A Grand night out

The school is gone, the shop economises, just two farmers plough on. The cement trains no longer rumble along the dusty railroad from Northallerton, either, though the Army sends sporadic heavy weaponry down the line after first experimenting with cardboard cut-outs of tanks on the back of low loaders.

The replicas, unfortunately, were a couple of inches smaller than armour plated reality. There are bridges in Wensleydale which still bear the scars.

The charming old village is even said to have had its first flirtation with what are recklessly known as recreational drugs - a local gentleman who grew cannabis in Freeholders' Wood, dried it, rolled it and smoked it as casually as in another age he might have puffed ten Woodbines.

Redmire, so far as may be ascertained, appears tolerant towards the joint exercise. "He's always been a miserable beggar," someone said. "It's just nice to see him happy for 45 minutes."

The first opening was in 1976. Brotherhood of Man were top of the pops, All the President's Men was the favourite film, Bjorn Borg the youngest Wimbledon champion for 45 years, 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci the sweetheart of the Montreal Olympics and Mrs Birtwhistle flew a large Union Jack from her garden in order to mark the village occasion.

The hall had been converted from the former Methodist chapel, across the road from the tree beneath which John Wesley himself preached on a trip up the dales.

Wesley, a truly extraordinary man, appears to have preached on, or beneath, almost every tree in God's kingdom and usually several in a day. Now the ancient elm is held, lest it fall, by devices like giant arboreal walking frames.

Billed as "grand", the opening overflowed, almost the entire village turned out last Saturday evening. The column, incorrigibly insecure, nonetheless officiates insecurely at any occasion describes as "grand".

Is it perhaps "grand" as in the ironic west Yorkshire sense, as in "Why, that's rart bloody grand, that is".

The money had slowly been raised from Europe, from the National Lotteries Fund, and from district and parish councils. The restoration had been done by local craftsmen, even when in danger of being blown off the roof. It was a tremendous job.

All manner of games and other pursuits are now available, a focal point for a fluid community. "We just hope that people will use it, and appreciate it," said Joan Farrow, the splendid hall committee chairman.

They kindly gave the opener a bottle of something spiritual. On the tombola we won some talcum powder, a porcelain duck called Leonard and a box of chocolate covered orange peel made by the Duchy of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales' Own. "Eat after dinner" it says on the box, as if anyone could have supposed otherwise.

Whilst the music played and the young folk embarked on their voyage of discovery, we adjourned to the Kings Arms - coal fire improbably blazing - and talked (as you do) about funerals. Such sombre circumstances notwithstanding, we said that we looked forward to being back in another 25 years.

Not a mouse stirred in Freeholders' Wood; a Grand night was had by all.

A LITTLE further into the past, someone sends a membership card - number 007 - from the GR Club in Shildon. It sang and danced in the early 1970s in the shoe box premises known previously as Snowplough Hall. GR, his profile then relatively unburnished, was George Reynolds - now a multi-millionaire industrialist and chairman of Darlington Football Club.

With a couple of necessary prefixes, even the telephone number remains the same as that for George's subsequent, more spectacular, enterprises.

Small but pretty perfectly formed, the GR Club was a very swish place. George - hands on, then as now - presided in daft hat, pin striped suit and with a substantial cigar.

Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas were among the big names who sang for their supper there; member number 007 was Bernard Fairbairn, for 40-odd years now the secretary of Tow Law Football Club. Perhaps, the best story of all from the GR Club, however, concerns the night that Peters and Lee - surprise chart toppers in 1973 - played Shildon and lost. But that's another story.

STRUMMING to much the same beat, the column was recalling a couple of months back how Jimi Hendrix not only appeared at the Imperial in Darlington but had his guitar half inched.

There are many who insist, that several times resprayed, it is not only still in Darlington but that they know the owner's identity. Whoever it is may like to know that a guitar once owned by the long dead guitarist brought £62,000 at a London auction last week. A lucky silver dollar which he kept in his show raised £1,840.

SNOUT in the trough for the last time, a pint in the dear old Pig and Whistle in Redcar - closing, after a long and bloody battle, on Saturday.

The pub's regulars, and its extraordinary litter of 2,700 ceramic pigs, are moving just 200 yards. The Pig and Whistle Social Club - "Pig II" says landlord Nick Coulson - opens at the end of next week.

The Pig's near Redcar railway station, originally the Alexandra but renamed 25 years ago because everyone called it the Pig and Whistle, anyway. Something to do, legend unsteadily suggests, with the presence nearby of an abattoir, a railway siding and a lot of thirsty workers.

Former landlord Bob Laidler began the pot piggery in the 1970s; now it's not so much piggy in the middle as in every cranny imaginable. Customers bring them from all over the world, and from the charity shop round the corner.

"You'll know the barmaid," Nick said, "she's the one with the big ears and the apple in her mouth."

Somewhat iconoclastically, the pub also has a near full-size figure of an Indian chief. He just phoned and asked for a reservation, says the landlord.

Nick, 46, has been drinking in the Pig for 35 years - "or since I was 18, whichever sounds better"; Mr Bill Perfitt, with whom we shared a last drink, recalled that it was also a favourite watering hole in his time a generation ago as The Northern Echo's man about Redcar.

He'd even picked up a story there about a bloke who'd fled Redcar to join the Foreign Legion; they've thrown so much European money at the place of late that the Foreign Legion now decamps to Redcar.

The pub makes reluctant way for a Morrison's supermarket. "We'd been told we wouldn't be affected," says Nick.

"I went to a meeting three years ago to sort out my back entrance and learned for the first time that it was coming down. There have been petitions to the Prime Minister and all sorts. It's one of the last real community pubs, a second home for some of the older folk. The past three years has been a nightmare."

The new place in Station Road - annual membership £1 - will closely replicate the cosy original. The swine herd, all 2,700 of them, will again have a special place. Pigs might fly, of course, but only to the next street but one.

A WALK along Station Road reveals that it also has a Euronics Centre, a couple of doors up from the mucky book shop. This column hasn't the slightest idea what euronics might be or whether they are Sweden's entry in the next song contest. Perhaps someone will know by next week.

...and finally, we'd wondered a couple of weeks back if Barbara Law, an attractive blonde writing an English language showbiz column in Tenerife, might be the same blonde Barbara who sang 40 years ago on Tyne Tees Television's fondly remembered One O'Clock Show. "Certainly it is," says Greg James, manager of the Hole in the Wall bar out there (but encountered in the Hole in the Wall, Darlington, which he also once ran). Greg's promised further details when he gets back, but reckons the lady's still entertaining. "She must," he adds chivalrously, "be turned 50 by now."

Published: 28/06/2001