IT may not be said, as that elderly Welsh singer supposed, that the old home town looked the same as I stepped down from the train. The station’s not gas-lit these days.

Shildon appears in a twilight zone, nonetheless. The last bank has closed – no money in it – the remaining supermarket checks out at the end of the month.

Folk fight. Reported the other day, a church youth group delegation has been to the House of Commons to raise concerns about the old town’s social and economic decline.

The story also contained the remarkable fact that Shildon has more hot food takeaways per head than anywhere else in County Durham – a gut-busting 20 or so, around one for every 500 people, and that’s an awful lot of calories.

On its uppers it may be; Hungry Hill it aint.

THERE’VE always been takeaways, of course, but when we were kids they were all fish and chip shops – fast food except on Friday dinner times, when the queue would be half way down the street.

There were three within 200 yards of us. Mrs Gerard sold the best chips, threepence a bag, Mr Beddingfield offered the best fish and Mrs White had the best scraps. Not unconsidered, scraps.

Now things are a bit more cosmopolitan. The main street has four Chinese takeaways within a few hundred yards – there’d have been five, but the Golden Dragon’s fire appears to have been extinguished.

One of the pizza parlours opens until 2am. In Shildon at two o’clock in the morning, there may not be a lot else to do.

The main street isn’t Main Street. Main Street’s mainly residential. The main street’s Church Street, topped and tailed by the Egregious Arches which lend the place the appearance of the entrance to a third-rate theme park.

Like many another threatened small town shopping centre, it has beauty salons, hairdressers, American nail bars, amusement arcades, a tattoo parlour – Incantations, “hand crafted pneumatic lettering” – and a health, safety and environmental consultant. There’s even a Cambridge Diet consultant, who may be the busiest of them all.

The HSBC bank is being converted into a house, Barclays is a bookie’s. To the tune of When the Saints Go Marching In, football fans now have a song – “It’s all pubs, bookies and chip shops, oh So-and-so is wonderful.” It’s a matter of opinion, of course, but the number of taxis about the place suggests that few are walking off the excess.

What the shopping centres no longer have, or at least don’t have many of, is shops.

FOG hangs low, not the best day to see anywhere in a particularly good light. Across Jubilee Fields from the station, seagulls – early birds – search through the murk for worms.

A notice in the community centre advertises the Shidon Loyalty Card – “showing you care about being a vibrant town” – whose participants include Co-op Funeralcare, South Durham Counselling and the Children in Distress charity shop. Folk fight.

Further up the housing estate, the Delicious Bites takeaway is already up and frying – “hot baggets, £2” – though the morning rush may already be over. It’s 9.30am. Around the corner, Eric’s Fish Bar offers a “lunch kid’s special” – chips and any sauce, £1 – but that doesn’t open until 11.

Discarded containers, and discarded food, mark the path from there to schools and to town centre.

Just outside the Arches, another chip shop has a notice in the window urging customers not to tie their dogs to the scampi sign. The Shildon Food For Less store has a new line – “hot thermal vest and long johns, £1.59.”

An estate agent’s advertises a one-bedroom bungalow in Shildon for £42,000 and a four bedroomed end-terrace house in Hatfield for £400,000. Hatfield, when last encountered, was in Hertfordshire. There may not be much demand in DL4.

Even the paper shop sells hot pies, but that doesn’t count because they’re Taylor’s and Taylor’s pies are unquestionably the food of the gods.

SHILDON Alive, a vigorous and innovative charity run beneath the wing of St John’s parish church – they who organised the House of Commons deputation – has its headquarters in a former shop, probably one of the butcher’s. Church Street had seven, now there are two.

Recent initiatives include cookery classes for both children and adults, for which they’re trying to attract more funding. Paula Nelson, the community development organiser, says that the total number of hot food takeaways is 21 – “so high in salt, so high in fat.”

Costa Coffee is across the road. Shildon seems almost proud of having a Costa Coffee, though it has yet to gain a Wetherspoons pub. Everywhere has a Wetherspoons, for heaven’s sake.

Costa has leaflets about a Chamber of Trade-inspired My Shildon app – folk fight – and about the loyalty card. “Get any large drink and pay for a medium,” promises Costa. It doesn’t say what loyalty bonus the Co-op funeral service is offering.