WAY BACK in the 1980s they got me to write a series of features based on spending a weekend in villages throughout the North-East.

There was one from Fishburn, another from Wheatley Hill – the infamous occasion on which the entire club bar thought we were the men from the Nash and skedaddled. A third from Rookhope, top end of Weardale, was interrupted by news that my old mum had been burgled.

Deputed to sort things out, the lady of this house discovered that the intruders hadn’t found her mother- in-law’s secret stashes beneath the bay window floorboards, sewn into the lining of the sofa or, most improbably of all, half way up the chimney. Aghast, she all but frogmarched her and her money to the bank, the older woman protesting (not entirely unreasonably) that banks weren’t safe. “A damn sight safer,” said Sharon, “than half way up your chimney.”

Another of the villages, 27 years ago, was Osmotherley, that delightful spot at the edge of the North Yorkshire moors once known as the start (or finish) of the Lyke Wake Walk. We’d been on the beat with Norman Barningham, a wonderful country policeman, joined Grace Thompson in the village shop where little had changed since 1785, looked into the quiz at the Queen Catherine and discovered how long it takes to boil an ostrich egg.

Ossie, as it is known to its friends, was also renowned for its public toilets, meticulously maintained by Mrs Ann Cation. “Osmotherley’s such a bonny place that I don’t see why the toilets shouldn’t be bonny, too,” she said.

Last Tuesday we were there again, invited to speak to the Osmotherley Women’s Leisure Society, known in short as the Owls and sagacious enough not to advertise the occasion around the village. There was a notice about Lent courses, however, based rather aptly on Les Miserables and details from the Rev Trev.

The Owls meet in the little Methodist chapel, hidden up a snicket and built in 1754. John Wesley is said to have visited Osmotherley 17 times: clearly he was smitten, too.

The Owls had also heard about what in North Yorkshire appears happily to have become the standard speaking fee – beer and pies. Since it wouldn’t do to bring alcohol (if not pork pies) onto Methodist premises, they hid them behind a wheelie bin in the garden across the lane.

The gents’, now maintained by the parish council and the Village Society, were spotless. A framed certificate not only announced that they are twinned with a toilet in Burundi, but offered latitude, longitude and latrine number (1144), too.

Whether they hold exchange visits, stage grand civic dinners or exchange news from the netties we were, regrettably, unable to discover.

Sadly, the ladies’ was less impressive.

“No soap, no towel and no hot water,” it was reported. Mrs Cation wouldn’t have approved.

Still, it was the most marvellous March afternoon. We walked up the hill, came upon a bench in memory of Alan Bosomworth with the carved inscription: “Sit thissen down” and, in the company of a couple of rum and raisin ice creams, needed no second bidding.

The Owls proved a receptive audience.

The pies proved world class.

Though none knew that it takes four hours to boil an ostrich egg, sometimes it’s good to talk.

DARLINGTON does mayoralty very well. It’s based on seniority, not politics, a tested mix of dignity and informality that for a year persuaded one incumbent to refrain from addressing all she met as “Comrade.”

“How you doing, pet?” someone asks Carol Johnson, the present mayoress, at the opening by her husband, Coun Charles Johnson, of Amritsar, the town’s newest Indian restaurant.

Like all the best people, Carol’s only alcoholic drink is beer. “I get some funny looks,” she says.

Unlike some of them, she particularly likes a pint of John Smith’s Extra Smooth.

Amritsar’s in Houndgate, the coming place – dog’s whatnots, as it were. It’s run by the admirable Raju and Sheju Ali, who’ve long tended the Garden of India, and by their brotherin- law Rayhad.

First impressions are that the new place is imaginative, creative and impeccably run.

Perhaps inevitably, the conversation turns to the collective noun for mayors, and not only a chain gang. Coun Johnson says that he thinks it’s an excellency. In Darlington that would be just right.

AS previously we may have observed, the Deerness Valley Walk is delightful. A 6pm stroll from Stanley Hill Top (much changed) to Waterhouses (ditto) sees it in a different light. It prompts an email from Robin Hinds, suggesting we check out an account of that purple pathway on the Gadgy Walks website, which proves difficult.

Almost all that results from googling “gadgy walks” is a site called Local Nut Cases, talking of a gadgy who walks around the Ferryhill area dressed as a Roman centurion.

(“Nut case” is unfair; the gentleman is merely a little eccentric.) The site’s actually called Gadgie Walks, the entertaining ramblings of a bus pass brigade from Tyneside. It also offers the agenda for their annual meeting: 1. Drink; 2. Eat; 3.

Drink again; 4. More drink. Apparently it was passed unanimously.

THE gadgies are a musical lot.

Passing Esh Winning – the location may be irrelevant – the conversation turns to Tchaikovsky. One of the quartet demands to know what you call a man eating an egg sandwich at 6.12pm.

An 18.12 ova chewer.