WOT fettle? Firstly today a little quiz, an attempt both to preserve what properly is called pitmatic and to promote a perfect little stocking filler.

Readers are invited to translate the following terms - most of which have a distinct Co Durham accent - into Her Majesty's English.

1. Kedged, 2. Wowie, 3. Ezzent mense,

4. Maffted, 5. Oxters, 6. Penkered, 7. Gallower, 8. Thrang, 9. Slaisterin', 10. Yully.

We mention it, coming in with a twang, because of Nelson Dunn's determination to speak up for the dialect of his affectionately remembered fetchings up in Evenwood.

Trying to retrieve pitmatic from the attic, he has written and recorded a light hearted cassette called Dinna Tark Si Fond - it wasn't so very long since, says the sleeve note, that everyone talked like that.

"Now," says Nelson, "if I spoke all the time like folk did 50 years ago, most people wouldn't know what I was talking about."

Evenwood's a former pit and coke works village between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle, inseparably twinned with Ramshaw and divided from it by the width of the River Gaunless.

He was born there - "one of at least five Nelsons in Evenwood" - and remains 70-odd years later, never away apart from youthful digs in Newcastle. "There's nothing like a bad lodge to make you appreciate home," he says,

The tape has been produced without charge by John Wray, a Ramshaw lad who now heads the AIR entertainment agency in Spennymoor, and by Olllie Blackett whose father conducted Evenwood colliery band.

John and Nelson also appeared together in the 25 Club, a 1960s concert party so called because there were 25 of them and a waiting list.

"It was when concert parties were concert parties, based at the Methodist chapel opposite me gran's in West Auckland," recalls John.

Nelson himself was never a miner, went like all the best folk to Bishop Auckland Grammar School, learned to talk properly when necessary and in pitmatic when it mattered.

He still comperes a concert party, too - just three of them now - reckons to have performed in just about every old folks' in the North-East. "There won't be two dozen people in this village know about it. It's just something I do," he says.

For the benefit of future generations, he has also compiled a list of words and phrases in common currency when almost all Evenwood's menfolk daily got their hands dirty and a kepped man was simply someone caught behind the wicket.

"We knew nowhere else," he says. "I remember the school team going to Wolsingham and we were thrilled to bits, because we'd no idea even where it was."

Brazzend fond is in there, and rump an' stump - "You know, cleaning the plate, rump and stump" - makkin' gam and (the column's favourite) akin tid coal. Translated, apparently, it means well in with the management.

The tape also carries reference - and we approach it with temerity - to someone "looking like two shiting frames put together."

Apparently it means very thin. "I've thought long and hard about it, and still can't understand why," Nelson concedes.

He mourns the dying dialect, blames television - "youngsters today all want to talk like Americans" - hopes that his humorous little cassette may at least provide fond memories.

There's a brass band backing, all proceeds to the village schools at Evenwood and Ramshaw. "I hope it'll buy the bairns an ice cream," he says.

Available from either school or from the paper shop in Evenwood, the tape is just £2.50, plus a few bob for postage. Gan canny.

AWAITING the bus back from Evenwood, we look for a swift one into the Bay Horse and are delighted to encounter the column's old friend Kenny Walton, now 76 and getting away canny on two sticks.

Ken's the former Evenwood polliss, long since lost his buttons - as they may still say in those parts - and was also a Teesdale district councillor and chairman of the village workmen's club a couple of doors up from the pub.

Sadly, however, he and two friends were suspended from the club on Remembrance Day - "you must have known," he said - and, quaking, must face the committee.

Details are confused (shall we say) but the charge appears to be "Drunk and not being on holiday."

It's a sorry business, but proof nonetheless of what they say about ill winds. Till rolling, the landlord of the Bay Horse looked delighted.

...and finally, there was a new taxi driver on Sunday night. For 23 years he'd sung round North-East clubland as Rob Masters but took a vow of silence 11 years ago after being second on the bill to Henrietta the Clairvoyant Hen.

"I think someone was trying to tell me something," he said.

Henrietta the what? "Oh aye," recalls John Wray of AIR. "It was a bloke called Leslie Melville, mentalist, looked a bit like the Honey Monster. I last saw him at the Tyne Theatre playing Ali Baba or someone in Aladdin."

Leslie's feathered friend was real, carried round in something approaching a pigeon basket. "I think he was quite kind to it," muses John, though he supposes that - chicken and egg - there may have been more than one Henrietta over the years.

Leslie Melville, he suspects, is still offering his unique layer of entertainment. At the risk of reverse clairvoyancy, does anyone know what happened to Henrietta the top of the bill hen?