Peter Barron was born in Saltburn, and raised in Middlesbrough. He joined The Northern Echo as a reporter in 1984, rising to become the paper's editor in January 1999.

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THERE are mistakes which are trivial and mistakes which send you round the bend.

I once drove all the way to Pickering to speak to a ladies' luncheon club, only to discover I was a year early. They'd made the arrangement more than 12 months in advance and the booking got mixed up.

It was annoying at the time, of course, but nowhere near as bad as being a year late In March 2007, I was happily enjoying myself at a friend's 40th birthday bash in London when my son rang with some alarming news: "Dad, a man's been on the phone to say you're supposed to be speaking at a dinner in York."

Due to a diary catastrophe, I was 200 miles away when I should have been addressing a large gathering of freemasons and their wives at the annual dinner of the Province of Yorkshire North and East Riding.

All I could do was fall on my sword and, mercifully, the freemasons proved to be a forgiving bunch. They agreed to give me a second chance and last week I went to York Racecourse for their 2008 dinner.

I feared the worst but the jibes were entirely good-humoured and my hosts extremely kind.

I also learned that the freemasons, who have not enjoyed the most positive of public profiles, are the biggest contributors to the hospice movement outside of the National Lottery.

I thank them for that, for everything else they do for endless good causes, for the generous cheque they gave me for the Butterwick Children's Hospice in Stockton, and for being so understanding.

HAVING sewn together the loose ends in York, my next speaking engagement was to the Darlington Machine Knitting and Craft Club last Wednesday night.

The last time I'd spoken to the club was on March 19, 2003 and I was called back to the office in a hurry because it looked like the bombing of Iraq was about to begin. As it turned out, the bombs didn't start landing on Baghdad until the early hours of the morning, so I could have stayed a bit longer.

It was nice to be invited back and, thankfully, I got through the talk uninterrupted.

One of the members, Val Tait, was a Saturday girl at The Echo as a 15-year-old and remembered her days in the old reading room with great fondness.

"I loved it," she said. "The buzz in the newsroom and the noise of the presses were unforgettable."

She left in 1962 to become a radiographer at Darlington Memorial Hospital and recalled the time Harold Evans, then editor of The Northern Echo, came in to the casualty department.

He'd been speaking at a dinner and had somehow dislocated his jaw. "He couldn't shut his mouth," said Val.

There are those who say the same about the latest editor.

APOLOGY time. In last week's report about the 19 North-East sporting venues in the running to become training centres for the 2012 Olympics, we produced a map showing their locations.

Peter Rowley, chairman of Sport England North-East, was one of a number of readers who kindly pointed out that we managed to put the University of Sunderland's Centre for Sport in Middlesbrough.

The person responsible is being offered to the British archery team - for target practice.

MIND you, we all make mistakes. The Daily Mail's report on the Chelsea v Olympiacos match last week featured a player called Ballard. I suspect he was a cross between Ballack and Lampard.

9:33am Monday 10th March 2008

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