A hurl new ball game

IT began, like most of the great wheezes, as a debate after a few pints in the pub – a session on how to build a better catapult.

It ended like a classic scene from Last of the Summer Wine, the woolly- hatted characters barely distinguishable, the setting moved from the hills around Holmfirth to a disused industrial site in Newton Aycliffe.

Each had to build a trebuchet, a medieval siege engine, a throwback if ever. The winner would be the one whose contraption furthest propelled a standard size tin of baked beans (and not, it might be added, wind-assisted.) Each attempt was called a hurl.

Even for these guys, each around 60, it was a hurl new ball game.

They drew up rules, worked separately and in strict secrecy, called themselves the Friends and Associated Team-mates of the Guild of the United Trebuchet Society, or the FATGUTS for short.

Compo, Foggy and Clegg could hardly have written a better script.

The lads are from the Shildon and Bishop Auckland areas. I’ve known them for donkeys years. They were wacky when you were allowed to be; wackier still – siege mentality – now.

David Kershaw, the least mechanically- minded, was appointed the judge. They gave him a fluorescent yellow jacket, didn’t tell him they’d painted a target on the back.

“I wondered why everyone was laughing,” he says.

The rules forbade the use of explosives, hydraulics, pneumatics or giant rubber bands. Nor could the baked bean tin be nobbled in any way – “no wings, sky rockets or helium balloons may be tied to it,” the regulations enjoined.

In half a dozen south Durham garages – Wesley Pegdon, where were’t thou at this hour? – they worked hammer and tongs. The throwing arm couldn’t be more than 6ft long; the distance, like putting the shot, was to be measured from the first bounce.

For reasons of health, safety and avoiding fractured skulls, the public was kept well away. Contestants were advised not to try to catch their beans in flight.

“The rules didn’t specify making a trebuchet at all, it’s just that that’s what everyone came up with,” says Ricky Tillotson, the eventual winner.

Results proved mixed. One of the tins, propelled by Mr David Coates, shot about 150ft in the air but landed back at his feet. Others, a significant reverse, flew backwards.

Ricky’s hurtled 100 yards in the intended direction and smashed into a wall without bouncing. “Fortunately the wall withstood it, but it didn’t do much good for the tin of beans,” he says.

“It went like a bat out of hell,” says Derek Newby, another contestant.

Ricky’s winnings have been donated to the Teesdale Fell Rescue Team.

Tres bon, the throwaway trebuchet now sits in his garage in Bishop Auckland, awaiting the next Nora Batty episode. That’s what worries Dave Kershaw.

SIX years ago someone pioneered the Mongol Rally, a charitable event from England to the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator for vehicles of 1200cc or under.

Its popularity has greatly accelerated.

“A participating car,” say the rules, “must generally be considered to be crap.”

Dave anticipates with interest the next long evening in the pub. “I wouldn’t mind a bet,” he says, “that that’s where we end up next.”

SPEAKING of those things that fly through the air with the greatest of ease – or not, as sometimes may be the case – a Durham reader recalls the grumbling over Durham Tees Valley Airport’s failure to clear runways during the freeze. Most KLM flights had to depart from Newcastle.

Like other regular flyers, he has now had a letter above the name of both the airport and KLM.

“It’s a hassle, isn’t it,” the letter begins, “when you’re rushing to an early morning meeting and what do you find when you get out of the door – a frozen windscreen.”

They who themselves became snowed under, kindly enclose an ice scraper.

THEN there was that intrepid flyer Amy Johnson, who probably needed ice scrapers, too. Back in 1930, the gallant pilot was forced to land in a field alongside the Great North Road at Chilton – south of Ferryhill – after running out of petrol.

Locals recall her pushing back the cockpit and asking if there were a filling station nearby. “She wore a leather flying jacket and trousers, together with her hat and goggles,” said one.

We recalled it – ten years ago today – after the launch of Brian Turner’s history of the Chilton area.

Something always seemed to be happening in the village, we said – “Chilton, as these columns have observed before, is basically Coronation Street: the Village.”

As with Last of the Summer Wine and the Tale of Tillotson’s Trebuchet, however, not even the writers who’ve turned Coronation Street into Murder Mile could have dreamed of the horrific episode that ended in Teesside Crown Court last week.

LAST week’s note on Cliff Richard, the man who never did live in a prefab in Newton Aycliffe, contained at least two errors of fact.

Cheshunt, the town in which he really grew up, is in Hertfordshire – as Stan Johnson points out – and not Surrey.

We also said that, circa 1957, the then Harry Webb won a talent competition singing Moon River. The song, says Howard Campion in Wheldrake, near York, wasn’t around until 1961 when both Danny Williams and Henry Mancini had hits with it.

“By that time, Cliff would have had no need whatever to enter a talent competition.”

We’d also supposed Margery Burton in Shildon to be Cliff’s number one fan, a claim gently challenged by Mary Everitt.

“There’s a whole army of us in Darlington who’ve followed him for years and years. You might find it hard to believe for a pretty sane person like me, but in October I saw him twice in 48 hours – in Newcastle and then in Sheffield on his 69th birthday.”

The first time was at the long-gone Globe in Stockton – “in the 50 years since, he’s never disappointed us once.”

THERE’S also a voicemail message from Margery Burton. “I want to tell you about what I got for Christmas,” she says. Call returned, Margery herself is unavailable. We may find out next week what she got in her stocking. A Cliff hanger, if ever.

MIKE Teacher, Crook lad now across the pond, is the latest to send the Washington Post’s annual list of neologisms – new definitions for old words, though many seem to have been around for ages. “Rectitude – the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists” is timeless, nonetheless.

...FINALLY, and coincidentally, back to flying machines. Ivor Wade in Darlington sends the story of the plane going through severe turbulence, things made worse when a wing is struck by lightning.

Clearly not of the Amy Johnson mould, a female passenger loses it.

“If I’m going to die I want my last minutes to be memorable. Is there anyone on this plane who can make me feel like a woman.”

Big and muscular, a Geordie lad strides to the front, unbuttoning his shirt as he walks. No one moves. He removes his shirt, pecs rippling.

She gasps, he speaks. “Iron this, pet, and gerrus a beer while you’re about it.”