Close encounters of the bullish kind

WITH no thanks to the bull which last year put him in intensive care - the horns of a dilemma, if ever there were - 70-year-old farmer Doug Anderson next month publishes a remarkable book of his writing and painting.

It's called One Field At a Time and it's the very antithesis of what they say about the other man's grass. For Doug there've never been pastures new, Moor House has always been home.

It's at Brignall, in Teesdale, worked by four generations of his family since 1860. Doug grew up there, never left, never wanted to. That the embrace of the Morritt Arms is down the road may be a bit of a bonus, too.

"If I had me time again, I'd do exactly the same again, just mebbe make me mistakes a bit sooner," he says. The bull was one of the mistakes.

"We were putting him in a trailer to go to market, and I don't think he was very keen on going. He knocked me over and I'd have got up again, but then he jumped on top of me.

"I cracked my ribs and punctured a lung, 40 per cent oxygen and out for four days. They said I was fortunate to be in such good fettle generally. I count it as one of my luckier moments."

Eventually he discharged himself, after remembering there was a party he wanted to attend. "I was in't hospital at half past five, went home to sort out one or two things and was at the party by half past seven. I think people were a bit surprised to see me."

An amazing lad, Doug Anderson.

For most of those 147 years, Moor House was in Yorkshire. One or other of the local government reorganisations - 1974, this one - dragooned it into Co Durham. "I was born in Yorkshire and I've never left it," he insists.

"I've nothing against Co Durham, but you can't just tell folk that they're no longer Yorkshire."

He's also been chairman for 20 years of Rokeby and Brignall Parish Council - "I didn't go one night, so they made me chairman to serve me right" - is a churchwarden and chairman of Rokeby Farmers' Ball committee.

"It's good being chairman," he says, "you do nowt."

He attended Barnard Castle School, thought about becoming a vet or a doctor, left at 16 to work contentedly at Moor House and to watch the second agricultural revolution, from tractors to technology.

"I remember piking the hay when you needed a dozen men at harvest time. Now there's one man on the combine and another on the tractor, and that's it."

He still meticulously builds the dry stone walls, though - "I've built a nation of dry stone walls" - still loves the solitude, still grateful for the friends who get him through.

It could almost be Hannah Hauxwell on a grander scale, but for Doug there's never been too long a winter. "I can remember snow drifting over the top of the tractor cabs, remember 1947, dear me, when we couldn't get a vehicle into the farm for 12 weeks. This year we never once saw a snow plough.

"It's a pity that Barry Cockcroft (the television producer who "discovered" Hannah Hauxwell) didn't come to Brignall Mill around that time. There were at least three characters who'd have left Hannah standing."

Inspired by the view of his farm from the top of The Stang - the road which links Teesdale to Arkengarthdale - the book has a chapter on each of the 19 fields, names like Intake, Elsie Close and Blakely Slee.

"My father was a historian, researched into things," says Doug. "I thought someone should write some of it down."

The paintings, splendidly reproduced, have a wonderfully pastoral feel and have been exhibited in Barney. He's a bit of a poet, too, like the one about the fly - a "little buzzer" he called it - at morning service. The church magazine loves them.

"If you've a hobby, you quite look forward to winter," he says. "I'll maybe write or paint for a couple of hours in the evening and then go down the Morritt for an hour. We have some pretty good nights down there."

After the bit of bother with the bull, however, the dairy herd which once produced milk for Cotherstone cheese has been disposed of. Doug, whose wife died from breast cancer in 1999 and who has no children, is now solely a sheep farmer. They're a bit more even tempered.

"By January I was maybe getting a bit bored and hoped they'd start lambing, but I've had five months of it now and there's still two sheep to go. I have a bit of help with the shearing but otherwise I do it myself. My bones creak a bit, but it's not done me any harm."

We meet at CP Offset in Darlington, the firm which handsomely is producing 5,000 copies of the book. A sign declares it to be a printing house, and thus the crossroads of civilisation.

The launch is at Moor House on June 9 - hog roast, bar, up to 500 guests expected to include Sir Andrew Morritt, his landlord, and Sir Anthony Milbank, master of much else that he surveys. Yorkshireman, not Durham lad, Doug says he'll make them pay.

"He was inspired to write the book by his wish for future generations to share his love and his understanding of this unique and special place," says the biographical note on the cover. We hope to have more of it, and of the launch party, thereafter.

Forty Years On

DEAR old Seth Shildon, four decades as a comedian, has produced his first DVD - appropriately called Forty Years On.

Then just Trevor Shaw, Cockfield lad, his career began at a 1967 talent contest in Wolsingham Club. "I was seventh out of six. I entered about 20 contests after that and never got in the first three, but then one Sunday I won two in a day - Spennymoor dog track in the afternoon and Thornley Workmen's at night.

"I couldn't believe it, I was so used just to getting my half crown for turning up. It was like being in Las Vegas."

The DVD of his act, with supporting interviews, was recorded at Cockton Hill WMC in Bishop Auckland by local firm Izon, from down the road in South Church.

"It's absolutely brilliant, but if anything Trevor was more nervous in front of Cockton Hill Club than he'd been at London Palladium," says Graham Sheldon, the promoter. "It was probably because he knew everyone, but the feedback we've had has been tremendous."

■ The DVD is available (£5.95, plus £1 postage) from Sheldon's Newsagents, 122 Cockton Hill Road, Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, DL14 6BG.

A sting in the tale

ONCE the British Nettle Growing Champion, John Burton - Tony Blair's long-serving constituency agent - is turning greenish fingers to something a little more floral.

The great nettle sting came exactly 25 years ago, though "Britain", it should be said, may have extended little beyond the Trimdons. "Folk took it really seriously, there was nettle slashing and all sorts," he recalls.

"There were people trawling the hedge backs for prize specimens. I just got mine out of the garden, over eight feet tall. It was a beauty."

Dissuaded from entering the following year - that the young Blair was a lodger was rumoured to have something to do with it - he now hopes to grow the Trimdons' tallest sunflower, instead.

Around 500 packets are being given out around the villages in a fund-raising competition to help provide security fencing for the new play area.

John himself - councillor, musician, former free-scoring centre forward - is also distinctly more heliotropic after knee replacement operations in March and October last year effectively added two inches to his stature.

In the sunflower stakes, however, he insists he's a no-hoper. "I'm two feet behind already. I just haven't the time to devote to it."

There'll be a bit more time, probably, after the Prime Minister stands down on June 27 - and a surprise if his loyal agent isn't among the resignation honours. Lord Burton of Trimdon Village? "No way," insists John. "There'll not be anything like that."

BEARING a 1950s picture postcard of himself sent to a long lost love - "She was the granddaughter of the founder of Coutts' Bank, you know" - newly elected Darlington councillor and world champion name dropper Peter Freitag (last week's column) comes into the office for another bit natter. Two pollisses follow. Asked if he's the owner of the car parked immediately outside, Peter confirms that it is so, produces a disabled badge - he's 78 - but is politely asked to move it. The protestation that there's nowhere else to park is met with a smile. "I'd have a word with your councillor if I were you, sir," says the polliss, and is gone.

LAST week's misty eyed piece on the joy of travelling on a steam train footplate through Shildon tunnel said in the photographic caption that it was the first steam train through the tunnel for 40 years.

Both John Rusby in Bishop Auckland and Alan Ellwood in Shildon point out that at least three steam specials ran through the Prince of Wales tunnel in the 1990s.

Malcolm Priestman in Hartlepool was more concerned at the suggestion that, as bairns, we did things in Shildon tunnel which certainly we shouldn't have done and raises the suggestion of virginity.

Mr Priestman should know that in those distant days, raggy-trousered Shildon lads hadn't even found virginity, much less sought to lose it again. It was more to do with pennies on the line, I fear.