AS we were waiting for the Queen to perform her walkabouts in the North-East yesterday, we were struck by the word "walkabout".

Our dictionary says that it is a Pidgin English word which originates from Australia about 200 years ago. Periodically, aborigines who worked for Westerners felt the draw of the bush and they wandered off for a month to commune with nature at their favourite waterholes. These disappearances were known as "going walkabouts".

The Royal walkabout - an informal stroll through the crowd - seems to have evolved Down Under as, in 1970, the word was first applied in print to the Queen when the Daily Telegraph reported: "The Queen realised she was on to a winner with her New Zealand 'walkabout'."

It doesn't, though, have to be a monarch doing the mingling. It can be any figure of importance - or, indeed, any figure who believes in his own importance. The first non-Royal usage is believed to have been in the Listener magazine in 1984 when a self-important journalist wrote: "I was engaged in a walkabout during last year's Darlington by-election."

PHEW! We got away with it. One of the most notorious errors in The Northern Echo in recent years came when our computer spellcheck took a dislike to the word "aubergines". And so, in 1998, in a business report about a new sandwich company, we printed the immortal sentence: "Its range of 90 fillings even includes designer items such as marinated aborigines."

But if you've ever tried eating a Native Australian, you will find that they are a little chewy unless they are marinated overnight.

THE people who design newspaper pages dread unfortunate juxtapositions, like a story about a brutal stabbing being printed above an advert for "a killer night out" at a murder mystery theatre production.

But there are some unhappy juxtapositions in life, too. On Tuesday, a funeral procession was passing slowly around Darlington ring-road, the black hearse followed by four or five cars of solemn-looking mourners.

And there, in the middle of the procession, was a big white van with multi-coloured capital letters down the side screaming: "Celebrations! Balloons for every occasion!"

BUENOS Aires, Sydney, Calcutta, Moscow, London, Paris, New York - there was a certain irony in the Mayday anti-globalisation protests being such a truly global event.

A CUBAN, a Japanese man, a Pakistani and a female member of the English Shadow Cabinet were on a train. The Cuban threw a fine Havana cigar out the window. When he was asked why, he replied: "They are practically worthless in my country.'

The Japanese man threw a Nikon camera out of the carriage, adding: "These are practically worthless in my country."

The Pakistani then picked up the female member of the English Shadow Cabinet and threw her out of the train. When the other travellers asked him to account for his actions he said: "They are practically regarded as worthless in her country.