Telling tales from the owl country

With an invitation to "top that", therefore, Harry Watson in Darlington wonders: why did the owl howl?

Because she hadn't the wit to woo.

Instantly, however, he is topped by Janet McCrickard - also in Darlington - who recalls her late father's all-time favourite joke. "Every time he told it, he'd giggle."

What, Janet's old dad would innocently enquire, is the difference between a bad marksman and a constipated owl?

One shoots but cannot hit...

THESE hoot of the moment exchanges had been prompted by a letter in the Oban Times on the key - B flat, apparently - in which West Highland owls do their thing.

The Oban Times was also plugged on Radio 4 on Sunday, something to do with a row at the Mallaig Prawn Queen competition in which a contestant in drag was beaten about the head with a wooden truncheon which his assailant had stolen from a laundry basket in a flat.

"Ah yes, there was a bit of a stooshie," confirms a charming lassie, called Joanne, on the Times newsdesk.

"A what?"

"An altercation likely to lead to fisticuffs," translates Joanne and, since everyone else up there has the flu, offers a job in real journalism as well.

Events in Mallaig, however, may not have been as hard prawn as first supposed. So far as may be ascertained from 350 miles down wind, the contest is a drag affair, anyway.

"It's possible," says Joanne, "they do some rather peculiar things in Mallaig."

MALLAIG is next to the Knoydart Peninsula. In traversing the area last week, we called it a Peninsular. "If a grammatical icon can get it wrong what hope is there?" asks Ian Forsyth in Durham. Probably none. Apologies.

JOHN Wesley usually visited Weardale in the summer, when still it seemed usually to be cold and wet but not as cold and wet as in the winter. He'd have felt at home on Sunday, then.

As the news pages have chronicled, it was 250 years to the day since the evangelist first visited High House chapel at Ireshopeburn, the anniversary enthusiastically acknowledged.

"It's a long time since there've been folk queuing to get into church," someone said, or since windows had been so greatly steamed up with songs of praise.

The usual congregation hovers around ten. On Sunday, upstairs and down, 320 squeezed in.

We sat in the gods, though no closer to heaven, unable to see the Kids on Sunday tableau in which "Mike Amos" interviewed John Wesley, nor the sequel in which the time machine got a parking ticket.

Wesley continued to visit the dale, particularly Wolsingham, until 1790. "An occasion of uncommon blessing," he wrote in his Journal in June 1788 and, though the rain persisted, there seemed many in May 2002 prepared to echo the sentiment.

...and afterwards, as they say, to the Weardale Inn - conveniently next door. "I've never seen so many Methodists at the bar," someone said, though the total were large tea drinkers. In the car park we spotted this remarkably self-effacing registration plate, see right, owner unknown. If she'd care to get it off her chest, however, we'd love an explanation.

What's the collective noun for dentists? A filling, perhaps? A cavity? A drill?

We mention it because there'd been a dentists' convention at the Hardwick Hall Hotel in Sedgefield on Friday, before they were all rinsed out and the Northern League's annual dinner took the chairs.

Dick Coleman bought the hall for £14,000 in 1969, the elegant new function suite named in his memory and managed by John Adamson, his grandson. A nice bit of beef from George Bolam's, across the village, an' all.

Hardwick Hall's particular appeal, however, is that in an earlier incarnation it was a nursing home - the place where I was born.

The delivery room is a swish conference room now, all overhead projectors, multimedia opportunity windows and blue sky thinking. There didn't seem to be a blue plaque, however.

The greater disappointment, a sort of delayed post-natal depression, was the room's present use.

In the past year we've sat - uncomfortably, irascibly - around conference tables all over England, though none more memorably than one much closer to home.

It was a course on lateral thinking, or some such king's new clothes claptrap, led by a twerp in red braces.

"I'm sorry if I'm keeping you awake, Mike," he said, having detected a certain languor from the other end of the table.

The muse stirred. "Not at all," we said, "the exact opposite is the case."

They were bright lads, Hardwick lads. The twerp in red braces still hasn't laterally thought his way out of that one.

PERHAPS all those dentists were chewing over when next to declare a bank holiday. Whatever the health service's other chronic shortages, there seem to be an awful lot of them going about.

Sue Wray in Bishop Auckland rang the town's General Hospital at 8.35 on Monday morning and after being in a queue was greeted by a recorded message telling her to ring between "normal" office hours - "8am to 6pm" - or leave a message.

She left a message and was called back shortly afterwards with the news that in the hospital it was a bank holiday. "I'm the only one here, the telephones are going mad," the girl added.

The column sought a second opinion. Twice a year they got what were called hospital statutory bank holidays, said the lady on the switchboard.

"It should have been next Tuesday following the usual bank holiday on the Monday, but since there were already two next week it was decided that there shouldn't be a third and it was moved.

"I didn't know about them until I started working at the hospital."

Though the switchboard operator was most helpful, it was impossible to speak to anyone in higher authority. In the beleaguered health service, they were all having a buckshee day off.

...and finally. we are grateful to David Armstrong in Redcar for a "Lost and found" ad from his local paper: "Lost: black car, yellow eyes, not very big, still could be wearing blue collar. Answers to Toby."

Probably purrs like a kitten, too. The column that gives a hoot returns, as usual, next week.

Published: ??/??/2002