READERS gasping for the promised column on cigarette cards must again get their pipe; as the waters deepen, it's time once more to call out Reeth Fire Brigade.

These columns over the years have had abundant mileage out of Reeth's single fire engine: there was the secret ballot over the firemen's ball, the curious case of the goat up a tree and the ever-memorable Sunday morning on which - after 11 weeks of inactivity - sundry cows became stuck in diverse ditches.

Last Thursday evening, however, we came upon Reeth's firemen very much closer to home - sent 16 miles down Swaledale to help pump raging floodwater from the bottom end of Middleton Tyas, which is where the column lays its head.

In winter, the brook across the green is normally 18 inches wide and not six inches deep. If a flooded beck can cause such heart-breaking damage to property - in some cases for the second time in four months - what is the fearful potential of the River Ouse in York? That things weren't much worse was because of the efforts and smart thinking of the Reeth irregulars, joined for four hours in pouring rain by their no less hard working colleagues from Colburn fire station, near Catterick Garrison.

To them, and to rescue workers throughout the region, we owe a perhaps greater debt than often is realised or expressed - and if there's still a firemen's ball, if not a second ballot, there could be drinks all round.

IF things are a bit cold and miserable over here, what about New York - particularly when stuck in a lift half way up/down a skyscraper.

It happened last week to North-East MPs Giles Radice and Jim Cousins and to fearless Michael Fallon, the former Conservative member for .

Darlington. As the temperature rose, the air quality dropped and jobsworths played stateside silly beggars, all but one of the prisoners of the lift began removing their clothes.

Not so the fastidious Fallon, now MP for Sevenoaks in Kent but remembered in Darlo as a man for whom high fashion meant a woolly pully - even in the middle of summer.

"It was like a Turkish bath," reports Brian Sedgemore, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch. "Only Michael Fallon behaved in a wholly British fashion, keeping his jacket on and his tie done up. From him came not a drop of fear-stained sweat."

Whether he was still wearing his true blue pullover has unfortunately not been recorded.

SINCE the Eating Owt column is also overflowing just now, join us for an instant at Yates' Wine Lodge in Darlington. Again it is a story of water, water everywhere.

Mr C Grainger from Newton Aycliffe lunched there with his wife, discovered that the "award winning" beef cobbler was unavailable - an award from whom, and for what? - and was recommended by the barmaid to try the roast beef dinner.

Lodging his subsequent complaint to Yates's head office, he described what followed as "a dirge on a plate" - though the really miserable bit was yet to come.

"The roast beef dinner was a joke," wrote Mr Grainger. "The roast potatoes were obviously straight from the freezer, as were the carrots."

The solitary, salutary Yorkshire pudding was frozen to death, too, the beef apparently sliced by someone with a Nuffield qualification in micro-surgery, and the mash - this is the bit that gets our correspondent - of the instant, rehydratable sort.

"In all my years of eating out I can safely say I have never been served instant mash," wrote Mr Grainger. "Please, please tell me tha this is not common practice."

Yates's couldn't. "Unfortunately," replied the customer service department - unfortunately, understand - "the meal was to specification. The mashed potato is instant and the vegetables frozen. I understand your complaint and have passed it to the catering department."

Yates's added that a new menu has been launched and suppliers changed "to increase quality". Mr Grainger has even been invited to offer his views - feedback, as it were - should he wish to try it. For some reason he has instantly declined.

WE all make mistakes, of course, though rarely as ghastly - or as inexcusable - as that rather gleefully pounced upon by Clarice Middleton in Richmond.

Discussing long-gone events in the bar of Wheatley Hill workmen's club, the column a couple of weeks back talked of "not even bearing teeth".

"I have a mental picture of you and your photographer strolling into the bar carrying a bag full of dentures," writes Clarice - and this in the paper that on Monday talked of an asteroid hitting the earth on September 31, 2030.

You've heard of the four-minute warning. From the Northern Echo there's an extra day.

ALLEN Nixon, meanwhile, has been chewing upon the latest promotional bumph pushed through his door by Safeway.

Allen - the Stokesley Stockbroker - is particularly drawn to the small-print at the foot of the back page. "In-store bakery offers are only available in stores with a Safeway in-store bakery... In-store coffee shop offer is only available at stores with an in-store coffee shop."

It is, he concedes, hardly dangerously radical - "or is it a case of Safeway playing safe?"

MORE small-print: the programme for Cleveland CAMRA's real ale festival at the end of last month reveals what's written on the giant - and inevitably contentious - bottle sculpture outside Teesside Law Courts in Middlesbrough.

"I like to remember seagulls in full flight, gliding over the ring of canals," it says. Eric Cantona, it may be recalled, had similar views.

That little bit of philosophy is from Coosje van Bruggen's Memos of a Gadfly. This has been another.

THE gulls would also be interested in this photograph, above, taken from a flyer for The History Channel, of a little lad standing in a box of freshly caught fish.

It could be Oor Wullie, of course, but Tom Purvis in Sunderland has other ideas. He's convinced it's the young Albert Steptoe - "I can almost hear him calling 'Harold.'."

...and finally, Bishop Auckland Labour party agent Billy Neilson points out how easy it would be for cricket loving Bishop Auckland Grammar School old boys to strike it rich.

Only two £1m questions have ever been revealed on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The first sought the identity of the county cricket team which plays at Chester-le-Street, the second the name of the king known as the Wisest Fool in Christendom.

As anyone who ever went to King James I Grammar School knows, it was our founder - but that, alas, is wisdom after the event.

Back next week - by which time the tobacco may be dry.