IN for a penny, last week's column on savoury ducks - penny ducks in these copper bottomed parts - stirred memory's pot for many. There have been recollections of Saturday night fry-ups and of Wednesday dinner time treats, revelations of what barely is contained within the Tyne Tees Television breakfast cupboard and (for reasons shortly to be explained) of the way things were in The Northern Echo's Northallerton office.

Two things need initially to be understood, however. For the purposes of this column, "dinner" is a midday meal and a penny duck is no more a bird than a Bombay duck has tail feathers and a beak.

First off the mark last Thursday, a 6am e-mail from Rob Williams, early turn at Tyne Tees. Rob's from the Black Country, where such things are known as faggots and his grandma ("4ft 11in and not to be trifled with") was a mistress of the faggot maker's art.

Rob was also reminded of Saturday nights at Sam's Chippy in Walsall, where faggot in batter and chips fried in beef dripping would last all the way home from the pub.

Drooling over such dissipated delights, he looked in the breakfast cupboard and found cereal and stale croissants. "I blame you," he says.

ELIZABETH Sayers would also enjoy her Saturday night suppers, a big fry-up of black pudding, saveloys and penny ducks which can't have done her much harm because she's just celebrated her 80th birthday with a poem from her daughter. It ended:

The day is cold and bright

Conditions are just right

For you to go skateboarding, jet-skiing, abseiling

Or you might

Sit with the hot bottle on your back

And keep Mike Amos right.

The family lived before the war in Newfield, near Bishop Auckland, and walked to Tommy Wilde's in Willington, returning heavy laden with bags of butchery's best.

"Tommy's ducks," says Mrs Sayers, now in Spennymoor, "were the finest you could buy anywhere."

The business began in 1926 and remains in Commercial Street, Willington - Tony Wilde having taken over his father's stripy apron 40 years ago. Sadly, however, duck lovers now find nought for their comfort.

"We're still a traditional butcher but there are so many regulations these days that things like ducks are no longer worth doing. We just can't take the risk," says Tony.

Now almost 65, he has no plans to retire. "We mightn't have penny ducks but there are still savouries which families have been coming 80 years for," says Tony. Willington can walk on the Wilde side a little longer yet.

BOB Harbron in Norton-on-Tees recalls his inky trade apprenticeship at Harrison's printing works in Stockton. "It was my job every Wednesday morning to take a large wicker basket containing up to a dozen small white pot basins to Mr Wake, the butcher opposite the works.

"Each basin was filled with ducks and peas for ninepence, the mushy peas ladled from a large, army-type dixie simmering away on the gas ring. A table cloth covered the container on its return."

The mushy peas must have been eightpence, then.

Arthur Pickering's dad was in pies (as he puts it) in Elwick Road, Hartlepool, and also sold savoury ducks.

"I have a fleeting memory of the stuff, served with peas pudding and gravy - probably not as good for you as cous cous and lentils, but very tasty, nonetheless."

The young Pickering once ventured to ask what a penny duck was made of. "Don't ask," said his dad, and he never did again.

THE garret above Smurthwaite's garage in Northallerton High Street offered office accommodation in the 1960s to the late and great Arnold Pearson and to Tony Ford, his junior on The Northern Echo and Darlington and Stockton Times.

Arnold had won DSO and DFC in the Second World War. The garret might not have been a home fit for heroes.

There was a two bar 1930s electric fire, an 18 inch strip light, fading green lino on the floor and ice - rime and season - on the inside of the windows.

"Arnold," recalls Tony, "had a running battle with head office to try to improve our lot. What excitement when a rep visited and said we could expect some new carpet."

Suitably wrapped, it proved to be a black, rubber John Player darts mat complete with oche line and it was still there eight years later when Tony decided to seek his fortune amid the rather brighter lights of London.

Most dinner times, at any rate, Arnold's wife Gladys would look in on her way home. Inevitably asked what was for dinner, Gladys frequently replied that it was penny duck.

Tony was a Dorset lad originally, unschooled in northern ways. "I was genuinely impressed," he recalls, "that the Pearson household could so often afford duck."

Two doors down a dismal corridor, incidentally, was another door labelled Kingdom Hall. "I never saw anyone going in or out and I always puzzled how the chap I took to be a lawyer with that imposing name could ever make a living."

Older and wiser, Tony's now back in Northallerton. "Eeeh," he says, "I were a very nave lad back then."

LAST week's ducks were served up at Number Twenty-Two, the award winning real ale bar in Darlington. Owner Ralph Wilkinson also features in the new edition of Darlington Drinker, the CAMRA newsletter.

In October, it transpired, the bar unexpectedly closed for a day, the mystery resolved when it was revealed that Ralph had forgotten to renew the justices' licence which had expired eight months earlier.

Temporary arrangements were put in place, the issue ducked no longer, and in any case, we all make mistakes.

The Rev Tony Bell, the former Durham diocesan priest who started all this ducking and diving with a letter to the Guardian, is national chairman of the clergy branch of Amicus, not Unison as last week's column supposed. Apologies - but that's two good helpings, already.

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Published: ??/??/2004