Norman fits the bill

NORMAN Barningham was a proper polliss. "He was everybody's policeman, a people's policeman," says his friend and former colleague Dennis Hawthornthwaite.

For 26 years Norman was village bobby at Osmotherley, on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors, lived in peace with his pipe, won the BEM, the force's top community policing award, umpteen agricultural shows and any amount of friends.

All that time he'd been chronicling the more improbable bits, the life and crimes of lawman Barningham, self-styled chief constable of Osmotherley. Last weekend, 15 months after his death, the book was published posthumously - and sold out on launch day.

We'd first tried at the Ossie village shop, outside which a chicken waited patiently to cross the road. "All taken by hoarders," said the chap behind the counter, though - since hoarding may still be illegal in those parts - subsequent detective work suggests that what he really said was "orders".

In any event, they were spoken for.

Down at Mitchell's, the book shop in Northallerton high street, the story was similar. "They've literally flown out," said the assistant. "We're almost begging them to do a reprint."

Dennis Hawthornthwaite, a retired sergeant, took the 59 copies he had left to the North Yorkshire police open day at Newby Wiske last Saturday, collected the money in an old ice cream carton with "Lambs' fries" written on top.

Lambs' fries? "You know," says Dennis, "little round things. They know all about lambs' fries in Osmotherley."

NORMAN Leslie Barningham was born in 1938, his father a policeman before him. Norman joined when he was 21.

We'd first encountered him, late 1970s, shortly after closing time at the Three Tuns, then locally known as the Mousehole. In Ossie, as in many rural areas, closing time was simply a guideline, more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Norman ambled in, wondered if they'd no beds to go to, ambled out again. "The buggers won't even go when I'm rude to them," he said, but the buggers still knew which side their bread was buttered.

Again we'd enjoyed his company in 1987, a frosty Friday night in March. "Ossie's steady away, friendly, a lovely area," he said.

"There are one or two queer 'uns, of course, but that's inevitable. I get paid to live up here. What more could any man want than that?"

He was also an acclaimed carver of sheep's head walking sticks, grew prize-winning tomatoes and flowers in the greenhouse that had cost him £12.10s, locked up his share of villains, too.

They'd talked warmly of him in the Queen Catherine. "He's a top 'un," someone said, "is Norman."

"The book's not so much about Norman as the people he met," says Dennis. "There were the poachers who'd come over from Middlesbrough, the farmers who'd go sheep stealing, the people pinching diesel."

There was also the time he looked after the Queen at York, the dead of night when he came across a ghost near Northallerton cemetery, the two-for-the-price-of-one story of how he trapped a bigamist.

"There's quite a lot to it, but it's all in the book," says Dennis, and is reminded that there's been a greater rush for Barney's book than if they'd discovered gold on Snilesworth Moor.

"Oh yes," he says. "Aye."

NORTH Yorkshire's best known village policeman is, of course, former inspector Peter Walker whose "Constable" books - written under the pseudonym Nicholas Rhea - provided the lifeblood for Heartbeat. He was also a colleague of Norman Barningham.

"Everyone has an image of the village policeman and I think Norman fitted that image both in his rotund appearance and in the way that he worked," he says.

"A village policeman needed to maintain a balance between the heavy hand and the easy going, to find the middle way and to keep people on his side. Norman achieved it quite remarkably. He was a fantastic policeman."

These days, of course, the village bobbies have all been chased back to the towns, where they spend half their time writing reports and much of the rest behind the wheel. Despite a petition signed by most of the village, Osmotherley lost its policeman, Norman's successor, in 1991.

Peter Walker, whose Constable on the Coast has just appeared - "the 34th or 35th, I think, about 125 books altogether" - believes the blue line has retreated too far.

He lives in a village near Helmsley. "I haven't seen a policeman here for years, except when they go through with blue flights flashing. I don't even know how they work any more," he says.

"A lady in the village said to me the other day that she'd never had reason to call the village policeman, but she'd always known he was there. It was like an insurance policy, and it reassured her.

Like many more, he'd love a copy of the book. "I may have sold quite a few of my own, but sold out on launch day? That's almost unbelievable."

NORMAN had written the stories by hand. Dennis Hawthornwaite and Tony Eaton edited them, arranged private publication at £6 a copy, hoped to make a few bob for Cancer Research - the charity supported by Myra Barningham, Norman's widow.

"We thought about doing 150, didn't think we could afford any more, then went up to 400. It was a real chance," says Dennis.

Now they've decided on a reprint. Already there's a lengthy waiting list; we'll have availability details later. "Only this morning I've had people on wanting three and four copies," says Myra.

"Dennis and Tony have done a fantastic job, without them it would never have got out of the cupboard. I'm really grateful to them, to the shops which are selling it and to the printer.

"We really thought that 400 might be too many. We never imagined that it would take off like this."

Dennis Hawthornthwaite reckons he could write a second book just of the stories about his mate that he's been told in the past few weeks. "A lot of people who bought it must have known Norman.

"He was a countryman, a good policeman, a man with a real sense of humour, but that's all in the book, too. One day you might even get chance to read it."

Loos with a difference

Holidays over, readers have taken to sending their snapshots. John Heslop's back from the Cotswolds, where in the village of Bourton-on-the-Water he was at first intrigued - and then a little disappointed - by the sign over the gent's.

It appears to say "Lavs Deo", which John - from Durham - translated as "God's loos." It is, however, the Latin inscription "Laus Deo", meaning "The Lord be praised."

"I prefer to think of it as the former," he insists.

Pete Winstanley, also in Durham, was particularly impressed by the intelligence of the animals in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park - capable not just of reading but of shutting the gate behind them.

Homeward via Leeds, he discovered Cellar Vie - an ingeniously named off-licence and, next door, a food shop called Sam Widges. Sadly, c'est la vie, both had closed down.

A bit closer to home, Anne Birtle from Billingham had a day out in Swaledale where, between Ivelet and Muker, she spotted this sort of Stone Age Jenga structure.

Swaledale's answer to Stonehenge, she wonders, or simply a game for bored lads and lasses?

ONE or other of these columns noted a few years back that road signs at the entrances to Oldham proclaim it "Home of the tubular bandage". Readers subsequently pointed out that Chapel-en-le-Frith is self-styled "Home to the brake lining" and Droylsden home of Golden Shred.

Our own holiday was spent in the Peak District, where the official brochure for the town of Wirksworth reveals that, between them, five mills in the town once produced 800 miles of red tape every week.

Sadly for those in high office, the council has declined to trumpet Wirksworth "The home of red tape".

Among holiday delights is the chance to read the papers, and not least the obituaries. Thus we learn of the passing of two senior clergymen - Alan Webster, former Dean of St Paul's Cathedral and vicar of Barnard Castle, and Augustine Harris, last-but-one Roman Catholic Bishop of Middlesbrough.

Dean Webster had been at Barney from 1953-59, during Michael Ramsey's time as Bishop of Durham - "an effective pastoral priest, stimulating his congregation to be aware of their place in the total environment," said The Guardian.

"An articulate priest, an effective pastorate," concluded The Times.

Bishop Harris, born in Liverpool 89 years ago, had been Middlesbrough's bishop - the diocese stretches from Tees to Humber - from 1978-93, Pope John Paul II's first episcopal appointment in the British Isles.

"As Bishop of Middlesbrough, he singled out unhappiness at work, poverty and bad housing as threats to the stability of family life," said the Telegraph.

A gifted communicator and frequent broadcaster - from Thought for the Day to the Terry Wogan show - he caused a storm in 1973 by suggesting on Panorama that a woman with a large family who wanted no more children should resort to her conscience over the question of artificial birth control.

The Association of Catholic Priests demanded his resignation. Happily, he stayed.

THE column two weeks ago told of the CD of his own music and songs being compiled in memory of Robert Luke, a 19-year-old Newcastle University music student who took his own life in March.

Distribution has now been delayed, however, after one of Rob's friends pointed out that three of the tracks had been written, not by Rob, but by himself.

"It gave us a real job-and-a-half. I had to take them all off the shelves, substitute three songs onto a new CD and reprint the inlay," says Brian Luke, Rob's dad, recently moved from Shincliffe to Crook.

"It broke our hearts at first, but now I'm relieved because I'm confident everything is Robert's work in every respect."

The CD - called "beach" - should be available soon at the HMV Music store in the Prince Bishop Centre in Durham and also at DAM Music in North Road, Durham.

Matt Westcott's review of beach appears in next Thursday's 7 Days supplement.

...and finally, some refreshingly good news. Amos Ale will soon be back on sale, stronger and more handsome than ever.

Made at the Wear Valley Brewery in Bishop Auckland, it'll be relaunched on the evening of September 26 - when Wear Valley starts a three-day beer festival in-house at the Stan Laurel, the newish Wetherspoon's pub in Bishop market place.

The idea has personally been approved by Tim Martin, founder of the ever-lengthening chain. "I met him in another Wetherspoon's pub and asked if he was one of the so-called beer tickers," says Wear Valley boss Simon Gillespie.

"He said he wasn't, he was the chairman. He seemed a really nice feller."

Simon has also asked if we'd like any variations on the physiogonamical pump clip. It was impossible, we said, to improve upon perfection.