Lights which light up the world

THE biblical injunction to judge not, lest thou be judged, clearly doesn't apply to us purveyors of suspended sentences. There's a get-out clause for peripatetic columnists.

Over the years, very often with the lady in attendance, judgement days have ranged from Miss Eldon Lane - where a sore loser left the imprint of her stiletto - to the mounted fancy dress section at Reeth Show, where the silver band leads the judges down the village and you get a primrose coloured rosette and a very good lunch for your troubles.

In the summer we were asked to judge Catterick Village's scarecrow competition - won, it may be recalled, by a scarecrow caught with its trousers down, The Northern Echo cut into squares on a nail on the netty wall - and last Friday to decide upon the Christmas lights in West Auckland.

It proved a lovely evening; truly the lights fantastic.

We gathered at Oakley Grange, where reside parish council vice-chairman Colin Mairs, his delightful wife Heather and - in a stable across the farmyard - a 12-year-old zebra called Rebecca. Colin's very fond of Rebecca.

"People don't ask about me, they ask about Rebecca," said Heather, cheerfully. "He doesn't show visitors photographs of me and the kids, he shows them pictures of Rebecca."

Rebecca's been on television, too, when Luke Casey came out and persuaded Colin to walk her through the main street, thereby offering the line that, after years of campaigning, West Auckland at last had a zebra crossing.

It's still all they have, though the yet-longer awaited bypass - or, at least half a by-pass; there may be a medical equivalent - is expected to open in the summer.

External decoration - what the Echo used to call Ho-ho-homes - has really gone through the roof, of course, and only the poor-spirited would deny the annual extravagance. We saw a house on Middlesbrough's southern outskirts on Sunday night that made Blackpool Illuminations seem like a 40-watt bulb by comparison.

In West, there were those who'd gone to a lot of bother and then omitted to switch on, inviting a further biblical reference about hiding their lights under a bushel.

Much the dullest street in a bright-blazing village was the one where they reckoned the moneyed folk lived. "It's probably why they still have it," said Hazel Charlton, parish council chairman, retired teacher and lovely lady.

You can't expect to win a Christmas lights competition by being restrained, of course, but Colin thought them all suitably tasteful - "not what you'd call clarty decorations," he concluded.

The award for best decorated domestic premises went, unanimously, to Harry and Anne Gittins in Staindrop Road.

Last year they were second. "I think you mebbe need one or two more things," Colin had advised. They took him at his word.

They begin decorations at the beginning of November, the house as bright sparkling within as without, reckon to have 60 plugs empowered.

"A lady over the road had been in hospital and when she came out, said how much the lights had cheered her up. That made it worth every minute," said Anne, who'd always enjoyed a true family Christmas as a child and reckoned that, however old they were, there still wasn't anything to beat it.

Kevin and Karen Stewart in Coniston Avenue were runners-up, narrowly beating a house in Copeland Road, onto which a projector rotated half a dozen different seasonal greetings.

The Prince of Wales on the green won the prize for best commercial premises, and also had a new music machine. It wasn't what you might call Silent Night in there.

Back at Oakley Grange there was a huge fire, a magnificent farmhouse tea, some very good crack and even a present which clinked. The judgement seat is beginning to feel quite comfortable.

ONCE a coalman, now an arable farmer, Colin Mairs is a strong, well-made lad - but as a bairn, he announced, he was very much the wreckling. It was a word we'd never heard, would in any case probably have misspelled, and which features in none of the dictionaries on these shelves. Back home, however, the Complete Oxford notes that "wreckling" is now mainly dialectal - "A weak, puny or dwarfish animal, the smallest of the litter." The wreckling crew sails on.

INCORRIGIBLY entitled "Anything Yukon do" - they won't write headlines like that any more - the column on August 31 reported the fleeting return to these shores of Ted Harrison, a Wingate miner's son who struck gold in the Far West.

Ted, now Canada's most loved and most snow-capped painter, was back to celebrate his 80th birthday with Algar Meechin, his twin sister, in Wheatley Hill.

Phil Atkinson, another County Durham lad who made good in Canada - he's from the once-benighted village of Witton Park - not only sends Ted's Christmas card but a copy of his own new book, Fireside Tales of Christmas.

It offers memories of a carefree childhood, from the King Street kids to whom Good King Wenceslas got a snowball on the snout to the still-remembered tales his grandfather told.

There's also the story of Tom Lockey's hydroponic leeks, prefaced with explanatory notes on Co Durham - "a cornucopia of eccentricities and quirks" - and a list of some of its best-known characters.

They range from Tony Blair to Mary Ann Cotton, from Mr Bean to Billy Elliott - "proof," says Phil, "that being a ballet dancer doesn't necessarily mean you're a puff".

There's also a claim which hitherto we'd not heard - that Trimdon, titular home of the Blairs, is "the sweariest place in the kingdom". Truth to tell, says Phil, it may well be f******g true.

Expletives deleted, Trimdon lads are invited to defend their reputation.

NEW books abound; we could open a shop. There's neither space nor shelves to include them all.

Just room, however, to mention the latest from Dulcie Lewis in Wensleydale - "You'll remember me as the Lavatory Lady," she says - whose ever-jolly Not Just Yorkshire Pudding (Countryside Books, £7.99) is sub-titled "The story of Yorkshire's food and drink".

The delightful Dulcie also feeds on a 1912 cookery book published by The Northern Echo, with an assurance that we devoted "special attention to the Lady Reader".

For Christmas, or its aftermath, we suggested giblet pie. "Take giblets from turkey or goose, or two sets of fowls, wash them and take gall from liver, cut heart in two, pick the head, remove the eyes and cut off beak. Skin feet and gizzard, cut gizzard in two..." You can follow the entrail, anyway.

It was served with stewing steak, onions, parsley, thyme and boiled eggs beneath a shortcrust pastry. "I hope," adds Dulcie, laconically, "that it was all worth the effort."

THERE'S also been a letter from Santa or, if not from the man himself, then certainly one of his first lieutenants.

Better known as an indomitable athlete, despite the ongoing effects of diabetes, Brian Hunter from Sedgefield is in much demand to camouflage behind red coat and whiskers.

He even encloses a reference from the head of one of the schools he attends. "His prime motive is to make Christmas special for the children..."

His "Santa's Magic Reindeer Dust" began when he was at Boyes in Billingham - "guaranteed to send Santa down your chimney" - and Brian has kindly enclosed a packet. Chiefly it appears to contain sparkly stuff and porridge oats and, as Santa's little helper explains, all reindeer love porridge. It'll be sprinkled on Sunday evening.

LAST week's investiture, and subsequent reports, reinvigorated the flow of generous messages which began when the MBE was announced.

Peter Charlton in Sunderland thought the photograph a ringer for Mungo Jerry, and was presumably being serious. Mike Morrissey in Saltburn discerned a likeness to Michael Douglas and may have had tongue in cheek.

There's also been an email from Messrs Affleck and Moffat in Darlington, from whom we rented the hat and tails, requesting a copy of the picture to hang on their "wall of fame".

It might even dissuade Mr Richard Crosland, who runs the business, from disinterring on every possible occasion the case of the missing dinner suit trousers (but that's another story).

So ends an extraordinary years, from Regional Journalism Hall of Fame to Affleck and Moffatt wall of fame and with quite a few milestones in between.

There's also an appropriate biblical reference to the outfitters' wall of fame, and to morning suits, somewhere in the Parable of the Wedding Feast, Luke 14:10: "Friend, go thou hire..."

Merry Christmas.