SETTING out its stall in the usual quasi-querulous manner, the column on May 12 reported enthusiastically on Darlington Food festival but found the absurd overuse of terms like “hand-baked” rather harder to digest.

The particular gripe was hand-baked dog biscuits. How do you hand bake a dog biscuit, or anything else, for that matter?

The complimentary crisps on the train to London are described as “hand-cooked.” Who’d buy that, anyway? How do you hand cook a crisp? Is this what’s meant by finger food?

The Northern Echo:
Twins Lizzie and Jenny, whose mother named her chocolate company Jennybeth after them, dip marshmallows in the chocolate making machine. Picture: Stuart Boulton

The May 12 column, at any rate, also waxed lyrical about Wendy Thompson’s “hand made” Belgian chocolates, never doubted that that’s exactly what they were, but received a slightly concerned letter from the lady, even so.

So I take myself back to Darlington. We enjoy a mutual chunter about too many hands, mourn the overkill of words such as “artisan” and “boutique” – beaten into meaningless submission – and then turn the conversation moreishly to chocolate.

WENDY’S 43, married to Ben who’s an IT bod, mother of twin daughters Jenny and Lizzie. She’s also a Brownie leader, hence the headline and (it’s to be hoped) the photograph.

She came north in 1997, was a planning officer for the Yorkshire Dales National Park based at Bainbridge, in Wensleydale, worked for Teesdale Council and among other things as a school cook before deciding she’d like to run a home-based business.

She and Ben thought about it, looked at what was available on eBay and saw some chocolate making equipment for sale. Jennybeth Chocolates – Jennylizzie perhaps too much of a mouthful – was born in the kitchen on November 18 last year.

The chocolate machine’s called Hermann – “I don’t know why, it’s not even German, Hermann just seemed to suit it” – the Belgian chocolate itself is described on the website as “perfectly tempered” (but then again, aren’t we all?)

Her 13-year-old daughters love it, of course, though treats are strictly rationed. “We have to remember that it’s a business, and that they’d be eating the profits. When I won’t let them have any, they’ll go upstairs and I can hear them rattling their money boxes. It’s meant to melt my heart.”

The Northern Echo: CHOCOLATE: Jennybeth chocolates. Picture: STUART BOULTON. (28893486)
Jennybeth chocolates. Picture: Stuart Boulton

Wendy herself has rather gone off eating chocolate, if not quite aversion therapy, then the realisation that chocolate is work. “I used to have a really sweet tooth, but now I can hardly be bothered to go down to the corner shop for a Mars Bar,” she confesses.

The most extraordinary thing, however, is that since Christmas the chocolate queen has lost 22lbs in weight.

THE one-woman business prospers despite more conventional weight loss regimes. “Slimming World is the curse of chocolate makers; it’s everywhere, like the plague,” she says, cheerfully.

She went on a chocolate making course, a food hygiene course, a marketing course. She sells on-line, at farmers’ markets – “Stockton’s lovely, but always so windy” – has become a sort of emergency hotline for friends who’ve forgotten birthday presents.

“I still have a lot to learn. Sometimes chocolate behaves and sometimes it doesn’t. It still baffles me.”

She not only meticulously makes the chocolates, but the boxes and labels, too. Truffles are a speciality – some big enough to cut in half, and you know what say about a truffle shared – but also chocolate lollipops and things for the bairns.

“It makes me cross when the chocolate in children’s sweets is often such poor quality. Ours is just about the most expensive you can buy.

“I’ve been really surprised at how well it’s gone, though I’ve always been a bit of a pessimist. It means I’m here when the girls go to school, here when they come back. It’s perfect.

“Probably the hardest bit is staying cheerful on a stall when it’s freezing and you’re next to someone selling sausages. Chocolate’s lovely, but it doesn’t have an aroma like hot sausages.”

Eventually she hopes to take on an assistant, perhaps open a small shop or café and make chocolates out the back. “I don’t think Cadbury’s have much cause to worry, but it’s all quite exciting.”

Sweet talk, it has to be confessed that we’ve had half-a-dozen. Hand on heart, delicious.

Jungle lore

SO Jungle has died, and will much be missed. Even now someone should write a biography, chapter by chapter: The Jungle Book.

He was leader of Darlington’s Hell’s Angels in the 1970s –the “eminence grease” one of these columns once called him – a wonderfully colourful character and no matter that the colour was countless shades of black.

The Northern Echo: Sascha-Jai Preston, from Darlington, with grandfather Jungle, who escorted her to the prom on his motorbike, along with dozens of other bikers (28963894)
Sascha-Jai Preston, from Darlington, with grandfather Jungle, who escorted her to the prom on his motorbike, along with dozens of other bikers

Another earlier column was widely and affectionately reproduced on Facebook after his death last week. We’d called him a mucky pup.

He was born George Pamler, frequently became Palmer at the hands of less street-wise sub-editors, changed to Jungle by deed poll. Even that may have been too much of a mouthful: he was known, almost universally, as J.

The second best Jungle story concerned a Darlington magistrates’ court appearance in 1997 for a minor drugs offence. Since it was also Comic Relief Day, Jungle turned the stroll to court into a sponsored walk, wore a red nose, got off with a fine, went upstairs to pay the first instalment and tapped most of the staff for more sponsorship.

“I came back down with a bag of money for the kids,” he said.

The best story, which we’ve told before, involved an unscheduled meeting with Lady Starmer, Darlington’s grand old lady.

The Northern Echo: LADY STARMER (28963623)

Lady Starmer was driving her stately Vanden Plas near the town centre; Jungle was riding his Kawasaki. Her ladyship, perhaps not entirely blameless for the ensuing collision, hovered solicitously over the fallen Angel – as doubtless befitted someone who’d driven a World War I ambulance in France.

Thrown together, they became the most improbable friends since the lady and the tramp, Jungle a regular visitor to her up-market home at Danby Lodge. Lady Starmer called him Mr Jungle; she died in 1979.

Jungle reached 60 in 2010, the birthday announcement in the classified column headed with the single word “cushty” – everything was cushty to Jungle – and the occasion marked with an all-night party for 300 Hell’s Angels in a field near Stanhope.

Not long previously, he’d attended the funeral of Harry Petch, Britain’s last Great War survivor, on his Harley. “It wasn’t that he knew the old gentleman,” said Liz Jinks, Jungle’s former partner and firm friend. “He just thought that it was right.”

Age and fashion changed him little. They reckoned him a great friend, a devoted grandfather and a caring human being. A classic example of all that they say about book and cover, he sleeps with the Angels now.