Columbian connection is raising a smile

Though the sun had his early hat on yesterday, there was to be no light leaping from the bed.

Shildon lad John Robinson covered the distance barefoot. Eight others, all of us old enough to know very much better, accompanied him down the old A1 whilst recalling the children's matinee at Shildon Hippodrome and trying to remember the names of the Three Stooges.

There'll be much more of this end-of-August odyssey in tomorrow's John North column. The headline, probably, should be Last of the Summer Nine.

GNER has an on-train magazine called Livewire. Just as we were about to upbraid it over a story headed "New changes at Kings Cross" - as opposed to old ones, presumably - an altogether more compelling headline leaped from the cover.

Singer Celine Dion, described as a pop icon, has signed a contract to perform 600 shows at Caesar's Palace in the USA. The headline was Diva Las Vegas.

Good headline writing, particularly embracing just two or three words, is a sublime but seldom mastered craft. Readers' favourites much welcomed - and no need for that old ironmongery about nuts, screws, washes and bolts, either.

STILL grabbing the headlines, Tom Purvis in Sunderland e-mails about the front page banner - "Columbian star in Quakers sensation" - in Monday's paper.

"Your proof reader is going through a bad spell," says Tom. "I'm sure Peter Falk would have spotted it."

The headline, of course, was a reference to Darlington FC's possible signing of the former Newcastle United favourite Faustino Asprilla. Throughout the front page story we called him Columbian, too; in the sports section he correctly became Colombian. Columbia was a record label - Cliff Richard and the Shadows - in the days when Monday's walkers were rocking it up a bit.

For future reference, and there are likely to be many, the South American republic is called Colombia, as opposed to the television detective in the grubby raincoat who was Columbo.

Like Celine Dion, Columbo - played by Peter Falk - was based in Los Angeles. Like Faustino Asprilla, what we need is consistency.

THIS column's role as a sort of internal castigation engine occasionally offers moments of blessed relief, however. Headed "From the desk of Brian Jefferson", a letter from Piercebridge, near Darlington, draws attention to an ad last week for the Orange Darlington Festival.

On Sunday, August 25, we said, there'd be "childrens entertainment" and on the following day "children's entertainment."

"Fifty per cent correct use of the apostrophe would expect a C grade in GCSE English," says Brian and if that's the case would score rather better than he would.

The hand written letter, blame the desk, is headed "Inconsistancy."

RECENT columns have reprised school songs: still they echo. John Marsh in Shildon recalls the "Old English" words of Wolsingham Grammar School - founded in 1614, though the song is thought to have been written 300 years later.

"Lo here is fellawschipe,

One faith to keepe,

One truth to speake,

One loving cup to syppe.

And to seeke for one true loveliness

And turn our dreams to ellendeeds,

Either for other to suffer all things,

One song to sing in sweete accord

And maken melody

Lo, here is fellawschipe."

It sounded fine when the whole school was present, says John - but for some reason it's no longer on the play-list.

JOHN Briggs in Darlington was at Southmoor Tech in Sunderland - "where we wore strange, reddy brown blazers and were known around town as the Rustycoats". The song taught responsibility, if not careful English:

There are boys who have gone from the School in the past

We honour their record from the first to the last'

But now it is clear for all to see

That the school now depends upon me...

Elizabeth Kellett in Bishop Auckland remembers not only the school from Kelsick Grammar in Ambleside, but sharing the school with Dame Allan's, from Newcastle, during the war:

T'was on top of a mighty hill

The school was set so snugly,

To keep us safe from every ill

The wind blows sometimes roughly...

They probably don't sing that one any more, either.

Last week's musical notes failed West Hartlepool Grammar School, however. Though King Henry VIII's song was lustily rendered, the school - founded in 1902 - had no other connection with the old philanderer.

After the 1964 act of union, it simply became Hartlepool Grammar, of course.

"When I started in 1967 we used exercise books with 'West' crossed out on the cover, in the same way that British Rail pout a smear of orange paint over the 'West' on the totem sign boards on the railway station," says Stephen Turnbull, now in Middleton St George.

As amended, the first verse of the old king's improving song was:

Youth must needs have dalliance,

Of good or ill some pastance

Company methinks the best

All thoughts and fancies to digest.

For idleness is chief mistress

Of vices all.

Then who can say that mirth and play

Is best of all...?

Ken Orton not only tried hard to remember the song from the old A J Dawson Grammar School in Wingate - a snatch of which next week - but was among HAS correspondents on the great shuggy boat up and downer.

Seeking something else among the back copies, we came upon a report - exactly 50 years ago - of an unfortunate accident to 32-year-old Thomas Harbron from Witton Park who fractured his right arm in four places "after falling from a swing boat."

Mr Harbron may not now live to tell the tale, but at Witton Park they'll have been shuggy boats, then as now.

Swings and roundabouts? More fun of the fair next week.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/ news/gadfl

Published: ??/??/2002