WHEN it comes to ambitions, best to aim low. Mine, long attained, were to be invited to open the church garden party and to address the old school speech day. (No half holidays allowed.)

Restless, a third aspiration arose. It was to write a story which legitimately might appear beneath the headline atop today’s column.

Brotherlee is a hamlet in Weardale, back road west of Eastgate, once with a Methodist chapel but now home to little more than one of the dale’s many holiday home parks. They’re no doubt very fond of that, too.

So when the quite magnificent folk of the Weardale Family History Society invite me to talk for half an hour at the opening last Saturday of their first festival there is – of course – no fee, but a deal, a quid pro quo, nonetheless.

Fraternal greetings, find me a Brotherlee love story.

Ken and David Heatherington, volunteers who enthusiastically help run the Weardale Museum up at Ireshopeburn, are set to work. Ken produces the last will and testament, written in 1756, of John Muschamp of Brotherlee. Having bequeathed his soul to the Almighty and his body to the ground, Muschamp then attends with great generosity to the disposal of his assets. All intended beneficiaries are described as “loving”, as doubtless was their provider.

David, in turn, provides much fascinating information – a “gentlemen of standing” of those parts who did much for the Primitive Methodist cause and converted an old barn into the chapel.

Brotherlee love? This is a veritable love feast.

THE Family History Society’s exhibition takes place until this Sunday in the 800-year-old St Thomas’s parish church in Stanhope. Few areas of England may enjoy greater generational kinship.

Before the opening we head up to Brotherlee, essay a couple of photographs, are almost overtaken by a grey haired runner pounding like the Royal Mint the roads. Could it have been Ian Bloomfield, gentleman of those parts and marathon man extraordinary?

It’s the dale of the Emersons and the Pearts, the Hogarths – who may alone populate Rookhope – and of the Bainbridges, one of whom founded the great department store in Newcastle.

In the opening talk, I’m minded to recall Wearhead United’s centenary dinner in 2007 at which the former Sunderland and England footballer Eric Gates spoke of the first Wembley cup final in 1923, an occasion on which a police horse called Billy played a starring role.

Eric didn’t identify the horse, simply observing that several present might share the same name. “Bloody hell,” said someone on our table, “a police horse called Coulthard.”

There is much to see, to learn and to marvel at, a rich treasury of remarkable folk and a lifelong resource. Particularly I’m taken by the life and times of William Morley Egglestone (1838-1921), a man truly described as polymathic to whom space may in the future allow a return.

For the now the festival continues apace, and an ambition is achieved.

n The family history festival is open to the public from 10am-5pm until Sunday and has daily talks at 2pm. Tomorrow at 6pm there’s a dedication service for a magnificent new book about the church’s restored west window and, at 7pm, the launch of the Friends of St Thomas’s. On Saturday at 7pm there’s a concert by Weardale Community Choir and on Sunday, 5pm, a Festival evensong.

“YOU don’t remember me, do you?” asks an elderly lady. Since we’re still in Stanhope parish church, the subsequent confession is both truthful and humble.

“You should do,” she says, cheerfully, “you wrote about me forty-odd years ago.”

Forty-odd years ago, it transpires, Dorothy Morton boasted the car registration 32 CUP. She still does. “The registration plate’s worth an awful lot more than the car is,” says Mrs Morton, now 90.

It came with her first car – “an Austin, I think” – back in 1947 and has been worn (as it were) by many more since.

“Durham County Council used to charge an extra £5 for keeping the number plate but I don’t think they do any more,” says Dorothy, from Etherley, near Bishop Auckland.

Still 32 CUP attracts attention. “I get honked everywhere I go, especially by lorry drivers on motorways,” she says. “They always look disappointed when they overtake and discover there’s a 90-year-old women at the wheel.”

Both her granddaughters covet it, the number plate with Solomonesque judgement bequeathed to them equally.

I love the story, a fine example – if an ecclesiastical metaphor may be maintained – of casting bread upon the water and seeing what comes up.

Classicists might simply suppose it a case of multum in parvo, as might be supposed of 32 CUPs everywhere.

BEFORE heading off on holiday, we raised a glass to the latest incarnation of the Temperance Seven, sixties syncopators. Clearly it hit the right note.

Susan Jaleel in Darlington loved them back in the day – “off the wall in every way” – Bill Bartle in Barnard Castle recalled that they even featured in an Andy Capp cartoon.

Andy’s listening to the radio. “That group’s good, what are they called?” he asks Flo.

“The Temperance Seven,” she replies.

Click. Andy’s switched off again.

The same piece wondered if the English language had any rhyme – save maybe – for the word “baby”. Eric Gendle in Middlesbrough points out that Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor, is now Lord Lawson of Blaby but is disqualified because proper nouns don’t count.

Lord Barnard may similarly be pleased to learn that, while the hunt pack may once have risked rabies, the danger was always in the plural.

STILL with the peerage, the same column noted the 80th birthday on June 25 of former Bishop Auckland MP Derek Foster – and, incorrigibly, wondered if his birthday suit would be any different from those he seems to have worn every day of his adult life.

Not quite every day, says Bill Bartle. Addressing a Methodist coffee morning in Barney, Derek – now Baron Foster of Bishop Auckland – recounted the occasion when he’d met the US president whilst wearing his Salvation Army uniform.

“Which one he didn’t say, but he must have been on his way to or from the citadel.”

The paper carried a picture of the birthday bash. As ever, Lord Foster looked immaculate.

WE’VE had a sun-blessed week in Pembrokeshire, land of her fathers. On the evening of June 20, whilst exploring a churchyard, I fell spectacularly over a grave surround, narrowly avoided ending cold among the cadavers but still carry substantial bruises. Sleepless thereafter beneath a duvet – invention of Beelzebub – longest day is uniquely preceded by the 80 degree heat of the longest night. It’s good to be back: to back on a fine summer day in Weardale was simply a bonus.