THE unknown soldier becomes more familiar with every Remembrance Day. Several more of the national dailies carried his image last week.

The war memorial is in Shildon, now perhaps the country’s best known outside the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Press Association photographer John Giles perchance passed it in the summer of 2004, after covering the opening of the National Railway Museum satellite in the town.

He vowed to return in the autumn of that year, his shot making a full page in The Times. “It was just a very simple statue and all the better for it,” he said. “No angels, no trumpets, no glorifying war.”

This year he went back, his photograph every bit as evocative. Lest we forget? Thanks to John, it’s never going to happen.

IT’S coincidental that Ivor Wade in Darlington should send, from the internet, a selection of “legendary quotes about France”. It was General George Patton, apparently, who said that he’d rather have a German division in front of him than a French one behind him and Norman Schwarzkopf who more cryptically observed that going to war without France was like going deer hunting without your accordion.

A third is attributed to the US talk show host Regis Philbin: “The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee.”

Another French connection from Robert Bacon in Wolviston, near Billingham. “Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.”

IF Shildon’s war memorial is among the most photographed, Redcar – says Peter Sotheran – has claim to the most nomadic.

The 20ft, pink granite memorial to students and staff of Sir William Turner’s College who died in the Great War has stood in six different locations. Originally erected near the staff entrance when the school was in Coatham Road, it was moved after the Second World War into the adjoining cloisters. When the site was redundant in the Sixties, the four-ton memorial followed the school to its new home in Corporation Road and then to Redcar Lane when Sir William Turner’s became a sixth-form college.

After further educational reshuffling, it was moved to the grounds of what is now Redcar and Cleveland College and then, two years ago, to its sixth resting place, near the junction of Corporation Road and Locke Park Road. Like the rest of Britain, Redcar still faithfully remembers the fallen. The harder bit’s remembering where the war memorial is.

ANNE Reynolds in High Grange, near Crook, kindly sends the November neighbourhood watch newsletter for her area, issued from Bishop Auckland police station.

Since nothing much seems to be happening round that way – the “crime break down” amounts to a careless farmer whose car rolled into a field after he forgot to set the handbrake – there’s a piece about dog muck, instead.

“May we also remind people,” it says, “that if they are not seen to be picking up their dogs freesias, they could be given an £80 fine.”

A rose by any other name? Anne – “still laughing” – is moved to verse: If dog faeces were freesias We’d all be content, No need to rid shoes, Of their sweet, fragrant scent.

With a rainbow of petals On path and in park, We could safely go walking In daylight or dark.

PETER Sotheran is also one of two readers – David Shaw the other – who raised musical eyebrows at the use of the word “dispaison” in last week’s column. It was a displaced dispaison, in truth. The word is diapason.

It all came about because of that whiskery old joke about the difference between a terrorist and an organist, Durham Cathedral organist James Lancelot imagined to be chasing the discordant verger who told it with a 32ft dispaison.

A diapason may, indeed, be used for tuning, if not for reminding errant vergers of the error of their ways – but James Lancelot, says David, is far too much of a gentleman ever to consider such fearful retribution.

A NOTHER County Durham churchman, seeking anonymity, draws attention to a piece in New Directions magazine about the latest crucifix – described as “life-size” – planned for a Tyneside church.

It’ll be carved out of pig fat. “The Lard Jesus”, says the Reverend Jim Craig, a full-time arts chaplain who’s also responsible for St Edmund’s chapel on Gateshead High Street.

Mr Craig, one of those who bared all for the photographer Spencer Tunick’s nude art installation on the Quayside in 2005, also has a painting in church of the devil giving an angel the V-sign.

Pig-headed or otherwise, he’d be surprised if folk were offended.

“Apart from the fact that the Lard Jesus is of a substance not exactly revered for its beauty, I really don’t see a problem with it.”

Mr Craig’s average Sunday congregation is about 30.

BACK in September 2009, we reported that Thomas the Baker in Darlington – as doubtless elsewhere – no longer sold gingerbread men. Politically correct, agonisingly emasculated, they had been replaced by gingerbread persons.

Clearly there are even more ginger nuts than we’d supposed. Lancashire County Council, it’s reported, has told 400 primary schools that they, too, must bow to the ginger whingers.

Happily, there are still those whose integrity remains intact. North-East artist Jane Szikora, back in her native Bishop Auckland earlier this year, exhibited her trademark gingerbread man at the town’s food festival.

Not a murmur of protest was heard, which is probably just as well.

Her exhibition was in the throne room of Auckland Castle, next door to the Zurburans. Auckland Castle has enough on its plate already.

FOLLOWING a report on the possible closure of Bishop Auckland court, last week’s column attempted to weigh up whether the correct style should be “magistrates’ court” – as above the court door – or “magistrates court”.

Steve Dawes, in Norton, Stockton, defended the apostrophe. “If it were to be omitted, then ‘court’ would become a verb,” he pleads.

He’s right, of course, as a check on the Echo archive has revealed. Of more than 2,000 references in the past couple of years, almost every one has been to a “magistrates’ court.” As may never have been said at Bishop Auckland, I did us an injustice.

…and finally, one or two more from Robert Bacon, including the faithless suggestion that a man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.

A chicken crossing the road may, he supposes, be poultry in motion; if you don’t pay your exorcist you get repossessed, acupuncture is a jab well done and – ho-ho-ho – Santa’s little helpers are no more than subordinate Clauses.

Someone else reports that Radio 3 played the Gadfly Suite – one of Shostakovich’s – yesterday morning.

More sweet music next week.