BEFORE proceeding, and for reasons which will later be explained, readers are invited to name a Top 30 hit with the word "macaroni" in the lyrics. Phoned friends might suggest that it peaked 45 years ago this week - and that it was an improbable duo who recorded it.

A TRUCK stop, no more, last week's column admitted that the door of this impenetrable office is adorned with a wagon plate - "Re-bodied in Shildon" - from that dear old town's railway works. They're the round things fixed to the side of everything built at the works. Readers, including David Burniston in Darlington and Tony Webster in Northallerton, point out that there's another on the wall of Roy's Rolls.

A Shildon reader who seeks anonymity spotted it, too. "I just thought 'Why yer bugger'," he says. Shildon lads think it all the time.

Roy's Rolls is in Coronation Street, of course. Roy Cropper is the resident anorak, railway buff and occasional Aunt Sally, a role in which he must not be confused with the fearful Sally Webster (who's someone else entirely).

The railwayana which decorates the caf walls was a job lot - a shed load, it might almost be said - from the Railway Carriages Trust in Keighley, West Yorkshire.

Production staff arrived seeking signal arms and the like and, carried away, spent £600. "They bought so much I threw in some notices like what to do in case of an air raid," says museum manager Bob Stott.

Tony Webster supposes that they made a deliberate attempt to get something from Shildon. "Failing to secure your services, they went for the wagon plate instead."

MOTE and beam, last week's column also referred to "minor indiscretions" by journalists. "You could write a book about them," suggests Ian Cross, a fellow inky tradesman.

Particularly he recalls a story - "some years ago" - of the agency brought in to create a bright and viewer friendly new image for Tyne Tees Television's regional news programmes.

In the fullness of time and money, the agency unveiled its suggestions. Among them was "If it's happening in the North-East, it's news to us."

For some reason, it was never broadcast.

WE all make them, of course. Mike Clark in Stockton recalls a workmen's club quiz in that town in which contestants were invited to name the "Swedish Nightingale." Dismissing all protest, the question master would only accept Jerry Lind. "That," he insisted, "is what I've got written down here."

DULY and enthusiastically eulogised by the Public Orator, Alan Heesom received last Friday an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree from Durham University chancellor Bill Bryson.

Save for his passion for Chelsea Football Club, it appeared abundantly deserved. Mr Heesom, recently retired, had worked at the university for almost 40 years and played a central role in its direction and development.

"Among the foremost of those who have helped steer the university in this difficult period," said Prof David Fuller, the Orator aforesaid.

One thing remains puzzling, however. At meetings of the university executive committee, said Prof Fuller, Mr Heesom was wont to cheer the company with an "andrological expletive which we will leave to rest in the fond memory of those who heard it."

Andrology, says Chambers Dictionary, is the branch of medicine concerning the functions (!) and diseases of men.

Suffice, added the Orator, that the Chancellor in his "fine" book Mother Tongue had concluded that in American English the same expletive could be used in polite conversation.

It couldn't at degree ceremonies in Durham Cathedral. The remark, adds a university spokesman decorously, would also habitually test the skills of their committee clerks.

Usually, adds the spokesman, they wrote that the Dean of Arts and Humanities had recorded his dissent.

STILL playing word games, Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool points out that the Echo used "tow the line" and "toe the line" in the same story.

The former may be pulled, though etymologists agree that it's a familiar error. "Toe the line" has been around since 1813, theories varying from a chalk mark on the scaffold to sundry navy larks.

Peter Chadlington in "The Real McCoy" supposes it to refer to the start of a race. A line in the sand, anyway.

DING-DONG merrily, last week's column loudly wondered why carollers should go around signing Io, Io, Io.

They may not have been the only ones. Dwarves also sang it on the way to work, a small point made by several readers.

Gill Wootten adds that Io is also sung in the "macaronic" carol In Dulci Jubilo, and at once drives us back into the ample arms of the Oxford English.

As well as being "a kind of wheaten paste formed into long tubes and dried", the Oxford lists ten other meanings for macaroni, ranging from a type of crested penguin to a quarter of a West Indian dollar.

"Macaronic" is defined as "A burlesque form of verse in which vernacular words are introduced into a Latin context with Latin terminations and in Latin constructions." It also applies to Greek, all or otherwise.

The song which included macaroni was Bangers and Mash, a number 22 hit in January 1961 for Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren.

....and finally, last week's column essayed a little tail tweaking at the expense of Judge Guy Whitburn, who freed a Redcar heroin dealer but jailed for two and a half years a parrot smuggler from East Cowton. (He locked up George Reynolds for three, an' all.)

Dorothy Howard now kindly sends a hand written poem which has been doing the rounds in St Mary's Club, near her Darlington home.

"I'd better sit down while I'm winning,"

Said the barrister, knowing the score.

His drug dealing client stood grinning,

When the judge couldn't lay down the law.

The prisons are full, said Judge Whitburn,

As the law stands, I'm left with no clout,

So we'll all have to sit on our bottoms

Till a smuggler of parrots comes out.

Feathers ruffled, that's it. What goes around comes around, as they may say in the world of andrological expletives, the column returns next week.

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