More melodies to be unchained

Most recently we kidnapped it to describe the choir at the High Anglican church of St James the Great in Darlington - a little figuratively perhaps, but all sorts figure around here - and it is perhaps that which has prompted the arrival from Mike Geal, also in Darlington, of a virginal £1 note.

The name of the Chief Cashier is (indecipherably) on the front, the image of Sir Isaac Newton on the back. They don't make them like that any more.

The £1, says Mike, is an award for "blather" - it used only to be a penny for your thoughts, inflation is clearly rampant - though we are grateful also for a further reference to the choir of St James the Great.

What, asks Mike, were they doing on South Park lake in Darlington during the great freeze of 1947?

Chorus skating, of course.

ANOTHER melody about to be unchained, last week's column sought the words of a song about a royal visit to Middlesbrough, apparently called The Procession. Since then, one thing has followed another.

Pat Cariss from Killerby, near Richmond, had sung it in far-off days at ICI's nylon works in Billingham, but had been able only to remember the chorus:

The procession it started at Ayresome,

Past the park and museum as well,

Past Kirkup's fruit stall,

And Boro town hall

And into the Baltic Hotel.

Several readers recalled it, though the Opening Gambit varied from Newport Bridge to Transporter Bridge to a ward at Middlesbrough General.

Like many folk songs, it has accumulated credibility down the years. "The plaque's still on the hospital wall," insists John McCoy from Billingham. "It was a lampoon on the cost and the extravagance of the visit."

Ian Luck from Gainford not only sends a 1999 CD which includes The Procession - Town in Time, Songs and Tunes of Middlesbrough, the English Klondike - but a couple of books of Teesside folk numbers.

The song was written by veteran Tees folk singer Graeme Miles, allegedly about the Duchess of Kent - and about Middlesbrough General.

The aldermen held a collection.

To get the mayor's chain out of pawn,

The message went round

To the heads of the town

That collars and ties should be worn.

The rest needs must be summarised. The civic party assembles at the railway station but misses the Duchess who's come in on the Tees floating crane, finally escorts her to the Baltic - somewhere over the Boro border - where the mayor has 25 pints and the Duchess 29 before retiring to St Mary's community centre for a feast of runner bean soup and crab apple melba. Trouble is, everyone's forgotten to open the new ward.

Some may consider the story apocryphal. Others might exercise the royal prerogative. Pat Cariss shall have her words, though the last word may be some way off yet.

STILL begging the royal pardon, apologies to Buckingham Palace for the suggestion in last week's column that the Court Circular might have become a little elliptical.

Following the Duke of Edinburgh's visit to a sewage works, we noted that the official statement had called the location "Bran Sands, Teesside, North Yorkshire" - which, it proves, was right all along.

Following the abolition of Cleveland County, says David Simpson, the old boundaries - Durham to the north of the Tees, Yorkshire on the down side - were restored for "cultural purposes" in 1996.

The Lord Lieutenant of Durham officiates in Stockton and sundry places, the Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire around the Boro. Tyne and Wear, where clearly they aren't so cultured, still has its own Lord Lieutenant though the county no longer exists.

Still, boundaries can be awfully flexible. Middlesbrough, Redcar, Yarm and Thornaby fall under the aegis of the Northumbria Tourist Board, not Yorkshire's - "tourism obviously isn't cultural," suggests David - whilst the National Trust disagrees and puts Ormesby Hall, properly, in Yorkshire.

Cleveland itself was a cultural misnomer, too. First mentioned in the 11th Century, it lay entirely south of the Tees between Middlesbrough and an area north of Whitby. From 1974-96 it became a county and embraced Stockton, Billingham, Eaglescliffe and Hartlepool, too.

Folk in those parts who still use it in their addresses defy nine centuries of tradition in favour of 22 years of bureaucratic convenience. Co Durham will do nicely.

RAF Seaton Snooks was a radar station between Hartlepool and Billingham, its antennae re-activated during the column's recent Eskimo Nell saga. It wasn't, however, the BKS operated airfield from which twin-engined Dakotas (Gadfly, August 22) flew commercially - that, recalls Maurice Heslop in Billingham, was Greatham Aerodrome, half a mile away.

Maurice reckons that 3,000 people flew off from Greatham between 1947-53 to London, Jersey and the Isle of Man until the aerodrome closed "because of the lack of customs facilities".

He also recalls taking off from Greatham as a youngster in a three-seat Oster, fare around £1 a head. "The pilot deliberately cut out over the sea, and I can still remember everyone going white. He probably realised he'd gone a bit too far, because when we landed he took us all home in his car. Aviation seems to have changed a bit since then."

SINCE the ice maiden Nell has rather seduced recent columns, one or two items of overmatter from our notes of July 18.

Anne Gibbon from Darlington joins the great aspirations debate with memories of a great aunt's gardener - one Warren by name. "She never quite knew if he was asking if he should cut the h'edges - of the lawn - or the 'edges. Confusion reigned."

Noting the alleged oxymoron "military intelligence", John Weir in Redcar remembered the home-grown gunnery sergeant instructor who repeatedly insisted that when range-finding there were only three types of tree - "fir trees, bushy top trees and popular trees".

In from the cold but with no given address, Mr I W Hateley underlines the North- East use of the word "starvation". He lived in north Northumberland in the 1950s. "It's starvation out there," folk would aver, "and ah'm near starved to death myself". Exactly.

...and finally, the thought that the space age still can't find a cure for the common cold or for the quite awful stink from Romanby sewage works - perhaps the Duke of Edinburgh should pay a visit - in Northallerton.

Despite suffering from the former, we were only too aware of the latter on Monday morning. What on earth do nearby residents make of it?

A week's holiday may at least thaw the cold. We return - coruscating, it is to be hoped - on September 12.

Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2001