Cause for alarm

MAKING the most of summer - it fell on Wednesday, August 8, between approximately noon and 4.15pm - last week's column recorded a gentle stroll along the Castle Eden Walkway in Co Durham and a reverie across Hurworth Burn reservoir

The serenity, however, had been interrupted by what for all the world seemed like a wartime air raid siren, three short alarms and one longer, from the other side of the reservoir.

Had Arthur Lowe doubled up the line with Grandads' Army in his wake, it would not have been entirely surprising. Not even the county's civil contingencies unit was able to sound convincing by way of explanation.

Now, however, the mystery is resolved. It was the Munro family's front door bell.

They own Hurworth Burn boarding kennels and cattery, on the road from Trimdon Village towards the A19. Much louder and it might have been assault and cattery. The alarm - "Our great yellow master blaster," says Alex - sits up a tree and is worked remotely.

It was impossible to hear genuine visitors, says John Munro, when their arrival could set off up to 40 dogs in cacophonous welcome.

"We realised we'd have to do something. We got the master blaster from an electrical retailer. It's amazing how far it carries, but it only operates between 9am-5pm. There are times when you can still hardly hear it even then."

There's a sign in reception, asking visitors to press the button. Some, says John, almost suffer a heart attack. "There aren't many neighbours. We've been here ten years and no one's complained."

After five o'clock, master blaster and dogs fall silent. Conan Doyle quietly makes his point.

UNLIKE the great master blaster, which is yellow, you all know what's crisp and white and swings from tree to tree. A meringue-utang, of course.

SINCE it might have been an emergency, David Walsh in Redcar rapidly responds with the story - he swears it's true - of the Durham County councillor upset a decade or so ago because he'd only heard through the radio of a potential national disaster on his own doorstep.

Huffed, he complained to a senior fire officer that he hadn't even known there was a nuclear reactor there.

The fire officer recovered his composure before reporting that the incident had been at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine.

Sherburn Hill, he was able to tell the relieved councillor, had escaped completely unscathed.

WITH his young daughter Zoe, Martin Birtle in Billingham had walked the stretch of old railway line past Hurworth Burn some time in the 1990s.

It was while approaching the former Hurworth Burn railway station, the platform still intact, that they came upon a perch (see below) gasping for life in the middle of the path.

"It must just have been taken from the reservoir, dropped there by a heron or something, and was still thrashing about," says Martin. "Zoe always loved animals, put it between two dock leaves and ran with it back to the reservoir."

The fish's fate is uncertain, but Zoe Birtle went on to gain a doctorate in zoology. "I reckon," says her dad, "that that was the luckiest perch alive."

ALSO in Billingham, Robert Bacon forwards a list of favourite quotations sent by a friend in America.

It was Winston Churchill who said that the inherent vice of capitalism was the unequal sharing of the blessings and that the inherent blessing of socialism was the unequal sharing of the misery.

Ronald Reagan supposed that government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it.

Robert's favourite is one of Mark Twain's: "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

Until something that happened in last week's column, it could totally have been discounted.

BACK among the quotation marks, a Bishop Auckland reader, noting how splendid the trees are just now, seeks help in recalling the lines beginning: "I think that I shall never see..."

That was the self-effacing American poet Joyce Kilmer, who lived from 1886-1918...

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

LAST week's announcement that National Express is to take over operation of the main East Coast railway line reminded David Walsh - clearly determined to make a mark on this week's column - of a song by a group called The Divine Comedy.

"I'm not supposed to be au fait with modern pop, but I was directed to it," he pleads.

"Take the National Express when your life's in a mess, it'll make you smile...

All human life is here, from the feeble old dear to the screaming child."

There's also a bit about the National Express jolly hostess.

"She'll provide you with drinks, and theatrical winks, for a sky high fee."

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the company replacing GNER.