A WEEK back Sunday, and in the company of our younger son and his wife, the lady of this house flew off to New York with Virgin Airways. Four days later I followed, on the No 309 bus past Sandyford Road cemetery.

Swiftly it will be realised that this is one of that broad sidewalk of places in North-East England that shares a name with bigger brethren across the pond.

Toronto is near Bishop Auckland, California tacked onto Witton Park, Quebec west of Durham, Philadelphia near Houghton-le-Spring and Washington – which has a district of Columbia – lies honestly alongside the River Wear.

New York is a village on North Tyneside – the Little Apple, it might be said. Though it may not offer the same perquisites as Virgin Airlines – no endless free pretzels, no mile high club, no film – the 309 is one of those talking buses which provides route information as it proceeds.

“The next stop is New York,” says the automaton vicariously, 29 minutes after leaving Newcastle Haymarket, and not even Sir Richard could make it that sharp.

THE village may best be described as unexceptional, and with little attempt – save for The Bronx, a pizza place – to filch from its alter ego. None can explain the name.

There’s a Brookland, but not a Brooklyn Terrace, a Burwood but not a Burbank Road, a Greenlea but not a Greenwich. Nor does the Little Apple offer any sign of a tickertape welcome, though there’s an awful lot of larger, wind-blown, wrapped around the hedges. Where are the boys of the NYPD choir when you need them?

The skyline’s a bit different, too, the high point probably the extractor fan chimney on the roof of the New York and Murton Social Club.

There’s a New York Post Office and a New York Convenience Store, a New York Surgery and – up the street – a New York Pharmacy. There’s even a New York Forge, though so old and so English that it might have been a location for Great Expectations.

A notice on a lamp post talks of the New York Pageant, but that was nine months ago.

The local McColls – wasn’t it the McColls who sang about the boys of the NYPD choir? – has the Morning Star but not America Today, the News Guardian, but no sign of the New York Times.

Formerly the Whitey Bay Guardian and Seaside Chronicle, the News Guardian has no mention of New York – neither of them – but a Guinness-fuelled story about a lass from Cullercoats who’ll be attempting on St Patrick’s day to persuade 1,000 others to help form the world’s biggest human shamrock on the sands.

She shouldn’t bother. The Yanks will do it bigger.

Sharon has provided updates of her movements, so that when others of the family are enjoying a sumptuous breakfast at the Rockefeller Centre, I’m grubbing through a bag of salt and vinegar from McColls and when they’re at the top of the Empire State Building, I’m at the bottom of New York Road, wondering whether to go to Whitley Bay or straight back to Newcastle.

The Wheatsheaf, on the edge of the village, offers a pint of Bombardier – “glorious English ale,” it says – and a log fire.

In a strange sort of way it brings us together, though – both of us being in New York – and right now that’s really quite important.

I AM not a natural bachelor, a euphemism ill concealing total domestic ineptitude.

Framed prominently on the wall at home is a cartoon she commissioned 20 years ago of my returning from work. On the kitchen worktop is a note saying “Your dinner is in the oven” and, next to it, a second note reading “The oven is on the left.”

A third note might have explained how to work the blooming thing.

The pork pie reserve having been exhausted on the first day of the lady’s absence, on the second I walk up to the village shop for newspapers and sympathy.

The kindly lady makes me a coronation chicken sandwich for breakfast and suggests a ready-to-heat cottage pie – “with wine” – for lunch.

The offer supposes knowledge of how to work the microwave. That’s not just domestic science, it’s A-level.

By the fourth day things are becoming anxious, emaciated even. I head to the Age UK “men’s breakfast” at the indoor market in Durham.

AGE UK was a late-life marriage in 2009 of Age Concern and Help the Aged, though none of us – of course – feels aged. We’re just getting on a bit.

The breakfast’s £3.50 with coffee and is first class, the company’s convivial. Speakers have ranged from the faintly facetious – me – to the local colonic cancer consultant who aided breakfast’s digestion by passing round one of the tubes used for purposes (shall we say) of investigation.

It’s reported that one or two of the lads sat a little uncomfortably thereafter.

Last Wednesday’s speaker is 85-year-old Tom Moffatt, a man of many talents – probably including how to work a microwave – whose chief claim to fame may be his crucial role in bringing first class cricket to Durham.

His talk’s called The Impossible Dream Come True and Tom reckons to have given it at least 200 times. “It’s probably because I charge nothing,” he says, with the wisdom which also comes of age.

The ambitious plan to turn the riverside at Chester-le-Street into a stadium fit for first class cricket – now the world’s only test match venue not in a city – met orchestrated opposition. “They were cheats, they got up to all sorts of things,” says Tom, himself one of life’s gentlemen.

Last week’s breakfast is also being filmed, the 20-or-so present required individually to sign a consent form, presumably lest we have a funny turn amid all the excitement.

A section on the bottom requires under-18s to gain approval from parent or guardian. None of us quite qualifies, though it brings to mind a football match on a bitter-cold day at Cockfield, about 25 years ago.

I’m talking to a spectator, well into his 70s, who at half-time says he just has to pop down home. “I have to put a shovel of coals on for my dad,” he explains.

It’s also slightly odd that the young lady from Age UK should seek to prorogue questions just when those present are getting nostalgic or loquacious – the two may by now be synonymous – but possibly they want their café back.

The breakfasts are held on the third Wednesday at 9.30am, the talk on March 16 by members of the county fire brigade. I’m not sure if I’ll be there. She came home on Saturday: the emergency, thank goodness, is over.