What cards!

Over all these years, the sole exception may have been the one about the two pieces of string who go into a bar. The big ’un loved it.

If I could remember anything but the punch line – “No, I’m a frayed knot” – I’d not just be retelling it here but turning paternal cartwheels in so doing.

Thus, at any rate, I was really looking forward to recounting when we met for his mum’s birthday lunch the brilliant gag about the mummy’s boy with the tractor obsession. This should not be considered allegorical.

Whatever the bairn’s obsessions, none of them concerns agricultural equipment.

He was scornful. Not only had he heard it, he said, but it was he who’d told it to me – “and,” he added viciously, “about ten years ago.”

The birthday was on a Sunday, All Saints Day, the only day she’d probably have allowed it. We took ourselves off to the Rose and Crown at Romaldkirk, in Teesdale. There are many who’d canonise Chris and Alison Davy, too.

They arrived at Romaldkirk about 20 years ago, highly regarded but cautiously greeted by the column. Since then they’ve achieved more guide entries, more unalloyed acclaim and more awards than perhaps any other establishment in the North-East.

First impressions, many of the certificates line the entrance. The gent’s, on the other hand, is hung with seaside postcards of the “Ginger nuts”

school of humour. You can probably get away with it in the gent’s; undoubtedly not in the ladies.

“We sometimes give the ladies a little look when the coast’s clear,” said Alison.

These days they like to call the place the R&C – as in V&A, the ace caff with quite a nice museum attached, or in T&G (a former trades union now poncily rebranded).

The appeal is unchanging, nonetheless.

There are panelled lounges with beamed ceilings, coal fires, whitenaped dining room, attentive service.

Three-course Sunday lunch in the restaurant is £17.95; in the brasserie, the usual lunch menu may work out a little more expensive.

The boy, in truth, wasn’t at his best, having chosen to celebrate his mum’s birthday – and the parental wedding anniversary, 31 years – the evening previously and unable to remember where he did it.

The morning had been stormy, the afternoon picked up. We ate in the brasserie, where the best tables overlook Romaldkirk’s ancient green.

Ours was by the cutlery drawer.

Though the place may be much busier in summer, there was a chap flying from Somewhere to Somewhere who insisted that he’d simply had to stop off at the R&C.

He told the pretty young waitress.

“Wow,” she said dutifully and “Wow”

several times thereafter as further the story gained wings.

More down to earth, we much enjoyed the birthday lunch – the not-sogreat secret in careful cooking, local sourcing and in allowing food to taste of itself. The menu lists some of the suppliers: fish from Hodgson’s in Hartlepool, meat from Peat’s in Barney, ice cream from Archer’s, outside Darlington. An impressive line-up.

A bacon chop was as good as could be remembered served with pease pudding, flat parsley sauce and carefully cooked vegetables. The potted game which preceded it arrived with “Earl Grey-infused prunes” – a bit hard to taste the tea – and slightly enfeebled melba toast.

Drinking expensive Argentinian wine, the birthday girl rose with a nice cheese souffle followed by roast salmon with puy lentils. The boy, visibly drooping, started with haggis and neeps – among his father’s favourites – followed with steak and kidney pie, like his mum had a raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake for pudding.

All very happy.

There’s Black Sheep and Theakston’s bitter on hand pump. Might they not be a bit more adventurous with their real ales?

The tractor boy, since you insist, was told by his mum to get a life, went off sadly into the real world but ended a hero after rescuing a mother and her children from their blazing bedroom, smashing the window, inhaling all the poisonous fumes and then blowing them back down the street.

“Amazing,” says the fire chief, “how did you do that?”

“Easy,” says the guy, “I’m an extractor fan.”

Have you also heard the one about our own big boy, the one now sedulously ploughing his own furrow?

Within five minutes of getting home, he was fast asleep in his old bed – and that’s not joking at all.

ENFOLDING the Shepherd and Shepherdess, at Beamish in north Durham, last week’s column noted that it had once been part of the nowvanished Vaux empire. It prompted the customarily informative note from former Vaux managing director Frank Nicholson.

Frank not only recalls long-serving landlord Jack Hobbs – the Arnhem veteran, not the cricketer – but the story of the lead figurines over the front door which gave the pub its name.

“They were imported during the Napoleonic Wars, when the import of lead shot was prohibited, but not that of lead statues. For some reason, the French failed to realise that, after being melted down, these served as the source of such shot.”

Not surprisingly, adds Frank, few examples still exist.

LAST week’s column also mentioned the resurrection, after a £250,000 facelift, of Tow Law workmen’s club. Now it’s called Club X, and they asked me officially to open it.

The place, it should be said, is much changed since the days when I’d have the occasional beer there with the late Johnny Maughan – pronounced Maffen, of course, thereabouts.

For one thing, the WMC never had bouncers. “You can’t come in until seven o’clock,” said one of the gentlemen in question.

“I’m invited,” I said.

“Are you the Coke man?” said the bouncer.

This, it transpired, was a reference to fizzy drinks and not solid fuel (or, indeed, any other substance). Alert readers will have noticed the capital C.

It was Hallowe’en night, fancy dress, all ghouls and grim reapers. I didn’t stay long, for fear of winning first prize.

THIRST after righteousness, or something like that, Saltburn’s first beer festival will be held in Emanuel church hall (TS12 1LE) this Friday and Saturday.

The Reverend Guy Donegan-Cross, the vicar, will give the whole thing his blessing by pulling the first pint.

Many of the 20-odd real ales will have ecclesiastical names – Bishop’s Farewell, Monks’ Gold, Matins.

The festival itself bestrides Saltburn’s peerless pier, Britain’s pier of the year in 2009. There’ll be special glasses, a specially commissioned bottled beer and a display of the pier and other local history. Music both evenings, families welcome during the day.

THOUGH it may not have been his most exotic or most celebrated dish, the late Andrea Savino is said to have sold “Cockney beef” at his admirable and eponymous restaurant in Shildon.

“It was based on potatoes, tomatoes, onion, beef and, crucially, baked beans,” recalls Shildon lad George Cate.

Now a group of them is trying to trace the recipe. Google has but one lukewarm offering, and that’s something to do with Ikea.

“With winter coming on and the effects of the recession hitting Shildon, who can we turn to?” asks George.

One of our readers, perhaps.

…and finally, the ageless bairns wondered if we knew why cats seldom shave.

Because eight out of ten prefer Whiskas.