A bridge too far

THE Scottish play was written in 1605. Milton used “botch” similarly in Tetrarch in 1645 – “Let it stick as a notorious botch or deformity.”

It is with considerable regret, therefore, that we must beg to differ with Cath Gregory, author of a piece on Thomas Bouch in the ever-informative magazine of the Stainmore Railway Company.

The Stainmore Railway, properly the South Durham and Lancashire Union, ran from coast to coast, Tees to Solway. Bouch was the engineer, his bridges including the magnificent structures at Deepdale, near Barnard Castle, and Belah, beyond Kirkby Stephen.

He was also the engineer responsible for the 2.25-mile Tay Bridge, near Dundee, which in a terrible storm on the evening of Sunday, December 28, 1879 collapsed while a train was crossing it. Seventy-five people, including Bouch’s son-in-law, were killed.

The Northern Echo produced a special edition, even then. “Fearful excitement prevails in Dundee,” we reported. “The anguish of friends at the station is indescribable.”

The Scots, understandably, were greatly aggrieved. “Apparently the word ‘botch’ comes from Bouch’s name,” supposes Ms Gregory. “To botch something means to make a mess of it, with overtones of filling the holes of flawed metal with putty and painting the surface to make it look sound.”

The Oxford dictionary traces the word back to 1382 – “To repair clumsily or imperfectly, often with ‘up’” – though it can also mean a lump, swelling or tumour.

A “botcher” was also another word for a cobbler – perhaps as in cobble up, though learned readers will know that “load of cobblers” has a different etymology entirely.

Cath Gregory, it should be said, sounds sympathetic towards the unfortunate Bouch. “Can the man be defined by one event, or was he a decent, innovative and world-class engineer who was subsequently ruined by a bad press?”

She isn’t alone, and not just in Shildon, ever-loyal, where there’s still a street named after him. Since Bouch’s span grows too great, there’ll be more of this in tomorrow’s John North column.

STOKE up a latter-day search engine and it’s not Thomas Bouch who first features under “Tay bridge disaster” but William Topaz McGonagall, widely hailed – says his own website – as writer of the worst poetry in the English language.

There’s a flavour atop the home page.

“Arabi’s army were about 70,000 in all
And, virtually speaking, it wasn’t very small.”

McGonagall was himself from Dundee, a handloom weaver who’d begun writing poetry (of a sort) only two years before the great bridge fell.

Of his 200 published works, the Tay Bridge Disaster is reckoned best known:

Beautiful railway bridge of the silv’ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That 90 lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath Day of 1879
Which will be remembered for a very long time

The poem ends with what the website calls a “striking moral.”

“For the stronger we our houses do build,
“The less chance we have of being killed.”

The site includes an online petition to have a stamp issued in the great man’s honour and an offer to send subscribers a McGonagall “gem a day”.

Mind, it concludes, you have to be a real glutton for punishment for that.

BENEATH the headline “Council buys ice-fight vehicles”, Pete Winstanley in Durham notes the Echo report that Durham County Council is purchasing some “duel purpose” wagons. For snowball skirmishes, he assumes.

BACK on the railways, Tony Metcalf emails from a firstclass carriage on the Amtrakoperated Acela Express, somewhere on the four-hour journey between New York and Boston.

Tony used to work here, still has a place in Darlington, noted recent Gadfly comments about the £350-orso cost of an “open” first-class return between the North-East and London.

On Amtrak, he’d just enjoyed a three-course breakfast with eight main course choices, served by one of four staff working that carriage alone.

Coming home, he’d have a multiple- choice four-course dinner with as much as he cared to drink. “The seats are huge with leg room easily double that of National Express,”

says Tony, now editor-in-chief of Metro USA. The return ticket, bought the day previously – no special offers – was about £200, inclusive of all food and drink.

“There’s simply no comparison between the services, you’d love the calm of Amtrak,” he says.

It’s so much cheaper, Tony supposes, because three other rail companies and six airlines vie for custom between the two cities. “In the UK we get ropey services at relatively high cost – taken for mugs, in other words.”

There’s a caveat, however. “Ask for a black pudding sandwich,” says Tony.” and they’d probably put you off the train.”

AT Tesco in Northallerton, reports Peter McInnes-Crawforth, there’s a sign in the caravan accessories department for “Levelling blokes”.

Even money, they probably mean blocks.

TWO magazines are left, anonymously, on my desk. One’s The Oldie, which may need little explanation; the other – humbler – is sub-titled The newsletter of the Association of British Counties.

The editorial address is given as Skipton, West Yorkshire, though that town’s local government allegiance is now to North Yorkshire, and to Northallerton. The last committee meeting was held at Redcar, North Riding of Yorkshire (formerly Cleveland, nee North Riding), Durham County Council is slated for use of the “old” name without qualification and there’s a plea for Westmorland, which began – begins, some would say – half-way across the Stainmore Railway.

“The media assumes that it has disappeared into a black hole called Cumbria,” they say. The column is happy to acknowledge its continued existence: go Westmorland, old man.

THE Telegraph’s had a good week. Leading the agenda on the MPs’ expenses scandal, they also made the best fist of the unofficial competition to write a headline befitting the arrival of Durham cricketer Graham Onions on the Test match scene. While The Times could only mumble about a frying start, The Telegraph was crisper altogether. “Cheers and Onions,” it said.

…and finally back to where we’ve been trapped for nearly two months, the unseasonal weather which takes the North-East by storm.

It was almost 25 years ago, May 26, 1984, that American evangelist Dr Billy Graham began a series of Mission England rallies at Roker Park, Sunderland, then the town’s football ground.

A Northern Echo leader noted their “pleasing” success, seven Barnard Castle bus drivers were given Gideon bibles for ferrying the faithful. Though the ground’s long gone, a service at St Andrew’s church, Roker, on June 8, will mark the anniversary. Over eight evenings, 124,000 people were clicked through the turnstiles.

What chiefly they may remember is how cold and wet it was that first Saturday evening. The Echo the following Monday talked of his overcoat, red scarf and – for the first time in his long ministry – a flat cap while preaching.

Though he spoke of the hardy North-East people, Dr Graham’s text is, sadly, unrecorded. Perhaps it was “All that believe in me shall not perish”, though “Ne’er cast a clout till May is out” may almost have been as appropriate.

Top botch, the column returns in a fortnight.