BENEATH a picture of bairns blissfully enjoying an ice cream, the Northumbria Tourist Board has launched a vigorous half term advertising campaign. "Remember when holidays tasted this good?" it asks.

The Board, responsible for a glorious area between Tweed and Tees, also urges readers - as well it might - to enjoy the "many sights and tastes of your wonderful region".

Though no location is given, the familiar photograph is of Suggitt's celebrated ice cream parlour in Great Ayton; Great Ayton, in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, is part of the Yorkshire Tourist Board's area.

"We knew it was over the border but it was such a nice picture," says Val Lowther of the Durham based NTB, denying that they've been left with ice cream on their faces.

Weren't there any nice pictures of the wonderful Northumbria region, then? "We have plenty of our own," she insists.

Suggitt's have been making ice cream in the Captain Cook village since 1922, from weekend-only beginnings when milk would be heated on the domestic hearth out the back. Great Ayton, it might be added, does a mean pork pie, too.

Being in Yorkshire, Alan Suggitt was unaware until Gadfly pointed it out of the enormous free publicity which the Northumbria Tourist Board is giving him. "We're very grateful to them," he says.

The NTB insists that the campaign will have a "limited shelf life". The board operates under the slogan "Northumbria: unspoilt for choice."

WERE the Northumbria Tourist Board to promote truly regional delicacies, they might consider bread and dripping.

What did anyone last tuck into such wondrous fat of the land, then? Or enjoy a cup of boiley, for that matter?

We mention it because Brian Hunter in Sedgefield passes on the Christmas catalogue from an outfit called Sweet and Tasty, promoting gourmet delights like marzipan potatoes ("arrive with a realistic potato sack"), cherry and grape chocolate liqueurs, crooked crunchy fingers and cappuccino balls.

Amid it all is a half litre German beer mug, filled not with beer (which mightn't carry across the North Sea very well) but with 500g of home-made pork dripping.

"Enjoy the dripping with your evening meal," it enthuses, though for generations of North-East lads, bread and dripping might well have BEEN the evening meal, perhaps with a drop of Daddies' Sauce on Sundays and bank holidays.

"When we had nowt as kids in Stockton, I used to love beef dripping spread on my bread, with the gravy congealed on the bottom," says Brian, 68.

There may be a slight difference. Whilst dripping and bread in Brian's day probably worked out about a penny a doorstep slice, in the Christmas catalogue it's a tasty £12.95.

* The Sweet and Tasty catalogue also offers four bottles of wine - "in an exclusive wooden crate" - for £49.95. They're from Casa Defra. There's not likely to be a rush from North-East farm lads for that one, either.

IN honour of the column's late mother - much given, as recently we observed, to a vulgar variation on what kettle called pan - Laurie Bates in Chester-le-Street kindly sends a little book called The Day of the Airship, by Walter Nash.

Basically, it's an affectionate recollection of parental saws and juvenile sores, though on page 49 we discover a toothless epitaph to the black treacle sandwich - the stuff Americans call molasses.

"How shall I tell of that voluptuous moment when my teeth sank into the still-warm bread, and the treacle bearded and moustached me, a grubby child grinning with the gusto of it?

"Now, alas, I am one of the sad millions who have grown old, lost incisors and molars and been fitted with dentures; in consequence of which, because there is nothing like molasses for dislodging an upper set, they will never, never again, put the glad bite on a treacle butty."

Maybe not, but there's always bread and dripping.

ANOTHER fine mesh, or not as the case may be, Peter Sotheran in Redcar asks where he can buy a proper string vest - "not the wimpish, micro-holed variety but the real, manly sort made of heavy thread and with holes the size of a tennis net". Since clearly it is a matter close to his heart, readers may be able to help him get it on his chest.

AT precisely 6.11pm last Wednesday, the No. 1 bus proceeding uncertainly along Newgate Street in Bishop Auckland came finally to an inglorious halt. Conked out, as they probably say in those parts.

Exactly five seconds earlier, the column's eye had fallen upon a report in The Times headlined "Rail plans under threat as minister switches to buses."

The following day's bus, perchance also the No. 1, squealed like a stuck pig (or, as rail travellers would aver, like a train entering Hartlepool station from the south.)

"This thing's going to have me demented by four o'clock," said the driver.

The minister concerned is Mr Alastair Darling. Like most others who promote bus travel, flogged to death and with ever more limited leg room, he has no intention of using it.

Seeking a steer, last week's column reproduced an ad from the Teesdale Mercury: "Sheep dog for sale, frightened of sheep." No one bit. From Evenwood, however, Peter Murphy reports a classified in last week's Mercury: "Lost cat, very timid deposition." We should probably be grateful.

FOLLOWING the trick question about when Sunderland last scored in the FA Cup final at Wembley - 1979, as last week's column confirmed - the erudite Ian Forsyth in Durham e-mails to ask the year in which Good Friday fell on Boxing Day.

Dunno, we replied, but it must have been a racehorse.

Ian hit one or two hurdles after that, assumed it had to be the King George VI chase, e-mailed his son-in-law ("because he reads Dick Francis novels") and is still no wiser.

So did Good Friday fall on Boxing Day, or is this another of those ubiquitous urban legends?

Published: ??/??/2002