SEEDLESS and perfectly preserved, last week's column noted that on the day of his resignation as Health Minister, Tow Law lad Alan Milburn had jam and bread for his Whitehall lunch.

"In my school days at Tow Law in the late 1930s it was considered a luxury," writes Ken Tyers who continues, it might be said, to have jam on it.

Throughout his 50 working years his bait box contained six slices of jam and bread though sometimes, he concedes, he'd get a change of jam.

Now that he's retired - to Delves Lane, near Consett - his breakfast still comprises two slices of the same. "Great stuff," adds Ken, though perhaps unnecessarily - a man who lays life on thick.

FOR reasons entirely to do with football, we lunched on Saturday at the Boot and Shoe in Greystoke, a delightful little place west of Penrith.

There's a church half the size of Durham Cathedral serving a village half the size of Redworth, a parish that includes Patterdale and Matterdale, Watermillock, Mungrisdale and Penruddock, a heated outdoor swimming pool and a castle which, while its doors remain closed to the public, may still ring one or two bells.

Remember the orphaned son of the noble Lord of Greystoke? He answered otherwise to Tarzan.

Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the king of the swingers first appeared in pulp comics - a reference to the quality of the paper - in 1912. Burroughs subsequently wrote 26 Tarzan novels which have been made into 40 films, most famously starring former Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller alongside the lovely Maureen O'Sullivan.

(Someone in the pub points out that it's 41 films if Terry Scott's Tarzan in Carry On Up the Jungle is included.)

Aped but never emulated, the man with the line in loin cloth remains hugely popular. So far as may be gathered, however - and despite the cobblers in the Boot and Shoe - there is no link whatever with Cumbria.

THE jungle book: ten more things you might never have known about Tarzan:

* Edgar Rice Burroughs was a hard-up pencil sharpener salesman until he dreamed up the hero he called Zantar.

l His first pen name was Normal Bean, a dig at those who thought him slightly crazy, later changed to Norman Bean.

*The 1913 sequel, The Return of Tarzan, was rejected by the publisher. A dozen publishers also rejected the book.

*Burroughs had made so much money by 1919 that he was able to buy a large ranch near Los Angeles. He called it Tarzana.

l A 1914 first edition would now sell for around $60,000.

*Johnny Weissmuller's "Tarzan" yell is said to have been electronically enhanced and played palindromically - the second half a re-wind of the first.

*Far from the jungle, the first film, in 1918, was shot in Morgan City, Louisiana.

l In 1962, a Los Angeles librarian tried to have Tarzan banned on the grounds that he and Jane were living over the besom.

l In 1963, ten per cent of all US paperback sales were of Tarzan books.

l Cheeta the chimpanzee was 71 (it's said) on May 15. He lives in a Palm Springs rest home for retired show business animals.

STILL on the trans-Pennine route, Susan Jaleel in Darlington sends a picture of England's longest winded pub - The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn in Stalybridge, Cheshire, known for quart and pint pot reasons as the Rifleman.

(Stalybridge, it might be added, also has England's finest railway station buffet. Dr Harold Shipman was a regular there, says Susan.)

A pub crawl through North-East Yellow Pages reveals no serious rival, the Hamilton Russell Arms at Thorpe Thewles near Stockton briefly seeming to be the most verbose.

Then a little local knowledge (as might be said of someone who knows his pubs) finally kicked in. Though Yellow Pages lists it simply as Ye Jolly Farmer, memory suggest that the village inn in Dalton, near Thirsk, is officially Ye Jolly Farmers of Olden Times.

Not in the same range as the Rifleman, of course, but the North-East probably can't do better.

SPEAKING of pubs and of railway stations, as we were the other day in the Brit, the largest town in Britain which is more than ten miles from a station is Hawick. The English village furthest from a railway line - gazeteering per Mr John Briggs - is in north Devon. The name of this forsaken place? Hartland.

CLEARLY a chap who knows which way the wind blows, Geoff Howe in Darlington points out that Tyne Tees Television meteorologist Bob Johnson uses the first letter of place names on his weather map to spell out words. The acronym the other day was Claptrap. Something to do with all the recent thunder, no doubt.

THE turmoil enshrouding the tower and glories of York Minster coincides a) with the revelation in the Daily Telegraph that the present Archbishop of York was known at school as Edna the Cruel and b) with the consecration a week tomorrow of Canon Tom Wright as Bishop of Durham.

None, since we have just been recalling meteorological extremes, will need reminding of the cataclysmic events in York which coincided in 1984 with the elevation of an earlier Durham bishop.

This week's Church Times appears to join the anxious debate, reporting the requirement on the Minster chapter - the governing body - "to maintain a library whose purpose shall include the promotion of scared learning."

It may be true, indeed, that the entire Church of England is running scared just now. Or maybe they just meant sacred.

JOE Powell in Middlesbrough has been teaching infants in a school built for juniors, with resultant problems - wet shoes, wetter floors - in the wall mounted toilets.

Concerned, the head asked Joe to have a word with the boys after assembly, but to remember the school policy of calling everything by its proper name.

"Hands up anyone who can tell me what a urinal is," says Joe.

Not a flicker, not a drop. The realisation's dawning that he'll have to tell them not to pee on the floor when a hand hovers, half-heartedly.

"Come on, Simon," says Joe. "Tell us what a urinal is."

"Please Mr Powell," says Simon, "it's a grey animal with a horn on its nose."

...and finally, we have been unable satisfactorily to discover why the term "jammy" has come to be associated with good luck, any more than the dictionaries adequately explain the difference between a "preserve" and a "conserve".

Since this is the column which always wants jam on it, readers may in both cases be able to help.

If not quite jam tomorrow, as the White Queen suggested in Through the Looking Glass, another slice of life next Wednesday.

Published: 25/06/2003