WERE the bairns still at home, they'd be crying for their daddy. Last week's evenings overflowed from Monday to Saturday - never off the roads, as they used to say in Shildon of Geordie Ellis's horse.

Today's column is largely about lunch.

We broke off, first time in nine years, at The Talbot in Bishopton, greeted on the music machine by so melancholy a version of When You're Smiling that it was possible to have sat down and wept.

Probably it was Andy Williams; perhaps his cat had died.

Bishopton's between Darlington and Stockton, the pub named after a long extinct breed of mastiff said to have had a fondness for marauding Scotsmen and to have been mentioned in Chaucer.

To be featured in Chaucer, it would also have to have exhibited a fondness for fornication and for farting.

For 27 years it was run by Bill Robinson, a former inky tradesman, and one of only two North-East pubs - the Star at Netherton, Northumberland, the other - to have appeared in every edition of the Good Beer Guide.

Now it's run by Diane Spouse, whose parents have a pub in Guisborough, with Strongarm - good stuff - as the only real ale.

An extensive menu includes lunchtime and early evening (5.30-7pm) specials - main course £5.95, two courses £7.95, three with change from a tenner.

Since The Boss reckons that bars shouldn't serve meals at all, and may well have a point, we ate in a pleasantly decorated room at the side, waited upon by a nice blonde lass who also ran the bar.

Blondes, it will long have been apparent, have a head start so far as this gentleman is concerned.

A couple of tables away, a mothers' meeting was discussing Christmas, and who was coming to whom, and cellulitis. (If readers expect to be told it as it is, they must also accept that consenting adults still discuss cellulitis.)

From a starter selection that included a nest of ham and quails' eggs with assorted leaves and a mustard vinaigrette dressing, The Boss - another blonde - had a bacon and brie concoction which she thought very pleasant. The leek and potato soup was fine, too, though the roll had long since rolled over.

She followed with salmon, we (unusually) with gammon and eggs with excellent chips and other vegetables which at best were bland and in the case of the broccoli, positively awash.

Undeterred, The Boss began pinching all sorts of things, reminiscent of the late Bobby Thompson's excuse for having just three Woodbines left in the packet after a mere ten years. "Why, they greed them off yer, ye knaa."

The Little Waster would probably have plodged in the broccoli, too.

Other main courses included chicken chasseur, pork and leek stroganoff, scampi and roast of the day. The two we had were entirely enjoyable without being utterly memorable, so was a creme brulee which ended the affair.

The Boss, having declined pudding, greeded some of that, too. Had a talbot waited mendicantly beneath the table, it would have had to eat Scotsmen instead.

WE also ate last week at the new Bishop Auckland General Hospital, where a large, self-service, open to the public restaurant shares the ground floor with cardio-pulmonary investigation, medical illustration and sundry other things which you don't really want to think about over lunch.

Happily, there was no mention of cellulitis.

It's called Chimneys, presumably because of the exceedingly ugly edifices stuck like carbuncles either side of the new facade and not because of any encouragement towards smoking like one. The hospital is much changed, and no doubt for the better, from the anachronistic asylum of old.

"You're not bad are you?" inquired a Shildon lad carrying a salad tray.

"No worse than usual," we replied, in a manner intended to be enigmatic.

The inevitable emphasis is on healthy eating - substantial salad bar, nutritional know-how, whole hog. We had tasty, hot, thick vegetable soup, vegetable paella (with chips) and a large Coca-Cola with which incorrigibly to wash it down - £4.25 the lot and discounts for the workers.

"Are you staff?" asked the cashier, clearly mistaking the column for a visiting consultant.

A visitor, we admitted, though without bedside mannerisms. Discharged, we went to the pub.

IN the Railway Tavern in Darlington we bump into the ever more extravagantly bearded Mr Alistair Downie, nursing a pint of draught Bass like a father his long-awaited offspring.

Charged with conquering a desert, Alistair is CAMRA's answer to Lawrence of Arabia, a leading hand in the Wear Valley sub-branch which embraces Bishop Auckland, Crook and Willington.

He's upbeat for all that. The admirable Uplands in Crook has already been chronicled, the Colliery at High Job's Hill - anyone know who Job was? - now has three hand pumps, the Garden House at Howden-le-Wear recently went real and is to revert to its former name, the Plantation.

It's only the internal colour scheme Alistair finds disconcerting - "blood and custard," he says, as they did of the British Railways livery after nationalisation in 1948, though in the south they called it plum and spilt milk, and there's no use crying over that.

Custard cream? More from that junction shortly.

ETERNALLY appropriate, Hope Street in Liverpool has the Anglican cathedral at one end and the Catholics' at the other. Bishop David Sheppard's ecumenically inspired autobiography, just published, is called Steps Along Hope Street.

Hope Street in Crook has a health centre where the railway station used to be, several pubs - including the Golden Fleece, named after a streamlined steam engine, not Jason and his Argonauts - and Clark's fish and chip caf into which we stumbled, numbled*, before last Wednesday's match.

Pattie and chips is £1.80, pattie, chips and sauce - what, HP? - £2.30. The "special" - fish and chips, mushy peas, bread and butter, coffee - was £3.50, but the really special touch was the assistant who took compassion, smiled, switched on the gas fire, warned against setting the coat alight, hoped in vain that Crook Town might win.

They lost 6-1, but one day she'll still make someone a smashing mum.

*You know, so cold it was almost impossible to speak.

CLIVE Mansell, one of the few Church of England clergymen who appreciate the true value of publicity, left his country parishes near Bedale last week.

Hundreds turned out for his farewell feast. "Two hags were roasted," note Clive's initial press release - uninterrupted by the spellcheck - though it's possible that he meant hogs.

The Church no longer roasts hags in the good name of religion. Not until the evangelicals take over, anyway.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a gorilla with a banana in each ear.

Anything you like, because it can't hear you.