The best days of our lives...

They were the days of innocence and of Syd Phillips and his Band, of washing mangles, Johnny Weissmuller and - as the minister recalled - of the Goon Show, which seemed, 50 years ago, at the leading edge of irreverent thinking.

They were also the days, 1945-55, of the Hope Street Young People's Fellowship in Crook, and, on Saturday, at a glad-to-be-alive reunion, youth once again had its fling.

Whilst it might always have been said that where there was life there was Hope Street, the Methodist church from which the Fellowship took its name has long since been demolished.

They reunited instead at the Dawson Street church, over 100 young-at-hearts as far flung as Gordon and Thelma Simpson, who'd flown in from Vancouver, and as near as Elsie Jackson, who lived across the road.

"I thought it was you but I wasn't sure," folk said, and then thought no more and embraced one another like the long lost friends that moments before they had been.

They wore name badges and maiden name badges, remembered the post-war days when Crook had 37 pubs, three picture houses and Mrs Taziloi's celebrated ice cream parlour, ate salmon sandwiches, apple charlottes and cream horns from a veritable cornucopia, a chapel tea fitted to the greatness of the occasion.

Mostly, however, they simply reminisced - the strongest drink black coffee, the darkest expletive "Good gracious."

The Fellowship had been started after the war by railway signalman Bill Askwith, known as Uncle Billy, and by his sisters who became Aunty Mary and Aunty Betty.

There was a croquet lawn and a badminton court, for which they'd raised money by making proggy mats, there were plays, pantomimes, public speaking competitions and choir practice in Harry Dixon's front room and there were good Methodist holidays, carefully chaperoned, like the 70 who one year took off to Guernsey.

"Guernsey," echoed Bill Hodgson. "A lot of those kids had hardly been past Willington in their lives."

There'd been dancing, too, though the Methodist church of the 1940s found it difficult fully to keep in step with such things. "At least when you danced you held your partner close," said Bill, "not danced around your handbag like they do today."

Real dancing, though, was reserved for the Elite Hall, the emphasis thereabouts on the first syllable, as (perhaps) in eeeh-bah-gum.

There was Harry Gould and his Pieces of Eight - Harry's still alive, they reckon - and Ray Holliday and his Orchestra, but the Elite was something to which you probably never admitted, within earshot of Uncle Bill and Aunty Betty.

The YPF also had a threepenny magazine called Scoop, edited by Jack Ramsden. At 14 he'd had to choose between the law and the Auckland Chronicle, eschewed the inky trade, finished as head of the county council conveyancing department and never regretted it for a moment.

The back issues had largely been reassembled for the reunion, with a note saying that the magazine had been sponsored by Marquis and Co (Solicitors), though they'd not realised it at the time.

There was a column called Bits and Pieces (by the Scrounger) which revealed that Barry Appleby had fallen off his bike and that Arthur Turnbull wanted an Olympic Games postage stamp and there were Sports Jottings (by The Skipper) with the bad news that they'd lost to the Presbyterians by six wickets.

Scoop could be outspoken, too, attacking the "dismal Jimmies" who wrote off young people of the day - Bill Middlemiss, Crook's present minister, saw the following morning's sermon in that - and on another occasion lambasting a visiting preacher (visiting from North Bitchburn, two miles away) for suggesting that YPF members didn't fulfill the obligation to attend church at least once every Sunday.

"Critics such as Mr Morton are destructive in character and harmful to the propagation of practical Christianity," fulminated Scoop and Jack, 82 now, maintains the editorial line.

"We'd every reason to be proud, just look around you at these fine people. Of all the things for which I'm thankful, the greatest is being born when I was."

The reunion had been organised by John Hodgson, Bill's brother, disappointed to know so few people at a similar Wolsingham Grammar School event last year and determined to put rather more names to faces.

John, who lives in Wolverhampton, had found one YPF member, given up for dead by half of Crook, playing golf five miles away at Bishop Auckland. He'd brought together cousins who'd not seen one another for half a century, reunited after 45 years a best man with his groom. "Uncle Bill and his Fellowship were a positive influence on people," he said. "Talk to people here and I think you can understand that."

George Simpson, his accent little translated by 27 years in Canada, had been back to Stanley Hill Top whence he came and discovered it much changed - "like it must have been before the pits were there" - but believed that the folk, good Durham folk, had hardly changed at all.

Thelma hadn't seen Harry Wilkinson since they carried him off the football field with a broken leg; Edna Marsh recalled that if you were a young man at the YPF then Joan (her friend) fancied you; Jean Henderson had been Mrs Cowie for donkeys' years but still answered to the name she'd been given at birth.

"Everyone calls me that," she said, "except when I'm sitting as a magistrate."

Most were there for the weekend, and a special service the next morning. They were the good days and the old days which so affectionately they remembered, but when again they sang the tune from Much Binding in the Marsh, tiddley-om-pom-pom, last Saturday may have been the best day of them all.

MORE nostalgia at Bishop Auckland Town Hall, where an exhibition on Spennymoor Settlement - about which we wrote last year - is running.

Sadly, we were unable to attend the opening by 85-year-old Eva Kirtley, still active in the drama group - a particular regret since Arnold Hadwin, Settlement lad and former editor of the Northern Despatch in Darlington, was back home for the occasion.

"Lovely little feller," they reported, when finally we looked in on Tuesday.

The Settlement, a sort of Everyman's University, was founded in 1931 by Bill Farrell, who also ran Spennymoor's first lending library. The town's literary taste, he observed, was for the most part deplorable.

Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness broadened their brush there, classes ranged from social science to psychology, crafts from cobbling to carpentry.

Though the Settlement ceased its full time activities in 1954, the Auckland Chronicle fulminating against the absence of a county council subsidy, its leisure pursuits continue - as does the exhibition, until; June 23.

WENDY Bowker, a name which rings bells, appears among the credits of Bad Girls, the cult television series about life in a women's prison to which 70 unofficial websites are already devoted,

Wendy, one of two "technical advisers", has what might conveniently be termed inside information - she was an officer at top security Frankland Prison, near Durham,

After getting over the wall in 1993, she opened Beiderbecks restaurant in Darlington with Joy Fraser, her partner, later converting it into one of the area's first Internet cafes. Sadly, we have been unable to track her down - a local girl made Bad.

A WEEK after we sought comment from Bass on the intended evisceration of the Duke of Wellington - that familiar and highly popular pub at Nevilles Cross, Durham - the brewing giant has returned the call.

If it aint broke don't fix it? "We always listen to local people but they will always be unhappy about change," says the spokesman. The intention, as we reported last week, is that the Welly will become an Ember Inn - aimed at a wide age range, insist Bass, playing quiet music and serving food "into the evening." (Not after eight o'clock, probably, gets in the way of the drinkers in the huge single bar.)

Trade has risen 50 per cent after similar projects. Word is that they want to spend £800,000 on the Duke. "We don't invest that sort of money unless we're sure of it," adds the spokesman, "but these are still early days."

...and finally, a PS to last week's piece on the North Eastern Locomtoive Preservation Group. Blue Peter, the magnificent class A2 steam engine, duly completed its 240 mile "farewell" run on Saturday - farewell for a few years, anyway - though with an additional and unexpected load.

Two class 31 diesels, assigned to banking duties south of Carlisle, both failed. Dear old Blue Peter pulled its 13 coaches and both diesels safely back to Darlington.

Published: 14/06/2001