I’VE been hosting two husting this week, one in Redcar and the other in Darlington, in the run up to the casting of ballots on May 7. The candidates were reasonably well behaved but none of them, disappointingly, was dressed in white.

I approached the Darlington husting – it would be equally correct if it had an s on the end – with some trepidation because I always remember a story from 150 years ago when Joseph Whitwell Pease was standing on such a platform with his five-year-old son, Jack, beside him. The hustings ended when the candidates were pelted with eggs, soot and fish, and the poor boy was smacked in the face by a herring.

He burst into tears.

Even without such excitement, "husting" is an interesting word. It dates back to the very beginnings of language when there were only two types of gathering – one was an outdoor moot, or a meeting, and the other was indoors, held in a house. The indoor one, then, was a huus-thing where people pressed their points on the king or nobleman who lived in the house in the hope he’d take action. The house-thing, of course, became a husting.

Now, if you think that much that was said at my hustings, as candidates searched for support at the ballot box, was a load of balls, you may have a point. Because a “ballot” was originally a small ball.

For 1,000 years, the Doge of Venice, the ruler of the Most Serene Republic, was elected by ballotta – small silver and gold balls which the voters placed into a container. The officially-issued ballotta showed that a person had the right to vote, but because the ballotta were untraceable, it was a secret ballot.

You placed your ballotta in the container relating to your preferred candidate, which is another fascinating word because “candidate” really means “clothed in white”.

In Roman times, someone standing in an election was expected to wear a toga candida – a white toga. Not any old white toga, though, but a brilliant white toga which had been bleached and chalked.

The toga candida made the candidate stand out from the crowd, and it was also meant to indicate the purity of his intentions – that he was candid in all he said.

This must have been where young Jack Pease went wrong in 1865. Despite his father being a candidate, he was standing on the hustings wearing a light blue suit – topped off by a large dollop of herring.

ANOTHER of my duties this week was speaking to the ladies of St Herbert’s church, in Darlington, who first met 50 years ago as a young wives club. They’re no longer young, but I’m sure they are as beautiful as they ever were.

The church is off Yarm Road, and it serves an estate where the streets are named after waterbirds and raptors: Teal, Albatross, Flamingo, Kestrel, Widgeon, Mallard, Heron, Falcon and Shearwater.

But as I drove away, I noticed that directly opposite the church is Malim Road. I can find no bird called Malim. In fact, the only malims I can find are a 16th Century headmaster of Eton and a small town in Malaysia. Why would this Darlington street duck the waterbird theme and be named after a corner of Asia? Can anyone explain?