THE Welsh author Dylan Thomas, who once defined an alcoholic as a man you don’t like who drinks as much as you do, honed Under Milk Wood over many years.

Described as “A play for voices”, it was based in Llareggub, a fictional fishing village, and first performed on the Third Programme in 1954, shortly after Thomas’ death. Richard Burton was the narrator.

By the mid-60s it had reached the A-level syllabus at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, as doubtless elsewhere, though sixth form sensibilities were considered so delicate that Llareggub had been sanitised to Llareggyb, lest any of us had learned to read backwards.

After many adventures, the wonderfully-crafted account of the folk who live beneath the grassgreen, gooseberried double bed of a wood arrived last week at Osmotherley, near Northallerton.

Ossie’s a lovely place, paradise with parking problems, might itself be thought akin to Llareggub were it at the seaward end of the lugubrious Lyke Wake Walk.

We went on Wednesday, fogeys’ night, a fiver. The village hall thronged, the night as moonless and bible black as Thomas had supposed.

Others also recalled studying Under Milk Wood for A-level, though at BAGS we didn’t so much study it as lark around with it, which still seems the proper approach. Mind, we larked around with Hamlet, too.

The play has 52 characters, mostly lovesick; Osmotherley Village Theatre managed with 20-odd. Here again were the discordant Organ Morgan and the fearsome Mrs Ogmore Pritchard, here blind Captain Cat, Willy Nilly postman, Nogood Boyo and PC Attilla Rees – “ox-broad and barge booted” – off to arrest Polly Garter for the perceived crime of having babies.

How many others in Osmotherly village hall were reminded of the late Norman Barningham, the perfect village policeman, loved by all except the pesky poachers?

Polly Garter, it might be added, had made little impression upon the Upper Sixth innocents at Bishop Grammar School. Had we been told that she was on the game, we’d have assumed the game to be netball.

The production proved wholly triumphant, even the Welsh accents pretty much in place save for “Llareggub” itself, which sounded like a Northumberland miner trying to roll his R’s up Sisyphus Hill. (Sisyphus Hill, it’s believed, is near Cramlington.)

The lady of this house, so fluent in Welsh that she can almost buy a loaf of bread on Anglesey, approved entirely.

Di Stokeld, the narrator, created a particular tour de force of memory and stage presence. Save for the plastic seats, it was a memorable, magical evening. These were the wizards of Ossie.

Wearing well, like all us Bishop Grammar boys, a “vintage” jacket and tie from the old school was lot 207 at Addison’s auction in Barnard Castle last week. The catalogue estimated the price at £10 to £20, the ribboned coat finally went for a tenner. Not what you’d call a blazer glory.

Osmotherley, remarkably, has three thriving pubs within 50 yards of one another. Coatham Mundeville, off the A1 near Darlington, now has none after Kate Umpleby – once likened by the Eating Owt column to Dusty Springfield – threw in the towels after seven near-heroic years of trying.

Durham Drinker magazine not only records the mournful news but suggests that anyone interested in how the oft-criticised pubco model works should ring the Foresters answering machine on 01325-320565.

Kate’s message was still playing last week. Impeccably modulated but perhaps sobering, it makes very interesting listening.

Buttons’ Bank runs from Waterhouses in west Durham southwards towards Stanley Hill Top. Some might relocate the apostrophe and others abandon it. Older locals are said simply to call it Buttonses Bank, dextrously sidestepping the laws of grammar altogether.

We mentioned it a fortnight ago, a nearby pond heavy with frogspawn said by Robin Hinds to be the herald of a long hot summer.

For retired headteacher David Armstrong, however, it was mention of Buttons’ Bank itself which stirred childhood memories from 70 years ago. The Button family worked Wooley Farm, where the bairns from Mount Pleasant (Primitive) Methodist Church would head on the morning of the Sunday School anniversary to serenade them and their neighbours. David’s Auntie Ethel would pull a little harmonium on wheels. In the afternoon there’d be concerts, with an orchestra drawn from miles around. At Christmas they’d carol there, too.

Back then it was known as Wolsingham Bank, or possibly Crook Bank. Now it’s not only Buttons Bank on the Durham street atlas but on the internet, a 1km cycling time trial for which the men’s record is held by Luke Mullen and the women’s by Veronika Rauch, thus described as QoM.

Queen of Mean, of what?

So we walked along the old wagon way from Stanley, though Buttons’ Bank applies equally to the road. A couple of runners passed effortlessly, accompanied by a dog which appeared also to be of the butcher’s variety.

Near Waterhouses, out of the woods, a plaque on a bench duly records that Alice and Thomas Button and their son Tommy farmed the nearby land for 58 years. In Waterhouses itself, a sign proclaims Buttons Place, uncluttered by grammatical furniture.

All this is what frogspawn spawns. Bright burnished, anyone know anything more about the Buttons?

David Armstrong, now in Barnard Castle, also remembers coming home from university and being asked to help with the carol singing at Billy Row Centenary chapel, above Crook. He asked why they weren’t given any words and was told he’d soon find out. “We only sang While Shepherds Watched, but to a different tune every time.”

The note two weeks ago on 86-year-old Peter Freitag’s speech to the Lib Dem spring conference – perforce restricted to four minutes – delighted Peter and interested Bill Bartle in Barnard Castle.

Bill saw something similar on the podium at an NUT conference, where green, yellow and red lights gave warning that a speaker had delighted them long enough.

He’s even wondered if a similar system could be applied to the pulpit in church. “Sadly,” adds Bill, “it’s never happened.”

Encountered at a funeral last week, retiring Redcar and Cleveland LibDem MP Ian Swales confirms that they also use a “traffic light” system. “Anyone longer than four minutes gets the plug pulled on them. They’d even pull the plug on Nick Clegg.”

Even Peter Freitag? “Well,” says Ian, “they’d maybe think twice about Peter.”

The paragraph recalling the late comedian Dave Allen reminded Martin Birtle of Allen’s week in cabaret at La Ronde night club in Billingham, circa 1970.

Forever with a bottle of whiskey by his side, Allen would invite an audience member to have a drink with him on stage. Martin’s mum – “whose idea of a drink was a port and lemon or possibly a sweet sherry, certainly not whiskey” – was chosen.

Some supposed that the whiskey was diluted, or possibly even cold tea. Mrs Birtle discovered otherwise. “She came back befuddled,” he says.

…and finally, Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland adds to the column’s present pre-occupation with an image of a pump clip from his local Wetherspoons pub. “Don’t pre-drink,” it exhorts. It’s another case of stones and glasshouses, alas. The Echo the other day had the Archbishop of York reading from a pre-prepared statement.