Signed, sealed and delivered

The chits were issued to plane crew like Jim, flying across the Middle East, lest they came down in a remote desert region and found themselves held by The Bedou.

These Arabs, it's said, were in the seriously anti-social habit of excising some of a prisoner's particularly private parts, stuffing them into his mouth and sending him, alas and a-lacking, on his way. The Bedou, as it were, had our boys by the short and curlies.

The gooly chit had a £1 note on one side and what might be termed a promisory letter, in Arabic, on the other. Were the captive returned entire, as it were, a reward would be paid in gold.

We were reminded of gooly chits by a bizarre incident at the Three Tuns Hotel - nominally Brown's Three Tuns Hotel - in Durham. Asked that the duck might be pink, the waiter announced that "health and safety" demanded that we sign a note of indemnification before it could be delivered.

By day a computer science student, he waved the scruffy little pad on which he had written the order. "The chef insists," he said. Had he been reading law, he would have known that no judge in the land would wipe his brow, or any other part of him, with so specious or so spurious a document.

We signed, anyway, next to the squiggle that represented asparagus in filo pastry. They can sell the autograph on eBay.

It was not the only regrettable thing about the Tuns, alas, and that includes the decision to go there in the first place.

It's also the reason that the principal picture accompanying today's column is not of Brown's Hotel - a thoroughly unpleasant experience - but of Brown's Boathouse, an altogether more attractive enterprise alongside the Wear.

The reason for going was that, 125 years ago last Tuesday, Durham County Cricket Club was formed at a gathering in the Tuns. Today's team even had a photocall there.

It was also the birthplace, the following year, of Durham Football Association and, on March 25, 1889, of the Northern League, with which I retain some connection.

A splash-your-boots notice framed next to the urinals records that they are Durham's oldest licensed premises, that the Brown family ran the place from 1849-1915 and that the "three" in a pub name was meant to be lucky. I should be so.

Would it be historic, as the lately invalid Mr Michael Winner would have it, would it offer a sporting chance or would it be better had we stopped in the tea hut with a half-eaten pork pie and an Oxo?

It's a Swallow hotel, though the group changed hands last November after the company went into administration. "We don't think they have been managed as well as they could have been," said a spokesman for the new owners. One Swallow?

The bar is both smoky and smoke-stained, the restaurant has a certain elderly charm. There was a coach party of French folk.

The seats had been sprung in some long-gone winter of discontent, The Boss had a view of the fire escape, the Frenchies' charabanc and some push-bar doors with a notice that they were alarmed. Not half as alarmed as we'd have been, had we had an inkling of what was to come.

Take the asparagus in filo pastry, the "filo" - a meagre sliver of dough covering the bottom inch of the most cadaverous asparagus that ever could be imagined, especially at its most vivid time of year.

We mentioned it to the head lad, who said he'd tell the chef. You could tell he was the head lad because he trailed a key chain, like he was moonlighting from HM Prison out the back. "He clanks like Marley's ghost," said The Boss dismissively, but we heard nothing thereafter.

Take the mackerel timbale, a semi-solid affair that sank quicker than the estimation. Return to that duck, priced at £13.75.

Officially it was both confit leg and roast breast, with an orange marmalade. The leg may have been produced by someone who thought "confit" to be a Crimewatch mug shot, the breast had had any semblance of flavour surgically removed, the scraping of "orange marmalade" tasted as orange Ajax might.

It was more punk than pink, anyway, a dish with all the visual appeal of Sid Vicious.

We asked what it came with. "Duck," said the waiter, with what doubtless passes as undergraduate humour at the University of Durham.

A bowl of garlic new Jersey potatoes (OK) and another of very ordinary vegetables (watery, insipid) were £2. 55, each, extra. There were more than any reasonable person could ever have eaten. It was madness.

The Boss had fried fish, "Northumberland" chips and mushy peas. There were six chips, probably called "Northumberland" so that Durham might not take the blame.

Always overrated, the mushy peas were lukewarm, almost solid and pallid. It was like eating a surgical gown.

We braved one pudding between two, asked what the "syabel biscuits" might be when they were at home. "Biscuits," said another waiter, somewhat unhelpfully. There was supposed to be ginger; it couldn't be discerned.

The bill was £45, without drinks - a pint of boring Boddington's, a bottle of mineral water - because they'd forgotten to include them. That created another five minute wait and then another, fully five, when they hadn't produced a receipt.

All these bits of paper were again a reminder of wartime gooly chits. Wholly appropriate really, for this truly was a load of old bollocks.

Coopers on York railway station may be so called because it has travellers over a barrel. It's not really a pub, it's a waiting room, and as such has all the charm of the waiting room at a municipal morgue.

It's been tarted up a bit since last we viewed the body, but remains a lachrymose and a lugubrious experience, nonetheless.

The barmaid announces that a pint of something called Davenport's, as flat as Yorkshire vowels, is £2.80, then realises her mistake. "Sorry, £2.90," she corrects.

From a basic menu, steak and ale pie is £6.45. While the pastry's OK in a microwaved sort of fashion, the filling defies description because there's no way of telling what it is. The chips are the sort of thing with which ink pellets were made in the Just William stories, the mushy peas pod all.

As a means of filling a hole, it is as effective but as spiritually uplifting as pouring liquid concrete down the chimney of Shildon tunnel.

The music machine plays I Will Survive as we leave. It is a matter of some doubt.

Cafà 21, the Newcastle restaurant which won the North-East its first Michelin star, closed last Saturday. It re-opened the following day, a quarter of a mile away.

Originally 21 Queen Street, it opened in 1988 - the first of several successful Terry Laybourne ventures in the region which helped win him the MBE, services to catering, in 1998.

Now it's relocated to Trinity Gardens, behind the law courts and next to a multi-storey car park. That it's said to "nestle" there may be a PR person's fancy, because it's nearly twice the size of the previous place.

The new restaurant is 5,300 sq ft, has 148 covers - including a 40-seat private dining area - and is said to be an "ideal" location.

"It'll remain smart but not stuffy, sleek but not pretentious and fun but not gimmicky," says Terry. The menu will be revamped, but the favourites will remain.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a guard with 100 legs. A sentrypede, of course.