Third degree burns

NOTICE: for maximum effect it is best to imagine the following joke delivered by Private Fraser when hectoring poor Godfrey on the declining quality of his sister Dolly’s upside-down cake.

Bloke goes into Fort William hospital, tells the receptionist that he thinks he’s broken his arm. “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley,” she says.

He tells his story to a nurse. “The minister kissed the fiddler’s wife and could na preach for thinkin’ on’t,” she replies.

Finally he collars a doctor.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” asks the doctor.

The poor chap’s exasperated. “Is no one going to do anything about my broken arm,” he demands.

“Och,” says the doc, “you want accident and emergency. This is the Burns unit.”

BURNS Night was last Wednesday.

“It’s even quieter than last night,” says a lady in the bar.

“Dismal,” says her friend.

“I blame it on Christmas being a long weekend,” says the lady.

This is no pot luck sort of a pub, this is the Burns Tavern in Darlington.

For all that, the bar is near-deserted – like a flag day on Princes Street, some would say, as subdued as the waiting room at Motherwell crematorium. There’s a games room next door; nothing’s afoot.

The pub opened in 1988. At one time they’d mark the occasion with a piper, and with haggis and neeps on the counter. Now they don’t even have Scottish bar snacks, not even a deep-fried Mars Bar. They’ve devolved.

Burns Night’s been on my mind since I declined the invitation to give the toast to dear old Rabbie at the Senior Common Room Burns Supper at St John’s College in Durham. “I’m sorry you feel unable to rise to the challenge,” replied the lady, and might have been less hurtful had she wielded a bunch of thistles.

The Burns Tavern seemed the next best bet. For years there was a pub of that name at the town end of Northgate; they kept the sign. Now it’s outside the suburban pub in Thompson Street.

It’s owned by Sam Smith’s, who sell commendably cheap beer and allow neither television nor music, not even the skirl of the pipes, on their premises. “You call bagpipes music?” says someone, predictably.

The landlord’s unforthcoming, even under the sort of intensive interrogation necessary to justify today’s headline. The barmaid wears a sort of tutu, which must not be confused with the Edinburgh Military Tutu. The conversation turns to dying pubs, still 15 succumbing each week.

Most blame greed. “Sam Smith’s may not be greedy, but they’re certainly strange,” says former Rolling Mills man Peter Scott.

Then a Scotsman walks in. Jimmy Kennedy is a Glaswegian, was a training sergeant with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards at Catterick, has long been in Darlington and is a lovely feller.

His son’s a chef at Bishop Auckland College where they’re having a Burns Night of their own. They who call the tune are having to pay the piper £150, says Jimmy.

Though taught Burns at school – “we all were” – he does nothing to mark the anniversary of the poet’s birth. “Christmas and New Year are much more important,” says Jimmy.

“I know he was Scotland’s greatest poet, but really it’s only the educated Scots who bother much with it now.”

Nothing else happens: it was never like this in The Broons. Jimmy and Peter have been greatly hospitable, but January 25, 2012, will not bide long in the immortal memory.

EARLIER last Wednesday, I find myself lunching at the acclaimed County, in Aycliffe Village, with that entrepreneurial industrialist Mr John Elliott. They’ve no haggis. “You should have come at New Year,” says the waitress. Outside there’s notice of a meeting that very evening of Great Aycliffe Town Council to which the press, it says, are “cordially” invited. The temptation formally to complain to the council is swallowed again by Rabbie. Remembering the words of grace at the head of the page, I order the duck confit instead.

IT’S widely recognised that these columns belong to the Three Little Pigs school of journalism – get there before they expect you – and to a sort of theme scheme, too.

The re-opening party at the Scotch Corner Hotel was coincidental and by every account convivial; that we couldn’t make it regrettable.

We went a few hours earlier, instead.

It’s been an Anglo-Scottish crossroads since Roman times, the foursquare hotel there since 1939.

When it opened – en suite from a guinea – guests could book a servant or a chauffeur, too.

For a long time, however, it’s been a case of Scotch on the rocks. As far back as 1989 – four course dinner £10.75, pint of beer £1.20 – the Eating Owt column reported lugubriously.

“It’s not that the restaurant is gloomy, but we were glad they’d left the curtains open lest someone think there was a funeral on,” it said.

On a snowy day in January 2010, we’d tackled garlic bread with all the vibrancy of a mortician’s slab.

“There’s something in the Parable of the Prodigal Son about his having to eat the husks intended for the pigs,” the column observed. “For some reason it came to mind.”

If they thought that was a bit unkind, they should have read Trip Adviser.

Now it’s been relaunched as a Holiday Inn, £3m spent on its resuscitation, 50 jobs created and a home soil visit from the Foreign Secretary.

There’s a Fratelli’s restaurant – “more Italian than a Fiat 500” – the lounge renamed the Columbus Bar.

We debated who it was in literature that commonly used the term “Christopher Columbus” as an expletive.

The lady thought it might have been Jennings (who went to school), I suspected that it was the saintly mother in the Railway Children.

Probably it was Mary Poppins.

It’s changed for the better, though the clientele still seemed familiar.

Mostly they appeared to be what the retail trade called travellers – a representative selection. A glass bowl on the piano invited customers to leave their business card with the chance of a monthly prize, the wheeze as transparent as the receptacle.

Everywhere were signs of The Times, including in the restaurant next to another sign reading “Wet paint”. It wasn’t even open.

The lady, who – shall we say – has a natural curiosity, overheard a chap discussing a sexual harassment allegation with his gaffer.

He kept saying “To be perfectly honest”, a well-known euphemism meaning “Further to lie through my teeth”.

The sandwiches were okay, the service efficient. There’s no real ale, only John Smith’s Horrendously Cold, a brand offering all the keen anticipation of the Black Spot.

Still the place lacks distinctiveness, what marketing folk call a USP, but really it wasn’t bad at all. With Holiday Inn, the old place may at last be getting a break.

THERE’S also a new Holiday Inn brochure in which words like “iconic” and “perfect” are much used and which offers directions by road, rail and air. Those from Darlington railway station appear a mite confusing, however. “Turn left at McNay Street and turn right onto A167”.

A glance at the A-Z reveals that McNay Street is next to North Road station, a hardly used halt on the branch line to Bishop Auckland.

Scotch Corner may still have to work on its angles.