Keeping in step with father time

"I have to give myself a push every now and again," he says. "I can't gallop about like I used to."

He is an extraordinarily nimble 90, nonetheless, still maintaining the sequence, still thinking on fast feet. The Railway Institute OTMS Dance Club, a bairn by comparison, celebrates its own 50th anniversary on September 4.

Not to be confused with the LMS, the OTMS - Old Time, Modern and Sequence - was part of the British Railways Staff Association in the days when the beat of the wagon works' steam hammer checked also the pulse of the town.

"I think it's the sameness of it that's the attraction," says Lilian Storey, the secretary. "People still come from all over south Durham and into North Yorkshire because they know exactly what to expect."

Laurie Robinson was a Shildon butcher when it began, the finest pork pies in Christendom wrapped in the previous day's Sunday Pictorial and carried upright to washing day dinner as triumphantly as poor Bob Cratchit and his twopence ha'penny goose.

There was potted meat and polony and peas pudding, too, and two Pinky and Perky plaster pigs that assumed the window once the Robinson brothers had gone home.

When he retired, he took more frequently to the dance floor, still leads a second club at Leeholme, continues to provide all his own music.

"Each dance has 16 sequences and every one has a script," says Mrs Storey. "I can't even understand the script, never mind remember it. Laurie is absolutely incredible, I really don't know how he does it"

It began at a shilling a night, Tommy Smurthwaite and his band, dances like the Lancers, the Caledonians and the Quadrille. Freda Ridley has been on the door for much of the 50 years and her mother before that.

"I've always enjoyed just watching," says Freda, 79. "We've never really had the young ones, always Darby and Joan."

Laurie regrets that old time is now history - "we used to have some really good nights, let our hair down, took our coats off" - but still keeps one step ahead.

"There are maybe 50 new dances a year now, and you have to try to remember all the sequences. Some I do, some I forget, but you have to keep struggling on."

The fiftieth anniversary will be marked next Tuesday with a "gold" themed evening in the Railway Institute, at which founder members like the column's dear old friend Bertha Pallister - a few years older than Laurie - are expected once more to trip Shildon's light fantastic.

"It should be a really tremendous evening," says Mrs Storey. A merry dance, undoubtedly.

UNABLE to hit a barn dance whilst sitting on the handle, we made our excuse me's and left for a game of dominoes in the bar with Mr Tommy Taylor, chairman of Shildon Boxing Club. "That'll not be in your sports column on Friday," said Tommy, after winning a few bob. He's right, of course.

JACK Amos, mischievously believed to be the column's grandfather but many a mile further removed, rings about The New Jerusalem - otherwise Saltburn by the Sea - and more of that revelation in a moment.

Jack, now 69, remains secretary of Durham Club and Institute Union. The CIU convalescent home on Saltburn front has just undergone a £400,000 facelift and, for the first time, will offer en suite accommodation in its 26 rooms. It used to be a canny wait for the bathroom, says Jack.

"Downstairs we were five star but upstairs maybe only two and a half," admits Martin Logan, who manages the home with his wife Bridget.

"The bedrooms were probably a little bit of a let down when guests saw them for the first time. Lots of our guests have done national service or active service with barrack room and communal living, and that's what we were based on to a certain extent. Now it's five star everywhere."

It was built for £6,000 in 1872 by Sir Joseph Pease as a convalescent home for Cleveland ironstone miners and sold to the CIU in 1909.

The Rev Henry Solly had founded the clubs' union to promote "temperance and self-improvement" among working men. The £2,000 sale price reflected the Quaker Pease family's sympathy with such good Christian ideals.

Saltburn had been laid out by Henry Pease, Joseph's father, its first streets named after jewels - based, says Martin, on the 21st chapter of the Book of Revelation in which the Holy City's 12 foundations were garnished with "all manner of precious stones".

The convalescent home - formally to be re-opened on September 7 by national CIU president Derek Dormer - will also have a ruby wing, a sapphire wing and an emerald suite.

It's open to all CIU members who book in advance. "We often get lads coming waving their club cards and wanting to pop in for a pint," says Martin. "We'd love to see them, but unfortunately it's not allowed in our licence."

HEAVEN knows how successful last week's plea for the Forty Niners from King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland may have been, but the piece stirred memories for two of a slightly later intake.

Ken Bibby, whose mum's still in West Auckland, recalls teachers like his woodworking namesake "Alf" Bibby, Freddie Chapman ("who thought he was being modern by letting us call him Fred") and Sid, always Sammy, Hakin.

Most vividly, however, he recalls being caned by stick-happy headmaster "Neddy" Deans. "His aim was bad and the first stroke broke the cane against the base of my spine.

"It would have been hilariously funny with hindsight, had I not suffered from lower back problems ever since."

An old school e-mail correspondent who identifies himself only as Ewbank recalls maths master "Butch" Dixon - "fists like October cabbages, probably used a sawn-off shotgun instead of a starting pistol on sports day" - French teacher "Killer" Watts ("great bloke") and "Mambo" Scripps, whose blackboard script was beautiful.

He also remembers a 1950s school speech day, in the town hall, at which the Bishop of Durham - Maurice Harland, probably - "gave us his all by ranting and raving about the evil introduction of drainpipe trousers." The episcopal limbs, adds Ewbank, were themselves shrouded more tightly than a duck's derriere. All gas and gaiters, see.

....and finally, an appropriately warm welcome to the Rev Peter Davis, to be installed tonight as Vicar of Tow Law with the neighbouring parishes of Satley and the more southerly of the Stanleys.

Mr Davis, an Australian, wrote from Adelaide to inquire about vacancies in the Diocese of Durham and has been convinced that his journey's worthwhile by a specially-made video of the area's attractions.

"I'd been trying to find a Vicar for Tow Law for years," says the Ven Granville Gibson, retiring tomorrow as Archdeacon of Auckland.

"Peter said he wanted somewhere near Durham, not as hot as Adelaide and with plenty of fresh air.

"I thought 'Aha, I know just the place'...."