Margery Burton may have been Sir Cliff’s number one fan

Born in Leeholme, near Bishop Auckland and educated at Bishop Auckland Girls Grammar School, she’d long been in Shildon. After two heart operations, she was also an enthusiastic member of the Sing For Life group in Newton Aycliffe and helped the British Heart Foundation organise the Shildon Shuffle.

Her topics ranged from Toc H to dropped aitches on television – “no wonder the kids do it” – but chiefly she was in the paper for her devotion to Sir Cliff Richard.

Smitten since early years, she was still attending Cliff’s concerts in her 70s, her house decorated with memorabilia and with a large signed photograph – “Warmest wishes to a superfan, with love from Cliff.” He even spelled her name correctly.

She’d also helped demolish the preposterous notion peddled by a glossy magazine that Cliff had been brought up in Newton Aycliffe. Like some of the town’s early homes, the column observed, the claim was prefabricated.

Margery denied any particular devotion. “There are millions of us still adore Cliff. I doubt if I’m even the biggest fan in Shildon.”

She was 82, her funeral at Shildon Methodist church last Friday.

MARGERY had also been a chorister, and thus the first to spot the most egregious of my manifold mistakes. Attending New Brancepeth Methodist church, west of Durham, the At Your Service column had expressed surprise that the tune to the wonderful hymn Love Divine All Loves Excelling should be Blindworm. It wasn’t, it was Blaenwern. Another one fallen on deaf ears.

AMONG the most memorable of the At Your Service columns, 21 years ago, was a visit to the Light and Life church in Darlington. It was in the news again last week.

Back in 1996, the first paragraph read: “If the Kingdom of God is like unto a mannequin parade, as congregations of our acquaintance appear to believe, the menfolk of the Light and Life church are unlikely to tread the celestial catwalk. They wear jeans and well-worn cardigans, big brown boots and big blue coats and pork pie hats that formerly were called rag man’s.”

Light and Life, based at the former St Hilda’s parish church on the inner ring road, is, broadly, a travellers’ church. They do things differently there.

Gary Nixon, the pastor, had sought to interpret the Beatitudes. “If a man sticks the nut on you, you don’t stick the nut back. You say ‘That’s all right, mate, here’s a tenner’.”

Over 100 were present, men with names like Isaac and Elijah, children called John-Boy, Joleen and Mary-Ellen. The men prayed fervently, fundamentally. “Oh we weren’t bad,” says a born again traveller after the service, “we were a lot worse than that.”

Pastor Nixon owned that Darlington had long been a travellers’ town – then as now – insisted that their reputation was exaggerated. “Jesus says that those who are forgiven much will love much. I think that’s what happened to the gipsies.”

LED by Life and Light, 3,000 had pitched last week on a showground at Thame, said homophonically to be inappropriate. Some locals weren’t happy. The Backtrack column visited Thame – “Thame as in emasculated” it pronounced – for an FA Vase semi-final second leg in 1999, Bedlington Terriers leading 5-0 from the first leg. For what was the town known? “It has a very good laundry,” someone said. That apart, it was the most boring and most predictable goalless draw in history.

LAST week’s note on North-East car registration plates brought a fascinating email from Neil McKay in Lanchester. South Shields, says Neil, had the registration CU – a historic nod to Caer Urfa, said to have been the town’s name under the Romans.

Neil’s grandparents were from Sheels. When they moved to Harrogate, they called the house Caer Urfa.

Bill Bartle, once Barnsley now Barney, recalls that in his South Yorkshire homeland the registration was HE – enabling the mayoral limo to display THE 1 front and back.

These days Caer Urfa is the name of everything from an aquatics shop to the local U3A group. Don Clarke, our man on South Tyneside, also recalls a social cricket team called Caer Urfa, formed by the late and lamented Clive Crickmer, Daily Mirror man and cricket nut.

Though Don supposes “CU” to be coincidental, another email – from Geoff Richardson – recalls that Durham simply issued “J” plates until the registration was transferred to Jersey. Was the Ministry of Transport the government department with a soul?

We’d also been talking of 32 CUP, cheerily sported by 90-year-old Dorothy Morton. Here’s something similar spotted last week in Ferryhill market place – hot stuff, no doubt.

TRIFURCATE, last week’s column also sought to debate the Rev David Kinch’s suggestion that we’d been in error to write of “forkfuls”. It should have been “forksful” he insisted. Former Fleet Street man Jon Smith disputes the point. “My Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the plural of teaspoonful and teaspoonfuls and the plural of mouthful as mouthfuls.” Doubtless like David Kinch, Smithy’s spellcheck disagrees.

SHAMELESSLY, we exhumed a couple of weeks back the joke about which birds fly in formation and emit red, white and blue smoke.

Eric Gendle sends a lengthy poem by Richard Digance which tells the story much better. Four lines only:

Eight Red Sparrows, they soared above the trees

And then in diamond shape fell at eighty-nine degrees,

You could see they’d all been practising, for the best part of six weeks

Some had conjunctivitis and some had buckled beaks…

It’s well worth googling.

...AND finally, yet another opening has presented itself. Over many years, these columns have been invited officially to open much of a community conscious kind, but never before a shed.

The ceremony last Friday evening was at Middlestone Moor, near Spennymoor – red ribbon, the lot.

Admittedly there was a marked absence of champagne, but we did enjoy a couple of brown ales in the Masons Arms thereafter.

The two-level shed’s on Gary Hodgson’s allotment, though it’s very definitely the domain of his nine-year-old son. The nameplate says “Charlie’s shed”, more colloquially it’s the bairn’s cree.

Charlie Hodgson outside his shed

There are house rules, too, not least the stipulation that “anyone being naughty will be chucked out for life”. The unwritten decree that girls aren’t allowed may be relaxed in years to come.

No fee, as always, but we left bearing carrier bags overflowing with ultra-fresh veg and with the most delicious eggs ever.

This Saturday, 1.30pm, I’m officially launching the Gaunless Valley History Trust’s photographic exhibition at Butterknowle Village Hall, though it’s there from 11am on both Saturday and Sunday. More opening gambits next week.