End-to-enders

The following year, having recovered, she went by service bus from London to John O’Groats – 25 buses, no booking, £4 5s 9d the lot.

Mrs Leather’s book about it all is recalled by Bill Taylor – Bishop Auckland lad, long in Canada – following last week’s note on bus pass pilgrimages.

The book’s called Home With the Heather. Bill, happily, doesn’t just remember it, but arranges on-line for a copy to be despatched within days – and for less than the present cost of the bus fare from Darlington to Croft. How on earth do authors and small booksellers survive?

WHO needs senior citizens’ passes and the like, anyway. Returning by train from Teesside last weekend, I asked the guard for "a single to Darlington, with the rail card." He duly issued a young person’s.

THE end-to-enders, those who aspire to traverse the minimum 874 miles from one mainland extreme to the other, have long been a source of fascination.

These days there’s even a Land’s End to John O’Groats skateboard record – 21 days – and a wheelchair record of eight days, ten hours and nine minutes achieved by US Navy pilot Rick Ryan.

The cycling record, just over 44 hours, has survived for nine years.

The men’s running best is nine days and two minutes, the women’s record held by the column’s dear old friend Sharon Gayter from Guisborough (who’s a dab hand at jigsaw puzzles, too).

On April 1, 2008, the day that the national bus pass was introduced, retired teacher Richard Elloway, 61, set out from Land’s End to follow in Gertrude’s tyre treads.

Using only service buses, and wangling a free pass in Scotland because the concession didn’t generally apply there, he reached John O’- Groats in eight days after 1,133 miles and 40 buses.

His journey won the admiration of The Times. "His slow omnibus odyssey was somehow reminiscent of Dr Livingstone, riding his ox through the wilderness wearing that bus conductor’s cap," someone wrote.

Mr Elloway was asked what on earth has possessed him. "Because it was there," he said.

HELL for leather? None seems convincingly to know the phrase’s etymology, though money rides on the British cavalry in India giving leather saddles a good bashing when galloping at top speed.

Rudyard Kipling may have coined it, too.

ATTRIBUTED to Big Trev, one of the Durham Cathedral vergers, last week’s column also recycled the joke about the difference between a terrorist and an organist. You know, you can negotiate with a terrorist.

James Lancelot, the cathedral organist, is celebrating 25 years in office.

"He has been seen chasing Big Trev around the cloisters with a 32ft dispaison," reports another verger, who’d best remain nameless.

A dispaison is a tuning fork, but may on this occasion be considered akin to a red hot poker.

There’s also been a call from one of the cathedral "listeners" who confirms how much they like a joke. "We tend to pass them around one another, at the appropriate time, of course," she says.

Her favourite, also pinched from these columns, was about the difference between a marsupial and a Geordie stuck in a lift.

One’s a kangaroo. The other’s a kangaroot.

STILL with matters ecclesiastical, the Echo reported last week that North-East motors millionaire Sir Peter Vardy is suing Tribune magazine over claims that his sponsored state school imposed creationism on children.

Sir Peter’s later statement was quoted, too. He had, it said, been "saddled with this unwanted and holy untrue ‘creationist’ tag for many years."

Quite possibly – but as Stan Wilson in Thirsk and Keith Walshaw in Wolsingham both point out, it’s also possible that we meant "wholly untrue"

instead.

Bishop Auckland magistrates court is under threat, both from possible closure and – as last Thursday’s John North column reported – from a marked decline in traditional courtesies.

Defendants (and others) dress as if having won the booby prize at a tramps ball. None uses the onceobligatory term "Your worships"; some don’t even remove their chewing gum.

The column had spent a morning on the press bench. After hearing a defendant simply reply "Cheers"

when told that he was free to go, it observed that it was the magistrates who should be grateful. How much longer before it was "Cheers, mate"?

It proved remarkably timely. Two days later, the paper’s "Last Word"

paragraph reported that a defendant in Queensland, ordered to call the magistrate "Sir" or "Your honour" instead of "mate", replied "Okay, mate"

and was sent to the cells in order to consider the error of his ways.

Bishop magistrates are strongly recommended to follow suit.

JOHN North also carried a photograph of Bishop Auckland solicitor John Turner in front of the court building. Above the door it said “Magistrates’ court”. After days of agonising I still can’t work out if the apostrophe is necessary, though the suspicion is that it’s not. Learned readers may have other ideas.

Guilty as charged?

LAST week’s Gadfly reprised the favourite old song "In 11 more months and ten more days, I’ll be out of the calaboose." Bill Callan, a nimble-minded 90-year-old from Richmond sends a slightly different version, same tune and similar disdain for the judiciary.

A yap got up before the judge, he thought it was a cinch To talk his way right out of it, when he got in a pinch.

He walked right up, said "Howdy, judge. How’s the old boy today?"

The judge said "Fine", 100 bucks, and they dragged that guy away."

...and finally back on the buses (or not, as the case may be). I was 20 yards away, waving frantically. The driver looked, turned and headed in the other direction.

Thus it was that, last Sunday teatime, I found myself in the Travellers (aka the Halfway House) in Crook, an hour to put in before the next one.

It’s a proper pub – a men’s pub, not a little boys’ pub – and none more manly than the mountainous Fijian in the corner who at 5.50pm launched, vigorously but wholly unexpectedly, into the thigh-slapping, jaw-dropping, eye-bulging Maori war dance known as the haka.

Possibly, this was to welcome the distinguished guest, said to be one of the haka’s functions. Possibly he was a Scouser on his maternal grandmother’s side, celebrating Liverpool’s win over Chelsea.

Either way, hindsight suggests that it may have been unwise loudly to suggest that the Travellers hadn’t a dancing licence. "You go and tell him," they said.