Lives, by any standard, remarkable

FIRST, however, to Countess Elizabeth von der Schulenburg, more often remembered in the Durham coalfield as Tisa Hess and, later, simply Sister Paula. She was 97.

Allan Newman in Darlington draws our attention to her obituary in The Times, and to her frequent visits to the mining community.

"Knowing your ability to make summat from nowt," he writes, "I wonder what you might make of this."

Bricks without straw, Pharaoh called it. The column builds skyscrapers that way. After she was born in northern Germany in 1903, her father called his four sons together to discuss what their sister might be called. Rosebush, their consensus, was paternally uprooted in favour of Elizabeth, but soon she became universally known as Tisa.

Though her father was a Nazi general and her family mainly sympathisers, she married a divorced Jew, came to London, became friends with the sculptor Henry Moore and was drawn to the collieries.

"She would even draw down the pit, though it was almost unheard of for a woman to go down in those days," says Gillian Wales, manager of Bishop Auckland Town Hall, where an exhibition of Tisa's work will be held from June 4-23.

Before the war, she also taught art and wood carving at Spennymoor Settlement - the renowned Miners' Academy - and designed the two dramatic masks which still adorn its entrance.

"She was a very nice lady and though I was only 16 or 17 at the time, I think very attractive too," recalls Norman Cornish, 81, Spennymoor's celebrated pitman painter.

Her favourite brother turned his back on the Nazis, plotted to assassinate Hitler - Tisa whole heartedly approved - and was hanged.

Tisa became an Ursuline nun in 1950 but continued to visit England and, sometimes, the coalfields. "A life by any standard remarkable," said The Times obituary. Summat and nowt, it wasn't.

DON Wilcock was described in an immensely affectionate death notice in Monday's paper as an "incorrigible wit and raconteur" and from time to time in these columns as the world's greatest expert on Cockfield Fell.

So he probably was, though veteran Teesdale councillor John Armstrong might contest the claim. Who was it, after all, who remembered that when the Germans inadvertently dropped incendiaries on the fell - missed again - Gunga Din was on at Butterknowle pictures?

John Armstrong.

Shildon lad by birth, he was a distant cousin who periodically assumed the role of kindly uncle, gently correcting our inaccuracies.

"Teacher and lecturer, naturalist, local historian and industrial archaeologist," added the death notice, though we best remember him for the way in which he cherished the county's industrial heritage.

He was also, memory suggests, a campaigner, fighting - this time in vain - to preserve the long lines of old-style telegraph poles that stretched to the horizon along the Roman road from Piercebridge to Royal Oak.

He lived in Bowburn, near Durham, underwent a heart by-pass one Monday in 1996 and by that Saturday was helping with the weekend shopping.

In one of our more recent conversations, he'd recalled a talk on Cockfield Fell which once he gave to Redworth Women's Institute.

The area's late eighteenth century industrialists, he'd said, would cure alkali by adding the most easily obtainable form of light acid - human urine. For that reason, added Don - earnestly begging the ladies' pardons - the place where such chemical reaction most frequently took place was identified on a map of 1795 as Piss Pot Hall.

For some reason, added the Old Incorrigible, Redworth never invited him to return.

HARRY Colbert appeared in the Gadfly column only last May, a First World War veteran who'd lied about his age to enlist and 80-odd years later been awarded the Legion d'Honneur by the French. He'd been 100 the previous Christmas Day.

No one else had noticed, however, the intriguing evidence of his shirt pocket. It was a packet of pipe tobacco, with the clearly marked warning about what smoking does to the health.

Harry lived in a care home in Willington, Co Durham, in peace with his pipe and with mankind. He had only stopped smoking, indeed, when baccy became quite scarce on the Somme.

At 90, still sprightly, he had joined the committee of Willington FC. Incomparable certainly, matchless never once.

GEORGE Hardwick lives, happily, and has a tale to tell. Our old friend, now 81, has at last been awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Redcar and Cleveland.

George, born in Saltburn and brought up a couple of miles away in Lingdale, captained Middlesbrough, England and Great Britain at football. Almost always his name was coupled with that of Wilf Mannion, born in Redcar and another football great. They even had a joint testimonial.

In 1996, however, Redcar council awarded a deserved Freedom to Wilf but nothing at all to George.

In June that year the column described the decision as grubby and tawdry. "No one is more proud of his roots, nor more willing even at 76 to make public appearances or advise youngsters and without thought of payment." Now, at last, they are doing the decent thing. What on earth can have kept them?

Finally, a few snippets... Mike Walker in Darlington probably wasn't alone in noticing that the winner of our Saturday caption competition the other day - a mischievous comment on a picture of health secretary and Darlington MP Alan Milburn - was purportedly a Mr W Hague from Richmond. Perhaps a pro-celebrity category next time, Mike suggests.

Rob Williams from Tyneside sends a cutting from one of the Newcastle papers offering for sale a set of the Short Oxford. It's headed "Dictonary". Speaks volumes, really.

And David Armstrong in Barnard Castle points out that immediately beneath the sanctuary knocker at Durham Cathedral is an advertising board for the Undercroft Restaurant. "Please visit us in the former monk's wine cellar," it says.

Is that, asks David, the reason he left the order?