FOR rather longer than perhaps was ideal, we had chance on Saturday evening closely to examine Durham's expensively reborn bus station - an astonishing improvement, though not even Durham County Council can do anything about some of the fellow travellers.

It's fully enclosed, air conditioned, attractively tiled, sensibly signed, forbids smoking and offers up to the minute travel information.

Should the wait become too irksome for those of us of advancing years, there's even an Age Concern shop on the concourse - proclaiming that there's still time to take out a funeral plan.

Whether there's time before the service 43 to Ushaw Moor finally arrives isn't made clear.

A large notice board indicates that all this has been achieved by the county council's "strategic transport alliance" and funded by the Local Transport Plan (which is very kind of it.)

Since the acrid old place offered little more than a cheap ticket to an early grave, the council is to be congratulated. Since it's been promised for at least 20 years, might we not now have something similar in Darlington? Or, come to that, anything at all?

WITH or without the apostrophe, a sign in a clothes shop in Hurworth advertises a "Massive ladies sale" - less full figures may have to downsize elsewhere.

The Stokesley Stockbroker, meanwhile, sends from Tunisia a splendid photograph of the leather goods shop belonging to M. Orter. (See below) Though it seemed a bit quiet at the time, L'Apostrophe is doubtless in the right place.

IN Willington, the centenary of the present church of Our Lady and St Thomas is being marked, among much else, by the publication of a parish history by renowned Roman Catholic historian Leo Gooch.

A piece in this Saturday's At Your Service column will doubtless add to the festivity.

Like many other west Durham communities, Willington had an influx of Irish labour in the mid-19th century - and like many other places, it sparked trouble.

"This arose partly through English insularity and partly through Irish solidarity," writes Dr Gooch. The fact that Willington had 31 pubs probably didn't help matters, either.

"It wasn't conducive to peaceability," he concedes.

At least three murders in Willington can be attributed to sectarian motives, adds Dr Gooch. A century and a half later, the world hasn't changed very much, has it?

THOSE familiar with the works of Hans Christian Andersen, or who remember Danny Kaye's much reprised lyrics on Children's Favourites, will know the story of the King's New Clothes. (Originally the clothes belonged to the emperor, but "emperor" didn't scan.)

Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine!

Look at the cut, the style, the line!

The suit of clothes is altogether

But all together it's altogether

The most remarkable suit of clothes

that I have ever seen....

In truth, of course, the vain old king was in his birthday suit, but - since not being able to "see" the clothes was an indication of foolishness - only a little boy watching the procession had the innocent courage to bare his soul.

The king is in the all together

But all together the altogether

He's altogether as naked as the day

that he was born...

Funny how the story of the king's new clothes came to mind when 1700 people pranced naked across the Millennium Bridge on Tyneside on Sunday morning - presumably all having been convinced that it was in the name of art, of photography and of culture.

THAT Andersen shelter apart, admirers and physical culturists have wondered why the column itself didn't bare all at 4.30am on Sunday. It was purely because of our incurable gephyrophobia - that is to say, fear of bridges. There can be no other reason whatever.

THINGS off its chest, last week's column wondered what were the medals worn by Princes Edward and Harry at the ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

E-mails from Stan Johnson and from Eric Gendle in Middlesbrough confirm that Harry is wearing the Golden Jubilee Medal granted him by the sovereign and that Edward, who left the Marines without completing basic training, is wearing the uniform of Colonel of the Royal Wessex Regiment and displaying the Silver Jubilee medal, Golden Jubilee medal and New Zealand Commemoration medal.

There was also a call from a service mum, one of whose lads has several times been on parade for the Princess Royal. "The main thing they're told to remember," she said, "is that if spoken to, ma'am rhymes with jam."

No more surprising, says Eric, was that Prince Charles was the most decorated man at last year's D-Day celebrations - "not the many heroes who were actually involved in the landings and earned their medals."

What's more, he laments, Charles's were bigger, too.

STILL with matters ceremonial, Allan Newman in Darlington noted while watching the Trooping the Colour ceremony that all the horses of the Kings Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery - "a very special mob" - were named after characters or horses in the works of the 19th century novelist R S Surtees.

Robert Smith Surtees, as Allan points out, was one of us. Though the family was from Dinsdale, on the Tees, he was born at Milkwell - somewhere near Shotley Bridge - and became squire of Hamsterley Hall, in north-west Durham and an enthusiastic huntsman.

His best known novel was Handley Cross, his best known character Jorrocks, his most curious aversion that - unlike some of us - he was a writer who hated to see his name in print.

Our correspondent also cites Surtees's view that "No man is fit to be called a sportsman who doesn't kick his wife out of bed once in three weeks" - which, curiously, fails to make the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Much that does would have kept the pro-hunt lobby in propaganda for a twelvemonth. There may be another load of Jorrocks next week.

A FEW weeks after the Eating Owt column got its feet beneath the table, the Prime Minister dined last week at the Red Lion in Trimdon Village - the first completely non-smoking pub in his Sedgefield constituency. It's a brave move which deserves to succeed.

Doubtless under pressure - if not cross-examination - from the learned bride-to-be, Mr Blair also revealed that he'd given up smoking a quarter of an hour before his wedding.

In our house, things were rather different. The lady, who smoked so heavily that folk seeing her without a cigarette assumed she must have given up, finally stopped smoking precisely three months before the wedding day. These days it would be called a pre-nuptial agreement.

It's coming up 27 years and, though the air still very occasionally turns blue, she hasn't lit a cigarette since.

Published: 20/07/2005