Close encounters

SAVE for Garsdale railway station, 200 yards the foreign side of the North Yorkshire/Cumbria border, but still one of the most glorious places on earth, the John North column in 2010 has just once ventured beyond its North-East comfort zone.

That was the very first, a New Year trip to London to chat with royal double Elizabeth Richard – born Mary Holder in Meadowfield, near Durham and still pretty anxious to get back home.

“I only work for the money so that one day I will be able to buy a place back in County Durham,” she insisted.

“If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, I think the Queen would be quite pleased.”

A love of the North-East probably characterises many who’ve appeared hereabouts – not least Dr Tom Wright, the departed Bishop of Durham, whose pub lunch party piece proved to be Scott Dobson’s Geordie version of the Exodus story.

The one, memory suggests, where they went tappy lappy through the clarts.

Michael Sadgrove, the Dean of Durham, has much taken to the region, too – not least when asked to bless the inaugural steam train on the Weardale Railway from Bishop Auckland to Stanhope and to jump aboard the footplate.

Clerics love railways. “I’m the envy of every clergyman in the Church of England,” said the dean.

The column has frequently run on railway lines, too, once or twice had a flavour of best bitter, more often fraternised with church and chapel.

Though a non-religious occasion, one of the more memorable afternoons was at the lovely little Methodist chapel at Wind Mill, west of Bishop Auckland, where villagers met for a reunion and Joyce Davies recalled long-gone Sunday School anniversaries.

“We thought we were facing the whole world, not just half of Wind Mill,” she said.

That was April 24 and it just about managed to stay fine. Much of the time it didn’t. Many columns appeared to mention rain, snow, ice or gales – and just three occasions all year when it was possible to compose it in the Outer Office, an infrequented picnic table in North Lodge Park.

Nor did the sun put its hat on for the bandstand’s official reopening, on September 12, after a £216,000 refurbishment.

“Most of the houses round here just have yards,” said Yvonne Richardson, who leads the Friends of North Lodge Park. “For many of us this is our back garden.

We wanted to reclaim it.”

We’ve spent a fruitless, frightless night with the Spirit Seekers at Middlesbrough Town Hall, finished second in the world’s oldest annual domino drive, in Thirsk – “Once there was a waiting list, it was a dead man’s shoes job, the Thirsk domino dinner,” someone said – joined a 104th birthday party in Wensleydale for the bright-twinkling Dorothy Walker and helped, closer to home, to celebrate the centenary of Timothy Hackworth primary school, in Shildon, reminiscing with Anne Dockray, the head.

“Ah the good old days,” said Anne.

“Diphtheria, rickets and getting whacked round the back of the legs for not having the lines of your stockings straight.”

The General Election barely merited a mention, save for the revelation that Kate Adie – Britain’s best known war correspondent – was being drafted back to Sunderland to cover the battle for the first declaration.

We have opened a veritable bouquet of flower festivals and a Mind shop in Yarm – where, incidentally, the ambiguity of the Little Bra Shop remains unresolved – spoken interminably and on demand, upturned endless stones, read innumerable village noticeboards and – save for having to write far too many obituaries of friends and acquaintances – enjoyed every moment of it.

Who but a John North reader would know that James Hutchinson won the fancy dress competition at Arkengarthdale Sports by drifting in as an oil slick, who would know that there’ve been at least two recorded instances of one-legged tap dancers, that Northallerton mountaineer Alan Hinkes also conquered Boring Field, at 263ft the highest point in Huntingdonshire?

Who could have guessed that Ronnie and Reggie had (inexplicably) been rejected as names for the recently arrived pest control hawks at Frankland Prison near Durham, or that Apollo and Zeus were chosen instead?

Who could have supposed that Mike Thompson and Sue Jones in Sedgefield would get a concrete mixer for a wedding present or that tomorrow marks the centenary of the wreck of the Scotch Express, with the loss of 12 lives, just north of Hawes Junction?

Hawes Junction is now called Garsdale. It was there, too, that we were reacquainted with the delightful Bill Mitchell – countryside lover, prolific writer and former editor of the Dalesman.

Bill’s 83, ails little, acknowledges advancing years. “One of these days I could be found slumped dead over the keyboard. I suppose it would be quite a good way to go,” he said.

So it would but not, it is to be hoped, before very many more columns have been constructed. A very happy Christmas.

High notes – some of the column’s musical interludes during 2010

● DANA plays Shildon – and wins – exactly 40 years after All Kinds of Everything reached No 1.

● The Durham Constabulary Choir, now wholly civilian, gives a nonetheless arresting performance at Newton Aycliffe Methodist Church.

“The nearest some of this lot have been to the police is a Black Maria on a Friday night,” says the Rev Graham Morgan.

● Darlington vicar the Rev Robert Williamson entertains the Rotary Club Christmas lunch on the saw.

“It’s a high note, like a woman warbling,” he says.

● Jacob Heringman, now living in Richmond and reckoned the world’s top lautist, in wet Wednesday afternoon concert at St Agatha’s church, Skeeby. “I hope this music will perhaps take you to places where the sun is shining,” he says.

● George Lundberg conducts Leyburn Brass Band which, seven years ago, he re-formed. Then they had seven pieces of music, now they have 1,723.

● Tees Valley Jazzman mark their 40th anniversary – the wages of syncopation. Co-founder Keith Belton, 71, admits there are nights when he doesn’t feel like turning out – “but when the band’s playing and the room’s with you, there’s still nothing like it in the world”.

● Gordon Peters recreates Flanders and Swann at Darlington Arts Centre. Born Peter Wilkinson in Shildon, he’s now 83, lives in Surrey, still tours. “My wife would kill me if I stayed in all day doing nothing,” he says.

● Brahms at Auckland Castle and, the same unforgettable night, multidecibel pop at the Ash Tree in Spennymoor.

● Irish singer/musician Fergal Flaherty wows the Hole in the Wall in Darlington. The column incorrigibly moved to comment that Flaherty gets you everywhere.

Gone, but not forgotten - some of the old friends who died during 2010

MICHAEL Adamson MBE, 73-yearold chairman of Ramside Estates hotel group, entrepreneur, gentleman and perennially unsuccessful dieter. “I’ve been to Weight Watchers more times than I’ve had hot dinners, and I’ve had an awful lot of hot dinners,” he said.

Clarrie Beedle, 86, upper Teesdale farmer and Methodist lay preacher who lived all his life in the same remote farmhouse.

“Someone once told me that all you needed to get by was a good wife and a good muffler,” he’d memorably observed. “I was lucky, I had both.”

Stanley Blenkinsop, Wylam-born national newspaper journalist, eccentric and gambler who long ago bought his mother a colour television from a night’s winnings at Grey’s Club in Newcastle. “His intelligence,” said his eulogist, “made the Enigma code machine seem like a Poundshop pocket calculator.”

Percy Cradock, 85, colliery auditor’s son from Byers Green, near Spennymoor, who became Britain’s ambassador to China.

“His career outpaced that of any John Buchan hero,” said the Sunday Times.

Edith Darby, 95, widow of the delightful Tom – pub licensees from an altogether different age. Would never touch a drop on her own premises.

Thelma Denholm MBE, aged 100.

Chairman of Durham City magistrates and of the county probation committee.

Ralph Iley CBE, said probably to be the only leek-growing pigeon fancier to be named North-East Businessman of the Year.

Chris Langford, One O’Clock Show chanteuse in the early days of Tyne Tees Television. Aged 69.

Jack Lee-Warner, 87, much loved County Durham priest and former wartime pilot who lied about his height to get into the RAF. The second vicar of Peterlee when 250 children overflowed the Sunday School.

Bob Lewis, 85, businessman who bought Trimdon Motor Services in 1959 and drove TMS – and later Zebra Holidays – to main road prominence despite innate philanthropy. “If I hadn’t been there, he’d have given the company away,” former managing director Eddie Fowler once observed.

Pat Lisle, 80, Bentley-driving Northallerton railway station porter, publican and tilter at electoral windmills as Labour candidate for Richmond.

Followed by a television crew, he enquired of an elderly farmer if he’d be getting his vote. “Will thoo hellers like,” replied the old boy, unequivocally.

Derek Mansfield, 81, organist at St John’s in Shildon for 35 years. “I’ve always said they’ll have to carry me off that stool when I go,” he’d said.

Audrey Oliver, widow of former Echo photographer who’d bequeathed editor Reg Gray’s style book from 1950. Black tie with dinner suit, white tie with tails, it said.

Bill Scott, former headmaster and vicar of Byers Green – a round peg in a round hole, it was said – on the first day of his retirement.

THE THINGS THEY SAID...

"IF the meat’s tough, put the fork in the gravy” – former Richmond school teacher Ian McNeilly, now director of the National Association of Teachers of English, asked by the Times Educational Supplement about the best advice he’s ever had.

“I have this strange idea that it helps keep all those dreadful nervous diseases at bay” – former Dalesman editor Bill Mitchell, 83, explains his routine of a bath at 3pm and the rest of the day in his pyjamas.

“Wipe bogies all over them” – unknown child at Dana’s Shildon concert, in answer to the query about how one side of the hall might be made to sing louder than the other.

“It’s not that I’m trying to be Queen. I’ve just never liked tea bags” – royal lookalike Elizabeth Richard explains why she uses “proper” tea.

“Women and drink have been the ruin of many a Bishop Auckland lad”

– solicitor John Turner reflects on the cases at the town’s doomed magistrates’ court.

“I do all the usual things that 18-year-olds do” – Stephen Williams, churchwarden at St Peter’s in Bishop Auckland.

" I’ve always had a weakness for Elizabeth Taylor lookalikes"

– Darlington borough councillor Peter Freitag, 81.

“I remember Stan Borrowdale, my godfather, telling me that the longer you washed up, the more cups you’d break. He was right, an’ all” – Shildon lad and former One O’Clock Show singer George Romaine muses on everything including the kitchen sink.

“I’d love to say it’s all down to skill, but I fear it’s all down to luck” – Tony Bardon, spot on, explains his win in the Thirsk domino drive.

“We had a talk on pig slurry last month. You’d be surprised how interesting it was” – Clive Sledger, secretary of the Darlington Pig Discussion Group.

“Ever since Blue Peter described Durham Cathedral as having two lovely knockers, humour has been alive and well in the world’s most beautiful building” – verger and Cathedral cartoonist Olly Burton.

“He’s known as Vespa – knocked down by a motor scooter when he was a child” – a soubriquet explained at community radio station Bishop FM.

“My last public speech was on the same platform as Blair, but frankly I don’t boast about it” – veteran politician John Toft, from Murton, marks his 90th birthday.

“Bishop Tom gets through so much, he’s suspected of being a consortium” – Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, on the departing Bishop of Durham.

“I even declared Hetton a nuclear-free zone. It seems to have worked.”

– the Rev John Stephenson recalls his time as Vicar of Hetton-le-Hole.

“Basically, Middlesex’s highest point is a set of traffic lights at Bushey heath” – Northallerton mountaineer Alan Hinkes comes down to earth a bit.