THE Metropolitan Police having appointed its first woman commissioner, the Coundon and District Society for the Prevention and Prosecution of Felons has had its first female supper guest in 163 years.

“Gentlemen, that is quite shocking,” said Sara Davies, founder of Crafter’s Companion and Coundon lass made very good indeed.

It has to be admitted, however, that discussion took place between us over the position of that crafty apostrophe. “It’s not a debate; I’m right,” said Sara.

Her family had the village paint and wallpaper shop. Sara gained a first class business degree from York, started Crafter’s Companion while still there, nourished the stitching-time notion in the Coundon garage out the back.

Now there are headquarters in Newton Aycliffe, £20m annual turnover, 130 staff around the world, regular appearances on shopping channel television and plans for further global expansion. Sara, still just 32 and a mother-of-two, was appointed MBE last year.

The column has addressed the annual supper several times previously, usually with the story of Coundon village polliss Arthur Stephenson, ordered in 1961 to summon ten youngsters to juvenile court for playing hum-dum-dum – finger or thumb – outside Ranaldi’s café. Obstructing the footpath.

Clearly the Felons remain effective. When did you last see anyone playing hum-dum-dum?

On the last occasion, the sesquicentennial in 2004, a medical gentleman told them that “felon” was also a term for a whitlow, but the Society for the Prevention and Prosecution of Whitlows probably didn’t sound so fearsome.

In Victorian times there were hundreds of similar societies. Now only half a dozen survive, a couple in the Esk Valley around Whitby and another in Weardale. That Weardale has historically had a much lower crime rate than Coundon – which is near Bishop Auckland – is thought to have been less for fear of the Felons than holy dread of the Methodist minister.

The residual role is social and charitable. The do was at Bishop Golf Club. The menu – as for the past 162 years – a variation on mince and tatties, the evening wrapped up by comedian Finbar Healy.

Fin told the joke, nearly as old as they are, about Coundon being twinned with Las Vegas – “the only places in the world where you can buy sex with chips”.

By then, perhaps fortunately, Sara had gone home.

THE Felons in 2002 had appointed me Keeper of the Queen’s Apostrophe, a duty treasonably neglected of late. His email thus perfectly timed, Malcolm Raine sends evidence of egregiousness on the Felons’ front step – the plant potty’s from Homebase in Bishop Auckland. At least there wasn’t an apostrophe in always.

The Northern Echo: An aberrant apostrophe at Homebase, Bishop Auckland

An aberrant apostrophe at Homebase, Bishop Auckland

PART of the National Union of Journalists’ “Local news matters” initiative, I’m on a panel at Sunderland Civic Centre which also includes No 1 best-selling author Philippa Gregory and Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman.

“A very handsome panel,” said the chairman, at once in one regard illustrating that you can’t believe everything you hear from journalists.

Philippa, who lives near Stokesley, had herself been in newspapers until sent to cover the Waterlooville and District Chrysanthemum Society’s annual show. “I’d have died if I’d had to do it again,” she said. “I wouldn’t care, but the same people won it every year.”

The industry faces common challenges. The Sunderland Echo, someone said, used to sell as many copies in Seaham as it now does overall.

Salvation’s chiefly seen in new tech and social media. Folk fiddled with their smartphones, lullabied their laptops, talked of accretions and of algorithms (which, memory suggests, I failed four times at O-level.)

It was thus wonderfully ironic that the great dinosaur’s mobile was the only one to interrupt a two-hour session. The guy was ringing with a story, too.

THE agreeable Ms Goodman, shadow minister and parliamentary press committee chairman, apologised for not preparing as well as she’d have liked. The train back north had been so full she’d had to sit on the floor, she said. Isn’t that precisely what happened to the ram-packed Jeremy Corbyn? A case of follow my leader, no doubt.

ANDY WHITEHEAD, former senior fire officer turned prolific author, was the speaker at the Age UK men’s breakfast in Durham.

Stationed in blue-light days at Bishop Auckland and Darlington – where he’d also been a night club doorman – he writes as A A G Whitehead. “It stands for Alan and Gail Whitehead,” said Andy, though Mrs Whitehead’s role wasn’t explained.

His latest, fifth in a six-part series, is a fictionalised account of the Durham Pals’ regiment’s real life experiences in the second Ypres battle, when the Germans used gas for the first time and before which they all thought they’d be home by Christmas.

Andy’s interest was kindled by booze cruises to northern France. “I had a pick-up and would come back with 300 litres of red. It lasted me a year,” he said.

“We’d pass little cemeteries in unlikely locations. I used to think it was a funny place for a graveyard until the penny slowly dropped.”

Now he talks of the cemeteries’ “tragic majesty”, writes vividly of their history. Pals’ War is published by Austin Macauley.

FORMER professional boxer Terry Schofield (“230 fights, 231 wins”) is among the good sorts who regularly attend the men’s breakfast. Amid concerns that he might not wholly have rolled with the punches, he was recently asked to attend what’s called the memory clinic at a Bishop Auckland hospital. Terry, 71, waited for an hour after the appointed time and then went back to reception. “Sorry,” they said, “We forgot."

The Northern Echo: Bishop Auckland rail station in times past

Bishop Auckland rail station in times past

IT’S 175 years next Wednesday since the railway arrived in Bishop Auckland, and full steam to Crook. Shildon Tunnel, named in honour of the Prince of Wales and enacted as one of Victoria’s first duties as Queen, effectively opened the same day.

To mark the occasion, Weardale Railway Trust historian John Askwith gave an illustrated talk last week on Bishop station. Both talk and birthday cake were excellent.

We gathered in the Four Clocks Centre, a former Methodist church, appropriately in the gods. The garrulous goods station had been out the back, next to it Hanratty’s scrapyard with what may politely be termed its attendant wildlife.

Folk were fascinated by Hanratty’s, who also had a place in Darlington. How was a scrapyard allowed so close to the main shopping street? None could help much, barely a scrap, save that the family was Irish and that Mrs Hanratty lived in Dene Hall Drive, the posh end of town once known locally as Little Jerusalem. Readers may know more.

The talk concentrated on the passenger station, famously triangular, but with four platforms and trains in every direction.

These days it’s the end of the line, just one platform, though they’ve made a good fist of the new buildings. “We’re just glad to have a station at all,” said Gerald Slack of the Auckland Railways Group. Ever-supportive, we caught the last train home.

CROWDED hours, the column has also been on parade in Newton Aycliffe at the 50th anniversary reunion of 223 Field Ambulance, a Territorial Army unit known as the Combat Medics. A salute deserves rather more space than today remains: back to attention, with luck, next week.