ON Thursday, the trio of creme brulees disappeared with astonishing speed even though all the ladies of Leyburn Probus had moments earlier declared themselves too stuffed to eat another wafer.

They settled back for a well-earned snooze in the Wyvill Arms at Constable Burton, and I prepared to assist them with a few, well-chosen, little sleep-inducing words.

Coffee came round, but Wyn Charlton on the top table wanted tea and some hot water.

Wyn is 89, was evacuated from West Hartlepool to Leyburn during the Second World War, and was in possession of a phrase I’d never heard before.

She liked her tea weak, she said. “Neither water bewitched nor tea begrudged,” she added.

I looked at her blankly, us incomers had never heard such a curious phrase before, and the Yorkshirewomen on the table had never heard it either.

I’ve since searched dictionaries to explain this beguiling phrase to no avail. I’ve only found it twice before relating to tea in print: in an 1840 book by a colonial American about his experiences on the high seas, and in an article by Mike Amos who swears his mother in Shildon used it to condemn his father’s beverage-making abilities.

Can you explain?

THE big news of the week was clearly that Posh Spice was to have a fourth baby by Caesarian section the method Julius Caesar gave his name to, said the radio newsreader.

Alas, this appears to be an urban myth.

Man has been cutting babies from the womb since at least the arrival of Bindusara in 320BC. Bindusara’s father was an Indian emperor whose advisors were feeding him daily doses of poison to build up his immunity against a feared assassination attempt. Unfortunately, Bindusara’s heavily-pregnant mother wandered into the room one day and took a casual nibble at her husband’s food.

The advisor immediately drew his sword and cut her throat, so she could not swallow the poison, and then slit her stomach and removed baby Bindusara – the heir to the empire – who was then kept inside a goat’s stomach for seven days.

As Bindusara’s mother discovered, you did not survive a section in the olden days.

In fact, Caesar’s mother, Aurelia, survived Caesar’s birth and had another six children.

The first to survive a Caesarian was the wife of Swiss pig gelder Jakob Nufer. In 1500, the pig gelder performed the operation on her and although she went on to have a further seven children, you can’t imagine he did a terribly neat job.

The Caesarian, or emperor’s cut as it is known in languages as diverse as Arabic, Hebrew and Russian, probably comes from the Latin word caedo, meaning to cut.

YOU may have noticed that Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln, the MP for Darlington in 1910, didn’t have a good opinion of journalists. In 1934, when asked for a comment when he was arrested at Liverpool docks, he wrote: “To newspapermen – you are all doomed by your wickedness and folly!”

Trebitsch Lincoln came to Darlington in 1909 and when researching his story, The Northern Echo’s quote of the day from December 7 of that year caught my eye. It is from someone called Mr J Scott-Stones: “Journalism is in a way music; it is the echo of the day set in a sonata of fine phrases.”

Those phrases don’t come any finer than bewitched and begrudged.