THEATRICAL persons, classicists and those who scraped O level English Lit may be familiar with the phrase deus ex machina - pronounced day-us ex mackiner and literally meaning "a god from the machines". Figuratively, however, a deus ex machina is a great, gauche, hob-nailed contrivance with which a story is kicked up the backside or, more usually, finished off completely.

The speed, for example, at which they play musical houses in Coronation Street - without recourse to estate agent, solicitor or Pickford's pantechnicon - may properly be described as a DeM, though they'd probably have other words for it in the Rovers.

Thus fulsomely forewarned, let us proceed apace to the Quaker Coffee House, in Darlington.

THE Coffee House is in Mechanics Yard, one of those still under-explored ginnels off the High Row, and is a real ale friendly pub with a caf upstairs. Skinningrove, in east Cleveland, once had a street corner pub called Timms Coffee House, though who Timm was and why he couldn't call it the Smelters Arms like everyone else, we never did discover.

It was 1.20pm, Wednesday, a sign on the stairs announcing that the Quaker caf was shut. Early closing day, apparently.

In Newton Aycliffe, last week's column, we'd experienced similarly precipitate half holiday packing. Perhaps Good Friday should now be switched to a Wednesday afternoon, the only way in which it might religiously still be observed.

The pub was quiet, too, the hand pumps - among them White Boar, Gale's HSB and something disconcertingly called Brewer's Droop - periodically outnumbering the customers. The buns were huge, inexpensive (£1.10) and generously filled, made by someone called T Andrews in Salisbury Terrace. Pork and stuffing particularly recommended.

We spread a picnic on what purported to be a sherry barrel - less Spain, more Spennymoor - irritated by the music though much enjoyed the ale. The Coffee House is Darlington CAMRA's pub of the year, but may suffer from an abstemious identity crisis. Grounds for closer inspection, anyway.

SO TO the Roman Bath in St Sampson's Square, York, a pub so called because the legionary ablutions - frigidarium, tepidarium and a hot tub called the caldarium - were discovered in 1930 where the cellar might have been.

Two doors away is the Three Cranes - the feathered sort, not some Taylor Woodrow triumvirate - where we were one night in November 1969 when an old man was found murdered in Walmgate.

Within 48 hours the head of North Yorkshire CID - Arthur Harrison, memory suggests - had sought outside assistance. It was the last time (not many people know this) that a provincial force called in Scotland Yard on a routine murder enquiry. The Roman Bath has murals of an Up Pompeii nature, but is otherwise wholly unexceptional. A pint of Coke was £2.04, for which the term bloody ridiculous might lose least in the translation.

The soup was "vegetable", laced with cream which may slightly have improved its appearance but which so greatly lowered its temperature that it might have been straight from the frigidarium. Nor is it possible to say what "vegetable" it was, but if Gannex is leguminous, it was probably that.

The "Thai chicken curry", conversely, was much too hot. Many national insults are now visited upon poor old Thailand in the name of curry, and this was among the most wounding. Were Yul Brynner still King of Siam he would undoubtedly have summoned the British ambassador (or Deborah Kerr, or both).

Afterwards we paid £1 for the barman to unlock the bathroom door. It was less than a half of Coke, and perhaps marginally more interesting.

THOSE of us of a certain age, that is to say nearly past it, associate Sunday lunch with Two Way Family Favourites, presented by Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe (who made an honest man of him.)

It was a radio request programme for our brave boys in Bielefeld, in Akritiri and in Agincourt. Nat King Cole usually featured, and Perry Como if they were feeling upbeat.

Since it could never be emulated, it is generally irksome that Sunday lunch pubs inflict inferior radio programmes and a particular annoyance that they continue raucously and relentlessly to advertise carpet warehouses.

On that charge, the Countryman may be arraigned, placed in the village stocks and pelted with assorted off-cuts. In almost every other respect it was first rate.

It's in Bolam, off the A68 above West Auckland, and was once known as the Shoulder of Mutton. We have remarked previously on the former excellence of its mushy peas and (when the gents really was out the back) on its 16 hand horse flies.

It was the column's birthday, so the little one - a splendid surprise - came too. Like his father he is a grammarian - in the habit, apparently, of advising his teachers where they should stick their apostrophes.

Unlike his father, he drank Coke. Dave Clarke has been awarded a Cask Marque for the way in which he looks after his cellar, a quintet of hand pumps - the Dave Clarke five, as we sons of the Sixties, might say - demanding a short truce in the warfaring.

There was Magus from Durham, Secret Kingdom from Northumberland, Workie Ticket from the Hadrian Brewery - excellent, each.

Behind us, one of those familiar piles of old volumes included an 1872 Book of Common Prayer ("The gift of Bishop Barrington") in which we fell to reading the Order of Publick Baptism of Such as are of Riper Years. Riper years being in full bloom, it was perhaps fortunate that the deed had been done in 1946.

The Sunday lunch menu is above average in inventiveness - not just soup ("like our chef's mood, prone to change," said the menu) but prawn and pasta salad, perhaps, or watercress, potato and bacon salad with spring onions and mayonnaise or garlic mushrooms in a puff pastry case.

The mushroom soup (£2.50) was terrific, Mr Clarke - who was cooking - in a far better mood than he might have been after the events of the previous Sunday. Totally unprovoked, he had been subjected to a vicious gang assault whilst having a drink in Chester-le-Street, his face showing every sign of a terrible beating. The watercress (etc) salad, as we were saying, was attractively presented and greatly enjoyed.

Main courses, too, ranged beyond the roasts of this or any other day, though The Boss considered that the trout with mushroom and cream sauce had been waiting for her, and not vice-versa. Pork and beef were carved with a glad hand, carefully cooked and cheerfully served with crisp vegetables and Yorkshire puddings the size of a satellite dish.

The best, however, may have been kept until last - puddings like baked bitter chocolate tart with coffee scented creme Anglais, caramelised orange and Grand Marnier trifle or poached summer fruit served with amaretto biscuits and raspberry sorbet.

It worked out around £11 a head and made for a very happy birthday. Those who have been with us since the start, however, may be wondering when the DeM will sink shamelessly onto the stage.

It will be recalled that this week's journeyings have been to the Quaker, the Roman Bath and to Bolam. Readers may therefore wish to consider a headline about Friends, Roman's and Countryman and to lend their ears again next week.

So finally, a birthday card joke from the bairns. What's brown and sticky?

A stick