His e-mail headed "A grave error" - it could as easily have been a monumental mistake - Bob Williams from Elwick, near Hartlepool, sends a photograph of a tombstone he discovered near Wrexham, North Wales.

The quotation - "God removeth away the speech of the trusty and taketh away the understanding of the aged" - is from the Book of Job.

The letter 'n' in "understanding" has been inserted with what proof readers (RIP) used to call a carrot mark, for no other reason than that it was said to resemble one of those freshly picked vegetables.

It's reminiscent of the old story of the Yorkshire lad who laid his wife to rest beneath the intended inscription "Lord, she was thine." Sadly, the final 'e' was omitted, rendering the parting shot "Lord, she was thin."

Ordered to replace the missing 'e', the mason at once obliged. "Ee, Lord," said the headstone, "she was thin."

It is as Bob Williams observes: even words cast in stone may not be considered infallible.

IN the sure and certain knowledge that to everything there is a season, a small volume called Goodbye Cruel World - sub-titled A Book of Memorable Epitaphs - comes tumbling from the shelves.

It is not, it can be ventured, a cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die sort of a publication. Some of the unattributed memorials may be at best be considered apocryphal.

Others don't just provide chapter and verse but appear to have been composed by an eye-witness - like the gravestone at Gilling West, near Richmond:

Unto the mournful fate of young John Moore,

Who fell a victim to some villain's power

In Richmond Lane, near Aske Hall, 'tis said.

There was his life most cruelly betrayed,

Shot with a gun by some abandoned rake,

Then knocked o' th' head with a hedging stake...

Others are much blunter:

Here lies my wife Polly, a terrible shrew

If I said I was sorry, I should lie, too.

Or, from Studley in Worcestershire:

At rest beneath this churchyard stone

Lies stingy Jeremy Wyatt.

He died one morning, just at ten

And saved a dinner by it.

Briefer, and more apocryphal, yet.

"Beneath this sod lies another."

Others go into what may be thought unnecessary medical detail - "The little darling that lies here, was conquered by the diarrhoea" - or "Here lies John Ross, kicked by a hoss" or, from a 1982 gravestone:

Alas, poor Willie, he is dead,

His friends known him no more

For what he thought was H2O

Proved H2SO4.

All know that H2O is water; GCSE scientists will aver that H2SO4 is sulphuric acid - known otherwise as vitriol. ("The latter," writes our medical correspondent, "more journalistically familiar.")

A funereal favourite is attributed to Connecticut but could as easily be from Consett:

Here lies, cut down like unripe fruit,

The wife of the deacon, Amos Shute,

She died of drinking too much coffee

Anny dominy eighteen fotty.

As probably they say when heading for the Co-op tea, we shall leave it there.

THE book is mostly tombstone epitaphs, though it also includes some famous last words - and not just the classic "I told you I was ill."

Bing Crosby's parting shot is said to have been "That was a great game of golf, fellers", Oscar Wilde's "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do" - what computer bods call cut and paste.

Pitt the Younger is said, when still just 47, to have shuffled off with the observation that he thought he could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies; Lord Palmerston, another British prime minister went with: "Die, my dear doctor, that is the last thing I shall do."

Another favourite is from the Tory politician Nancy Astor, surrounded by her family in 1967. "Am I dying," she said, "or it this my birthday?"

* Goodbye, Cruel World was published in 2004 by Book Blocks.

GOOGLE-eyed, last week's column admitted putting bad coal into a computer search engine. Peter Sotheran in Redcar, who knows much more about these things, suggests entering the phrase "French military victories" into the magic box and pressing the "I feel lucky" key. So as not to deprive those without Internet access, it should be stated that Google insists there are no documents matching those search terms.

"Did you," it adds, "mean French military defeats?"

MORE on Titty-Bottle Parks, recently perambulated hereabouts. "I am your great authority on the TBP at Normanby (near Redcar,)" writes Gadfly's ever-esteemed colleague Harry Mead.

In childhood and adolescence, he'd walk through it at least twice a day, recalls the "classic" parkkeeper - a First World War veteran with a hook where an arm should have been.

"We lads were terrified of him, but he must have been a kindly chap for he very rarely chased us from our improvised football pitch with oak trees serving as goal posts.

"Despite Mannion, Fenton, Hardwick and the rest, Ugolini - Boro's Italian goalkeeper - was the name we chiefly bandied about."

Harry and his future wife Shirley also spent endless hours cuddling on Titty-Bottle Park's cold benches - "the salacious bit," he concedes - their initials carved onto a beech tree.

They met at the church youth club. "I have that," adds Harry, "to thank the dear old Church of England for."

WE had also discussed the term "bottle", often taken to mean courage, though John Lovell in Skeeby believed the original Cockney rhyming slang to be "Bottle and glass" - "Class."

Bill Taylor, once in Bishop Auckland but long in Canada, accepts "Bottle and glass" but insists that the more familiar version is "Lost his bottle", as in chickened out. Even 250 miles from Bow bells, readers may work out the rest for themselves.

...and finally, it may be recalled that last week the sun shone. It was on one of those glorious days that the lady of this house was pulled over for speeding by a "uniformed" policeman wearing navy blue shorts.

It was disconcerting enough when postmen began exposing their knobbly nether regions, but pollisses? There should probably be a law against it.

There were those in the planning meeting, indeed, who supposed that at one time it wasn't even legal to be arrested by a policeman who wasn't wearing a hat, much less without his trousers.

Shorts shrift, she got away with a caution - and no stone unturned, as probably the authors of Goodbye Cruel World observed, the column returns next week.

Published: 17/05/2006