IT’S hard to describe the sound of Away In a Manger being played with a double bass bow on a large wood saw. but the edited highlights of an unanaesthetised procedure at a cat neutering clinic might come pretty close.

Cutting remarks, perhaps – not least at Christmas – and particularly so since it has been a long-held ambition to hear the Rev Robert Williamson get his teeth into a bit of saw playing.

Robert, the kindest and most amiable of men, is vicar of St Cuthbert’s parish church in Darlington. We bump into him outside a Sunday evening chip shop nearby. “I’m playing the saw again on Tuesday,” he announces.

That it was he carrying the fish and chips was in itself an act of Christian charity – a reward for one of the town’s more disadvantaged citizens for turning up at evensong.

Might we come along? Certainly, said Robert.

His father played the saw before him, an annual party piece at the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra’s Christmas party in Liverpool. Robert’s own son now plays it, too.

“The main thing you need is an ear to pick up a tune,” said Robert. “You have to be able to wobble your knee to get the saw’s vibrations. It’s really more suited for slow tunes; you wouldn’t want to play Flight of the Bumble Bee on it. Once you get the resonance, it’s just a matter of practice.”

The performance is part of Darlington Rotary Club’s annual carol concert – “a bit of tomfoolery,” admits Alan Cowie, the conductor – accompanied with appropriate sedateness by a section of Cockerton Band.

Robert, suitably suited, announces that he will play a verse from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and another from Away in a Manger and invites the audience to work out which is which.

It’s an interesting exercise – “you have to be very careful, not least in a formal suit,” he says. He holds it as might a very small Native American squaw attempt to stitch a very large tear in a wigwam.

It should not be supposed, of course, that the vicar plays the wood saw anything but beautifully. It’s just that so far as the sound of the saw is concerned, beauty is in the ear of the beholder.

It’s not what might be supposed that glorious song of old and, besides, who ever heard of angels bending near the earth to touch their double-edged saws?

Few can discern which tune is which. Among other guest performers is the splendid Val McConachie, her singing renowned throughout the North-East. So what does she make of the saw?

“Well, there’s something to be said for it?” says Val.

“What, exactly?”

“It’s very different,” says Val, inarguably.

Alan Cowie suggests that the vicar doesn’t give up the day job – and the woodman needn’t spare that tree.

EARLIER the same day to the pensioners’ party at the Black Horse in Tudhoe, near Spennymoor, where a fascinating festive story about the North-East police helicopter takes off.

On patrol near West Auckland earlier this month, the crew came across a hot air balloon – with Santa Claus in full fig among the passengers.

The officers drew closer, took photographs by way of evidence and posted them on Twitter. “We spotted Santa in a hot air balloon over Co Durham surveying landing sites for Christmas,” said the message.

The really curious thing is that Santa bore a remarkable resemblance to the bearded old chap giving out presents at the Black Horse, and that that gentleman looked awfully like a dear old friend of these columns.

Had the constabulary caught up with him at last? “Ho-ho-ho,” said Santa.

THE Black Horse do is a great community occasion, wholly funded by Chris and Susan Hill – who run the pub – for some of the area’s senior citizens.

The food’s good, the bar’s free, the Christmas puddings subject to the sort of inflation which means that these days they contain £1 coins.

Only the cracker jokers disappointed, leaving the singer – Chris Atkins, good turn – to crack one of his own.

“Where does Kylie Minogue buy her kebabs?”

“Jason’s doner van.”

WHOLLY coincidentally, we lunch last Sunday at the Black Horse in Kirklington, near Bedale, where a Bing Crosby automaton – a Bing Thing in a Santa suit – revolves while singing White Christmas.

One of our guests recalls that Bing helped pay for the sports pavilion at Kirkby Malzeard, a few miles to the west, an improbable claim that proves to be true.

It was August 1976, the local Highside juniors playing Kirkby Fleetham – Northallerton way – when Bing happened by while on a shooting holiday in those parts and was somehow persuaded to play.

Properly padded, he hit the first ball for four, was clean bowled by the second and spent another hour chatting and signing autographs. Much of his £1,250 donation, it’s said, was made up of the £250 fee that the Old Groaner received for each of three appearances on Yorkshire TV’s Stars on Sunday.

Bing vowed to return for another game but died the following year, aged 75.

PETER FREITAG, former Northern Liberal Party president and King of the Name Droppers, rings to lament the passing last week of Mandy Rice-Davies. “I once shared a blackjack table with her at La Bamba in Darlington,” says Peter, who’s 85. “She was very bright, very witty, lovely girl and not like Christine Keeler at all. Christine Keeler was just a prostitute.”

NOT just because of the Gunners’ magnificent win over Newcastle United – honest – the younger bairn forwards the on-line match report from the Sunday Times.

“Arsenal almost scored from the ensuing free kick in any case, with Cazorla shooting narrowly wide in a move that was clearly pre-rehearsed.”

This is going to have to be the campaign for 2015. Things may not be pre-rehearsed any more than they can be pre-planned, pre-booked or pre-ordered. They’re planned, booked or ordered.

“Planning ahead”, come to think, should only be allowed if planning backwards is permitted. Further egregious examples welcomed.

“YOU’VE opened the floodgates,” writes David Walsh after reference a couple of weeks ago to the hairdresser’s on Neville Terrace, Durham. It was, of course, the Barber of Neville.

David, a Redcar and Cleveland councillor, passes on his way to meetings in Redcar a baker’s called Baguette Me Not and a crockery and craft goods place called Hypo Pot A Mass.

On the way into Middlesbrough, at Brambles Farm, there’s a tattoo parlour called Rumble Still Skin. Well, that’s a trickle, anyway.

BREWERS are having their festive fun, too. The Consett Brewery, which likes to commemorate the town’s ferrous forebears, has a Christmas ale called Santa’s Little Smelter on sale at the Grey Horse, which may also have the region’s most handsome pub fire.

The most ingenious, however, is from Mordue’s Brewery on Tyneside. At the Union Rooms opposite Newcastle railway station they’re offering Howay in a Manger.

Whichever way you play it, may you have a very happy Christmas.