The Great North Road: a completely different World

This, of course, was no fault of the chubby feller in the white hat. Little Chef had installed a television, added a Big Kick-Off breakfast to those for every other day of the week, tried to cook up a bit of an atmosphere.

That it wasn't electric was clearly because someone had forgotten to put a shilling in England's collective meter and not because the other lot were cooking on gas.

Five were present at 7.15am, mostly what once were known as commercial travellers, but these days are probably regional sales executives. Two occupied the only table from which the television was wholly invisible.

Another sat in the far distant smoking area, a pariah commitment, watching the world go by at no more than 70mph.

Seats in all parts, we bagged the front circle, coffee on the house, Motty - universally derided for occupying most of the Argentina commentary with home thoughts of ham shank - turned his fertile imagination to the smell of best bacon instead.

Perhaps it was the early hour, but the Nigerian national anthem sounded awfully like O Little Town of Bethlehem. At 7.29, the couple who weren't watching turned their backs and left.

Breakfast is undoubtedly Little Chef's strongest suit, though Ms Clarissa Dickson Wright - a lady who abundantly lives up to her weighty soubriquet - is so enamoured of the Little Chef at Scotch Corner, a mile up the road, that she writes rhapsodically of it throughout the day.

As always there was the Olympic breakfast, the Americana - "with Linda McCartney sausages" - the vegetarian and the Bigger Breakfast, though bigger than what or whom wasn't clear. We were for some reason reminded of the Central Midlands Football League which, having established a premier division above the first, decided to go one better and have a supreme division to be, like Muhammad, the greatest..

The table mat offered free tickets to the National Seal Centre in Cornwall; we ordered the Olympic. When our boys won a first corner, forks were held in suspended animation before the assault on the Olympic continued.

Above the door, a notice had indicated that Jane Baldwin was licensed to sell wines, spirits and this, that and the other.

The chap on the next table appeared to be drinking what William and the Outlaws called liquorice water, and through a somnolent straw.

The more it went on, the more it became clear that the time difference was illusory also. The players had just got out of bed, an' all.

"It hasn't really taken off," Mr Brooking informed a nervous nation, though after 35 minutes Michael Owen finally discarded the duvet and made a run at goal.

"Come on, Phil," said a chap behind, having clearly driven in from a different planet entirely.

By half-time the crowd had swollen to 12, though the adrenaline level remained much the same as in the waiting room of a municipal crematorium.

The photographer arrived. "It was better on the radio," he said. Like the singular matter of the dog that didn't bark in the night, the other curiosity was that not a single mobile phone was heard to interrupt the inertia.

Little Chef also offers free copies of the Daily Mail, pages turning in inverse ratio to the entertainment value of the second half.

A free day at the National Seal Centre seemed suddenly a pretty good alternative.

After 60 minutes we observed to the chap on the other side that we could all still have been asleep. Startled by such over-familiarity he fled at once, leaving behind half a tomato in his haste to get away.

The menu had pictures of black pudding, hash browns and things lest (presumably) customers be unable to tell the difference. Some, having exhausted the Daily Mail, appeared to be studying the early doors identity parade. The bean counters were counting beans.

"It's been a little disappointing," said Motty, the news that Sweden had taken the lead against Argentina greeted with all the fervour of a penny off the price of parsnips.

In the foyer there was also a stress machine. For 20p, pinched from the photographer, it indicated that we were either bored stiff, or dead.

The chap on the next table had finished his liquorice water. Sinclair eventually made a run on goal.

"Hit it," someone murmured, but only in the manner that an impartial observer might suggest chastising a mildly recalcitrant dog.

Scholes struck the post. "S**t," said someone else, though Skeeby may not be licensed for such expletives.

"England haven't been taking any risks," said Motty.

Breakfast time ended England 0 Nigeria Reserves 0, work suddenly seeming a rather more attractive option.

The commercial travellers took to the road with hope in their hearts though they, in turn, delude themselves.

The reality, ask anyone in the Little Chef at Skeeby, is that we'll be back on the next plane but one.

A poignant PS to our note (May 24) in the passing of Noel Heaton, a man dedicated to cricket in general and to umpiring in particular.

Noel was vice-chairman, among other things, of the Darlington and District League and had been its secretary for 12 years. In an obituary to be published in The Cricketer, his wife Rose records that last November he was taking a forgotten trophy at last to be engraved when he slipped on the ice and fell on the cup, squashing it.

He died last month from a virus which attacked his liver, kidneys and heart. "Doctors suspect that the injury contributed to his death," says Mrs Heaton.

Born in Lancashire and a reputed demon among fast bowlers, Noel arrived at Catterick in 1951 as a young conscript, returned 22 years later as senior NCO on the Garrison and still lived in Catterick Village, where he was much involved with community life.

For her husband, says Rose Heaton, cricket was much more than the summer game. "He was involved the whole year round."

Tuesday's column wrongly identified John Coe as chairman of Willington Cricket Club. He's vice-chairman.

Donny Brown's chairman and, unlike almost everyone else in high office up there, he's not a polliss. He's the polliss's dad.

Needing to field two sides on Wednesday evening, Evenwood found themselves a couple short for the first team cup match with Shildon Railway. John Teesdale, 50, and Lee Forster, 12, were duly dragooned.

The elder recruit, Bulldog Billy's brother, takes up the story:

"It becomes a bit difficult when you can't see the ball, as you know, so I just stood around like a shrub.

"It was a competition where you have to use five bowlers so when John Maughan broke down they tossed the ball to young Lee.

"Frosty they call him, nice kid with a bit of a chirp, though nothing impitent about him.....)

(Interruption: "impitent is a North-East form of impudent, as in "Why, thoo's impitent fond.")

While John did his hydrangea impression, Lee - a pupil at Staindrop comprehensive - was taking 3-17 in five overs of mesmerising leg spin. "It was unbelievable," says John, "of those 30 balls, I'll bet 22 were right on the spot.

"It wasn't as if they were demoralised or anything when he came on to bowl, but they certainly were when he finished. He's going to go an awfully long way in cricket."

Bulldog Billy has not been available for comment. His spokesman says: "Mr Teesdale taught Frosty all he knows."

Boss Hogg has been on, too, wondering if we'd seen Hodgy and his cohort Robert Ellis - the big two of Spennymoor Academy - all over Sky Sports. The peg, as proper journalists would probably say, was Lewis's win at the weekend - "Good triumphed over evil," said Hodgy, emblazoned in a T-shirt proclaiming the club a drug-free zone.

Boss is impressed. "Hodgy," he says, "has more neck than Mike Tyson."

Had we been able to make John Dawson's 217th and last match of the 2001-02 football season - at Armadale, in West Lothian, on Wednesday - we could have recorded that not only were Armadale Thistle in the Scottish second division from 1921-33 but that, like Pisa, the town has a leaning tower.

It was erected in 1911 by the Armadale Public House Society, a body dedicated not to promoting the demon drink but (rather curiously) to diminishing it.

Domestic football finally ended, the Hartlepool Postman and friends now have a void to fill. They haven't been able to find a pre-season friendly until July 6.

Mark Bailey, the former England rugby player, has been reminiscing about his introduction to the dappled delights of the North-East game - his 1979 debut for Durham University, against Stockton.

We found it in a brochure for Bede College's recent tour to Dubai, picked up in a Durham restaurant.

The game was three minutes old when, after a mass brawl, the Stockton right wing rang 40 yards to loaf him one.

At the end ("without a whiff of hypocrisy") he offered his hand, in the clubhouse the assailant maintained a steady stream of Eighty Shilling Ale.

Both blow and aftermath left an impression.

"It was a stark lesson in the realities of North-East rugby - a serious physical pummelling on the pitch, and serious hospitality off it."

The only two footballers transferred from Manchester City to Manchester United since 1934 (Backtrack, Tuesday) have been Wyn ("the Leap") Davies for £60,000 in 1972 and goalkeeper Tony Coton, for £500,000, a decade later.

Back to the World Cup, Bill Bambrough in East Boldon today seeks the identity of the team which, like Saudi Arabia, conceded eight goals in a group match but - unlike the poor Saudis - went on to win it.

The small world turns again on Tuesday

Published: 14/06/2002