FIRSTLY today, Mr Ivor Wade in Darlington invites readers to peruse the following. "This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so plain, you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it. It is unusual, though. Study it, and think about it, but you may still not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching."

The solution may soon appear obvious. If not, it's at the foot of the column.

ANOTHER poser: where does the apostrophe go in "donkeys years"? It's a question which has been occupying not only the finest minds in this building but also those at the journalism centre at the University of Cardiff - reckoned Britain's finest journalistic finishing school, but recently obliged to begin a remedial class on the use of the apostrophe.

Like those pesky critturs, donkeys are familiar beasts in the English language. Mr R L Stevenson even travelled with one.

Donkey dropping, the style of cricket bowling long perfected by Mr Charlie Walker of Eryholme, was first referred to in 1888, when not even Charlie was launching his legerdemain.

Donkey jackets were made infamous by Mr Michael Foot and also worn by Mr John Osborne on the occasion of his wedding in 1961 - light checked and fur lined, the Sunday Express observed.

In 1929, it is recorded, the City of London Corporation sitting at the Guildhall demanded to know what a donkey jacket might be.

Fearful memory supposes that, somewhere in this newspaper's picture library, there may even be a 1970s snapshot of the writer between Scarborough donkeys called Mike and Amos. Odd one out? It is greatly to hoped that they can't find it.

(Sorry Mike... see right... Ed)

The Bloomsbury and Chambers' dictionaries agree that the phrase is "donkey's years". The Oxford proves its infallibility by deeming both acceptable.

What they all agree upon - and not many people may know this - is that donkey's years has nothing to do with asinine longevity but is simply is a pun on donkey's ears. Unlike these pithy little columns, they are deemed to be very long.

AT the planning meeting in No 22, we fell to discussing both the difference between parentheses and brackets and the class of steam engine No 67777 - otherwise the Flying Sevens - once familiar through Shildon.

The latter was an L1 and has cost Mr John Briggs a pint. The former is only a little more troublesome.

"Parenthesis" is a word or passage of comment or explanation inserted in a sentence - we do it all the time - which is grammatically complete without it. "Parentheses" is the plural, and in no way synonymous with "brackets."

Brackets are what you have on walls. (Nuff said.)

CHAMBERS defines an act of God as "a result of natural forces, unexpected and not preventable by human foresight".

Northern Trains, said last week to have the second worst record of any train operating company in the country, may define it differently.

Northern cancelled 12,884 services last year, an average 35 a day. About a sixth of the cancellations were blamed on acts of God.

We encountered the northern deity last Saturday. Though the front of the train from York clearly indicated that its destination was Blackpool North, the guard announced that it would travel no further than Leeds. No reason was given.

The next train was a little more than an hour away. Leeds railway station at 9am was piteous and perishing.

It was doubtless what Northern Trains call an act of God. Others would simply say almightily cold.

BLACKPOOL proved a bit breezy, too. Back into York shortly after 8pm, we eagerly awaited the 8.31 Virgin service back home.

It had left Birmingham about 6pm - overflowing, or so we'd supposed, with boisterous Newcastle United fans celebrating that afternoon's surprise victory at Aston Villa.

It was worse, far worse. Though there were almost no football fans - perhaps they've given up on the Magpies, perhaps they can no longer afford the fare - we were surrounded by a cackling hen party of screeching, shrieking nurses from Darlington Memorial Hospital.

That clearly they'd overdosed was fair enough. Most of us do occasionally. That they insisted upon loudly discussing "girly" matters may have been understandable, too, but became wearying when the train was diverted through Stockton.

It was when the high-decibel conversation turned to colostomy bags, and their accidental misuse, that things really became desperate. Bring back the football hooligans.

NO stone unturned, last week's column pondered the etymology of the word "clemmy", supposing it to be North-Eastern. Both responses refer to the Black Country.

Tyne Tees Television reporter Rob Williams, who hails from those sable parts, reckons that down there a half-brick is known "for some inexplicable reason" is a "'alf-end ducker".

Jon Smith in Barningham, near Barnard Castle, finds in his dictionary that "clem" is a variant of "cleam" or "cleme", meaning potters' clay.

"They called half-bricks clemmies when I hodded them up ladders during a very brief building site career in Stoke-on-Trent in my late teens," says Jon, adding that it put him off proper work for life.

He became a journalist, an' all.

LIKE the chillingly named Mrs I C Snowball in Sunderland, we'd wondered if any other ladies might find their married names eyebrow raising. Clive Sledger in Aldbrough St John, near Richmond, reports that when the family stayed at Minehead in the 1950s, the boarding house landlady was Olive Hoyle. Olive was generously proportioned - "quite the opposite," adds Clive, "of her near namesake in Popeye."

...and finally, we have to report that "South Durham and Darlington GP's" not only inserted an unnecessary apostrophe when advertising a symposium on chronic fatigue syndrome the other day, but that it was held at the Sleep Inn, near Newton Aycliffe.

Oh, and the curious thing about that paragraph at the top of the column is that though the letter "e" is much the most commonly used, it doesn't contain one.

More donkey work next week.

www..thisisthenortheast.co.uk/gadfly/

Published: 15/02/2006