FLYING closer to home than ever he could have imagined, John Briggs calls attention to a dreadful crash landing at one of his Darlington locals.

The Hope Inn has long stood in Yarm Road. When in 1976 some brewery bright spark decided that it needed a pictorial sign - a job for an abstract artist, perhaps - a most ingenious idea took off.

Faith, Hope and Charity were Gloster Gladiator bi-planes, just about the entire Maltese air force - there was another, but it was kept for spares in a crate - when Italy declared war on the island on June 10, 1940.

Valiantly, they defended their space. "I think they only shot down one bomber, but they frightened a hell of a lot," recalls Darlington based aviation historian Bob Jackson.

It was a month or more until the Allies were able to send Hurricanes to reinforce the garrison. Faith, Hope and Charity became part of military folklore, the 1976 pub sign depicting them in close formation.

Now, however, the Hope has had a lick of paint and a new sign. John Briggs, though no aircraft buff, suspected not only that what it depicted were not glorious Glosters but that they belonged to World War I.

What he didn't know was that, on a feckless Friday afternoon in November 1976, it was the column which had unveiled the original sign.

A speech seeming superfluous, we'd simply read aloud all thirteen verses of the 13th chapter of the Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity."

We have shown Bob Jackson a picture of the new sign. "Your Gloster is a Sopwith Camel and even that's only the back end of a Camel," he reports.

The front is like nothing he's ever seen, a most reckless nose job. "The artist must have got hold of a picture of a bi-plane and thought that that would do," says Bob. "It's a First World War plane. Apart from the fact that it has two wings, there's no similarity at all to the Glosters."

After 25 years, it's a sad way to be brought down to earth. Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here.

FEET back on the ground, we have invested the bi-annual tenner in the new railway timetable, a bucolic cricket match scene - timeless, it might almost be said - on the cover. What with one thing and another, the winter timetable proved virtually useless. This one promises better days.

Its appearance coincided with a survey by the Tees Valley Joint Strategic Committee (whatever that might be) on branch line stations in the area. Teesside Airport railway station, it concluded, fell below a minimum acceptable level.

Since Teesside Airport station attracts just two stopping trains a week - one in each direction on Saturdays - it may help to explain why.

Hartlepool, said in a Clive James article at the weekend to bear an air of "civilised prosperity", also retains a curious rail service.

Just one direct weekly train each way links the town with Darlington and the East Coast main line - on Sunday evenings, which may not exactly be peak period.

The old place does rather better with taxis, however. Idling through a cabbies' magazine the other day, we discovered that the Borough of Hartlepool has the second cheapest fares - £1.80 for two miles - of all 378 local authorities in the country.

Middlesbrough, which increasingly runs on liquid petroleum gas, has uniform rates throughout each 24-hour period, except for Christmas and New Year - none of the treacherous Tariff 2 on Teesside.

Darlington not only has a greatly enhanced rate after 11pm, when many civilised people are just thinking about their beds, but is Britain's 37th most expensive taxi town. It just feels like number one.

THE four call boxes outside Darlington's old town hall - opposite Binns - may at last offer good reason to buy a mobile phone. There has never previously been a reason for mobility, and several strong arguments against.

These four work as a ruthless team, however - like Dick Turpin in quadruplicate - and the highway robbery needs arresting.

On countless occasions in recent months we have inserted 20p - to phone home, as Busby formerly advised - only for the machine to make noises akin to a seriously upset stomach, swallow the money like a doze of Milk of Magnesia and forever thereafter holds its peace. The sound is only of silence.

Have others had a similar experience? Are the Old Town Hall call boxes alone in their larcenous intent? And since callers at least got their twopence back, whatever happened to good old Button B?

LAST week's column, accurately enough at the time, reported that the Apostrophe Protection Society had just two members - John Richards, the 75-year-old founder, and his son. Since news of the APS hit the nation's news stands, however, membership has increased to 250 and fast rising. The little thing may have legs, and life, just yet.

A DOT of a place above Shildon but a starting point in railway history, Brusselton appeared in Monday's paper. By no means for the first time, the Echo misspelt it.

"It's my pet hate," protests 76-year-old Margery Howes from Shildon. "I even had to tell the county council that they'd got a name sign wrong. They put up another within two weeks."

The column, as the admirable Margery points out, is in no position to cast the first clemmy. Still hazy after all these years, we have invariably to check the spelling - Brusselton, or Brussleton? At home we just called it Bruss, the spellcheck rejects both options, the Gazetteer ducks out. For those slow to learn, however, we have devised a sort of geographical aide memoire: Brusselton, remember, has el plates.

...And finally, a grateful note from Brian Madden on the back of last week's column on 1950s children's television programmes - "the best website I've ever found," he says.

Since we've also been on about carrot and stick - rather more of the latter - in the region's schools, Brian recalls a good Christian education at St Augustine's in Darlington.

"I and my brother and two sisters, my parents and a couple of aunts all went to the school in Larchfield Street.

"Every one of us, at some time in our school lives, were beaten by Sister Margaret. She had a great long cane that lifted the back of her skirts as it started its arc from the floor below to the outstretched hand of the poor miscreants."

Is it, asks Brian plaintively,

a record?

Published: 23/05/2001