REMEMBERING its place, and that there'd be an eager void to fill upon returning, the column pondered before last week's holiday in Dorset upon the sublime ridiculousness of English village names.

It was the Dorset parish of Piddletrenthide, Piddle Hinton and Plush which began the tongue twisting tour, a theme taken up on his own return from holiday by Eric Smallwood, in Middlesbrough.

Eric, who'd been in Herefordshire, sends a photocopy of the Ordnance Survey map to help vouch for some local doggerel which he discovered whilst perusing a beer bottle label.

Upton Snodsbury, Peopleton and Crowle, Wyre Piddle, Nether Piddle And Piddle in the Hole.

Within a day's walk of our Dorsetshire base, however, yet more lustrous alternatives proposed themselves as the country's most wondrously named village.

Here, with a lot of eplglottal, were Sixpenny Handley and Mudford Sock, Beercrocombe and Belchalwell, the Minternes (Magna and Parva), Toller Porcorum and its little brother Toller Fratrum, Turner's Puddle and Bingham's Melcombe, Giddy Green, Gussage St Michael and Haslebury Plunknett.

Prowling around, too, are Cerne Abbas, home of a Big Friendly Giant - the stuff of picture postcards, but perhaps inappropriate for Northern Echo readers over their muesli - and Osmington Mills.

(Osmington Mills is rather prosaic in comparison but was the pseudonym of Vivian Brooks, a lovely, lively old girl who many years ago was a reporter on the Evening Press in York and who when not writing North Riding Quarter Sessions wrote novels instead.)

All these, it should be said, can be found in the road atlas. Heaven knows what daffy delights are buried, two centimetres to the mile, beneath the Ordnance Survey.

Not ten miles from our cottage, the road atlas also revealed the Crinkley Bottom theme park, a product of Egregious Enterprises (or whatever it was that Mr Noel Edmonds called his company).

Whilst he, too, might have thought that he knew his place, the 2002 OS map reveals that Crinkley Bottom has been returned to nature - or at least to a wildlife park, which may be much the same thing - and to the parish of Cricket St Thomas.

Happily for those of us who generally deal in it, Mr Edmonds discovered that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Crinkley Bottom went that end up.

SO to England's most memorable village name, or at least in that part of the empire which these days styles itself Thomas Hardy Country.

(We had a drink in a pub closely associated with Hardy, and much visited by the Thomas Hardy Society. "Those buggers," said the landlord a little ungratefully, "are nearly as dull as his books.")

Ryme Intrensica will be disappointed to be in second place - "highly commended" as we serial euphemists familiarly have it. The winner, however, is a little further west. How uplifting to live in Queen Camel.

AMONG holiday's other joys is that there is time to read the papers, to cavort like a queen camel among the small print.

The Times, for example, still carries columns of "Latest wills", a dead reckoning to which the general admission fee appears to be £1m upwards.

A gentleman in Harrogate had left £1,000 of his £1.3m to the Cyclists Touring Club, a lady in Slaley, Northumberland, a sum almost identical but with no wheels within.

Last Monday's wills, however, allowed one manifestly marked exception to those death duties. Lord Spens left net estate valued at nil. His lordship was an accountant.

PRIMITIVE instinct or just more nominal interest, our last column wondered about the state of things at Basic Cottages in Coxhoe, south-east of Durham.

Both David Armstrong and Keith Whitehall, local lads once, suggest that the name may owe little to the street's down-to-earth nature, rather to the quarry area at the bottom of Coxhoe that was always known as the "Bassics" - pronounced, says David, as in classics.

A bit more digging to do there, then.

Ian Andrew, our Methodist local preacher friend from Lanchester, will shortly be holding forth at Hawkshead, Sparty Lea and Blucher - that intriugingly named village west of Newcastle - and adds that his medic son has now got a job in Ayr, widely known as the Honest Town.

Ayr United, come to think, are nicknamed The Honest Men. Hand on heart, anyone know why?

SO this blessed band of readers has remained vigilant even in our inconsiderate absence, though Tom Purvis in Sunderland may have a protest coming on over the absence of the terms "Wearside" and "Wearsider" from the latest Oxford English Dictionary - especially since Tyneside and Tynesider are included.

In the vicinity of those capital Ws there is little more than Weary Willie - "see Tired Tim."

Tramps, the pair of them. Illustrated Chips, was it not?

PAT Cariss near Richmond wonders how the column managed to spend a June weekend in Derbyshire and not mention well dressing - with difficulty, it must be said - whilst an anonymous caller recommends a fictionalised account of Eyam, the Derbyshire "plague village".

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (published by Fourth Estate) was serialised on Radio 4.

John Hawgood in Durham defends senior churchmen in Durham Cathedral from the accusation (Gadfly, June 19) of ingratitude and incivility to volunteer guides and stewards.

John's been a cathedral volunteer for 42 years. "All the deans and canons as well as the junior clergy and lay staff have been very friendly and appreciative," he insists.

The original accusation had been made in a letter to The Times by an elderly former guide from Sunderland - "a lovely lady," says an admirer. "Swears like a trooper, but in the most refined accent imaginable. At 85, you're allowed to."

THE union flag has been raised again, too - it's only the union jack, points out Russ Addison, when flying from the jackstaff at the back of a Royal Naval vessel - whilst in the deprecating matter of put downs, both Paul Wilkinson in Knaresbrough and Jean Foster in Hunwick, near Crook, recall perhaps the most famous of all.

Margot Asquith, wife of the Liberal prime minister, was at a party where Jean Harlow - silver screen vamp - insisted upon pronouncing her first name Mar-got.

"No, no my dear," said Asquith finally, "the 't' is silent, as in Harlow."

...so finally, back to the ship of the desert which - it should of necessity be pointed out - is pregnant for 13 months, has three stomachs and can't go for much more than ten days without a drink.

With the just-so injunction to re-read Mr Rudyard Kipling - how DID the camel get its hump, anyway? - and to remember about the rich man and the eye of the needle, the columnar camelcade moves on for another week.

Oh, and the female camel is called a cow - no matter what they might try to tell you in the delightful districts of Dorsetshire.