John North: One man and his jugs

WANTED MARTEL water jug, year 1989 featuring little polvier. Cash paid. - Tel 07817 166439.

Basil, retired chartered surveyor and auctioneer and long familiar man about Darlington, vainly consulted his dictionaries and guides. Neither martels nor polviers, great or small, were anywhere to be found.

After ringing the advertiser's number - "there's no one here who can help you," they said - he called the column, instead.

"I reckon it's a cryptic message about the invasion. I'm expecting a call any day to form a Resistance movement," said Basil, who served in North Africa, Burma and India during World War II.

We consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, so comprehensive that the volume covering the English language from "poise" to "quelt" alone embraces 1,016 expansive pages.

"Martel" might have been an obsolete word for a hammer, but not even the OED had truck with polvier. Polverine, the next nearest, was the calcified ashes of a plant.

There was no answer from the advertiser. Denis Edkins, long time Bishop Auckland auctioneer and valuer, was as baffled as Basil. "Perhaps it's the Russians," he suggested, but added that the water jug might just be Martell - for those who like things 50-50.

But why 1989, and what on earth was a polvier, whatever its size?

Then Paul Trippett returned the call. He is Durham County councillor for the Trimdon area, manager of Trimdon Labour Club - Britain's best known - and the man who once gave the Backtrack column the story about a spuggie killed by a cricket ball.

If not necessarily a Wanted man, Paul was the chap who'd placed the classified ad.

Martel should have been Martell, as Denis Edkins supposed - brandy distilling sponsors of the Grand National since 1989.

Each year the company has produced a limited edition of 5,000 water jugs, each depicting that year's winner. In front of West Tip, The Thinker and Lastofthebrownies, the 1989 National winner was Little Polveir.

"I got a water jug the first year but like a lot more I either threw it away or gave it away," says Paul. Since then, water under the bridge, he's collected every one - including the decanter and glasses issued this year.

Now, however, he finds himself one water jug short of a very substantial drop in the ocean - or as he himself puts it, a nice little pension plan.

"So many people either lost or broke the 1989 jug that a complete set is a real collector's item, worth many thousands of pounds. The 1989 jug on its own is worth very little, but it would be fantastic to be able to complete the set."

Paul's number, of course, is in the advert. Lest he fall at the first hurdle he'd love just one more jug. As Basil Noble - another National treasure - might put it, a piece de Resistance.

BASIL, happily, is not alone in reading the ads. In the same morning's paper an advertiser announced that Clem's fish shops had a special offer on hake.

Fishy puns - what the hake, love it or hake it - may be inserted according to taste.

Clem's, frying since 1954, has shops in Sunderland, Chester-le-Street, Spennymoor and Shildon. Cape hake, concedes Andrew Oxenham - Clem's son - is cheaper to buy and sell.

"Fish and chips has always been regarded as a poor man's meal and it still is compared to pizza or a Chinese take-away, but cod is becoming so expensive it's almost a luxury item. Apart from being a bit smaller, not many people could tell the difference between cod and hake."

They'd tried selling hake goujons in Sunderland - "a sprat to catch a mackerel," said Andrew, as a fish shop owner might - before pushing the boat out at Shildon this week.

We caught the number one bus, walked up Main Street and down memory lane, met up with Mr Michael Hardy who runs both the Shildon Countryside Movement and something called the Drain Team. The two are unconnected.

Mike, who wore a T-shirt with the message Queen's Golden Jubilee Abseil - Her Majesty has had an eventful year - considered the hake very good. A bit flaky, perhaps, but aren't we all?

Cod and chips is £3.10, hake 60p cheaper. Hake it or leave it? - "It's catching," said Andrew, "honest".

CLEM'S Shildon emporium is in Albert Street, happy home for the first 20-odd years. Audiences throughout the North-East know the story of the visit of the High Sheriff of Derbyshire and the unfortunate business in the outside netty.

We mention it coincidentally because Armitage Shanks, which makes bathrooms and things, is searching for evidence of remaining privies - two hole and upwards.

Mrs Dulcie Lewis from Wensleydale, it may be recalled, has made a lucrative sideline from talks and books on the subject, titles like Privy Counsellor and Flash in the Pan.

Armitage Shanks wants pictures and anecdotes about similarly down-to-earth structures, offering not just the possibility of a bottle of champagne but a mention in Soak - "the leading consumer bathroom magazine".

They're at PO Box 2004, Hogshaw, Bucks MK18 3JY.

ANOTHER old soak, some kindly soul has sent us a 100-year-old ad from the Methodist Recorder (of all things) for the "Buckeye" Folding (oblong) Bath Cabinet - "refreshing and invigorating, summer or winter" and with a heater free from smoke or soot.

Resemblance to a coffin is doubtless coincidental.

Separate post, same winter 1902 edition of the Recorder, we have also been sent an advertisement for Jaques and Jaques dress shop in Darlington - "bazaars, charitable purposes, Christmas presents &c."

There's also a reference to "the spring that has passed and the summer of which we have had but a fleeting glimpse."

Truly, as they say, there is nothing new under the sun.

SPEAKING (as we were) of matters sanitary, the excellent Mr Paul Conroy - landlord of the Grey Horse in Consett and brewer of fine beer - has written The Ballad of Potts's Clock with which to serenade his new ale.

Potts's Clock, apparently, is legendary in Consett for its feckless ways. Space permits but one verse...

The wives of Consett men were known

To say in high derision

You're standing there like Potts's clock

Ho'way you lazy midden.

The beer's available at the Grey Horse's beer festival over the bank holiday weekend, alongside 31 other real ales like Mutton Clog, Old Humbug, Aa'll Wheat Pet - a punning wheat beer from Mordue's in Shiremoor - and Old Rosie cider.

Rosie Conroy is the charming landlady. There is no connection whatsoever.

SO finally back to Shildon, from where Margery Burton writes of the Shildon Shuffle - a two and a half mile sponsored walk on September 15 (2.30pm) to raise money for the British heart Foundation.

Sponsor forms and further information from Margery on 01388 774238. They'd also welcome new members.

A rather longer walk, John Robinson's 20 mile "Barefoot crusade" in aid of breast cancer research, leaves Chester Moor at 7.30am on Monday, arriving at the Cumby Arms in Heighington - where a big fund raising party is planned - by around 4.30pm.

The column and others hope to accompany John for the duration. Several readers have already sent donations; others (cheques to the Breast Cancer Research Appeal) would be most gratefully received.

Much more of John's bare foot forward next Thursday.