DESCRIBED by The Northern Echo as "charismatic but ageing", Pope John Paul II visited the North-East on May 31, 1982. A victory for faith, hope and charity - these three - they let me organise the pontifical press gang.

The reporters were, as they say, hand picked: the brightest and best that we had.

They brought graphic accounts of 210,000 pilgrims, almost all wearing yellow and white rosettes or waving yellow and white flags and almost all (or so it seemed) bubbling.

They described how the Pope departed from his prepared homily on family and marriage to address the Falklands conflict, still raging; they told how the 90 minute visit to York racecourse had cost the Roman Catholic Church £700,000 to organise and how, in order to help recoup it, a John Paul chalice in Spode cost £195 and a Pope-Scope, a cardboard periscope, £1.

Perhaps the most sparkling of all those uncut journalistic jewels was Dorothy Byrne - feisty, feminist, absolutely brilliant writer - who worked in our Durham office and was asked, despite being an atheist and revolutionary socialist, to accompany the 200-strong party from St Joseph's church in Gilesgate.

The day before the Bank Holiday Monday visit, she'd joined them for Mass in Durham and been given last minute instructions, most of which seemed to relate to rations for the 14 hour trip.

"I have received five verbal warnings as to the dangers of going hungry in York," she wrote.

"The familiar incident in which a crowd of 5,000 turned up for a sermon with only five loaves and two fishes between them could never have happened in this country."

The day after the visit, Dorothy, charged with writing the main "colour" piece, began it thus: "You must have noticed us on television. We were the ones cheering and crying and waving little yellow flags."

Though many things remain memorable about that Papal visit, journalistically nothing could compare with Dorothy's intro.

Clearly the girl would go far.

NO photographs survive of Ms Byrne on the Knavesmire at York. All that exists, alas, is a shot of her reading a ten dollar American magazine called Sex Plunge. For the life of me I can't remember why.

THIRTEEN months before the Pope flew in, an almighty snow storm blew in. It was the last weekend of April 1981 and we were reminded of it by a call last week from former Echo photographer Mike Cowling.

"All this fuss about a couple of inches of snow," he said. "They don't know they're born..."

Back in 1981 we were due to cover the official opening of the youth hostel in Baldersdale, at Teesdale's iciest extremity and named (not many people know this) after Balder, the pagan god of beauty.

Two miles from the destination, the road proved no longer passable. Further progress, familiar in the Falklands, was possible only by yomping.

Finally we reached the hostel, where not only had the opening been postponed because of the storm, not only that they'd remembered to tell everyone except the media - ever thus - but that a feast remained to which not even the faithful forces of St Joseph's, Gilesgate, might have done justice.

"I remember that we sang hymns all the way there and back," said Mike Cowling.

I remember the chocolate cake. There and back, it was worth every single step.

SNOW disorientates, of course. Visiting London last week, Peter Shipp from Redcar read in the Express - "a complimentary copy," he pleads - of Scottish hill farmers amid two foot drifts near Thirsk. It's possible they meant Thurso.

LAST week's invitation to compose Welsh limericks for St David's Day - yesterday - elicited little welcome in the hillsides, or anywhere else. The selection John Briggs found on the Internet included:

Myfanwy, my love, are you there?

All my letters addressed to Llanfair-

Pwllgwyngogerychwmdrob...

Have all been returned

With a note saying Llanfairpwllwhere?

A couple also arrived from Marilyn and Ian Taylor in Darlington, the most timely of which concerned the national sport:

At rugby the Welsh were not bad

And fly halves a-plenty they had,

But working to rule

Meant no games after school

The results were exceedingly sad.

After the events in Paris at the weekend, of course, it has been gloriously overtaken by events.

LAST week's column also attempted to ventilate the word "stythe", spotted on a placard opposing opencast mining at Stobswood, Northumberland.

Well it might. The Times in February 1860 reported that "Donald Tollett, 60, died from suffocation after a freak weather phenomenon called a stythe caused a rise in air pressure, sucking carbon dioxide from a disused coal mine." Poor Tollett was walking through Widdrington Station, just a few miles from Stobswood. His dog couldn't get over the stythe, either.

John Briggs, whom providence preserve, discovers websites as far apart as Hexham, Hartlepool and Halifax in which the preferred local version is stife - "Ye must be posh in Shildon," he says - and is supported by Mary Lewis, raised in Sunderland but long in Teesdale.

"My mother always referred to that obnoxious fug when things became overheated in the kitchen as a stife. True to her teaching, all generations of this family still use the word."

Eric Gendle, however, reckons that both he and his wife - he from Middlesbrough, she from Egton Bridge, closer to Whitby - use "stive".

So what's a stoor, then?

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

/news/gadfly.html

l Sharon Griffiths is unwell

Published: ??/??/2004