Teesside International Airport's name change has clearly not quite registered around the world.

Spectator was in Amsterdam's vast Schiphol airport last week waiting to board the evening flight to Durham-Tees Valley when the public address announcer declared: "Would passengers due to fly on the 19.35 to....."

The pause was lengthy as the announcer pondered the unfamiliar name before her.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, she blurted out: "...Teesside, please come forward for boarding". Wry smiles all round at gate B45.

It turned out not to be only hiccup. Five minutes later the flight was cancelled because of a technical problem with the aircraft. Perhaps it didn't know the way.

Ironically the super-fast world of the internet is also slow to catch on. The web sites for KLM and Ryanair, two of the carriers which use the airport, this week were still including references to Teesside International.

Waste not ...

SLOE gin used to be the tipple elderly aunts and grannies made each autumn and produced on the quiet for the grown-ups at Christmas the following year, when it was suitably mature.

Now, thanks to diversification on a North Yorkshire farm, there are almost 100 stockists across the country for this rural treat - but it's been a bad year for sloes as the early-spring blackthorn blossom was hit by frost.

Richard and Julia Brown of Manor Farm, near Malton, have made a desperate appeal for farmers with sloes in their hedges to go in for their own minor bit of diversification and brave the thorns to pick them, for up to £2.50 a kg.

It's a sign of the times that sloes may be left in hedgerows. In Spectator's colleague's country childhood, sloes, like brambles, would have been the target of local residents as soon as they were ready.

Only Southerners

AFTER the extensive national publicity generated by the Bowes Museum's wonderful exhibition of sea painters earlier this year, we might have hoped for better things from contestants in Brain of Britain on Radio 4 this week.

Asked which County Durham market town boasted a ruined castle and the Bowes, which was actually described as an "art gallery", the first contestant offered: "Hawes." The next, with "Chester-le-Street", was at least in the right county and was probably thinking of Lumley Castle, which is hardly a ruin.

It took a third shot to hit on Barnard Castle. But the poor souls were Southerners.