TO the Blackwell Grange hotel, Darlington, where we bumped into the Venerable Bede. Well, not so much bumped into, but properly introduced to by Captain Cook, with whom he shares an unexpected common interest.

Actually, those distinguished North-Easterners might not have approved of the venue had our meeting been in the flesh.

It's a splendid hotel, especially the blazing logs nestling on a bed of Coalite as a nod towards smokeless-zonery. But the honest seafarer would find that the place had taken his name in vain and Bede the aesthete would likely deplore a clash between the period decor and a garish electronic no-armed bandit in the Captain Cook bar.

The Cook Islands? Been there, said the explorer. Mount Cook? Seen that. Cook Strait? Done that. But the Cook cocktail bar? The next thing will be a T-shirt.

It will be no consolation to him that the Blackwell Grange, with no known link to the Civil War either, also has a Cromwell suite. And its "Scotts Corner" is unexplained; it carries no acknowledgement to Sir Walter and it is too near that gorgeous fire to be am allusion to Antarctica.

That eponymous bar does, however, have some James Cook memorabilia, not least a framed copy of his notes on the Maoris' "expression of sentiments by hand". Which brings us to the interest shared by monk and mariner. It is sign language.

The discovery that the hand movements of the natives of New Zealand had so intrigued Capt Cook (he paused from his 1770 charting of the islands to jot them down) sent me scurrying to an encyclopaedia, where I learned that 1,000 years earlier at Jarrow, Bede had invented his own sign language. Even before Bede, the Romans were also into significant hand movements, most famously with the verdicts given by the emperor at the end of gladitorial contests: a thumbs-up meant freedom for a courageous slave, while a cowardly performance would be accorded a thumbs-down death sentence.

COOK compiled a list of Maori hand signals. Why? It is hard to believe he did so because he found them novel. More likely he did so because he was intrigued to find these faraway people, never before having had prolonged contact with Europeans, using many of the gestures he had grown up with in Great Ayton, Staithes and Whitby.

He wrote: "The raising of the hands conjoined, towards heaven, expresses devotion; wringing the hands, grief; throwing them towards heaven, admiration ... holding the fingers indented, musing ... extending the right hand to anyone, pity, peace and safety; scratching the head, thoughtfulness ... laying the hand on heart, solemn affirmation ... lifting up the hand and eye to heaven, calling God to witness ..."

There was also "laying the fourth finger on the mouth, bidding silence" and, just as commonplace, "the forefinger put forth, the rest contracted, to shew and point at, as much as to say 'This is he'."

But what are we to make of what appears to be - and Cook's handwriting is generally clear and easy on the modern eye - "fainting and dejected hands, amazement and despair"? And there's this one: "Giving with the finger and thumb, a giving sparingly."

The latter smacks a little of the rubbing together of fourth finger and thumb which we use today to suggest shrewdness with money.

Maoris had scope for a highly developed sign language. "Their artistic expression, except for decorative design, was completely oral before the arrival of Europeans," I learn.

But, to drop a newly-acquired word, that's enough Maoritanga (their traditions and culture) for today.

SO the Venerable Bede, theologian, historian and authority on how moveable a feast Easter should be, had a more practical string to his bow. We do not know, however, whether the purpose of the coded sign language he devised was to communicate with the deaf or merely to assist in the practicalities of maintaining monastic silence.

Or could the reason even be connected with the fact that in his 62 years astride the seventh and eighth centuries his only sallies forth from birthplace Jarrow and the monastic life at Wearmouth were to Lindisfarne and York? Instead, scholars from throughout the known world of that time came to him.

Many of his learned visitors will have known Latin but their widely differing pronunciation meant that communication would not always have been easy.

So Bede's code, in which hand-signs represented numbers in turn signifying letters of the Latin alphabet in sequence, would have been useful.

He signed 1 to mean A, for instance, and 7 for G. "Me Baeda," he might have mouthed to an unexpected caller, tapping his chest before hand-miming 2-1-5-4-1. "You Jane," he would continue, pointing at the new arrival and signing 10-1-14-5.

That's not as irreverent as it may seem. For Bede's earliest works included treatises on spelling, figures of speech, verse ... and epigrams, more commonly known these days as crisp one-liners.

By the way, did anyone who visited the Dome notice if Bede's copyright on the millennium was acknowledged? The sainted Tynesider (not canonised until 1899) pioneered the AD method of dating events from the time of Christ's birth