THE super-dooper saver tickets - £19 return Darlington to Edinburgh, barely enough to pay for the train driver's ten o'clocks - had gone long in advance. Standard return would be £48.

Then the booking clerk took pity. Perhaps it was Sixer's well practised lugubrious look, perhaps - as he claims - a shared interest (televisually, of course) in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

For £34 each, she said, we could pre-book first class. It was £14 less than the standard - that is to say, distinctly second - class fare and with endless free coffee and stem ginger biscuits served at table.

Both were very good. "The stem ginger biscuits stick to your teeth," said the waiter, appreciatively.

Thus it was that on Saturday, Sixer and I travelled in great comfort (and commensurate smugness) by GNER to the Scottish capital. The first shall be last and the last first, as probably someone said once before.

FROM Waverley station, past the Scott Monument and right down Princes Street, the road was ribboned six deep. Serendipitously, as ever, it proved the day of the 10,000 bagpipers - proclaimed the world's biggest pipe gathering and hoping to raise £500,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The column loves the pipes, an instrument shamefully and historically traduced. "Like an indignant, asthmatic pig," Alfred Hitchcock once icily observed. The Kansas City Caledonia and the Big Rock Pipe Band were kilted out, the Corricyallum from Holland, the Heather Pipes and Drums from Copenhagen and the Scarborough Red Hackle, who'd come from Canada.

Prince Charles was on parade, too. Unlike Donald, he wore troosers.

Ten thousand pipers, maybe, but only about four tunes. There was Scottish Soldier (whatever happened to Andy Stewart?), Campbelltown Loch, Scotland the Brave (which Sixer reckoned always reminded him of Scott's Porridge Oats, such is the power of advertising) and the one to which innocently we danced the Gay Gordons at long-gone fifth form dances.

Soon afterwards, early learning years at this company's Bishop Auckland office, the Gay Gordons tune gained lyrics. Doug Meek and Bill Oliver, bless them, would apply it to Chase Me Charlie, Chase Me Charlie, I'm the Cock of the North and another ditty - perhaps it was the same one - involving Aunty Mary and a canary.

Does anyone know the full score - or the tune's real name, come to that?

SATURDAY'S last train from Edinburgh to Darlington was due away at 7pm, at which time the four o'clock still hadn't shifted itself and Newcastle Central station remained closed indefinitely by a bomb alert.

Uncertain when we might leave, and at how many passengers per cubic metre, we caught instead the 7.10pm to Manchester, alighted at Penrith and summoned the household cavalry across Stainmore. (The cavalry had been planning a quiet night watching Inspector Morse. It was very good of her.)

This was a Virgin service, GNER's fierce rival for the new east coast main line franchise. First class by Virgin, travellers may have a complimentary copy of The Times, free coffee (though nowhere near as good as GNER's), free biscuits and free American style choc-chip muffins, or so it says on the wrapper.

Having previously eaten all the Scotch pies, Sixer then moved a choc-chip muffin mountain, too.

Another pleasant journey was much enhanced by a charming and wholly unflustered train manager called Stephanie, who deserves a Branson brownie button.

Though Gadfly remains a GNER man, you pays your money and you takes your chance. Just remember to mention Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

PERHAPS because he, too, had a train to catch, a chap rang Middleton-in-Teesdale police to ask the time. Teesdale crime prevention panel heard last week that it was recorded an "incident". The number of incidents is rising as the number of pollisses falls. Does Jack Straw know this?

WE were pondering the power of advertising, as in starting off the day with piping Scott's Porridge Oats.

In the same way, no doubt, many from ITV's infancy will recall the exact price of a dozen Gray Dunn caramel wafers - "Caramel wafers simply heaven, 12 for only one and seven" - but Howard Baker in Scarborough has the still greater power of surprise.

Last week's bit on Val Doonican noted that the young Irishman's first paid work, circa 1950, was a radio commercial for Donnelly's Sausages to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance.

Howard, a teenager then, often tuned to Radio Eirann. Whether it was Val Doonican, Donnelly's Sausages or both, he remembers it, every morsel.

Yes it's true, it's the talk of the nation

This sausage amazingly new

So new that it's caused a sensation

And Donnelly's make it for you.

With two wrappers for double protection,

The finest that money can buy,

The last word in sausage perfection

It's skinless and easy to fry.

So the next time you visit your grocer,

Tell him no other sausage will do,

To his other suggestions say "No sir",

It's Donnelly's sausage for you.

Such ad hoc appeal notwithstanding, Howard has one small problem. He's never tasted a Donnelly's sausage - "and I understand they don't make them any more".

ADVERTISERS announcements? Good old David Armstrong in Redcar sends a shoes ad from his local paper - "Truly amazing value; why not buy two while stocks last?" And another - "Laddies bras and briefs (pure passion or lace sensation")

David, Kelloe lad originally, is a bit puzzled. "I can't say for certain, but if they're talking about pit laddies then I don't think there was much call for bra and briefs around the back of the shaft."

ALL this Scots mystery means that several notes must perforce be postponed.

More next week on the remarkable flight northwards of the comma butterfly - the comma spreads whilst the apostrophe inexorably disappears - on what to do with unused mobile phones (the collective noun may be a demobilisation, suggests Tom Purvis in Sunderland) and, particularly, following last week's note on Roman dockers in Bradbury and the Isles.

LATE NEWS: Scotland on Sunday reports that the Scottish Academy of Music and Drama is to offer the world's first BA (Hons) in the bagpipes. "Best known for terrifying cats and making grown men weep," says SoS, perfidiously.

The Independent on Sunday, meanwhile, claims that Virgin train services from Edinburgh to Manchester (via Penrith, if not Stainmore) are to be slashed.

No need just yet to send for the household cavalry: the revisions are on their 72nd draft.

Enough, anyway. Until next Wednesday, the column gets its pipe