FIRST time for everything, we have been having a night out in West Cornforth, known affectionately - yes, affectionately - as Doggy. The etymology's arguable, something to do with molten iron a hot favourite.

In truth, the former mining community has been called much worse, most recently "Village of hate" by the tabloids after Ms Mercedes de Dunewic claimed a fearful campaign of intimidation and tried to raffle her £150,000 house at £1,000 a ticket.

She appears not to have been onto a winner.

West Cornforth's near Ferryhill in Co Durham, a road sign optimistically pointing towards the town centre. Earlier that evening, a puzzled lorry driver had looked into the Square and Compass to ask where the centre might be.

"You're in it," they told him.

Long in the Good Beer Guide, it's a friendly old pub on the Green - "totally different from the rest of Doggy," says the 2006 entry - and friendlier yet had someone bothered to put a match to the fire.

Real ales included No Eye Deer from Goose Eye in Keighley and Swinging Gibbet from the Jarrow Brewery; the chap at the bar owned a chip shop up the village.

When he came, West Cornforth had two takeaways. Now there were five, he said, and another on the way. He sounded like a Victorian mother for whom child bearing was not an option, but an annual expectation.

There are two Indian places, the Basmati and the Musafir, a Chinese - the Oriental Palace - and another chip shop. There are pubs called the Balaclava, the Flintlock and the Slake. There used also to be a very large and very popular workmen's club which with changing times was knocked down and replaced with a smaller one.

Now there's a medical centre on the site. There's a moral there somewhere.

There was also the Victoria, where last we had a pint about ten years ago in the company of Mr Ray Sunman, who led the village regeneration project and, better still, was married to a Shildon lass.

The locals had seemed uncommonly wary, until one took a metaphorical sledgehammer to break the ice. "Are you two the polliss?" he demanded, probably for no more reason than that we wore ties.

It could have been worse. We could have been the Nash

The Vic is now the Musafir, one of these restaurant names which makes you wonder if it's an anagram. Externally little altered, it's been smartly transformed inside, though it still seemed prudent not to wear a tie.

Across the road in the silent, steel shuttered street stood a funeral parlour and a "coffee shop and tanning booth", Tanning shop names are becoming inventive: we passed one in Trimdon Colliery the other day called Tanzinere. Not as neat as the Blackhall Wok, maybe, but other brown studies welcome.

It was Wednesday evening, the four other diners present all strategically seated by radiators. The restaurant was decorated for Christmas, the music machine played early days Indian music - baby sitar, as it were.

The inexpensive menu appeared to be variations - how Asians restaurants love that word - on a familiar theme. The staff were friendly if (like the lads in the Vic all those years ago) a little under-employed. Sonny Hasib, the owner, reckoned the locals had been welcoming, too.

The menu also carried the now obligatory rubric, something about a long journey of exploration. It's certainly a canny hike from Kashmir to Cornforth.

Starters were almost all £2.50 or less, the Boss kicking off with fish bhuna on puri, we with chicken bhuna. Both were well presented, the fish particularly tempting.

She followed with "chicken mosaka" with basmati rice - firm, fresh, full flavoured - we with Kashmiri lamb with cream, sultanas, banana and cashew nuts. The sauce was best spooned straight from dish to mouth; the naan bread was excellent.

It may not have been the most imaginative Indian meal in Co Durham, but it was a perfectly pleasant and wholly inexpensive one in a well kept and well run restaurant. Every Doggy has its day.

* Musafir restaurant and takeaway, High Street, West Cornforth, Ferryhill (01740 650656.) Open from 5 30pm, every evening except Tuesday.

AFTER a rainswept night in Swaledale, the column followed on October 4 this year with a deluge of praise for the Bridge Inn at Grinton.

The carrot and cauliflower mousse was the one exception. "If there were a list of 101 things to do with carrot and cauliflower, this would be the 102nd," we wrote. "It didn't work, the soft of stuff which should be fed only through straws to the enfeebled."

Alan Archbold in Sunderland now reports that the cutting is pinned on the pub wall, and beneath it a ballot form on whether the carrot and cauliflower mousse should be removed from the menu.

The "No" column is signed by the locals, the "yes" column by Jamie Oliver, Egon Ronay, Gordon Ramsey and Mike Amos. The latter may be a forgery.

COURT circular (or a very old ball game): prompted by an innocent visit to the Station House Tea Rooms in Thorpe Thewles, all these recent notes about the sex life of Edward VII should really only be read after the watershed, or with parental guidance. Especially this one.

In a distinctly unsalacious magazine called The First Post, David Walsh in Redcar spots a feature beginning: "I am loitering in a sex museum in Prague.

"Amidst the chastity belts and pre-war dildos stands this...thing. It looks like an instrument of medieval torture, or a commode for an incontinent Chinese warlord."

The "thing" turns out to be the fauteuil d'amour, the "armchair of love" made specially for Edward VII's visits to a brothel in the Czech capital so that he could entertain more than one lady simultaneously.

Perhaps happily, the accompanying illustration fails to make clear how the chair furnished the royal purpose.

Bob Harbron in Norton-on-Tees recalls that at Edward's coronation in 1902, a section of Westminster Abbey was reserved for the monarch's mistresses and their husbands, known thereafter as His Majesty's "loose stud box".

Lady Theresa Londonderry, who had a son by Edward, is remembered for a London soiree at which the rich were discussing their husbands. Lord Londonderry, of course, owned half the collieries in Co Durham.

One grand lady announced that her husband was in the War Office and the City, another that hers was in the Empire Court department and was a director of several companies.

Lady Londonderry said that hers was hoping to join the Foreign Office - "and he's a coalman".

From Bryan Sykes, meanwhile, a note that "Thewles" - thew-less - was Middle English for immoral. How wonderfully appropriate.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what two rows of cabbages are called.

A dual cabbageway, of course.

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