WELCOME back. As ever it was a quite splendid Christmas, though those who annually embrace asceticism - £10 on gifts and the rest to the nearest Donkey Sanctuary - would find little tethering in our house.

Among many presents was "Oops, Pardon, Mrs Arden" by Nigel Rees, sub-titled "An embarrassment of domestic catchphrases".

Many are hand-me-downs, familiar to those parentally and perennially accused of talking like a ha'penny book or looking like one o'clock half struck; many more are rather vulgar.

Farts abound, and not just in colanders; the exhausted are buggered like Barney's bull. Peter Foulds from Co Durham recalls that his cousin - a Cockney, admittedly - was fond of observing that something "shone like a tanner on a sweep's arse."

Many entries are delicate ways of describing lavatorial functions, rather neatly termed "loophemisms."

The book is generally disappointing, however, not least because it raises more questions than it answers - unable even to suggest why Barney's bull should be so unfortunately enfeebled.

The lady of this house said that she only bought it because it attempted to answer the familiar problem of why it's always looking black over Bill's mother's, but even that's lost in the mists.

Since almost every part of England claims the phrase's origin, all that safely may be said is that its provenance is unlikely - despite vociferous appeals - to lie with Bishop Auckland Cricket Club.

Otherwise, alas, Bill's mother's remains completely in the dark.

ONE of the bairns, happily, came up with Schott's Original Miscellany - the book of lists and leanings to which the column alluded before Christmas.

First privately produced with a print run of 50, it sold 220,000 copies - Christmas's surprise best seller.

Ben Schott's compendium - he disputes the term "trivia" so might bridle also at "useless information" - embraces everything from bizarre deaths of Burmese kings to the pantry stock on the Titanic, from collective nouns to perfect palindromes.

The Statue of Liberty has an 8ft index finger, Custer's horse was called Vic, disaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school, R G Hardie and Co are bagpipe makers to the Queen and only the common say "toilet", among a warning of words which are non-U.

The £9.99 hardback is published by Bloomsbury, for whom everything is coming up roses just now. When first they signed her up, J K Rowling was unheard of, too.

GADFLY readers have been assembling collective nouns, too. A waffle of commentators, suggests Tony Eaton; a perspicacity (or an infusion) of experts, says Dave Gill; a thicket of experts, proposes Phil Westberg - and if the collective noun for bears is a sloth, adds Phil in idle wonderment, then what's the collective noun for sloths?

SCHOTT'S Original Miscellany also carries a countdown of characters immortalised on the sleeve of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles' celebrated 1971 LP.

One, of course, was Albert Stubbins, the former Newcastle United and Liverpool footballer who died as the year turned; others include Tom Mix, Sonny Liston, Bob Dylan and Edgar Allan Poe.

Apart from Albert Stubbins, lovely feller, two others of the Beatles' band have their roots firmly in the North-East.

Readers are invited to cover themselves in glory - for, sadly, there is no prize - by identifying them. The answer at the foot of the column.

BOXING Day was woefully wet, the going at Sedgefield Races officially "soft, heavy in places" and at Marske United v Guisborough Town wick wi' clarts.

It was a tremendous match, nonetheless, buckshee half time whisky for the clubhouse crowd and the goal of that and any other festive season from Mr Lee Alexander of Marske - after which the gentleman raced to the touchline, prostrated himself in the mire and (as is now football's fashion) allowed nine tenths of his team mates rapturously to abandon themselves on top of him.

Mud in your eye, or what?

The toast is as curious as it is familiar and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable offers only Mr Rudyard Kipling's misanthropic reference to flannelled fools at the wicket and muddied oafs at the goals.

The most popular theory is that "Here's mud in your eye!" was a First World War salutation from soldiers who wished their comrades no greater optical injury. Lynn Briggs in Darlington discovers an intriguing alternative on the Internet, however.

On March 3 last year Dr Byron E Shafer of Rutgers Presbyterian Church on Broadway devoted his entire sermon to the conundrum - suggesting that its origin might lie in St John's gospel (Ch 9, vv 1-7) in which a blind beggar's sight is restored.

"When he had thus spoken he spat on the ground, made clay of the spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay."

A toast with its origins in the Bible? Cheers to the thought, anyway.

A LAST word on football. Last week's Darlington and Stockton Times account of the Wensleydale Creamery League match between Askrigg and Reeth noted that the visitors were without John Shutt because the striker was "suffering from a festive illness."

Has the poor chap eaten a bad Brussels sprout or what? The D&S Times, and the world, should be told.

ALAN Byde, briefly familiar in Middleton-in-Teesdale and at length in the correspondence columns of the Teesdale Mercury, confirms that his first published letter (Gadfly, December 4) was in Hear All Sides in 1944.

Alan was a 16-year-old schoolboy in Darlington, his headmaster a friend of the Echo editor. "Apart from Adolf, the hot issue was a proposed ring road around Darlington and the planning restrictions which a green belt would apply.

"What did we boys think of it? All letters would be published."

Headlined "Tight trousers" young Byde's effort read: "If a boy wears trousers suitable to his size, as he grows they become tighter. They either fall off, ripped to shreds, or he withers inside them."

Alan, now in New Zealand, admits that it was a "lunatic letter". But at least it was short.

...and finally, we are most grateful to Linda Dodds, who works at the new Clayport Library in Durham, for this photograph on the right of the road sign which has appeared at the bottom of Claypath.

"Is it," wonders Linda, "an interesting variation on the casting for the local nativity play or, more worryingly, evidence of genetic engineering."

Not even Mr Kipling wrote about how the zebra got its hump. Further sightings welcomed.

l THE two "North-East" characters on the Sgt Pepper LP are Stan Laurel, an old boy of King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland and Lewis Carroll, whose browtins up were in Croft.

Published: 08/01/2003