Foreign bodies

Thursday had been Syria, Friday the Royal Wedding and on the third day a spot of local council electioneering.

Middle East, Middletons, Middleton Tyas. A politician’s lot.

Not even the estimable Mr Hague may have foreseen the subsequent events in Libya, or what was to be announced from Pakistan in the early hours of Monday morning.

It was not, sadly, a strictly social call. Even if I’d been washed and dressed, which is not the Saturday morning custom, it’s doubtful if he’d have fancied a pint in the Shoulder.

Rather, he was seeking support for his man in tomorrow’s ballot and was keen to talk about AV.

Others aren’t. For some of us it can hardly be separated from AV/DV, something on the side of an electricity sub-station or on the box of a Triang train set.

Perhaps of similar mind, the lady two doors up had let it be known that she couldn’t see the Great Man because she was baking a cake. Wasn’t there once a song about “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake”? Maybe he’d simply arrived too early.

Mr Hague had also been in several of that morning’s papers, the lovely Ffion alongside him at Westminster Abbey in a wheelchair pushed (it transpired) by an Academy sergeant major from the Royal Artillery.

Ffion, said her husband, had cracked her fibula in a fall. “After a barbecue, oddly enough,” he added, oddly enough.

Even the Guardian, the grudging old Guardian, had noticed that the grey pot had matched the colour of her outfit and thought it quite chic.

Hague himself is a most agreeable cove and a top-class constituency MP, though the lady of this house believes him still to look little more than 18. Only the chap in the background, the one with the dark glasses and the 360-degree rotating neck, suggested that Our Man might not wholly be alone. The Shoulder next time, please, William.

GRAHAM Redfearn in Bishop Auckland sends the programme of “Sunday concourse” performances at The Sage in Gateshead.

“Why not enjoy the music from our Brassiere?” it asks, and Graham wonders what sort of music might be expected. He even talks of bosom friends, though Air on a G-string might be supposed out of place.

Somewhere amid the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan there is no doubt a chorus of “Titty-fa-lefalah” though it’s the best known of all football songs which leaps most prominently and most incorrigibly to mind.

“We’ll support you ever more…”

ON very much more serious lines, last week’s column quoted a piece in The Times suggesting that the much-heralded Hitachi factory at Newton Aycliffe was a belt-and-braces job that could still end up with its trousers round its ankles.

The proposed new plant will build electric-powered locomotives which will still carry three large diesel engines for use where there are no overhead wires.

Niall Clifford, a former governor of Durham Jail, shares the concern.

“I’m pleased that the Government is going to support a new factory in Newton Aycliffe and emotionally I share the view that, given the North- East’s former glory as engineers to the world, it’s good to reverse the decline up here.”

Niall, however, cites several opinions that the technology is unnecessary and that, even if it were, existing factories could probably build it.

Several contributors to Modern Railways magazine agree. “Whatever is decided will be critical for Britain’s infrastructure into the future,” says one. “This looks too much like a pre-conceived solution.”

Niall shares the concern. “My fear is that this factory will last as long as it takes to assemble the parts for these trains and then close, leaving yet more misery and no competitors left to build trains in the UK.”

THEN there are potential industrial relations issues. The wholly admirable Dave Ayre, who annually organises a Workers’ Memorial Day church service at Stanley Hill Top, above Crook – apologies for absence last Thursday – sends a new booklet called “Going on Strike”, published by the North- East Shop Stewards’ Network.

The script is trenchant – “Only slaves cannot go on strike”; “Solidarity action can overwhelm antiunion laws” – the cartoons light relief.

The illustration above is from the cover. They’re serious.

YOU know we’ve been banging on about the absurd overuse of the prefix “pre” – as in pre-booked, pre-ordered and (indeed) pre-arranged?

There’s a shop in Spennymoor High Street offering “New and pre-used guns.” Presumably it means old, something of which they want shot.

Whoever dreams up such nonsense should themselves be fired.

TWICE within a minute, emails suggest that the column is in danger of becoming borderline Scottish. They not only concern the same Eating Owt column, but the same plate of chips.

Harold Heslop picks up on the word “scadded”. “I know it’s a Scottish variant of scalded, but that would hardly fit for chips.”

David Halladay declines to become involved in etymological debate over “Buck’s fizz” – Gadherents may feel no such reluctance – but in the same piece questions the use of the word “presently”, meaning at this time.

“I wouldn’t normally mention it, but you’re a stickler for such things,” he adds.

David quotes Sir Ernest Gowers’s Complete Plain Words which says that, in England, “presently” means soon. Scotland’s different, says Gowers, to which exception Chambers Dictionary adds the US.

The proper use, adds David, is “currently.” As of now, we stand corrected.

SIR Ernest Gowers may also have something to say about the use of the apostrophe – as in Gowers’s – the subject on which the Gadfly column has really been a stickler over the years. Elsewhere, their misuse has become known as the greengrocer’s (or, possibly, greengrocers’) apostrophe.

Brenda Boyd spots two entirely appropriate examples near her home in Newcastle.

ANOTHER correction: we said two weeks ago that the A4 steam engine Silver Link had been scrapped in Darlington. Mr T Sanderson sends a list, a sort of locomotive graveyard, showing that the foul deed (as he puts it) was done in Doncaster.

Of the 34 A4s, only 60011 Empire of India and 60020 Guillemot met their end at Darlington. Most were shunted off to Donny.

Only 60002 – Sir Murrough Wilson, was it not? – went to Cohen’s scrapyard at Cargo Fleet, Middlesbrough.

Sir Murrough had strong connections with the Manfield area of North Yorkshire and was MP for Richmond. Though he may never have been Foreign Secretary, it takes us back pretty much to where we started.

…so finally, John Briggs in Darlington tells of the friends – a Chinese, a Cambodian, a Vietnamese, a Malaysian and a Burmese who go to a popular North-East night club and are stopped at the door by the bouncer who asks if they’re all together in one group.

“Yes,” smiles the Burmese, “we represent South-East Asia.”

“Sorry, mate,” says the bouncer. “I can’t let you in without a Thai.”