FURTHER to the editor’s column on Monday – and there may be few more sycophantic openings than that – is does appear to be the case that not everyone has been treating swine flu too seriously.

The first note comes from the early hours of May 1, and just because it was May Day doesn’t necessarily mean that it was an emergency.

Brenda Boyd was one of the Kingsmen rapper dancers, merry old souls, who as always greeted the May dawn on Newcastle Town Moor. It was all very British. Though teeth chattered, upper lips remained immovable.

“We did a very poor Grenoside garland dance, but it’s the being there that matters on May Day,” reports Brenda.

Tradition was further maintained when champagne bottles were passed around, prompting a warning that they could be laying themselves open to the latest contagion.

A dancer who is also a senior man at a major pharmaceutical company admitted that he’d several times phoned the Department of Health seeking guidance. “I haven’t been able to get through yet,” he added. “All I get is crackling.”

IT’S still wise to take precautions, of course, which is why certain safety measures were necessary before reproducing Pete Galloway’s cartoon.

The greatest fear of all – O tempore, O mores – was that he might want some money for it.

Happily, indeed crucially, he has waived the fee – and not just because his regular drinking companion in Cockerton, Darlington, is the 91- year-old stepfather-in-law (or some such close relation) of a senior colleague.

“Despite his failing hearing, Charlie has eyes like a hawk and a memory to disgrace Leslie Welch,” he says. There are readers who may even remember Leslie Welch.

The message is pertinent. Perhaps it may also say something – something good, probably – about the British.

Sadly, the nurse’s uniform went out with Barbara Windsor and Mr Stephen Moralee’s flu humour may not be reproduced at all.

NOT altogether invigorated by the 6am start, Brenda Boyd – “shattered, hungry, cold and ready for bed” – also sends a picture taken in Builth, Wales, or possibly Builth Wells. Cock and bull story?

“The advice holds good in any language,” she supposes.

LAST week’s note on the ingenious names given to tribute bands – Oasish started it, the Fab Faux seamlessly followed – had nowhere near the legs for which we’d hoped.

Someone did spot a Tyneside band called the Reet Hot Chilli Peppers – on a bill with Bon Jordi, no doubt – someone else reported an Iron Maiden tribute band from north of the border, aptly named Maiden Scotland.

The first of them is said to have been the Bootleg Beatles, formed in 1979 when the cast of the west End show Beatlemania invested in four black polo necks and a wig. Now pretty big themselves, they’re in Newcastle in December.

We’d also noted a Consett-based ironing company called Crease Monkeys, which sends Pete Winstanley in Durham fingering through Yellow Pages. There are ironing and laundry companies called Pressed for Times, Flat Out, Creased Lightning and Well Impressed.

There’s also an Iron Maidens, but they may be a tribute band as well.

SOMEONE else – I really must remember to write down the names of callers – not only records a Blackpool café named Breakfast in Bread but insists that, in Newcastle, he saw a builder’s van belonging to Mr S Singh. “You’ve tried the cowboys,” it said below the name, “now try the Indians.”

LAST Saturday’s At Your Service column, on a visit by the wonderfully charismatic Archbishop of York to the village of East Cowton – between Darlington and Northallerton – noted that he had gently chaffed a lady in the village shop for buying chocolate on the Sabbath.

It reminded Judith Wright in Great Broughton, near Stokesley, of Sunday School days in the Fifties when they were taught a chorus along the lines of “I must not spend on Sunday, because it is a sin, but I can spend on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday till Sunday comes again.”

Judith can’t quite remember it, hopes that readers might, recalled it last Christmas when the matches were too damp to light the Advent ring in her local chapel.

“I had to nip out to the local shop for fresh supplies.”

MARY Everitt, another good Methodist – though that snippet of information is wholly irrelevant – sends a copy of a scrap metal collector’s flyer, pushed through her door in Darlington’s west end.

“Having shared for many years your concerns for the English language,” writes Mary, “I counted 28 errors on one page from lack of full stops and capital letters to just plain bad spelling.”

The opening sentence may have offered a warning: “There is an estimated 35,000 tones of rubbish abandoned in our homes…”

What do you think of it so far?

...and another British thing

SOME football news – stay with us – and firstly a report of Leeholme and Coundon’s 2-1 win over Roddymoor in Monday’s Weardale Cup final.

Assistant referee Brian Wailes, alas, had to draw the attention of referee Shane Sugden to a Roddymoor player’s shirt. It wasn’t the big black number four that was the problem, but the nickname beneath it.

The gentleman in question is called Wayne Carr. His nickname, shall we say, is phonetic.

At the risk of abuse, the referee made him change it.

LAST week’s papers made much of the BBC’s decision to hire a train to ferry round its staff covering the Indian general election, so great their numbers.

Licence payers will be comforted, therefore, to learn that not all the Corporation’s departments are so profligate.

BBC Radio Newcastle will this Sunday send four staff to Wembley – there and back in a day – to provide full coverage of the FA Vase final between Whitley Bay and Glossop North End.

All four, and all their equipment, will travel in a Peugeot 206. Those who know their motors reckon not only that it’s a pretty small car, but that it’s a very good job they’re not taking the cat, as well.

IN Whitley Bay’s clubhouse, incidentally, there’s a poster advertising a match between two teams of the opposite sex – Blyth Spartans Ladies and Whitley Bay Women. It’s impossible to say which is the fairer.

…and finally, back to the snow which in recent weeks has so engulfed the column (though we remain, ineluctably, with football.) Tonight at Chester-le- Street’s ground, Horden CW meet Sunderland RCA in the final of the Ernest Armstrong Cup, contested between Northern League clubs and in memory of the late league president and deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.

It’s the first time that the final has been held at Chesterle- Street for exactly 12 years, since May 6, 1997, when the match between Jarrow Roofing and Shotton Comrades was played in a blizzard. Folk still talk about the snow cascading down beneath the floodlights’ beam.

Tonight’s game kicks off at 7pm. Best bring your wellies.