Braving the elements

A survey said as much last month. Maybe it’s because they’re also the jolliest.

Elderly carriages feature laughing images of Marilyn Monroe, tables inlaid with games boards from chess to snakes and ladders. The buffet’s a bit like something from a pantomime set.

The staff, most of them, seem pretty cheery, too. They all seem to be from the North-East – the return destination not Sunderland, but Sun’lan’ – may help.

Perhaps the only problem is that, as the relative youngster among train operating companies, they must perforce make way for all others en route. For Grand Central, read Grand Deferential.

Around here, they run down the coast from Sunderland through Hartlepool and Eaglescliffe to Northallerton and Thirsk and then non-stop from York to London. The younger bairn bought us first class tickets for Christmas, the first class freebies by no means as generous as East Coast.

We travelled last week, the on board cabaret an unscheduled bonus. Perhaps observing the flooded countryside, a chap two seats behind broke into an impromptu, deep bass rendition of River Deep.

He was a dead ringer for Eric Pickles, the larger than life (shall we say) communities minister. Whether this really was a case of jam and Pickles, we are sadly unable to confirm.

THE 12.53pm from Kings Cross last Friday had just four carriages – “short formed,” announced the guard, a reminder of long-gone Pitman’s classes with Miss Sharkey – and every seat reserved.

Grand Central must long to go to greater lengths.

Back into Northallerton by half three, we head up the stormy A19 for a Valentine’s Day tea at the Highland Laddie in Norton-on- Tees, a village noted among other things for its duck pond. Not even they might suppose recent conditions especially clement.

LISTED in the 1828 County Durham trade directory, its name a nod to the Scottish cattle drovers, the pub has recently been transformed into a Wetherspoons, the interior design lauded in the latest company magazine.

The theme, it says, is Dark Ages versus Age of Enlightenment – “using different finishes to contrast against one another: clean modern elements against worn, distressed deterioration elements”. In the Highland Laddie they may talk of little else.

It’s very well done, though, and by 4.30pm so busy that they’re having to rearrange the furnishings to accommodate everyone. “I’m shottin’ round that much furniture that if I ever got the sack here, I’ll easy get a job at DFS,” says the cheery barmaid.

The upshot is that our little corner becomes cut off, like the upturned island of childhood imagination.

There’s a Valentine’s Day offer, but it’s also what Wetherspoons calls Fish Friday – 8oz cod, chips and peas, pint of real ale and a Gordon’s and tonic, £11.98 the lot. It’s perfectly okay, honest. Distressed or otherwise, we’re just happy to escape the elements.

THE Highland Laddie also acknowledges eminent locals such as John Walker, Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Craig Beevers. John Walker was the match man, Thomas Jefferson Hogg wrote a life of Shelley (you know, Tracey’s sister.) Craig Beevers, Norton lad, was British Scrabble champion in 2009, eighth in the subsequent world championship and is a Grand Master. Perhaps Wetherspoons should have renamed the pub the Tile Sheds, though there are others at East Boldon and at Great Ayton.

A little research reveals that Craig was only the second contestant to score centuries in all eight heat games of Countdown – many will understand – and the second to score more than 900 points. He also describes Norton as “an unremarkable suburb in North-East England”.

More recently he seems to have gone quiet, nothing in the Echo since 2010, though there was an attempt last year at the record for most Scrabble points in 24 hours.

I’m sure I know him from somewhere, but forget: there’s a word for that, an’ all.

ONCE voted sexiest female in the British Soap Awards, actress Tamsin Outhwaite has further hidden talents, we hear. Her roots are in the former Co Durham mining village of Fishburn.

They’re enthusiastically being sourced by a team from the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are.

Tamsin, who played Melanie Owen in EastEnders and now stars in New Tricks, was born in Ilford, Essex. Her mother was Italian.

There may even be a link to the great ripples of Italian ice cream sellers who arrived in the Durham coal field at the start of the twentieth century.

Among the coal house doors at which researchers have knocked is that of former miner Bert Draycott, world spoons playing champion, allround entertainer and man of many talents.

They were very impressed with the spoons, says Bert, but also with his carved walking sticks. “I sold them a couple of those, as well.”

NORTHERN League business took me last week to Whitehaven, on the Cumbrian coast and in the local government district of Copeland.

“Copeland the fattest area in Britain” bloated the Whitehaven News front page, and that may just be the seagulls. It was thus in the mendicant marauders’ own interest that I declined to share the chicken mayo sandwich that comprised lunch.

Clearly, however, the revelation that 74.9 per cent of the population is either overweight or obese has got to the Whitehaven News, which is slimming drastically. After 162 years as a broadsheet, it became a tabloid last Friday.

THOUGH nowhere near as voluminous as Barter Books, about which we wrote a fortnight ago, the Lions’ Bookshop in Darlington remains a serendipitous place, nonetheless.

The bookshop, in Houndgate Mews, marks its 20th birthday with a little ceremony this Saturday at 10am, to which all are welcome.

Both in the column and at the swing-a-cat bookshop, I have been asked to squeeze in a few words. Better than that, there’ll be home-made cupcakes, too.

A LETTER in The Times from Ian Holloway in Ripon draws further attention to declining standards in HM Press. In particular he means the clue to three down in the quick crossword, two days earlier.

“Town in North Yorkshire (5)”, it said. The answer was Ripon, but as Mr Holloway is anxious to point out, his native heath isn’t a town but a “delightful” city.

“Sloppiness and/or metropolitan arrogance like this,” he continues, is the kind of thing that, alongside phone hacking and suborning police officers, gives print journalism such a bad name.”

LITTLE more to report following last week’s column on the ghost train to Tow Law, though Geoff Wood notes that the West Auckland shed steam raiser – Fred “Kitchener” Wood – was his dad. “He used to tell tales of physically lifting wagons back onto the tracks.”

The train, we’d supposed, was laid on to rescue workers from the Ramar dress factory in Crook stranded in the snows of 1963. Jim Davison, then in the RAF, believes it happened in February 1958 – a Friday night when he was homeward to Tow Law on leave.

The railway was still open to scheduled services as far as Crook, the roads impassable. “I believe they put a plough on the front and got through,” says Jim.

The snow clouds had a silver lining.

“I rang the RAF station to explain that I’d never get back by Sunday.

I was given extended leave and told to return when the weather allowed.”

These days he’s taking no chances: he’s moved down to Crook.

FINALLY, back to Tow Law where a filthy Friday night is cheered by the sight of a dog grooming company’s van parked in the main street. It’s called Glad Wags, what else.