Very berry good

PERHAPS the origin of the phrase about splitting hairs, the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society's annual show was held on Tuesday, and few found wanting in the balance. The world waited, agog.

In truth there were two big events in Egton that day, the first (it's said) an early morning police raid on a house at the top end of the village at which there'd been ten constabulary vehicles and the door had been smashed down.

That was then. By now there'll have been 50 polliss cars, the riot squad and they'll have taken the place apart brick by brick. The gooseberries, alas, hadn't always waxed similarly.

"A poor year, cold spring and wet summer," says Eric Preston, show president for the past 25 years. "It's going to be a bit disappointing."

Once there were 200 gooseberry societies in the North and Midlands. Now, crumbled, there are just two - Egton Bridge and a group of eight in Cheshire, amalgamated like a flightless Up North Combine and supported, as well they might be, by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Egton Bridge, in the Esk Valley, near Whitby, is perhaps the humbler, Cheshire the big cheeses.

In Cheshire they have "getters" to ensure that a member's entry is picked from his own bush, specially made entry boxes secured with sealing wax and string and they clip the stalk from winning entries so that they can't be entered elsewhere.

Some might call it beating about the bush. The technical term is that the poor berry's been snubbed.

In Egton Bridge it's pretty much grow-as-you-please, though there are still rules about man and wife members keeping their gooseberries separate - like tall stories, they grow in pens - and about those uprooting to a new house being supervised by a committee member if the bushes go with them.

"We're still a pretty honest, trusting lot round here," says the president.

THE society has 103 members, paying £3 a year and drawn from as far apart as Newcastle, Nottingham and Norwich. About a quarter are women, though only one has ever won.

Bob Martin, the Nottingham connection, claimed the bottom four places last year - the East Stirlingshire of gooseberry growing, football fans will understand - and having established his pedigree, joined the committee.

In gooseberry terms he is a maiden, and likely to remain a virgin forever.

Bob has a cottage near Egton. "The soil in Nottingham is heavy clay, not suitable really," he explains.

Winners are decided by weight only. As doubtless has been said on other occasions, there's no accounting for taste. "You wouldn't want to eat too many of them, anyway, a bit rough apparently," says Ian Woodcock, another committee man.

The Old Bailey-style scales, in use since 1937, are calibrated in drams and grains - wee drams, in poor Bob's case - and are said to be able to weigh a feather.

The annual show is staged in the jolly classroom at St Hedda's Catholic primary school, dedicated to a seventh Century saint who was educated in Whitby and became Bishop of the West Saxons.

Probably it would have been dedicated to Nicholas Postgate, a much revered 17th Century martyr of those moorland parts, but, to considerable local frustration, the Vatican still declines to canonise him.

The magnificent St Hedda's church is on one side - a double Hedda, as it were - the railway station and Postgate pub on the other. Perhaps they'll know more in the pub about the police raid? "I wouldn't think so," says Kathleen Brown, the show treasurer, "they'll all be telling gooseberry stories."

There are classes for red, white, yellow and green berries, for "twins" and for a plate of 12. Prizes range from Spode to spades, from tools to torches.

If it has a strain of leek show about it, so has the dextrous innocence with which exhibitors guard their secrets. None professes himself to have a chance, none has a secret formula - though there's whisper about Sandsend seaweed manure being rather good for the roots.

"My wife wouldn't let me pee on my gooseberries even if I wanted to," says Ian Woodcock, a chemical engineer on Teesside.

This year, Brian Nellists's said to be the man to beat. "I've lost in 50 of the 52 years I've entered, that's how good I am," he protests.

Brian, a grafter in every sense, is said to have given several members their first bush. "He's very good like that," says Bob Martin.

THE weighing room's down a long and elderly corridor, in what might normally be the church vestry. The weighmen write in a book of gold - like Abou Ben Adhem's angel and with no less diligence. Great gold-tooled volumes like Memories of a Mission Priest, Catholic Shrines and Martyrs of the Catholic Faith offer evidence of more usual office.

Entries are presented almost deferentially, some in cotton wool like a primary school nature box, others in egg cartons, some in Tupperware. None has string, or sealing wax.

"There's a bit of rivalry, but I don't think anyone's ever come to blows in the schoolyard," says Ian Woodcock.

Varieties include Lord Kitchener, Lord Derby, Mr Chairman, Jodrell Bank and Just Betty, Just Betty said to be particularly hirsute. The society was formed in 1800 and still they enjoy what might be called hairy stories, or little jokes about whopping pairs.

Ian Woodcock has a Daily Telegraph cutting claiming that the gooseberry is making a comeback. "If rhubarb can break free of custard why must the gooseberry play the fool?" it begins.

The Telegraph has also spoken to Eric Preston. His wife, he says, reckons she'd have been better looked after if she'd been born a goosegog.

Weighing begins at 8.30am, ends at 12.45pm, the public officially allowed in from 2pm though many arrive earlier. Few may have supposed gooseberry growing to be so great a spectator sport.

Just like with leeks, the entries are arrayed on a long table down the middle of the room, the winning specimens raised to glory atop five or six slender, candlestick-like podiums.

A steady procession files past, like pilgrims round a Papal catafalque and almost as reverentially. The men even take off their hats.

A visitor asks if the gooseberries are kept in the dark. "No more than most of us," says an exhibitor, mysteriously.

The overall winner's Norman Ashley, from Brandsburton - which sounds like it should be on the Wolds, though no one's quite sure. Rain affected, he's a long way off the record.

Sadly, the new champ appears to have disappeared. "Shrinking violet," they say, by way of mixed botanical metaphor.

At 5.30pm there'll be music by the Stape brass band, after which they'll march up to the Postgate where the green party will really start. It's been a lovely, essential English, August day. No sour taste in the mouth at all.

Clarrie is one of a kind

THE column unavoidably absent, they held a special service in the little Methodist chapel at Forest-in-Teesdale on Sunday to mark Clarrie Beadle's 60 years as a local preacher.

Now 84, he's been up there all his life, still in the remote farmhouse where he was born. "Someone told me that all you need to get by is a good wife and a good muffler," he once famously observed. "I was lucky, I had both."

Winnie, a wife as good as gold, was at his side for the diamond jubilee. For once in the upper dale, there was no need of a muffler.

"You missed a lovely evening, a very good company," reports chapel steward Sheila Walton. "A great occasion, wonderful weather for the top end," adds Eddie Bell, another of the not-so-ancient order of Foresters.

Sadly, it has not been possible to talk to Clarrie himself. He's not on the phone, never has been, though recently he was persuaded to buy a mobile and discovered that there was only reception when he stood atop the high-blown high road.

"In any case, wise man, he's not given anyone the number," says Sheila.

Clarrie, much loved, has been quarry blacksmith, dry stone waller and sheep farmer. Retired from working, he has no plans to step down from the pulpit.

Familiar in upper Teesdale, he's never ventured much beyond Cockfield and Staindrop - as if the message might be dissipated or the extraordinary accent misunderstood.

"Aa's content where aa is," he told the At Your Service column last November and though he may not have a telephone, he's still very much on-message - right down to the solo he sings at the end of every service he leads.

"Clarence really has his own way of preaching," says Sheila Walton. "Mainly it's Old Testament, but he always brings a bit of politics into it and not always connected to religion. If he feels something needs saying, he'll say it.

"He must have some wonderful diaries because he can go back years. He's a good man, and a good Christian, is Clarence."

MANY years ago, the column told of an 86-year-old grave digger in one of the villages between Bedale and Leyburn - Patrick Brompton, or somewhere - claiming him to be Britain's oldest.

The following morning an 87-year-old grave digger rang. He lived in the next village.

It was thus folly, in recording the death at 31 of a pit pony called Sandy, to suppose last week that he was the oldest surviving pony from a North-East colliery.

Pip is 33, still hauling in visitors to Beamish Museum and still - says Jackie Winstanley, of the museum - thoroughly enjoying himself.

Like Sandy, Pip worked at Sacriston colliery, north of Durham, until its closure in 1986. For the past 19 years, he has been out to grass at the colliery village at Beamish.

Sandy, it may be recalled, lived in Castle Eden, near Peterlee and, spoiled rotten, started the day with a breakfast of teacake, best butter and strawberry jam. Pip's regime is rather more rigorous.

"He's into health foods and early morning carrots," says Jackie. "He'd prefer to share our visitors' picnics, and especially their mints, but we have to watch his diet very carefully."

Pip also has an apprentice, called Flash, who has never himself worked down the pit. None could better show him the ropes.