A pub at the end of the garden is many people's dream but one man has made it come true.

With beers including one dedicated to this column's author, a better bit of bitter would be hard to find

A NOTE, firstly, for all those who say that this column hasn't a clue. Here are five of them: 2 down, country went to election after independence (4); 5 down, treat wood (4); 10 down, see Welsh girl blessed (7); 14 down; minute as mark approaches new year (5); 37 across, endlessly test the virtue of one in office (4).

They are possibly rather trickier than those to which Echo solvers are accustomed. The editor was said in his obituary last week to be responsible for the most difficult crossword in any English language journal.

He was also secretary of Ripon Cricket Club and worked one day a week in a local charity shop, enjoyed a beer in the King Billy. More of Mike Rich, and the key to his crypticisms, a little later.

THEY knocked down the Firth Moor pub last week. John Winterburn's is now the only place around there where you can get a proper pint.

There's Demolition Bitter ("a celebration beer") and Faverd Ale, which Darlingtonians will understand; there's Coal Porter, acquired taste, Moor the Merrier - memorable - and on Tuesday lunchtime there was Mike Amos Special Bitter, too.

There was home made corned beef pie, turkey sandwiches with real ale chutney, delicious little sausage rolls, seven meticulously-kept, cask-conditioned beers served from bright buffed hand pumps.

John, in truth, could hardly be more at home in his local - it's the shed at the bottom of the garden and since making ten gallons of beer costs less than £6, he brews 500 gallons a year, buys yeast a quarter of a ton at a time and wouldn't leave his little wooden hut for anyone.

Firth Moor is a former council estate in Darlington, now facing either modernisation or bulldozer. John's garden shed could be a million miles from anywhere, not three feet from the back door.

"My wife isn't keen on the idea but I can't understand why not," he insists.

"At least she knows where I am every night, I don't get drunk and if I did I wouldn't have far to come home.

"It's a place I can come when the grandbairns are crying. The fire on, a Chinese takeaway and a couple of pints and it's absolutely brilliant. I never drank in the Firth Moor, anyway."

He is 55, retired early - "it means I can spend more time working on the beer" - a keen fisherman and bird watcher, too. Once he worked at Shildon wagon works where he joined the queue for the blood donor session.

"Have you got a card?" the nurse asked one of his colleagues.

"No," said his workmate, "it's just me chest that's wheezin' a bit."

Externally unremarkable, the unnamed "pub" is decorated like a saloon bar. There's a certificate proclaiming John to be the owner of a square foot of the Island of Islay, a couple of Darlington Council "achievement" awards for his home-brewed ales, a list of reasons why a beer is better than a woman.

"You can have more than one beer a night and not feel guilty..."

There's also a poster with the slogan "Beer: helping ugly people have sex since 1862."

The ugly person in question is said to resemble Ronald Reagan - though it doesn't, of course.

As wonderful as it all is, of course, it is still not as stupendous as the garden shed at the other end of Darlington in which the Celtic Orthodox Church holds its solemn gatherings.

The Winterburn Arms - where no one, of course, is allowed to buy anything - is frequented chiefly by John himself and by Mark Chambers, his son-in-law. "Canny lad," he says, "built the shed."

A Campaign for Real Ale sub-committee once met there, too. "They've been wanting to come back ever since," says John.

He's been brewing for 30 years, to constantly changing recipes. "I started with kits, decided they weren't very good, bought some books and just seemed to get better and better. Darlington used to have ten breweries, mostly because the water is so good. There's no need to put any salts in it."

For reasons chiefly concerned with staying awake, he is not much of a lunchtime drinker. We had a few measured halves nonetheless, principally of Mike Amos Special Bitter.

Special? Probably not. Bitter? Never felt better in me life.

ALMOST 30 years after opening Mickleton carnival, in Teesdale - and dining out on the story ever since - we have again been invited to say a few words.

On the first occasion, the chairman had announced that they were delighted to welcome Mike Amos but admitted that the first choice was Mike Neville.

"Mike Neville was £50," he added. "Mike Amos was nowt."

The chairman these days is Stan Walinets, he of the Monday morning four-liners. A great day, he promises, is in prospect. Unfortunately the great day is June 1 which, set in stone and in standing orders, is also the date of the Northern League's annual meeting.

Mickleton, alas, will have to find an alternative. We have suggested they write to Mike Neville forthwith.

VILLAGE correspondents, penny-a-liners, once helped keep local newspapers alive - Norman Passfield in Blackhall, Harry Hardy touring the Trimdons, the incomparable Simon and Son.

Alan Bartle, Coal Board joiner by trade who broke local government boundaries and freelanced for up to 14 titles simultaneously - Gardeners' Weekly to the Sunday Post - wandered into the pub last week.

Now 75, he's always lived in Broompark, west of Durham, which afforded the opportunity to ask why The Loves - Broompark's affectionately entitled local - came by its name.

Harrison Love was the Wolsingham draper who bought the land, he said at once, and with not so much as a penny for the thought - but if Alan would care to ring, we may have (as they used to say on the North Home Service) an urgent message for him.

MICHAEL Charles Christopher Rich - "blessed with the proper initials for a cricket lover and with an appropriate surname for a banker" said The Times obit - worked for Allied Dunbar until (like John Winterburn) taking early retirement.

"He felt the rules on selling financial products were becoming much too byzantine" - Times, again - "for a mere crossword compiler to follow."

Officially it was The Listener crossword, though the labyrinth loomed every Saturday in The Times.

Puzzles could take days, even weeks, to solve. One mathematical puzzle took the compiler three years to devise, another solution involved folding the grid in half and punching two holes in the paper.

Rich, also co-organiser of The Times annual crossword championship, prided himself that at least 100 correct answers arrived each week.

He died suddenly, aged 61. "He was a really lovely, selfless man who worked here because he wanted to give something back," says Carol Heslop, manager of Ripon's Help the Aged shop.

"Mike's brain would be on the go all the time. if things were quiet on the till, he'd started compiling one of those crosswords off the top of his head."

Not for the first time, we are indebted to Tom Dobbin in Durham - who reads The Times as assiduously as he reads The Northern Echo - for drawing attention to this loss to cruciverbalism. The answers to those final five are - of course - Iran, deal, Elysian, teeny and temp.

Published: 04/04/2002