Women want to shatter special little sanctuary that is Darlington 5s and 3s league

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women – Title of 1536 pamphlet by Scottish Protestant reformer John Knox.

THE monstrous regiment is on the march again.

Women again want to shatter the special little sanctuary that is the Darlington 5s and 3s League.

We had all this nonsense exactly three years ago when the league’s annual meeting voted to jump into bed with any woman who fancied her chances.

The column led the campaign, school of hard Knox. Reason and realism prevailed; the decision was reversed.

Now they’re knocking on the Monday night door yet again, so incessantly – you read it here first – that the league is organising a players’ ballot for September 5, the first night of the season.

So let it again and emphatically be stated that opposition has nothing to do with sexism, ageism or even barbarism.

It is simply an attempt to secure the special, simple pleasures of the lads’ night out just as the opposite sex rightly, robustly, defend theirs.

Most of us would argue for equality in any meaningful way, Many of us are hugely and hopelessly fond of women. It should never mean that we no longer delight in the difference.

Back in 2008, Julia Breen – then the Echo’s women’s editor – challenged me to a game as the basis of a feature on the 5s and 3s furore. It was a femme fatale mistake.

She’d never played, was coached by the late and lamented Terry Garnett at the Britannia. Headed “Putting Mr Amos on the spot”, her piece began with the observation that if the Northern Echo were the Bolshoi Ballet then Mike Amos would be the prima ballerina. It was meant well.

Julia lost the game – “No offence, love, but you’re absolute sh**e” said Terry – but still saw the sense of the argument. There were women’s leagues and mixed leagues so why on earth shouldn’t there be a lads’ league?

Nothing has changed, not even the suspicion that those who’d even emasculate Monday night in the spurious name of equality aren’t women at all, but men who by that token believe themselves liberated.

The league secretary tells me that he still doesn’t think it’ll happen. It’s greatly to be hoped that he’s right, that both sexes realise that this isn’t just dominoes but the thin end of the wedge. I’ve been playing 30 years. If he’s wrong, I quit.

SINCE the Electoral Reform Society appears not to have been consulted, and since much of today’s column is again a play with words, it is necessary to ponder whether the September 5 vote is a referendum or a plebiscite.

Since most of us shufflers might reasonably be considered plebs, the latter might be more appropriate, though there seems nothing between them.

Back in Roman times, however, the plebs were not the riff-raff of modern parlance. They were the general body of free, land-owning citizens distinct from the patricians and, most definitely, from the slaves.

The patricians’ dependants were a sub-class – the clientes.

By 287 BC, however, plebs and patricians were formally equal. It did not, of course, mean that they were allowed to intrude upon the weekly lads’ night out.

DAVID Walsh in east Cleveland writes about phrases which “sound high faluting but which slide into the very ambiguous”.

Particularly he has in mind the BBC Radio 4 slogan “A radio station for curious minds” much used online and in publicity material.

“As a Radio 4 listener,” says David, “I’m not sure how to take this description of myself.”

All this was timely because, on the same day, Radio 4 reported reaching a record 10.85 million listeners. Zoe Ball’s popularity soars, too; Chris Evans has lost half a million listeners since Christmas.

News about Radio 4, in particular, may come as a shock to my esteemed BBC-bashing colleague the Rev Dr Peter Mullen. Perhaps he’s just hearing things.

THOUGH Martin Birtle spots in Dalesman magazine a paragraph about a Dales lecturer with “a flare for research” – Martin supposes his talks must really be illuminating – it has to be admitted that none of us is perfect.

Ken Orton in Ferryhill Station highlights the misuse – in an Eating Owt column – of the word “forewent”.

It had looked to be struggling at birth.

“I expected better of an ex-grammar school boy,” writes Ken, unforgivingly.

Fifty lines.

QUITE a lot of readers, a toast to them all, offered a translation for Amos beer – last week’s column – brewed in the French town of Metz.

The slogan “Cent ans de sante”, they agree, means One Hundred Years of Good Health.

Over here, alas, such claims would be prohibited on the grounds that in 1947 someone had one too many and fell and twisted his ankle.

Paul Wilkinson, while losing nothing in the translation, offers a further life-affirming gem.

Two weeks ago, he reports, his daughter was having such considerable labour problems that doctors at Harrogate Hospital contemplated a Caesarean section (see under “Rome”, above.) Among the first questions on the consent form was “Is there the remotest possibility you may be pregnant?”

Mother and daughter are both fine.

With or without Amos beer we wish them 100 years of good health.

THE correspondent who prefers to be identified as “That Bloody Woman” – a gentle soul, in truth – grumbles at the increasing misuse of the word “piqued”, as in “His interest was piqued.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” she says. “It may have aroused, but I’m sure it wasn’t miffed.”

A search reveals that the Echo has seldom been guilty of such pique practice, and that when we have been – “Roy’s curiosity was piqued” – it’s usually been by copying press releases (which should never, ever, be trusted.) Beneath the headline “Residents’ fury at swingers’ parties bid” – and in Wolsingham, of all places – a classic example appeared in October 2010, however.

The lady behind the move insisted that the proposed swinging was without momentum. It had failed to pique anyone’s interest, we said, though the opposite was clearly the case.

That Bloody Woman offers a guide from The Ballad of Bethnal Green, a Sixties song by Paddy Roberts: “In a fit of pique she married the Greek, and now she’s dressed in mink.”

Pique period, some of us remember it well.

SUCK it and see, last week’s column also recorded that an open space in Bishop Auckland had officially been designated Tittybottle Park – one of many around the North-East long to have had the nickname.

We’d also pondered the whereabouts of Tittybottle Bank in Shildon – just past All Saints, says Keith Hopper.

Up near Old Eldon, insists Bob Giles. “It’s where people went courting,”

adds Bob. The tittybottles may have been nine months later.

....and finally, the second half of today’s column was written in a first class railway carriage – the 21.47 from Berwick to Darlington – on Monday evening.

By booking in advance, with a rail card and on-line, a single ticket could be had for £8.60, including a substantial round of chicken Caesar sandwiches – there we go again – and two cups of coffee.

Had the mood taken, the price could also have included a can of beer, gin and tonic or whatever and a bag of crisps. A remarkable bargain.

Had it been a little earlier, the views over the North Sea would have been memorable, too; had anyone else been around the table we might even have had a couple of hands of 5s and 3s.

It was Monday night, lads’ night, after all.