National interest

A NOTE from Tyneside playwright Ed Waugh seeks the column’s help in what may only be described as a matter of National interest. You know, horses.

The Grand gesture is duly made.

Ed’s still fascinated by the 1973 National and in particular by Crisp, the horse which led by 25 lengths over the last, but which lost by three-quarters of a length to Red Rum.

“It was the greatest Grand National ever,” says Ed. “I still get tingles down my spine, that race moved me so much.”

That Crisp was carrying getting on two stones more than the winner doubtless explains why he was overtaken by events, and by history.

The following year, level weights, he beat Red Rum by ten lengths at Doncaster but was injured in the process and retired.

Ed and co-author Trevor Wood have already written two comedy plays – Good to Firm and Raising the Stakes – in which Bob Fletcher, the central character, is similarly fixated by Crisp.

They were first performed in 2002 and can again be seen at the Customs House in South Shields in October before a third, Photo Finish, has its premiere at the Customs House the following month.

Ed has also been reading the autobiography of Richard Pitman, Crisp’s jockey. “After retiring,” wrote Pitman, “he went up to Scotch Corner for the next eight seasons.

“He died out hunting and was buried at the entrance to his then-owner’s estate. They planted a cherry tree over him, which flowers at Grand National time.”

Ed was intrigued. Where might Crisp lie? The column considered itself under starter’s orders.

The horse was owned by Sir Chester Manifold, a splendidly named Australian, and trained at Lambourn by Fred Winter. When he retired, Winter was charged with finding him a good home – which is how he ended up with Captain John Trotter at East Layton Hall, a few miles west of Scotch.

“Fred and I were friends,” recalls Captain Trotter. “Crisp loved jumping so much that he just wanted to carry on. I said I’d love to have him if he could carry someone my weight.”

The great horse took at once to his new home. “He just adored hunting,”

says Capt Trotter. “When we were out and it wasn’t his turn, he had to be tied up, otherwise he’d kick the door down. He really would. He was a real character.”

Nor would Crisp allow himself to be clipped, until a “really strong” girl groom was found to do the job by hand.

The cherry tree has died, replaced by a horse chestnut. Crisp’s resting place remains in East Layton, the grave enclosed by a low wall. Ed Waugh was last heard of heading at a gallop down the A1.

A date with Dana

WE all know what’s going to happen on Thursday, May 6, of course. Dana plays Shildon.

The former Eurovision Song Contest winner – remember the 1970 hit All Kinds of Everything, the first of Ireland’s seven Eurovision successes?

– is making a stage comeback after five years as an MEP and a tilt at the Irish presidency.

“I hadn’t sung for a while. It was a bit like restarting an old car, but I feel happier with my voice than I’ve ever been,” she says.

Anything else that may or may not happen on May 6 is, of course, entirely secondary.

Dana, a devout Roman Catholic, will appear at Shildon Civic Hall in an evening promoted by the local Methodist circuit.

“She’ll also be talking about her life, work and faith,” says superintendent minister Graham Morgan.

Born in London, raised in Derry, Dana was just 18 when All Kinds of Everything offered an international passport. “I was neither a child nor a woman at the time,” she once said.

“People didn’t know whether to pat me on the head or to offer me champagne.”

She also had top ten hits in 1975 with Please Tell Him I Said Hello and It’s Gonna be a Cold, Cold Christmas.

As an MEP she campaigned for family values and against abortion. As a presidential candidate she came third.

■ The Shildon show starts at 7pm.

Tickets are £10, available on 01325- 319098 or 01388-772604.

FORTY years since Dana won the Eurovision Song Contest, 140 since the first Good Friday oratorio in Hetton-le-Hole Methodist church and still they’ve never missed an annual beat, not even during two world wars.

We attended The Messiah a couple of years back, a magical and memorable occasion deserving the single word headline “Hallelujah!”

“It’s an old mining area and the miners always did like their music,”

says Mavis Sherwood, one of the organisers.

Mind, they still tell the tale of the soloist brought in for The Trumpet Shall Sound who, having had little to do in the first half, nipped over to the Commercial for a refresher.

Wherever the trumpet sounded thereafter, it wasn’t in Hetton Big Chapel.

This year, April 2, at 7pm, marks another roof-raising outing for Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus – admission still the same footling, fatuous almost flippant fiver of which we wrote two years ago.

Susan Kemp Jordan, Alison Snell, Paul Smith and Arthur Berwick will be soloists, Richard Brice the conductor, Tom Rennie on the organ as he has been at Hetton for more than 40 years.

Good Fridays may rarely be better – but it’s comfortably in readers’ interests that we advise taking a cushion.

CELEBRATING the centenary of Timothy Hackworth primary school in Shildon – old school ties, if ever – we noted three weeks ago that four of the pupils had turned the tables by interviewing the interviewer.

The quartet – Jake Long, Niamh Ellison, Megan Jones and Mathew Raby – have now sent what might be termed the finished article. “We found out a lot about how the school had changed in the last 60 years,”

they write, fearfully.

The interview had recalled both the dreaded Miss Vint’s daily handkerchief parade and the day that the school got a fairly rudimentary sand pit.

“Nowadays you might say a sand pit was quite boring,” they conclude.

“Back then, a sand pit was equivalent to your Xbox 360.”

Souper troupers

SAVE for a damn great cattle market at one end – folk kick up a stink, too, but the cows were there first – Clifton Road is much like many other semi-residential areas within ten minutes walk of Darlington town centre.

There’s a ladder centre, a leather centre – suites, what else – and at yon end, near the park, St Columba’s church and what’s called the Clifton Centre.

All manner goes on there, from line dancing to weight watching, from martial arts to mothers and toddlers. JJs’ Soup Kitchen stirs itself every Tuesday lunchtime, and though few columnists may less evidently be in need of a square meal, we strolled across in the sunshine and tucked in, anyway.

JJs’ is remarkable. The Js are longtime friends John Hutchinson and John Shepherd, and though they and their team all have learning difficulties, they clearly know how the cookie crumbles.

Jim Ruck, Darlington’s mayor, had looked in last back end and thought we should give it a go. “Proud mum”

Barbara Shepherd also wrote.

“You’ll get a really good lunch,” she promised.

There, too – as he is every Tuesday – was the Rev Robert Williamson, vicar of St Cuthbert’s in Darlington, praising God for the sunshine if not noticeably following a Lenten fast.

His wife Sheilagh is priest-incharge of St Culumba’s. “The food here’s wonderful,” said Robert and so manifestly it proved – one of the most enjoyable lunches, and the best value, in years.

The idea came from Val and Joe Hutchinson, John’s parents, after the two lads had to leave a catering course at a Middlesbrough college because they couldn’t sit the exams.

They can’t read or write.

Val and Joe were determined to give them a chance to show what they could do, to demonstrate that they could stand the heat. JJs’ opened two-and-half years ago selling soup, exactly what it said on the label, but little else.

Backed by Lottery funding, the two volunteers now provide an opportunity for a team of seven, under supervision, to offer up to three courses on Tuesday lunchtime – “a lot take cakes and things home for tea, as well” – and a delivery service round the town on Wednesdays.

“It was just a chance for people with learning disabilities to do something creative, to learn new skills and to show that you don’t always need to pass exams,” says Val.

“We knew that they had a real talent for catering. Now they and others are proving it.”

Catering supervisor Michelle Messer – “German for knife, though my husband’s Welsh” – is equally impressed.

“We run it as a democracy, everyone here has an input. No one’s the boss, though one or two of the girls think they are!

“This is about proving to people that those with learning disabilities can do things they’re not given credit for. We want the emphasis to be on what they can do, given that chance.”

Black and white clad, smart as carrots – though what is so particularly smart about a carrot has always been quite difficult to explain – the team serves expertly. Presentation is impeccable.

The day’s special, appropriately, is shepherd’s pie – at £3 the most expensive item on the menu. A large bowl of terrific tomato and lentil soup is £1.50, a “slice” of warm and freshly made bread – “slice”?, there’s half a loaf – is 30p.

“Do I have to eat three courses?”

the chap on the next table asks his wife.

“Oh yes,” says she, “it’s compulsory.”

The shepherd’s pie comes with vegetables and rich, fragrant gravy in a boat of great buoyancy. An open ham and pease pudding sandwich with coleslaw and crisps would have been £1.20, a slice of pizza 80p.

Spotted dick, fresh and clearly home made, is another £1.50 with a jug of custard. A can of Coke brings the bill to a little over £6, Joe at the receipt of custom.

Afterwards there’s a chance to chat with some of the workers. With Louise, the fairy cake queen, with the talkative Malcolm, who runs the food store and reckons it the best work he’s ever had, with Jade who organises the Wednesday delivery runs all over town, and with Emma, the personification of service with a smile.

Most have become friends. “I love it,” says Emma. “People are very nice here.”

The need is for several laps of the South Park, the necessity to return to work. On the way out, I mention Robert Williamson. “He’s lovely,”

someone says, “the only person I know who can play a saw with a bow and get really good tunes out of it.”

His virtues else, it is a side of St Cuthbert’s vicar of which hitherto I had been wholly unaware. Truly you live and learn.

■ JJs’ Soup Kitchen, based at the Clifton Centre in Clifton Road, Darlington, serves lunch to the public between 11.30am and 1pm every Tuesday.