability," it adds.

WE all make mistakes, of course. Anne Gibbon in Darlington returns whence it came the property ad for Middle Farm, Mickleton - "former farm house with a converted buyer".

What's called a barn again Christian, perhaps.

Paul Wilkinson near Harrogate was intrigued to read in Saturday's paper of dodgy dealings in Stockton.

Known as the Lebanon Loop, the trick is to fix an electronic device which can steal users' pin numbers from hole in the wall cash machines.

"It seems to be carried out by people from Africa as the name suggests," said Det Sgt Adrian Bradley of Stockton police.

Since Lebanon is a republic in SW Asia, Paul's aghast. "I know that Teesside folk don't get out much, but you'd think that a detective sergeant would have a clue where Lebanon was, wouldn't you?"

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

Published: ??/??/2003