IF the British army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon supposed, then so – increasingly, it seems – does the local economy. Food festivals flourish: the latest set out its stalls in Darlington last weekend.

There was everything from burritos to bad ass beef brisket, from butter biscuits to Belgian chocolate – the last made moreishly in town by a nice lady called Wendy Thompson.

Her confections may well be hand-made, though the term is absurdly overused. One stall even offered hand-baked dog biscuits, the burning question unanswered.

The term “artisan” is now equally universal, originally intended to suggest rustic craftsmanship but now employed by any business smaller than H J Heinz.

The most curious thing, however, is that the festival is held on the High Row while the expensively restored – and more step-free – market square sits empty and unloved, used only by the occasional, egregious super waltzer.

It was smaller than we’d anticipated. Happily there was a Taylor’s pork pie stall to restore a little equilibrium.

On Sunday afternoon the festival included a parade of iced cakes – a cake walk, as it were – mostly on a railway theme, pushed on supermarket trolleys by people in daft hats and led by a band dressed in chefs’ whites.

The lady bought Weardale cheese, Darlington chocolates, artisan bread and gin made in Bedale, honest. Life’s bases, she considered, had pretty much all been covered

AT Bishop Auckland market at the weekend they launched Gerald Slack’s new book recalling the town’s railways, particularly the once-teeming, steaming railway station.

On Saturdays there’d be a direct service to Newcastle, frequently headed by a B1 class locomotive called Hirola or its sister, Ajax.

The first 40 of the class were all named after deer, though no one told us that at Bishop Grammar. At school we guessed that a hirola might be someone who’d bought both Mayfair and Park Lane, but knew that ajax was good for cleaning the bath.

The need to travel 250 miles in the opposite direction meant that we couldn’t make the launch. Nor did the travel centre on what’s left of the station have a copy a couple of days earlier, though they did sell liquorice torpedoes.

We also picked up the 2015 day tours brochure from Garnetts Coaches, who eschew apostrophes. Among the hardy annuals like Redcar, Flamingoland and South Shields are outings to Birmingham, Manchester and Blackpool Pride events. In the days that ajax was deemed to be bath cleaner, a gay day meant something else, an’ all.

SERVICE bus provision is pretty poor right now but at least in Greenfield Drive, on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland, intending passengers are warned that they may have to wait some time.

Firmly fastened to the bus stop pole, the glass-cased timetable – dated April 2011 – advises that from Monday to Saturday there’s no service.

On Sundays – “until further notice” – there’s no service either.

Beneath all the signs and symbols there’s another caveat. “Please note that services are likely to be different on public holidays,” it says – but you wouldn’t count on it, would you?

LAST week’s column wondered about Spennymoor Races. Tim Sutton, who pretty much set the horse

away, gallops it a little further.

There was, indeed, a mid-nineteenth century course at Whitworth Park – Shafto country – and briefly it prospered. Soon a rival began, somewhere near St Paul’s church, furnished with a “huge brick grandstand” and opened with a flourish of trumpets.

“Spennymoor went racing mad,” observes James Dodd, in his history of the town.

Robert Prudhoe, the principal partner, decreed that accommodation would be needed for “the expected army of bookmakers and racecourse thieves” – the terms appear synonymous – and erected the North Eastern Hotel near the railway station.

He backed a loser. The racecourse failed, the hotel became a white elephant. The huge brick grandstand was blown down by a strong wind and, in 1892 the North Eastern burned, doubtless accidentally, to the ground.

By the time that Dodd’s book was written, Spennymoor had another course, at the back of Carlton Terrace, which little interested once-bitten locals but drew large numbers from other parts.

“The road up to the racecourse is filled by an evil looking crew,” wrote Dodd. “Their baneful presence is a like a breath of poison to the atmosphere of the place.”

It wasn’t Spennymoor’s only problem. There was also the strange and sinful matter of the new Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM was the name given, perhaps ironically, to the area around Low Spennymoor and Merrington Lane inhabited by thousands of nineteenth century miners. “How it came by that name is difficult to say,” admits the history.

They lived in hovels – “a wild and terrible kind of life herded together in the wretched pig sties that were run up for them,” wrote Dodd.

“Money was plentiful and from Friday to Monday, Jerusalem became a small edition of hell. The people sat in the open all night, with candles stuck in the clay upon the ground, drinking, cursing and quarrelling. The public houses never closed their doors.

“There were no schools for the children, no churches, no chapels, no police to keep order, nothing but ignorance and depravity. Spennymoor became a byword in all the district round, and decent folk were ashamed to own that they lived there.”

Unlike the New Jerusalem of Frederick Weatherly’s glorious song, Spennymoor’s pretty much passed away. Those, adds James Dodd, were the good old days.

AS the column recalled on April 21, former Eurovision song contest entrant Ronnie Carroll polled but 45 votes in the 2004 Hartlepool by-election, declined to make a post-count speech and sang Danny Boy instead. Last Thursday he was on the ballot paper for Hampstead and Kilburn and fared getting on three times as well, attracting 113 votes. The difference this time was that he’d been dead for four weeks.

…AND finally, while David Cameron celebrated victory last Friday, the column basked also in the warm glow of popular acclaim.

It was the annual ladies’ lunch of the Northallerton branch of Macmillan Cancer Support, a charity founded way back in 1911 by the recently bereaved Douglas Macmillan, and thus not to be confused with Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, who supposed that we’d never had it so good.

All manner of famous folk have addressed the ladies who lunch, the previous attendance record claimed by William Hague – a top speaker – for whom 185 tickets were sold.

For this one they sold 216, the Golden Lion so full-to-the-gunnels that they’d to establish a waiting list. Rumours of a black market are, regrettably, unsubstantiated.

There’d been little sleep the monumental night previously. Customarily, I told them, folk started nodding off within minutes of my getting to my feet. The greater danger last Friday was that the speaker might be slumbering before any of them.

The raffle had prizes like a stainless steel tea pot, a box or organic vegetables and a scented candle. The fee, as usual, was paid in pork pies which, taken with Darlington food festival, may be considered an overall majority.