Milestone Monday

Jill’s the daughter of the late Bill Oliver, our affectionately remembered Bishop Auckland photographer when the working day started in Rossi’s cafe and gently percolated thereafter. He taught me much.

Bill’s wife, Audrey, died recently. In the attic, Jill found The Kemsley Manual of Journalism, published in 1950 by the great newspaper baron.

Bill had been a Kemsley man, so had Harry Stott, my first chief reporter, though it may not be said that old Harry Stottle did very much by the book.

The manual’s not so much a training guide as a call to excellence.

Kemsley believed in quality and in true education at a time when the meretricious media studies were still several decades away.

“There is no more important responsibility to the community than that of journalists,” he wrote. “If the public is to be fully and completely informed of the world’s events, their educational standards must be high and their training thorough.”

There are a couple of chapters on reporting, too, on the importance of a provincial grounding before a move to the nationals. Some groundings take a little longer. “English is his chief tool and he ought to use it with correctness and skill,” Kemsley added.

The book’s now a valued gift, its logo – possibly Kemsley’s – a chap on horseback holding a telescope and passing a milestone. Monday was another.

Here’s to the next 45.

BILL himself had been lauded by Harold Evans in a slightly later guide to journalism, a picture of road signs on the A68 that might have been commonplace but which Bill characteristically made special.

His daughter particularly liked the photograph in the Kemsley manual of the hatted hack, notes in hand, ringing his story to a light-fingered copy taker back in the office.

It was reminiscent of the single telephone booth in Bishop magistrates court, the most carcinogenic workplace on earth, from which twice or three times a week I’d send running reports to the Northern Despatch.

Two hours later the paper would be on the streets, fine fettle hot metal.

The court was a social centre, too, all equal in the smoky corridor if not within the halls of petty sessional jurisdiction.

You’d mix with righteous and with wrong ’uns, with polliss and probation people, ears cocked every minute.

Now, it’s said the future of Bishop court is under review. More centralisation, more loss of local amenity, more trial and tribulation. Some newspaper should launch a campaign.

THE old limbs still in ambulant order, a quick five-miler on Friday evening from East Herrington down the B1286 to Ryhope, where Sunderland RCA were playing Tow Law.

It’s impossible to venture anywhere in Sunderland these days without realising that this is Gentoo territory, the supposedly snazzy name of the burgeoning Sunderland Housing Group.

At the football ground they’ll tell you that a gentoo is a penguin, but that it’ll be a blooming cold day before they know what picking a penguin has to do with housing on Wearside.

An internet search, however, reveals that the name was coined in 2007, partly because they were branching out to Newcastle and other sub-polar places where a corporate identity involving Sunderland might not be greatly welcomed.

The penguin wasn’t the reason the name was chosen, said a spokesman, but it fitted well because the gentoo was fast and dynamic.

A fast and dynamic penguin? It’s all a bit odd. The planet has about 300,000 pairs of gentoo, widelyspread.

Like Sunderland folk fond of their fish, though not usually with chips and curry sauce, they leave the nest at three months and are – you know – “at it” by the time they’re two.

That may be gen too far.

ALAN Hinkes rings from Boring Field. “It’s quite interesting in an idiosyncratic and esoteric way,” he says. “The locals don’t think it’s boring at all.”

Alan’s a mountaineer from Northallerton, Everest and most of the world’s greatest peaks etched on the handle of his ice axe. Boring Field, rather less arduous, rises to 263ft. It’s the highest point in Huntingdonshire.

We mentioned it last week. Alan’s trying to raise money for mountain rescue by ascending – “conquering”

may not quite be the word – the summits of each of England’s 39 “traditional”

counties. Boring Field’s the low point, too.

He’s given himself a week, refreshed by the occasional glass of real ale. “Isotonic,” he says.

Last Saturday he did Burnhope Seat (Durham) and Mickle Fell (Yorkshire). By Sunday he was in Nottinghamshire, where the highest point is a slag heap. “Apart from a statue of miners on top, it’s just like dozens you used to find in County Durham,” he says.

Boring Field’s up a farm track. By the time they got there it was dark, moonlit, and one of the locals came out to ask what all the fuss was about. It proved fortunate.

“I had a GPS system, but like all modern electrinic kit it went up the spout. In the old days you’d have hit it with a lump hammer. Fortunately this chap had a good old OS map. He even offered to let us pitch our tent in his garden.”

The summit was atop an old railway embankment, oxygen unnecessary.

“The view across the cornfields reminded me of Nebraska,” says Alan. “It was really rather nice. I think Huntingdonshire has been traduced.”

TODAY Alan should hit Cornwall, where the highest point is Brown Willy – “a bit gnarly,” he says, gnarly’s his favourite word – but more immediately in the news because of Florence Rose Endellion Cameron.

Appealing her middle name may be; original it’s not.

Anne Gibbon in Darlington has a daughter called Endellion, a niece called Endellion and a great grand-something-or-other of the same name. In addition, she says, John Betjeman’s granddaughter is Endellion Lycett-Green, daughter of Candida.

Endellion was a Cornish saint and virgin. “Obviously,” says Anne, “this was a very long time ago.”

STILL with the great company of saints, a note from John Bailey in Hartlepool points out that last Wednesday was St Louis’s Day – it said as much on his daily tear-off calendar. There’s a Northallerton connection to that, too.

Louis – Louis IX of France – is the patron saint of barbers. In the 17th Century, adds the calendar, barber shops was so greatly the scene of “everyday idleness” that laws were passed to discourage loitering there.

As a result, it’s said, “rules” were invented to satirise the new laws, one set found in the barbershops of North Yorkshire’s county town.

Who checks the barber in his tale, Must pay for each a pint of ale.

Who will or cannot miss his hat While trimming, pays a pint for that.

And he who can or will not pay Shall hence be sent half-trimmed away.

John’s saintly, too. “It was the Northallerton reference that caught my eye on your behalf,” he says, “not the many references to ale.”

Cutting to the chase, the column returns in a fortnight.