Play about mining diaster proving unexpected joy - even for the cast

Not for the first time, he tries to ring his mate in Darlington and ends up talking to me – which, of course, proves as serendipitous as ever.

The accidental conversation turns to She’s Fired, a play about the terrible Seaham pit disaster of 1880 a musical play about which we wrote last year and which is proving so great a success that it’s booked for the Sage in Gateshead next March.

“We’ve been astounded. We thought it was going to be a one-off,” says John Wrightson, who wrote the songs. “The Sage is the ultimate around here; who knows what might happen next.”

They’ve even played Broadway though that, admittedly, was The Broadway in Houghton-le-Spring as part of Houghton Feast.

“That was brilliant, raised the roof. We got a standing ovation,” says John, from Murton.

“I looked around the curtains and could see people with tears rolling down their faces. It’s been the same everywhere we’ve been,” says 84-year-old Bert, Fishburn’s finest.

The play has been devised by former miner Bob Lowery in memory of the 164 men and boys killed in a terrible fire. The coal owners decided that the only way it could be contained was to close off a seam – with the miners still inside it.

Bert provides the light relief, the John Wrightson Band – John, Ken Jobson and Joan Edmundson – once described hereabouts as a pitman’s Peter, Paul and Mary – provide the music. Bob narrates from the perspective of a trapped miner, who dies. They all did.

It’s at Sedgefield parish hall on Saturday, but already sold out. “Honestly, it’s wonderful theatre,” says Bert, and then decides that best he’d ring his mate.

AT the Newcastle Mining Institute, meanwhile, Hewin’ Goals – a Backscratch Theatre production about 125 years of Northern League football – will be staged from Thursday to Saturday this week. Often funny, sometimes poignant, it really is very entertaining.

The Mining Institute’s in Westgate Road, just 150 yards from Central Station. The theatre’s said to be very impressive. Performances start at 7pm – £5 adults, £3 youngsters.

HAD the newsdesk not arrived there first, a rather larger part of today’s column would have concerned the new station at Northallerton West (pictured below) – allowing the Wensleydale Railway at last to run regularly into the county town.

Originally they’d hoped for a high level link into the main line station, an estimated £12m cost proving a mite prohibitive. £5m for a platform on the low-level line proved equally over-ambitious.

This one, built by Swale Scaffolding and very generously supported by Hambleton District Council, cost around £51,000. Services should start soon.

At the western end of the empire, meanwhile, Wensleydale Railway volunteer Perter Chapman – once the Echo’s head librarian – is bidding for £5,000 from the Engage Mutual Foundation to restore a carriage at Aysgarth station for educational and community use.

The winners are dependent on an on-line vote, before November 17. To support Peter, and the Wensleydale, go to engagemutual.com/foundation/projects/aysgarth-station-community-carriage/

GORDON BACON, once an occasional visitor to these columns but mentioned just once in the Echo in the past ten years – a talk to Newton Hall Women’s Institute – is at a greatly convivial gathering last Thursday of Durham’s three Rotary Clubs.

Former Bishop Auckland cricketer and Newton Aycliffe police inspector, he spent many subsequent years working in international crisis areas like Burma, Sri Lanka and Bosnia, becoming director of the Missing Persons Institute. Missing presumed dead, of course. He was appointed an OBE in 1998.

An incidental issue, Gordon once observed, was the woeful quality of the Bosnian rice beer. “If the inventor of the widget were female I’d propose holy matrimony to her,” he added.

His police career had ended following an incident on the boundary at Chester-le-Street where two fielders went for the same cricket ball and he needed extensive surgery as a result.. “His knee collided with my face. My face got very much the worst of it.”

He’s now 72, still travelling the world as a tour manager for a railway holidays company. “I love it,” he said, unsurprisingly.

HAD the Eating Owt column not retired unhurt, we’d probably have written something about the Hole in the Wall in Darlington Market Place, latterly reborn as a “pie and mash” joint.

Promotional stuff even describes it as a “pie hole”, echoing Harry Ramsden’s first fish shop which, memory suggests, was termed a chip ‘ole. We were the only customers.

The basic idea’s mix-and-mash: half-a-dozen pies, four or five different potatoes, peas or pease pudding and sundry gravy options. The pie was OK, the black pudding mash a bit of a mish-mash, the beer in very good fettle.

The only real problem was that the fair was once again in town, throbbing and thumping and Hallowe’en screeching just yards away. Whatever happened to the good old days when towns properly set out their stall, and when market places were for markets?

PERHAPSs feeling a similar need to diversify in these difficult days, Hogan’s pub in Bishop Auckland has an improbable offer on the blackboard outside. “Fish bowls £10, two for £15.” Sink or swim, no doubt.

...AND finally, the column two weeks ago recorded the death of Amos, the episcopal cat. In Prague, reports Malcolm Dunstone from Darlington, the Amos Restaurant is going strong. It’s in the Jewish quarter; the tribe increases.

On a brewery visiting trip with 46 Camra members – tough work, but someone…. – Malcolm and his wife Sheila lunched for 209 crowns, about £6 40 the lot.

Ever-magnanimous, Malcolm adds that he left an 11 crown tip.

Ward Allen, the ventriloquist, magician and children’s entertainer who died in October, had also started his career with a puppet called Amos, a brazzened-fond blackbird.

Nice lad – born Alan Ward in Littletown, east of Durham – he and Amos got into a bit of bother at the Mayor of Southport’s Floral Hall ball at which Amos (and owner) were accused of being racist, sexist and anti-Semitic. The bird’s Pakistani accent probably didn’t help.

Amos was subsequently pensioned off. Others of the ilk surprisingly survive.