The sound of sirens

FIRSTLY, a confession. Last Wednesday afternoon I played hookey, went AWOL, nicked off work and went for a walk, instead. (And why, etymologically, do we "nick" off things, anyway?)

It was the first really sunny afternoon since early May - far too nice to spend on the dark side of The Northern Echo - and it was Wingate, East Durham, a community all but inseparable from Station Town, to the south.

From Station Town - unimaginatively but once wholly appropriately named - the restored trackbed of the former Castle Eden railway runs from near the old Corner House pub south-westwards towards Hurworth Burn, Wynyard and Stockton.

Like most of Durham County Council's admirably maintained old railway routes, it's open to walkers, cyclists and itinerant journalists. Had the lady of this house been a-rambling, an abundant treatise on flora and fauna would have followed.

In the myopic event, a few dog roses must suffice.

Had even the smallest hamlet presented itself between Station Town and Hurworth Burn, it would surely have been called Much Rustling in the Hedgerows, so great the apparent realisation that the first and last of the summer wine were blending simultaneously.

Hurworth Burn reservoir sits a couple of miles along, benches thoughtfully placed for the enjoyment of the view northwards, to allow a breather and - old habits being what they are - to do some writing.

The reverie was interrupted shortly before 2pm, however, by the sound of what for all the world appeared to be a Dad's Army air raid siren somewhere to the north.

A blast of 30 seconds or so, three shorter blasts, one or two assorted attempts after that. L/Cpl Jones would have panicked.

The possibility of quarrying suggested itself, but nothing went with a bang. The possibility of turning out Wheatley Hill fire brigade was excluded because these days they have personal pagers instead of waking up half the neighbourhood.

Soundings with several locals having proved fruitless, we consulted a spokesman (as they say) for Durham County Council.

"It must have been an Amos alert," he said.

THE last incumbent having returned to his native Australia - "Lovely chap, but just couldn't stand the North-East weather any more," we're told - the acting chief civil contingencies officer for Co Durham and Darlington is Jill Bland, whom we knew 25 years ago when she was Jill Carter and a beauty queen.

Miss Hartlepool, Miss Maritime Hartlepool, Miss Gemini and no doubt Miss Crimdon Bank Holiday Monday, an' all.

Jill - lovely lass, then as now - was raised in Trimdon Station, just a couple of miles from the Castle Eden Walkway. She still knows the area well, so whither the sound of sirens? "I'm honestly stumped," she says.

The only establishment in the county which regularly runs audible warning tests is Hydro Polymers in Newton Aycliffe, 11am "without fail" every Thursday.

Two other chemical companies - Dynea, also in Aycliffe, and Hexion Chemicals in Peterlee - are also classified as "top tier" Control of Major Accident Hazard (COMAH) sites, but neither has audible alarms.

The old four-minute warning system now being about three-and-a-half minutes too late, how now is the nation to be warned of enemy attack?

The national monitoring system, sirens visible on the side of many buildings, was decommissioned around 20 years ago, though some sirens remain - especially in Weardale, says Jill.

"Pre-identified means of communication" may include the public address systems on police cars and helicopters and announcements through local broadcast media.

Jill, unfortunately, had a day of meetings yesterday and couldn't be photographed, leaving today's column a little short of visuals.

Whether it's proper to show the acting chief civil contingencies officer in a one-piece-in-our-time swimsuit is for others to decide, but this could be an emergency.

Now being rebuilt, the Corner House in Station Town was last mentioned hereabouts in 2004, a column which recalled that, back in 1977, the police had carried out a late-night drinking raid.

It was 11.20pm, and for non-stop stoppy-backs the landlord were fined £20.

The defending solicitor at Peterlee magistrates court explained that the defendant, had he stopped selling, was worried about trouble from a group of customers identified with a bunch of well-known local trouble makers.

They were known as the Dum-Tit Gang. Baby-faced villains? Honest.

NOT quite a civil contingency, perhaps, but another Newton Aycliffe factory - ThyssenKrupp Automotive - was in the news last week over plans to install CCTV in the netties.

Workers spoke of horrendous breaches of employee privacy, unions of an affront to human rights.

It reminded John Littlefair, in Shildon, of his 1950s' apprenticeship at Stivvies' - Robert Stephenson's works in Springfield, Darlington - where they'd be allowed to go to the toilet twice a day during working hours and were allowed seven minutes to (as John somewhat indelicately puts it) do the business.

"They must have established the time from some secret time and motion study, reminiscent of the film I'm Alright Jack."

At the head of the queue - there was always a queue - the lads were confronted by a little old feller with a foolscap ledger, who'd note time of arrival, clock number and time of leaving.

"If you outstayed your welcome, he'd shout out your clock number and inform you that your time was up. Sometimes, when things were quieter he'd get off his bench, come into the toilet, shout your clock number and bang on the doors."

The system, recalls John, was accepted with general good humour and earthy comments which (being a long-standing Methodist local preacher) he couldn't possibly repeat. It beat the hell out of CCTV, anyway.

CHIEFLY devoted to newts - that ubiquitously endangered species - last week's column wondered about the expression "As drunk as a newt". Harry Gilbert in Darlington offers an ingenious - or at least a plausible - explanation.

"As you may be aware, Eskimos have gained a reputation as heavy drinkers. Eskimos are also known as Innuits. In the Second World War, American servicemen who had over-imbibed used the phrase 'I'm as p****d as an Innuit'.

"We Brits who had never heard of Innuits and had difficulty with the accent, translated this as 'p****d as a newt'."

Still below freezing, Harry also invites the definition of an Ig. An Eskimo house without a loo.

NOW in Darlington, too, Lynn Briggs hails from Warren, Pennsylvania - where it's the northern riffleshell mussel which causes the trouble.

That little blighter's also protected. In Warren alone, it's presently holding up the removal of a dam and the construction of a Wal-mart, a road bridge and a boat launching pier. Warren has a population of approximately 5,000, a small town with a lot of mussel.

SO ends another column, though - early warning - we return next week. If anyone can meantime explain the sound of sirens over Hurworth Burn, it would be music to the ears.