WHILST briefly the SDP member for Newcastle East, Mr Michael Thomas would tell the story about the miner MP who waited several years before honouring the House with his maiden speech. Finally, since the colliery from which he had risen was facing imminent closure, the gentleman was moved to his feet.

"This here," he announced in an accent most kindly described as pitmatic, "will mean the crippilisation of my constituency."

The following morning a young clerk from Hansard, the Parliamentary minute book, knocked timidly on his office door. "Excuse me," she said, "but did you say crippilisation? I don't seem to be able to find it in any of my dictionaries."

The old lad looked at her with an almost paternal kindness. "Why thoo's all reet, hinny," he assured the poor girl. "If ye divvent understand lang words, just put it in invertebrated commas."

The story is recounted for two reasons, firstly because it was Gilbert Hansard (an ancestor, no doubt) who built Walworth Castle in 1189 and, secondly, because it buys time before having again to be unkind.

Eating Owt doesn't enjoy being critical, but when a supposedly leading hotel is as unprofessional as the Walworth Castle, they are asking for a biff with the basilard.

(A basilard was a sort of medieval night stick, Sir William Walworth, one of Hansard's descendants, said in 1381 to have bashed Wat Tyler with his basilard and thereby ended the Peasants' Revolt. It is simply to procrastinate further.)

Walworth Castle is five miles north-west of Darlington, the hotel perhaps best known for its good value carvery and for Albert the parrot, a blue- faced Amazon (or some such) which garrulously greeted all comers. Though the hotel changed hands last year, Albert stayed on his perch. When we visited, however, she - for such is the parrot talk of Walworth - was in an unused room, sullen and sidelined,

A notice on the cage advised only of her name, in the way that old lags - in The Beano, at least - would peer through the bars whilst holding a card saying "Fingers". Albert appeared not to be amused.

We ate in the Sir Gilbert Hansard restaurant, where just one other table was occupied, but began in the bar. A chap with a handsome smile and a winning way pulled a pint of Black Sheep in the manner that a Land Girl might milk a cow, but got there in the end.

The waitress offered the ladies a taste of the house white, which was fortunate because both benefitted from the brief encounter, made comments about not wishing to lose their teeth enamel and stuck thereafter to mineral water. Considering the lamb, we'd also asked what a "sauce paloise" might be when it was at home. For all that the waitress knew, and could hardly be blamed for it, it might as well have been paloise meat for dogs.

"I'll find out," she said, and didn't. It was hardly auspicious.

One of the ladies ordered a mozzarella and tomato salad, protested that the cheese was neither mozzarella nor even its long lost third cousin and again sent the poor waitress scurrying to the kitchen.

"The chef says it might not be the sort of mozzarella you're used to," she said, and that was inarguable, of course, though she remembered Kraft cheese slices very well.

The Boss had a seafood salad which was fine, we started with a crab gateau, flaccid but distinctly crabby - but by that time, weren't we all.

Both the women followed with Viennese Symphony of Fish, a damn fool name and an orchestration of bum notes. Vienna, they grumbled, wasn't even near the sea; had it been Bournemouth, which has a symphony orchestra of some renown, the name might have been slightly more appropriate.

"Very ill assorted," said one of the two. "a totally, unacceptable, gloopy sauce that has definitely had a relationship with a bottle of some sort."

The lamb was OK, the pink bits anyway, the black pudding crostini - crostini sounds like it should be a circus high wire act - not the Great Crostini but the very nice crostini for all that.

The paloise sauce was tasty, too. "Hollandaise with a touch of mint," said the waitress, prompted as she served the puddings. The vegetables had been indifferent, unexceptional, a little overcooked.

Puddings of the dusted, drizzled and decorated sort could neither greatly be faulted not vastly enthused upon.

With a couple of pints and some mineral water, but without coffee, the bill reached £71. The peasants, if not necessarily revolting, hadn't been terribly impressed. Albert, wise old bird, said nowt.

AFTER dinner at Walworth, a nightcap at the Raby Hunt in Summerhouse two or three miles to the west but now (as we reported) on the low road to delicensing. The rare gem remains the Marston's bitter, not regularly available anywhere else in the North-East. Hurry.

THE Turbinia in Newton Aycliffe is next to Burnhill Way Methodist Church, or possibly vice-versa. Invited to the 25th anniversary celebrations of the latter, but with time to kill in the former, we diligently drank two pints of Coke so as not to take alcohol fumes onto Methodist premises. Missionary zeal of which his neighbours would be proud, pub landlord Gary Soakell - formerly at the Tap and Spile in Darlington - aims to make the Turbinia the first Newton Aycliffe pub to be acknowledged in the Good Beer Guide.

Last Saturday, however, he'd run out of supplies - a case of temptation conveniently being removed. The only real thing was the Coke.

Gary can also explain why a pub in Newton Aycliffe was named after a ship built on Tyneside by a bloke (Sir Charles Parsons) who died 16 years before the town's first turf was turned.

"I've become a bit of an anorak," he said, but we rather lost thread, if not the steam turbine, half way through.

He's also proud of his £3.95 Sunday lunches. On Saturdays, however, the cupboard is bare. Unable even to get a bag of plain crisps, we settled instead on something hideous called Worcester Sauce Wheat Crunchies and breathed them over Burnhill instead. They'd have been far better off with best bitter.

MEMORY fades. That little caf alongside the old A1 north of Darlington wasn't originally the Brooklands (or Brookland) as we supposed last week, but the Brooklyn. Jean Degnan, now 67, worked there as a 12-year-old schoolgirl when it was owned by Mrs Hastings, whose first name she never discovered.

They did good grub, even then. "They grew their own vegetables out the back, attracted cyclists and buses from all over," recalls Jean. The new place may be almost as good.

UNABLE to stop digging, we'd pondered a few weeks back the origins of the Hole in the Wall in Darlington and then discovered another in Tenerife - run by Greg James, formerly at the Darlington pub and the present landlord's brother.

Tony Richmond's just back from holiday there, discovers not only that it sells more Guinness than anywhere else on the island - some claim - but that Hole in the Wall Celtic have become the first English speaking team to reach the Tenerife Cup final.

He's also brought back the local paper, the night life column written by Barbara Law. Wasn't there a Barbara Law on the One O'Clock Show or some such. Could it be she?

Tony Richmond is Conservative candidate for Darlington next Thursday. This is no doubt wholly irrelevant.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we'd heard about the cat that won the milk drinking contest.

It lapped the field.

Published: Tuesday, May 29, 2001