Disintegrated transport

It's England's least used railway station, the 10.20 on Saturdays the only stopping train of the week, the 13.41 the only one back.

Alongside the word 'Route', the ticket advises 'Any permissible'. Reluctantly concluding that JFK and Charles de Gaulle may not be deemed permissible, we join the two-coach diesel for Saltburn.

The fare's £2.80, the journey eight minutes. The station serving the region's second airport probably wouldn't have survived at all, save that the legalities of closing it outweigh the cost of keeping it open.

The train is surprisingly full, cloth capped old codgers off for a maunder around Middlesbrough, youngsters with surf boards for Saltburn. None other alights at Teesside Airport, none shares the flight of fancy.

In a country long committed to taking cars off the road, it is a classic example of disintegrated transport.

IT arrives at 10.28, exactly to time. The two-platform station, Tees-side spelt haplessly with a hyphen, has few facilities save for a footbridge and a notice headed 'Useful information' which advises that the nearest taxi rank is in Darlington.

On the wall, someone's painted a large question mark. Unspoken, it asks what on earth's going on.

A Network Rail crew bus - perhaps even a motley crew bus - waits in the pear shaped turning circle, its occupants eating their half past ten o'clocks. Whatever it's doing there, it's sure as apples not offering a taxi service to the terminal.

There are no signs to the airport, none of those indolently moving walkways, not even a footpath. All that escalates is the feeling that this is a shambles, a transport system unready for take-off.

These days, of course, it's not even Teesside Airport at all, rather Durham Tees Valley (or some such) in order to appease the marketeers. For reasons of convenience and of contumely, it will remain Teesside Airport for the duration of this column, or at least until the 13.41.

Six flights remain that day, to Heathrow, Amsterdam, Cork, Dublin, Malaga and Rome. Two are due to depart at 10.40.

Since the airport railway station may not be said to be tied to its mother's apron strings, the walk between the two - given a sense of direction, a freedom from suitcases and a certificate from the doctor - takes 11 minutes. Sixty seconds remain for check-in, baggage stow and boarding.

One of those banners promoting the North-East - Passionate people, passionate places - hangs over the terminal entrance. Whatever the secret desires of its people, Teesside Airport on a January Saturday morning is as passionate as the sale rail in a second hand shop.

FEWER than ten passengers are groundside, a solitary customer leafing through W H Smith's. There's the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Le Monde, but not The Northern Echo. Today Darlington, tomorrow Le Monde.

A couple of young ladies wait expectantly on the bmibaby desk, the gestation of a hairy mammoth.

One or two lads in fluorescent yellow jackets hang around trying to look busy and, singularly having failed in the attempt, just hang around anyway.

There are rows of strangely silent desks, like infant school on the first day of the holidays.

In the Yard of Ale bar, 35 and a half inches empty, a group of coffee drinking stewardesses - smartly dressed like Salvation Army songstresses - is being rebuked by a supervisor. "The captain's been calling you," she says, but what the captain's been calling them is unfortunately not revealed.

Notices about disruptive passengers, holidays in the sun and making Christmas cards at Middleton St George Women's Institute are stuck to the walls but nothing about a railway station, not even once a week.

There's also an incessantly eructating amusement arcade, games like Slotto and The House of Death and one of those incomprehensibly prehensile devices, once familiar at the end of the pier at Walmington-on-Sea, that are meant to scoop up bars of chocolate and things.

The Cork flight is called at 11.20am, four or five trickling towards the departure gate but not what you might call a bottleneck. A mobile phone rings Popeye the Sailorman, the brief frisson of excitement swiftly recanting of its temerity.

Most of the time the departure lounge is totally silent, save for the squeaking of a dozen unemployed slot machines, collectively down on their luck.

THE 10.40 to Amsterdam is further delayed - "ongoing technical problems with the fleet". Cafe Oasis has a rush on, which is to say that there's someone else in. A little girl is becoming anxious about the non-arrival of her sausages, but they'll probably land before the flight to Amsterdam.

The morning's highlight is another little girl, aged about three, who's not only dressed like Queen Elizabeth I but who even looks like her, or at least like Ms Glenda Jackson in that role. The photographer, sadly, has gone home.

Doubtless every movement, every stretched leg and scribbled note, is being caught on closed circuit television, though it's unlikely to rival Coronation Street. It's a low level morning in the quiet season, but what else do you do when there are still two hours to the train?

The 10.40 is further delayed, an intending passenger in the Yard of Ale becoming, if not angry, then KLMphatic, Amsterdam and blast.

The 13.41 to Darlington is called (however silently) before the 10.40 to Schipol. A couple of blokes in a blue car, Special Branch and not just twigged, follow me back to the railway station like a well trained house dog seeing unwanted visitors off the premises.

The sky's as grey as a Messerschmit's rear, the train again perfectly punctual. So that's another column seen off on the platform: as probably they tell grounded travellers at a quarter to two, can you come back next week?

FOR faintly footballing reasons, the Backtrack column has been reminiscing about Baldasera's ice cream parlours, stuff of legend in east Durham. Ken Orton in Ferryhill Station now sends a snap of himself and his younger brother Tom, circa 1951, with a Baldasera's ice cream cart in Thornley. Joe Dunnett, their uncle, drove the cart; the ice creams were free but the "sandwich" unusual. "We were almost never allowed to have a wafer sandwich at that young age. Cornets were felt to be much tidier." The carts were cream with a gold trim. Look carefully, adds Ken, and you can just see the horse's rump. Thereby, he adds shamelessly, hangs a tail.

THE Desert Sun is the newspaper for Palm Springs, California, where things are a little less wintry than over here. Reading it on-line, John Briggs comes across a report of last weekend's Kennel Club of Palm Springs annual show - judged by Freda Marshall from Darlington.

Freda's also secretary of Darlington Dog Show Society, tail wagging in the town since 1860, and has judged in 16 countries around the world.

What does she look for, asked The Desert Sun? "The winner has to have that extra quality," said Freda, "the personality that says 'Pick me, I'm the winner'."

Herbie name, Herbie Nature

IN a hamlet called Woodhouses, once west of Bishop Auckland but now almost indivisible from it, there's a smashing little pub called the Bay Horse.

Its landlord for many years was Tommy Wyse, a little leprechaun of an Irishman who by day was head lad to Bishop Auckland racehorse trainer Denys Smith. Whatever it said on the sign, the Bay Horse was known only as the Jockey Club.

For the past 15 years or so it's been run by a delightful chap called Herbert Bowen. Whatever it said on the sign, the Bay Horse was known only as Herbie's. He died last week, aged 71.

Herbie's favourite story - there were many - was of his time as a DLI private in Aden when a young officer called Peter de la Billiere sent him out for a shaving mug.

"It wasn't until I got back that I realised there was a picture of a naughty woman on the back. I spent the whole of the afternoon scraping the blinking thing off again."

The young DLI officer became Lt Gen Sir Peter de la Billiere, commander of British forces in the Gulf. (He also, memory suggests, officially opened the sports pavilion at Wearhead.)

Herbie remained a private, ran a post office in Bishop Auckland, backed a winner at the Bay Horse. His son Christopher, became an officer in the Royal Logistical Corps.

"Down there they all say that their father was a colonel or a general or something," said Herbie. "Christopher tells them his dad's a hotelier."

He was the most agreeable company. In an age when so many pub landlords are as graceless as they are faceless, you were always welcome at Herbie's.