THEY laughed, says Alan Singleton, when ten years ago he diversified from farming into growing mushrooms as well. Now he shifts almost two tons a week. "It's an awful lot of mushrooms," says Alan. They probably raised eyebrows, too, when he began keeping worms. Now, he has a quarter of a million at a time, the earth moves and in the north writhing of Yorkshire they're sold, alive, by the kilo.

After Easter, he diversifies yet again. Following the wettest winter in mordant memory, he's about to start selling bottled water. Water, water everywhere? "Not like mine," he says, confidently.

Alan's from Thornton Watlass, near Bedale, was for more than a quarter of a century a successful cricketer with Darlington and Northallerton and at 56 still plays for the village green side, whose own summer is likely to be abandoned to foot-and-mouth disease.

It's all anyone's talking about in the pub, when we meet to discuss life's diversity. Pyres are everywhere, vast graves above Catterick, a virtual woodyard awaiting on the old airfield. His own farms have escaped - but every time the telephone rings, says Alan, you dread it's bad news. The telephone rings an awful lot.

"I just can't see a future for the small farmer at all. Foot-and-mouth means that things will become ever more intensive. It's all very well the environmentalists talking, but a farm with 20 sheep or cows will just no longer be practical."

Though he retains his mixed farm at Thornton Watlass ("I'm still a proper farmer, if you like") his other activities are conducted mainly from a second farm at Danby Wiske, north of Northallerton, bought originally for his retirement.

The mushrooms don't grow in the dark - "it's an old wives' tale," - the worms are almost hysterically heliotropic. "We had a thunder storm last August, the lights went out and the little buggers ended up all over the farm."

There might be 10,000 in a tank six feet across and 18 inches deep. Worms have several million different species, even (he thinks) the blue nose.

"Basically they just chew away, laze around, have sex if you like" - memory suggests that worms do not have sex as others do, not Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am - "breed and are harvested at six months. We use the compost for garden centres afterwards".

The other clever bit is that every day they eat their own weight in cattle muck, there's plenty of it around, plus a bit of a horse manure to ensure a varied diet.

They're sold mainly to fishing tackle shops, though a house builder took rather a lot so that the lie of his land might improve. The worms, as they do, turned.

The water, as it were, is unconnected. The business had operated previously, already had an extraction licence. Alan thought not to leave well alone.

Danby Windmill Spring Water, rich in calcium and one or two other things, will go on stream as soon as labels, bar codes and things have been sorted. Details of his water supply on (01325) 378131. "There's no skill to it," he insists. "All we do is take it from 130 feet underground, bottle it at source and find a market.

"I know there's a lot of natural water about, but we're quite optimistic. We're selling it already to the people who buy our mushrooms.

"It won't be easy breaking into the market, but we just have to give it a go. There's no easy money in farming. No one's laughing now."

ALAN also recalls the 1967 foot and mouth outbreak when his father and other farmers around Thornton Watlass blamed starlings for spreading the disease and shot hundreds - "whole flocks of them" - every evening.

Strictly, however, starlings don't come in flocks but in a murmuration. Before the foot of the column, readers are invited to name the birds for which the following are collective nouns:

A murder, cast, covey, ostentation, unkindness, building, pitying, mustering, siege and a flight.

Feathers in caps for six or more.

UNPRETENTIOUS all these years, 22 Waldron Street in Bishop Auckland is at last to get a plaque to show that it's a house of standing. The connection, as with other promotional effort in Bishop, is Stan Laurel.

His sister Olga was born there, Stan probably spent Christmas there, attended Olga's baptism party and may himself have been re-christened, if the exercise theologically be possible, at the same time.

"He was probably christened three times. They kept thinking he wouldn't survive," says Stan Pattison, Grand Sheikh of the Bishop Auckland tent of the Sons of the Desert.

Arthur Jefferson, Stan Laurel's father, was twice manager of the Eden Theatre in the town. Already there's a plaque inside St Peter's church, where Stan was initially baptised, outside 66 Princes Street, where the family first lived and at King James I school where, like all the best, he was educated.

Gillian Wales, the Grand Vizier, is seeking funding for the new plaque, unlikely to be in place before the Southend tent - the Saps at Sea - come exploring the Stan Laurel Trail on May 3.

She denies that 22 Waldron Street's link is tenuous, thin even. "In Bishop Auckland, we're very proud of Stan."

THE column's old friend Mike Dalton, owner of the Greenbank Hotel in Darlington, has helped organise a show at Billingham Synthonia club tomorrow night to raise funds for the haematology unit at Darlington Memorial Hospital. It's where Beryl, Mrs Dalton, is being treated - with ever greater signs of success - for a form of leukaemia.

There'll be singer, comedian, disco, bar until 12.30, bus from Darlington if required. Tickets are £3 from Mike on (01325) 462624 or at the door from 7.30pm tomorrow. "It's the very least we can do," says Mike. "They saved my wife's life."

THE left-handed gunman on the Wells Fargo stage wasn't John "Basher" Alderson from Horden (John North, last week) but Dale Robertson, who played Jim Hardie in the 1960s television western series. Dale, points out Tom Purvis in Sunderland, was born in Harran, Oklahoma, which may not be Horden, but it's near.

....and finally, those avian collective nouns. It's a murder of crows, a cast of hawks, a covey of partridge, an ostentation of peacocks, an unkindness of ravens, a building of rooks, a pitying of turtledoves, a mustering of storks, a siege of herons and a flight of swallows.

The column spreads its wings again in two weeks.

Published: Thursday, April 12th