SO Richmond is to lose its farm and garden centre before Christmas, this use of the former station building not fitting in with the council's designation of "leisure use".

Well, that confirms what all we keen gardeners have always known. Gardening is darned hard work, not a leisure pursuit. Kipling knew it a long time ago and wrote: " ..gardens are not made/By singing 'Oh, how beautiful' and sitting in the shade."

Farming, obviously, isn't leisurely at all, so the council has a point there.

But, according to a recent report, all that decking, gravelling and instant planting done in nought seconds flat by TV gardening teams is sending viewers into garden centres in droves to spend their weekends trawling the shelves and greenhouses for the wherewithal to do the same. The outing is an object in itself.

Going to the garden centre, it seems, has become a "leisure pursuit". Too late, alas for the 27-year-old Richmond business and the 13 people who work there.

Return of the A1

THE decades rolled away on Friday - or so it must have seemed to the villages and towns on routes near the A1 in North Yorkshire.

An accident on the A1 first created massive queues and then diversions, that from the flyover north of Ripon being the one in which Spectator became a spectator. The drive from Northallerton along the byways to Ripon is usually a pleasant one, but on Friday it was a different matter as massive vehicles manoeuvered their way northwards in an unremitting procession.

Skipton on Swale and Baldersby lost their charm when the views were blocked by the high-sided species. It all recalled days of chatting in the kitchen of the Black Bull at Topcliffe, with the windows blocked by huge wheels as wagons crawled up the bank.

That was in the 70s when, eventually, a bitter campaign resulted in a bypass and once again it was possible to cross the road. A decade earlier, Boroughbridge regained its streets when the A1 ceased to run through the town centre - although there was some subsequent whimpering that trade was suffering. About the same time, Leeming became a village instead of a dodgy junction across the A1.

The A1 as we know it now is all too frequently a mobile traffic jam, but at least it no longer makes life a misery for villages, as Friday reminded us.

Just Arc-less

SPECTATOR was, of course, saddened by this week's demise of the Arc, Stockton's "flagship arts centre". But it confirms his suspicions that pretension comes before a fall.

It was the name, you see. The Arc replaced the much-loved Dovecot arts centre (in Dovecot Street). The D&S Times always referred to the new place as the Arc, but they would have preferred us to call it "ARC".

But why ARC, in capitals? Art Resources Centre, Spectator wondered. Appallingly Run Contraption, perhaps? No, the name was chosen, our cuttings reveal, because of the sweep and lines of the new building. But why CAPITALS?

Perhaps, if they could gain regal patronage for a re-launch, they could rename it the Arc Royal.

I bet they wish they'd stuck with the Dovecot.

Oh, mother

YOU think the commercial side of Christmas started too early this year? You ain't seen nuthin. At the exit to a Darlington superstore is a placard advertising bargain breaks for Mothering Sunday