VERY early one morning, two Saturdays back, an 85-year-old gentleman carrying an ivory-topped walking stick climbed with some difficulty onto the almost empty first train out of Darlington. It was 5.18am.

“I’d been up since half past two. I didn’t want to miss it,” says our old friend Peter Freitag, retired Darlington estate agent, former councillor and still a leading figure among North-East Liberal Democrats.

The monogrammed stick belonged to his grandfather, who died at Auschwitz. It was to prove useful later in the day.

The early bird was headed for the LibDems’ spring conference in Liverpool, change at York with booked wheelchair assistance, in the hope that he might be allowed to take part in the 9.20am debate.

“You have to put in a speakers’ card and hope you’re called,” says Peter. “You’re only allowed four minutes, but I hoped it would be worth the journey.”

The debate was on mental health, close to his heart. Peter and his wife, married 50 years, have a 45-year-old daughter, Wendy, who has Down’s Syndrome.

He was duly called, his speech on stigma. “I told them we were blessed with a daughter who has Down’s Syndrome and we are,” says Peter. “Wendy once asked what was wrong with her. We told her nothing – she was just different.

“Attitudes are changing for the better, but more slowly than they should. Why can’t they go to normal schools instead of special schools? There’s still a stigma. It’s a very difficult message to get across if you haven’t lived with it.”

His time up, Peter brought the stick down on the table in front of him. “We need help,” he said, stayed for the rest of the debates and was back in Darlington at 10pm.

The performance was near-heroic, just one question perhaps still asked by any who know dear old Peter Freitag: how on earth did the spring conference restrict him to just four minutes?

NO possible reference to Peter, but Martin Birtle noted that the Liberal Democrats were labelled “Little Democrats” in the televised sub-titles for the Budget speech. It wasn’t the worst of it. George Osborne’s statement “We are here to support families” was translated as “We are here to deport families.” An accidental slip, no doubt.

ST Patrick’s Day now seems to be all Irish. It flows universally, the only potential problem that it always falls in Lent.

Kevin Dunn, the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, was once asked if the flock were allowed the day off from Lenten abstinence to unwind a little in the Tyneside Irish Centre. Bishop Kevin, the most charming of men, declined to comment. He twinkled tellingly, though.

No such prohibition at the Green Tree in Brompton, near Northallerton, where last Tuesday we gathered for an emerald-edged quiz night. An anagram question sought a revision of “A seed miller". Surprising how many failed to realise it was Emerald Isle.

Apropos of little, we also learned that Colombian radio really is required by law to broadcast the national anthem at 6am and 6pm each day and that St Helena has the highest proportion of Jehovah’s Witnesses of anywhere else on God’s earth. One in 70, apparently.

It’s a lovely pub, lovely people. Wear something green, they said, a bit more difficult for the notoriously colour blind.

The two of us finished a close third, buoyed by a flash of George Best trickery, but robbed by a funny business involving leprechauns. The little Irish imps.

STILL with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal Basil Hume was among eight others who in 1990 received the Freedom of Newcastle at the same time as Lord Walton of Datchet, the Spennymoor-born neurologist mentioned in last week’s column on those who live in pig sties.

Five of the other recipients were former lord mayors. The others were Colonel George Brown, he of Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, and Newcastle United legend Jackie Milburn.

Cardinal Hume told the assembled dignitaries that it was one of the most exciting days of his life. “I always wanted to meet Jackie Milburn,” he added.

SINCE spring is finally upon us, Robin Hinds reports that half way up Button’s Bank – on the old wagon way between Waterhouses and Stanley Hill Top in west Durham – there’s a pond absolutely full of frog spawn. “If my calculations are correct we can look forward to a long hot summer,” deduces Robin, from Witton Gilbert, near Durham. In what other rites of spring do readers put their trust – and how are they shaping up?

SEVERAL readers realised that the fresh-faced entertainer pictured in the column two weeks back was the young Dave Allen. The gentleman who thought it Sean Connery – “I know it sounds unlikely” – was right. It was very unlikely.

“He always had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other – and was always poking fun at all things Catholic,” recalls Margaret Smith in Ferryhill. Born David Tynan O’Mahony, Allen died in 2005, aged 68.

Gerry Dorsey, later Engelbert Humperdinck, had appeared on the same Stockton bill. David Burniston not only remembered Dorsey at La Bamba in Darlington in the week of the epochal name change, but lived in Orchard Road, Darlington, where Dorsey had his digs.

“Little did I know that I was living cheek by jowl with a future global superstar – but for one week only.”

Mention in the same column of the sand dancers Wilson, Keppell and Betty drew from Pat Bywater in Hurworth the novel theory that South Shields folk were known as Sand Dancers because Shields sand was considered best for glass making. “To get the lumps out of the sand, it was crushed by the workers' feet.”

For retired Eaglescliffe milkman Tom Stafford it stirred memories of watching WK&B with his dad at the Metropolitan Theatre on Edgeware Road – that last of London’s music halls.

After the show they’d buy cockles and mussels from the stall outside. It was just like being at South Shields.

WORD arrives that the £95,000 bronze statue to Sir Nigel Gresley, the great steam locomotive engineer, is to go ahead at Kings Cross. It will be unveiled on April 5, 2016, the 75th anniversary of his death.

At his family’s request, however, the original design is to be changed a little. Sir Nigel, who had ducks in his moat, will no longer be depicted with a mallard at his feet. The bird has flown.

The same issue of The Gresley Observer has a piece on LNER vice-chairman and Richmond MP Sir Murrough Wilson, who lived in some style at Cliffe Hall, near Piercebridge.

A good Yorkshireman, Sir Murrough built a cricket pitch – still in use – and organised an annual festival in his grounds. The house team was called the Flittermice.

Learned readers will at once recognise a play on the German term Fledermaus. Sir Murroegh’s players were bats.