THE Lady of This House observed in one of her columns last week that there is a new breed of "Ask Me Another" text message, quid a query.

A similar "Ask Jeeves" service exists on the Internet, www.ask.co.uk. The day before Sharon's piece appeared, Peter Sotheran in Redcar enquired of it how to write a feature article - a universal mystery akin to the densest of Saturn's rings - but firstly how a magnet worked.

Jeeves replied without obvious attraction: "All the magnetic fields we can create are the result of moving charges. Electromagnets make fields through large currents in wires we make. Permanent magnets produce fields through the orientation of the electron orbits and spins of the atoms in the magnet."

After that, of course, writing a feature article - or six columns a week - was like a kindergarten outing. "Sort out information and lay it out in piles on the floor. Revise your angles and find facts to back them up.

"Don't disregard the rejects, keep them on file for another day...Once you've written your piece, put it aside. The story is still there, but you need to recharge your batteries..."

After battery recharging, it's then time to worry about editors. "They are not out to get you or to destroy your work," adds Jeeves, helpfully.

Thus advised, but aware also of the biblical advice in today's final note, we continue apace.

THE best definition of column writing was the analogy with the labours of Sisyphus, the king of Corinth condemned forever to roll a boulder up the hill until, inches from the top, it hurtled headlong back to basics.

What the poor chap had done to deserve it quite escapes the memory, but one of the gods' daughters - cherchez la femme - may have been involved.

If anyone can turn up an image or picture of the man at work - or, come to that, the explanation in Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia of how a magnet works - it would be much appreciated.

Chambers Dictionary defines "Sisyphean" as endless, laborious and futile. The first certainly, the second sometimes. The third? Readers are much too kind for it ever to be futile.

ELIZABETH Steele, one of those occasional welcome visitors to these shores, writes from Staindrop about the "northern" word "gormless." "Gaum the Norse giant I know," adds Elizabeth, "but what human quality is gorm?"

The question is itself Jeevesian, of course. "He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice," wrote P G Wodehouse in The Code of the Woosters. "I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

The Oxford English supposes the original word to have been "gaum", meaning - among other things - honour or self-possession.

Mrs Steele will doubtless be glad to hear it. "As you may see," she adds, "the silly season has arrived in Staindrop, too."

AMONG much else, last week's column embraced the Dum-Tit Gang from Station Town - terrors in the 1970s, gentlemen now - and

the tip-top claim that when two monosyllabic words are hyphenated, the one with the "i" always comes first.

Edwin Pugh's e-mail disagrees. "The Dum-tit gang must have been non-conformists," he says.

ON the same subject, Pete Winstanley in Pity Me, Durham, draws attention to an item in Dr Seuss's "Sleep Book".

A Mr and Mrs J Carmichael Krox

Have just gone to bed near the town of Fort Knox

And they, by the way, have the finest of clocks.

I'm not at all sure that I quite understand

Just how the thing works with that one extra hand

But I do know this clock does one very slick trick -

It doesn't tick-tock, how it goes is tock-tick.

So with ticks in its tocker and tocks in its ticker

It saves lots of time and the sleepers sleep quicker.

WE have also been recalling Doggarts Stores, a well-stocked department in North-East retail history, and with positive results. Thanks yet again to Gadfly readers, the possibility grows closer of a permanent Doggarts memorial in Bishop Auckland, where the company had its headquarters.

Bishop Auckland town centre manager Derek Toon has spoken with the third generation Doggart brothers and promises news of developments.

Malcolm Gray in Darlington recalls that the building which is now Geneva Road Evangelical Baptist Church began life as the A R Doggart Memorial Schools - named after the company founder, a leading Baptist - while Kath Williamson, also in Darlington, remembers happy days behind Doggarts counters in the town.

"It really was a bit like Are You Being Served?, all very genteel. You weren't allowed to call one another by Christian names, even your friends. There'd have been trouble if you had."

Kath began life in ladies' underwear but moved into the gentlemen's department. Twenty-three years after the company stopped trading, she and three former colleagues still meet every week in Binns caf to exchange what can only be termed shop talk.

"We still discuss old customers, talk about Doggarts clubs and about the pneumatic machines which brought the change. We got tills eventually, but nothing like shops have today.

"There's still plenty to keep us going. It was a lovely, lovely place."

KEVIN O'Brien in Ferryhill offers three "expressions in common use" which he finds particularly irritating.

The first is "enough is enough" - "No explanation required, it's obviously nonsense" - the second is "beyond a joke." It's almost invariably used, says Kevin, to describe a situation which wasn't remotely funny in the first place.

The third is "too little too late". If something is inadequate, he says, it doesn't matter very much whether it's on time or not.

If we continue along these lines, of course, the silly season could be over before barely it has begun.

FOR reasons which are not particularly scandalous and need therefore not detain us, the column had again to attend a meeting with the Football Association last week.

Optimistically invited by those in high places to provide advance indication of thinking, we advised them instead to find a Bible - doubtless there are lots lying around Soho Square - and to look up Matthew 6:34.

They did. The text "There is no need to add to the trouble each day brings" was flashed onto the screen before the meeting.

The intention, however, was that they wouldn't read one of the anodyne modern biblical translations but what is sometimes known as the King James or "authorised" version: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

What riches we lost, what sublime scripture, when we all but abandoned the "old" Bible. Considering the lilies of the field as always, Gadfly - the authorised version - returns next week.