ABOVE the fireplace at The George in Wath sits uncertainly the "Landlords and landladies" darts trophy, contested by the local licensed trade. New owner Stewart Marr is unlikely to retain it.

"I'd rather cook than play darts," he confesses, dressed in surgical blue, like the bloke who severed the column's varicose veins.

If not on the darts board, however, other accolades may soon be arrowing Wath way. The food is terrific.

Stewart is half Scottish, half Thai; his wife, who answers simply to A, is Thai. Around Darlington, as many know, there's a Thai chef called Oi. Together they'd make a lovely diphthong.

Wath is between the A1 and Ripon, just half an hour or so from Darlington town centre but accessed by one of those middle of the road crossings about which all but the suicidal have had central reservations for years.

Those who suggest that Thai food is much of a muchness should nonetheless head southwards forthwith. This one's the Thai breaker.

Wath's in a name? Though pronounced differently, it's also Thai for temple, which may explain the pretentious nonsense on the menu cover about the eighth wonder of the world. The cooking's ambrosial, even so.

They arrived four months ago after nine years in Thailand, survived rumours that the village's only pub was going to become a Chinese takeaway, have maintained a bar with a pool table and two hand pumps, a no-smoking, flower-filled lounge with comfortable armchairs and an elegant, inexpensive eastern orientated restaurant out the back.

Whatever the mutual culture shock, Wath and its newcomers have quickly grown accustomed to one another, even to a landlord who not only doesn't play darts but doesn't drink, either. "We like it very much here," says Stewart.

We lunched with Jane and Clive Mansell, leaving next week after 13 years at Kirklington Rectory, nearby. Clive, qualified solicitor and canny cricketer, becomes Archdeacon of Rochester and will properly be titled "The Venerable", though he looks much too jolly for the suffix.

The sort of clergyman who gives the Church a good name, he also looks like a chap who wouldn't hurt a fly. When one of the little blighters threatened to come between him and his phad phak, however, it was deftly and dextrously despatched.

This Sunday they'll bid farewells at a parish hog roast - "they'll say the pig has gone and mean the Rector," said Clive - the rest of the week essay logistical exercises many times removed.

The Pickford's man reckoned the Church of England all comers - goers? - record is held by a Vicar out Whitby way, 530 boxes of books when he moved on. The Mansells fear they might overtake it.

The valedictory lunch was vivid, splendidly spiced, manifestly fresh and attractively presented. Mrs Marr cooked - A-plus - Stewart, a man who clearly takes pride in what he does, hovered a little anxiously. If not from the operating theatre, perhaps he'd been beamed down from the Starship Enterprise.

The quartet began with a memorable "combo" of chicken and beef satay, spring rolls, crisps veg, pork on deep fried toast and spare ribs and followed with four or five main courses among which the steamed sea bass was particularly extolled.

There were puddings, too - excellent banana fritters, abundant coconut milk, custard which prompted Teletubbies tales.

Clive insisted, hand on venerable heart, that the owners hadn't been forewarned of our arrival. Whether they had or not is immaterial, because those who follow in the column's slipstream are urged to see for themselves. It'll all come out in the Wath.

The George Country Inn, Wath, Ripon (01765) 640202. Open lunchtime and evening except Tuesday. Thai bar meals all under £5, restaurant main courses not much dearer. Takeaways, too and OK for the disabled.

THE 2003 AA Bed and Breakfast Guide offers an "Egg cup" symbol for outstanding breakfasts - Wilson House at Barnard Castle among the winners - and a "Pie" symbol for upper crust dinners. Recipients include Low Cornriggs Farm at Cowshill, top of Weardale, and the Arkleside Hotel at Reeth.

Only one establishment in the North-East and North Yorkshire gains both symbols - Spital Hill, just south of Thirsk. Early bird, we've booked breakfast already.

IT had been a bad weekend for the landlord of the Wheatsheaf in Carperby and for his fellow Leeds United supporters in the village - trounced 4-1 at home by the Arsenal, done for speeding on the way to the game, one of their Land Rovers half inched when they got back.

"Carperby Rovers lost as well," they reported, gloomily.

Carperby's in Wensleydale, the Wheatsheaf where James Herriot spent his honeymoon when he was nobbut a vit'nary.

It's a football pub, the bar decorated with pictures not just of Leeds United but of slightly more obscure sides, like Gillingham. Gillingham may be bigger in Carperby than they are in Kent.

It's also a very warm, welcoming and instantly agreeable pub, the full bar meal menu available on Sunday lunchtimes and lots of folk in Last of the Summer Wine shorts to enjoy it.

Vegetarian options included spinach and ricotta cheese cannelloni, leek and parsnip hotpot and vegetarian sausage; the steak and mushroom pie dish was full, the contents succulent but endangered by a capricious salt cellar. The liver and onions, for which The Boss has a carnivorous weakness, was highly rated. Chips were decent, too.

Black Sheep or Webster's Yorkshire Bitter are on hand pump, Abba - no thank you for the music - fairly quietly on the tapes.

And if all that's not recommendation enough, it's from an Arsenal man, magnanimous in victory, as well.

THE Black Sheep Brewery, incidentally, marks its tenth anniversary this week by selling ale - in "participating pubs" - at 1992 prices: £1.30 for Black Sheep bitter, £1.45 for the Special.

Founded by Paul Theakston, the original black sheep, the brewery delivered a decade ago yesterday to its first few pubs around its Masham, North Yorkshire home.

Now there are over 700 pub customers and export orders half way round the world. Around 13 million pints a year are consumed, and another two in the Wheatsheaf at Carperby.

POOLING information, so to speak, we have been on about Horace Batchelor, he of Keynsham, Bristol.

"You brought back many happy memories of Radio Luxembourg," writes Mrs E Sayers from Spennymoor, whose teenage friendships all seem to have been conducted against a Luxembourg background.

Horace Batchelor, who died in 1977, aged 78, was said (mainly by himself) to have invented the Infradraw method of pools selection. He claimed ten per cent of clients' winnings and lived in a 27 bedroom mansion (in Keynsham, of course).

The Daily Mail, however, carried a letter from a lady in Manchester insisting that her unemployed father had sold Batchelor the system when times were hard. "I can only say that if it had worked, my father would have had no need to sell it," she added.

Mrs Sayers has a PS, too - "my husband says keep up the good work." What she says can only be imagined.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's yellow and flashes.

A banana with a loose connection.