Vowel play

The first, in French, is a 5,000-word palindrome - that is to say, something that, in totality, reads exactly the same forwards as backwards.

The second is a 300 page novel, translated into English as The Void, which contrives never once to use the letter 'e'. A complementary piece, in which 'e' was the only vowel used, appeared three years later.

His works are said to have been tinged with melancholy, though lunacy may be a more appropriate word. Some say that his early death was due to being a heavy smoker, but the gendarmerie weren't convinced. Vowel play hasn't been ruled out.

PETER Sotheran in Redcar, who draws attention to Perec on the back of something in last week's column, also sends a 5,000-word English palindrome. It begins:

Star? Not I! Movie - it too has a star in or a cameo who wore mask - cast are livewires.

And ends:

I - we, vile rat. Sack same row, oh woe! Macaroni, rats, as a hoot, tie. I vomit on rats.

Perhaps uniquely in the history of the Gadfly column, readers are definitely not encouraged to do better.

FROM bonkers to conkers, and a note from Bryan Sykes in Seamer, near Stokesley, provides the chance to quote from a more lyrical, and more familiar, work.

Across the road from where he lies awake at night stand two chestnut trees. Rather than count sheep, though there are doubtless plenty of those in those rural parts, he has fallen to "singing" the words of the spreading chestnut tree.

Nearby is the old blacksmith's, outside which the machinery once stood. What, asks Bryan, is the association between village blacksmiths and chestnut trees?

The answer is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he who wrote of Hiawatha by the shores of Gitche Gumme and in 1839 wrote of the Village Blacksmith:

Under a spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands,

The smith, a mighty man is he

With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

The rest is doubtless on Google. It is to be hoped that Bryan sleeps more easily thereafter.

LAST week's column also reported that, to his considerable chagrin, former BR boy John Briggs had lost a pint bet on a railway matter. By way of settlement, he has instead handed over a June 1945 parish magazine from St John's Church in Shildon.

The war in Europe was just over. The Rev Tom Dixon wrote of "sober and restrained joy" rather than boastful triumph and appealed for stuff for the bring and buy stall.

Well-remembered advertisers included Studham's the butcher's, Joe Davison the builder and Hay's who, then as now, make great pies. Arthur Robinson - Newcastle House, Main Street - promised that "high grade" furniture and carpets would be available once the war was over. In the meantime, utility would have to suffice.

Particularly, however, John was taken by a letter asking when it was appropriate to use the word "Amen" at the end of a hymn. Unsung, someone else may be able to explain the great theological mystery of why the Roman Catholics say "Ay-men" and the Protestants "Ah-men." The bet agreeably honoured, the magazine's now free to a good home.

SOMEONE else on eBay is trying to sell the programme for "How to be a Clever Cook", presented at the Hippodrome in Shildon - of fond memory - by The Northern Echo and the College of Modern Housekeeping.

The programme contains recipes for such forgotten delights as skipper sandwiches, fruit fool, devil's toast - what's devil's toast, then? - and salmon pasties. It was probably the 1930s.

The starting price was £1.50. Sadly, no one seems to have made an offer.

JOHN Chandler, himself a former Shildon lad but now training in London to become an Anglican priest, became wrapped up in last week's note on donkey jackets.

Workers employed by the William Press construction company, he recalls, used to wear black and white donkey jackets with the single word "Press" on the back.

"Of course I realised that this was a mark of possession, but how many others didn't know whether to give them a pick, a poke or a quote?"

WE'D also been recalling the sort of lady whose marriage raised eyebrows - but only because of the new name on the rent book. It was started by Mrs I C Smith in Sunderland.

Former Bishop Auckland lad Bill Taylor, long a journalist in North America, recalls writing a story many winters ago about a Philadelphia bride called Merriwether Smith.

"When she married John Christmas, she knew she'd found her life's partner - if only so that she could sign her cards 'Merry Christmas from Merri Christmas."

CLEARLY it is to be one of those columns where one thing leads to another: last week's talk of "donkey's years" leads Pete Winstanley in Durham to claim that it's not a pun, as we'd suggested, but Cockney rhyming slang - "years" for "ears". Whatever the merits, an email debate has ensued on the origin of the term "Cockney". Most theories are unflattering to our friends in the south if not to Ms Barbara Windsor, right, the dear old Cockney sparrer.

For centuries, a cockney was either a small and misshapen egg - a "cock's egg" - or a soft, spoiled and probably effeminate child.

A mother's darling, says the Oxford, a nestle-cock, a child that sucketh too long.

Later it came to be a derisive term for townsmen - soft southerners -in general, as opposed to their hardier cousins in the sticks.

Why it is now only applied to Londoners, specifically those born within the sound of Bow bells, we have been unable to ascertain.

...and finally, we told four weeks ago of teething troubles with the new computer, not least something called an optic mouse. "Is this the kind which comes with a whisky measure, perchance?" asks Gavin Hay, in Darlington.

It's apparently called an optical mouse, says Gavin, using a light emitting diode (LED) instead of the "old fashioned" ball and roller arrangement.

"There's a more technical explanation," he adds, "but I fear your readers would fall asleep."

Lest they do so in any case, the column retires until next week.

Editor's note: A challenge to come up with a palindromic headline in celebration of Georges Perec, produced 'So, mad Amos'.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/gadfly