Imposter unearthed in literary corner

It's part of Barratt's "Premier Collection", with streets like Cookson Way, Herriot Drive, Kipling Drive, Bronte Drive and Austin Drive. Spot the odd one out?

There's Catherine Cookson, James Herriot, Rudyard Kipling, assorted Brontes - but who on earth's this Austin?

Could it be George Austin, the outspoken ex-Archdeacon of York? Maybe it's Arthur Austin, doyen among Durham County cricketers or even Roy Austin, who played three games for Doncaster Rovers in 1978 and was clearly nothing to write home about.

Or perhaps it's supposed to be Jane Austen, an author of whom most readers may have heard.

Without prejudice, as the lady herself might have said, we have attempted to bring Barratt's to book. "It's not us who chooses street names, it's the council," says their spokeswoman.

Ah yes, but who makes and erects the nameplates and (just as pertinently) hadn't anyone among the Premier Collection pointed out the mistake?

Barratt's promised to ring back. They haven't. so the well read must draw their own conclusions. In Colburn it's probably called a balls up; in journalism it's what's known as a literal.

NONE of us is infallible, of course, which explains why the column has been shot down in flames by Mike Porter. "I have always admired your precision of grammar, your clever use of words and your accuracy of spelling, but...."

Recalling 1950s flights of fancy from Greatham Aerodrome, near Hartlepool, we suggested two weeks ago that they were by Oster.

It should have been Auster. Mike knows, he flew them, though not since 1967. ("There aren't many around now; the skies are full of American Cessnas and Pipers.")

It's coincidental, of course, that the name should have the same beginning and - just possibly - the same parentage as Austin, which is itself a corruption of Augustine, an order of hair-shirted monks. So could the Auster - also a name for the south wind, hence Australia - have been an austerity model, like the mucky old War Department steam engines that used heavily to clank on the back line through Shildon?

Mike thinks not. "But perhaps," he adds perceptively, "your Gadfly readers may be able to explain it."

MUCH more information on RAF Seaton Carew arrives from Paul Carter in Billingham, and more of that next week. It's from a book called Action Stations and headed "Seaton Carew, Yorkshire". Seaton Carew in Yorkshire? If Jerry read it, no wonder he kept on missing.

'AUSTERITY" seems to have become a Second World War term for hardship, a reflection of the years when everything had to be cut according to the national cloth.

In 1944, for example, Bishop Auckland MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton felt obliged to answer allegations that "austerity" clothing was unsaleable.

"On the contrary," insisted Dr Dalton, "many men obviously think that at 20 coupons, austerity suits are a good bargain."

Were they? Has anyone memories of the days when we flew by the seat of austerity's pants? Better - if more improbable - still, does anyone still own an austerity suit?

SPAM may best be remembered from the same dark days, though more popular than ever now.

We wrote of it in July last year, told how sales were rising by 30 per cent annually, how five billion tins of Spam would stretch 13 times round the earth, how there was a Spam fan club, a Spam biography and how Nikita Kruschev swore that it kept his boys going - Spambrosia, as it were - during the conflict.

This Saturday, we hear, they're opening a Spam Museum in America, where the kitchen will offer wall to wall renditions of Monty Python's celebrated Spam sketch.

Visitors will enter beneath a wall of 3,390 cans of the stuff and leave beneath a 5ft replica of a Spamburger.

They'll be greeted musically by the Spamettes - someone else thought of the Spice Girls - invited to take part in a Spam quiz, and to watch "Spam: A Love Story" in the theatre.

The venue for all this canned entertainment? Austin - or should that be Austen - Minnesota.

BACK, alas, to the Mote and Beam department. Pete Winstanley from up Chester-le-Street way returns whence it came a For Sale advertisement for a three-piece suite - "champagne beige draylon, ten reversible cushions, excellent condition." It was the only ad on September 1 in the "Shooting and Fishing" section. Someone spinning a line.

FROM the Sunshine Hotel in Jersey, where selflessly she is boosting the local economy, the redoubtable Dorothy Howard sends a cutting from the News of the World of September 2.

It's the story of a "swanky" Labour party fund-raising dinner at which groups of ten will pay £2000 to share a "gold" table with a leading minister - "then quiz them over the wine and port."

Cabinet ministers at the do in London's Marriott Hotel - inevitably described as "posh" - will include North-East trio Hilary Armstrong, Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn, whom Dorothy remembers when he had nowt.

She was steward at the Branksome Social Club in Darlington. He was the aspiring Labour candidate, invited to attend a community dinner at the local youth club.

Since Milburn hadn't a partner, Dorothy was invited by veteran councillor Cliff Hutchinson to make up the numbers - introduced to him as "a Maggie supporter and personal friend of Mike Amos."

Like the American Express card, it did nicely. Unlike all that glitters under New Labour, it didn't cost her a penny.

LIKE Dorothy Howard, the column has also been on holiday - but in Norfolk. In Cromer we fulfilled an ambition by visiting the once grand Hotel de Paris - where Stephen Fry worked as a lad and last week's entertainment was by the Singing Coach Driver - and in Sheringham, where the dry sea air is reckoned to afford England's longest life span, we finally paid a visit to the Tyneside Club, CIU affiliated.

Its name, apparently, owes nothing to an invasion of crab catchers from Cullercoats, rather to the fact that the building - then Tyneside House - had been home to a Newcastle-born GP.

Unusually for a club it had three real ale pumps. More unusual yet, there was no cigarette-stained Cerberus guarding the gate.

More familiarly, perhaps, there were lots of notices, including an admonition that children must be kept under control at all times. "Prams and push chairs," it added, "must be left in the entrance hall."

Child's play at the workmen's? It'll never catch on in Shiremoor nor - come to that - in Shildon, either.

Another austerity edition next week.

Published: Wednesday, September 12, 2001