Penultimate ambition

Jonas Gadfly, a handsome chap, is discovered by Alan Vickers in the 1902 Sunderland Year Book, republished a few years ago. Chips and old blocks come to mind.

Jonas, it says, is one of Sunderland’s institutions. “As guide and philosopher to every party, movement or enterprise, as the own familiar friend of the great ones of the earth, as critic and exponent of the larger affairs of the known universe, Jonas fills in his own inimitable way a unique place in our local history.”

It waxes yet. “Geniality, incisiveness, a wealth of apposite historical and literary illustration, trenchant insight and luminous imagination run riot in his writings.”

If only we could have met.

WHAT else occupied the good folk of Sunderland back in 1902? The year book carried ads for Ball Brothers earthenware manufacturers and Wanless Brothers gun makers, for JA Bennett – “practical bone setter and medical electrician” – and for Ferry and Foster, who had six piano showrooms thereabouts.

The George and Dragon boasted the best billiard table in the North of England, JJ Wilson and Sons were nautical opticians, the Neptune Savings Bank was supposed “a little bank with a big purpose” and TW Broadbent was an oyster merchant.

The pearls, of course, were all Jonas Gadfly’s.

WITH all this comes the elder statesman cloak, its cut remarkably similar to that of the king’s new clothes. “As a gentleman somewhat more advanced in years,” begins Robin Brooks from Barningham, near Barnard Castle, “would you please have a word with your colleague who in Monday’s paper writes of ‘the coke mines of Bishop Auckland and West Auckland’.”

If coke had indeed been worked from seams underneath the towns, adds Robin, “we might well have been spared the noxious smells and lurid glares associated with its production.”

BACK in February, 2007, we revealed a threat – EU, as ever – to the dear old Lockey’s bus fleet on Malta.

Based in West Auckland, Lockey’s were long familiar on the routes of south Durham – even a bus named Boyden, after long-serving Bishop Auckland MP Jim Boyden – before working a final ticket in the sun.

Exhaust emissions, it was said, failed to meet EU standards. Arriva, ubiquitous, has taken over. Malta chokes.

“I’ve heard that the timetable is in chaos,” says John Maughan, in Wolsingham, who sends a photograph, taken last year, of one of Lockey’s finest on Malta. Tony Golightly in Chester-le-Street, a regular Malta visitor, agrees. Maltese cross.

“Generally there’s hell on,” says Tony. “People going to work are standing in long queues because there aren’t enough buses for what’s needed. No one ever complained about the buses being too old.”

Lockey’s stock and barrel, he has a certain sympathy, however. “The nuns used to cross themselves before getting on one of Lockey’s – to make sure they reached their destination, I suppose.”

SPEAKING of the sun, we note outside the Green Tree, in Brompton, Northallerton, a banner promoting a “sun-drenched beer garden”. Unless Brompton has had a micro-climate this summer, perhaps the EU should do something about that, too.

HOWEVER improbably, Martin Wood writes of sharks in Shildon. There’s even a photograph, beached by the famous old coal drops. A shark is another from the dogfish school of which recent columns have been writing.

This one, says Martin, is a ballast plough brake van. There are no other sharks in Shildon.

SEVERAL readers wrote appreciatively after last week’s obituary of the Rev Prof Kingsley Barrett, many more to point out that we named the wrong church for Monday’s thanksgiving service.

The Times carried an obit last Thursday – “perhaps the most substantial British biblical commentator of the 20th Century” – followed in yesterday’s paper by an additional note from a former pupil.

Like so many more clergymen, it said, the man they called CKB was fascinated by railway timetables.

The student wanted to plot a crosscountry route across Spain. The professor did it from memory.

Charles Kingsley Barrett, who was 94 and a Methodist minister for almost 70 years, had become a theology lecturer at Durham University in 1943, retired as Professor of Divinity but continued until quite recently to preach at chapels great and small.

“A truly amazing man,” writes Ian Andrew in Lanchester. The style and content of his preaching, his magnanimity and his humility will not be forgotten.”

Percy Golledge, aged 82 and selfstyled “itinerant ecumenical organist”, remembers Prof Barrett’s sense of humour. “He’d frequently announce that he’d preached the same sermon in the same place in September 1962, but didn’t suppose anyone would remember what it was about.”

Neville Kirby recalls that Prof Barrett preached, in the 1960s, at the last Camp Meeting on Cockfield Fell, where such religious gatherings had been held since 1821.

“The site still exists, Cockfield Fell being an Ancient Monument, but the platform which was constructed by striking miners in 1926 – and upon which Prof Barrett stood – is now in a state of ruin.”

MIGHT there just be room – probably not – for Keith Taylor’s rather jolly picture of Brian and Ann Boyd outside the splendid Ship Inn at Middlestone, near Bishop Auckland? The heads – the maritime term, apparently – are being refurbished, regulars obliged to use temporary portable facilities outside. Ann and Brian stand guard; no need to go overboard at all.

SO to the ultimate penultimate.

Anxious to sustain the cutting edge journalism for which old Jonas set such standards, next week’s column may chiefly concern itself with a report of last night’s egg and bacon pie competition – men only – at the Black Bull, in Melsonby, near Scotch Corner.

On other licensed premises – the Vane Arms, at Longnewton, and the Tapas Bar, in Darlington, to name but two – it is already possibly to enjoy the quaintly named Bugger Off Bitter, made by the Cleveland Brewery to accompany the coming valedictions.

Like Jonas Gadfly, the pump clip is handsome indeed.

Still a little over three weeks to formal retirement, and the most extraordinarily gracious messages already arrive. There are even those like Bill Pearson – his email headed “Endangered arthropod” – who’ve appreciated the puns.

Diana Mellor, characteristically kind otherwise, recalls school days in Shildon – “I remember you in goal down the Rec. You’d have been all right if you’d been able to see.”

Ray Gibbon in Witton Gilbert, near Durham, writes a wonderfully generous note and ends – Gadfly readers for you – with a perfect tailpiece.

Now that he’s 80, Ray – former Durham Constabulary dog handler and Mayor of Durham – has discovered at Boots in Sacriston a vitamin supplement “especially for men”.

Upon reading the small print, he was thus a little perturbed to learn that it should not be taken when pregnant or breast feeding.

The assistant, he says, answered the inevitable query with a twinkle in her eye. “We have to cover all eventualities,” she said.

At this stage of the proceedings, I’d like to think much the same.