SIX pages apart, The Times on Saturday carried separate stories which together suggested that some of us might live to be a thousand.

The first, based upon research by Oxford University psychologists, outlined the benefits to health and longevity of a regular few beers down the pub.

Drink makes us happier and gets us new friends, the boffins – perhaps unsurprisingly – concluded. “Our social network provides us with the single most important buffer against mental and physical illness,” they added.

The second story concerned the health benefits of a kip after lunch, though these days it’s hard to last much beyond ten o’clocks. “An hour’s siesta can prolong your brain age by five years when it comes to memory and thinking,” another scientific survey had decided.

“Cognitive function was significantly associated with napping. Non-nappers had significantly poorer cognition than nappers.”

Thus cheered, the only remaining problems were not falling asleep after the breakfast bacon butty or dozing through Retford station, at which juxtaposed junction it was necessary to change trains, once more on the Railroad to Wembley.

SATURDAY’S Times also carried a letter from David Oliver in Darlington on the week’s great talking point, the rude rudiments of the second hand bookshop in Hawes. “I have always found the experience of visiting Steve Bloom’s bookshop most entertaining,” wrote Mr Oliver. Whether this is the same David Oliver who was a Northern League referee and Midland Bank gaffer is unknown, but the benighted Mr Bloom may be about to put to the ultimate test Phineas T Barnum’s aphorism that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

WE’RE headed to AFC Mansfield v Sunderland RCA, FA Vase fourth round. Yet further to improve his cognitive function, my mate Kit – who’s starting to look a bit like Jeremy Corbyn, especially with his glasses on – is studying the day’s runners and riders.

In the three o’clock at Sandown there’s a horse out called Pete the Feat, coincidental because our mutual friend Pete Everett, who runs Darlington Snooker Club, has been having terrible trouble with the old plates of meat and the Wednesday previously had been told he should immediately be admitted to hospital.

When it got to 8pm and he was still just 14th in line for the next available bed, they suggested he hobble home again.

Pete the Feat has no chance, says Kit, and has little more confidence in Alfred Hutchinson, out at Wincanton. Alf Hutchinson, former stalwart of Cockerton Cricket Club, is another member of our derring-dominoes crew.

A little later in the day, Pete the Feat skips home at 20-1 and Alf Hutchinson wins at 11-4. A £5 double would have won £375, Kit cognitively calculates.

In need of a therapeutic livener, we again change trains at Worksop, where a wonderful little pub called The Mallard stands on the station platform and we’re joined, among others, by Mr Nigel Brierley from, Huddersfield.

Nigel demands to know the only word in the English language which contains all five vowels consecutively in reverse order. A two pint problem? Answer at the foot of the column.

MANSFIELD’S remembered for several reasons, not least as some sort of imagined Eldorado when North-East pits were closing in the 1970s and 1980s. Many went down to Nottinghamshire instead. Even the black gold proved specious.

The Northern Echo:

ALAN MEALE: Now Sir Alan

Since 1987 the local MP has been former Newton Aycliffe lad Alan Meale who attended Leeholme school after failing the 11+, joined the Merchant Navy, boxed for Shildon BR, studied subsequently at Durham and at Oxford and when first elected had a majority of just 56, the country’s smallest.

Now it’s 5,315; now he’s Sir Alan – not many of those from Leeholme school, or from Shildon gym, for that matter – and got to be chairman of the all-party greyhound racing committee, too.

Mansfield Town, otherwise the Stags, are indelibly recalled for a 5-1 FA Cup first round defeat at Tow Law in December 1967 – the first game having been abandoned at half-time because of a little light snow and the second played with four feet of the stuff banked bleakly all around the pitch.

Until 1998, it was also one of the biggest towns in Britain without a railway station, served instead by Alfreton and Mansfield Parkway. “Parkway” is a railway term meaning “many a mile off.”

The new station’s close to the town centre, closer still to the Railway Inn. After a further interlude of a strictly medicinal nature, we head for the Forest Town Arena.

AFC Mansfield, alphabetically assertive and known as the Bulls, were formed in 2012 following what the Wikipedia page calls “a series of disputes with the (Mansfield Town) management.”

The Bulls’ website insists there’s no rivalry, however, that Town remain “dear to their hearts” and that they simply want to put something back into football.

“Putting something back into football” is an expression also used by former professionals at sportsmen’s dinners, before pocketing £3,000 cash-in-hand for 30 minutes of dross.

RCA’s followers include Joe Olobade, who was on Newcastle United’s books, played for Gateshead, and lost on points to Glenn McCrory in the ABAs.

The future world champion, it’s said, admitted afterwards that Olabade had whupped his ass. “So I did,” says Joe.

Watched by RCA spies, Mansfield had beaten Retford United 13-0 a couple of weeks earlier. Unlucky for some? “They won’t touch us for pace,” says RCA general manager Colin Wilson.

Mansfield include Jon D’laryea, who played for Manchester City in a League Cup tie against Arsenal in 2004-05, a game for which the Gunners made the usual 11 changes and gave first team debuts to Manuel Almunia, Phillipe Senderos, Seb Larsson, Arturo Lupoli and a 21-year-old called Robin van Persie, who scored in their 2-1 win.

RCA have former Irish Under-21 international Colin Larkin, once with Wolves, and the free scoring Jonny Butler who thinks he’s added to his tally after just two minutes but is contentiously ruled offside.

Perhaps the ref’s having difficulty with the visibility, the approximate equivalent of a three-foot seam.

Butler again finds the net after 37 minutes and, floodlights in full beam, is contentiously ruled onside. It proves the game’s only goal. “I told you we’d do them for pace,” says the exultant Mr Wilson.

It’s the second successive season that the unfancied Sunderland side, based in Ryhope, have reached the last 16. Cognitive function pits the need of a bit of shut-eye against raising a glass to the victors in the Railway Inn, brains trussed familiarly thereafter.

The toast’s triumphant. Cogito ergo sum, as probably they used to say in three-foot seams everywhere.

*The only word with all five vowels in reverse order? Subcontinental.