IT is to be another catch-up column, except for those who travel by Arriva, who've probably missed the bus, anyway. On the day that Arriva announced yet another fares increase "because of rising costs" - and when oil prices are fast falling - the column found itself the usual forlorn figure on the bus stop at Scotch Corner.

The driver of the glorified mini-bus pulled up a couple of minutes late, politely announcing that he had no seats and that, as he'd be running up the motorway, passengers weren't allowed to stand.

The next bus didn't come at all. By the time the one after that arrived in Darlington, the train connection had been missed and the day derailed.

Doesn't it sometimes seem that Arriva are simply taking the North-East travelling public for a ride - or not, as the case may be?

MRS S Kennedy writes from Spennymoor about some of the strange expressions of her childhood. There was squitz, starving and scumfished - meaning hot and bothered, we've dipped an elbow in that water before - plus phrases like the wreck of the Hesperus and, said of a particularly large garment, that it would fit Daniel Lambert.

Who on earth, asks Mrs Kennedy, was he? A weighty question, but already we knew the answer.

Desperate Dan was born in Leicester in March, 1770, succeeding his father as keeper of that city's Bridewell - "a kindly gaoler," it's recorded - at a time when Leicester's population was just 17,000.

He also had an excellent reputation as a field sportsman and rode until his weight, or the protests of the poor cuddy, prevented it. He is also said to have fought a bear, the uneven struggle ending when Lambert landed a left hook. "The blow brought her to the ground," wrote an observer, "upon which she declined the contest and, yelling, fled."

Lambert probably weighed more than the defeated bear. By 1804 he was 5ft 11ins tall and scaled 49 stones. Two years later he was almost 53 stones, with a 9ft 4in waist and 3ft 1in calf. By then he'd become an exhibit at travelling fairs, the remarkably high entrance of one shilling intended as a deterrent for the vulgar. He also disliked being weighed.

He died, aged 39, on June 21, 1809, said in his epitaph to have had an "exalted and convivial mind." In answer to the inevitable question about his funeral, it took 20 men to carry the bier. They still remember him in Spennymoor.

VIA the Rev Harry Lee in Consett, the column a couple of weeks back wondered why, specifically, South Shields folk were known as Sand Dancers.

Fr Ray Burr, a fellow Anglican clergyman, always supposed that the expression derived from the town's "attractive beach" and the large Yemeni population of the early 20th century.

"The sand dancers were a popular music hall act (Wilson, Keppell and Betty, were they not?) which parodied Egyptian and Arab culture as it was understood in Britain at that time. The term is now rarely used and is often considered to be derogatory."

Fr Burr's "elderly" churchwarden disagrees. It's from the days when miners from elsewhere in the country came to work at Westoe colliery in South Shields, he says. The incomers were called "Cowboys", while the locals were "Sand dancers."

Humbly, Fr Burr defers. "Who am I to know?" he pleads. "I'm only the Vicar of South Shields."

STILL with canny Sheels, broadcaster and raconteur Alan Wright swore at a dinner we attended in West Auckland the other night that he'd recently read the following in the Shields Gazette: "A woman who was washed out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth has been rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman said: 'This sort of thing is becoming much too common'."

FROM Westoe colliery to yet more on the black stuff - liquorice, that is to say, or "Spanish" as half the sweet toothed North-East still knows it.

John Barr in Darlington recalls a shop across the bridge in Whitby which still sells it - sherbet dabs, too - and that they bought a "Spanish stick" for his mother-in-law, aged 94. "She enjoyed it immensely," he says.

John Briggs wonders if they still make liquorice imps - "Small pellets like compressed napalm, that came in a little tin box" - while Brian Shaw in Shildon recommends Black Opal original soft "licorice" from Holland and Barrett's health food shop in Queen Street, Darlington.

"It's just wonderful. If you don't like it, I'll personally give you your money back," he insists.

It's made in Australia, carries some stuff on the back about remembering the days of spending hours pondering how to spend your pennies, now weighs in at £2.99 a bag. Those indulgently allowed to share the treat - the things this column puts on expenses - were as ecstatic as Mr Shaw.

The only problem may be the step at Holland and Barrett's shop. Though properly hatched, I fell off it. Health hazard, or what?

LEFT foot forward, recent columns have been discussing Socialist street names - like those in Wardley, Gateshead, which salute everyone from Keir Hardie to Emily Pankhurst. Somewhere among them, said last week's column, there was also a Tolpuddle Martyr.

That was Loveless Gardens, probably named after George Loveless, though his brother James - a fellow Wesleyan preacher - was also among the six Dorset agricultural labourers transported to Australia in 1834 for their allegedly unlawful attempts to swear in trades unionists.

They are remembered by unionists and O-level historians alike.

Ever a martyr to the Gadfly cause, Ian Andrew in Lanchester - himself a Methodist local preacher - not only points out the Loveless link but is cross that reader John Heslop should, also in last week's column, have described John o' Groats as "God forsaken."

Ian's just back from Lands End - "where mammon reigns supreme and it seems to me that God has indeed been forsaken.

"John o' Groats may be a wild and lonely place, but in my book it beats Lands End any day of the week."

... and finally, last week's column noted Clive Sledger's view that, as his Leeds-born wife knows cockroaches as blackclocks, it must be a southern expression.

It reminded former Times journalist Paul Wilkinson, now near Ripon, of the days of Watney's Red Barrel - "and Courage Worst" - when he was working in Fleet Street and living in Windsor.

Returning from a walking holiday along Hadrian's Wall, he stopped at a Co Durham pub, ordered a pint of Vaux and quaffed contentedly.

It was then that he noticed an old boy watching him across the bar. "Wonderful," said Paul, "not like the foul beer I have to drink down south."

The owld lad nodded. "Aye," he said, "bloody Tetley's."

www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/

columnists/feature/gadfly