Today's passengers are welcome to catch any bus... as long as it's a certain shade of blue. Whatever happened to the mulit-coloured merry-go-round of days gone by?

FROM April 9, announced one of many notices stuck to the bus window, Go North-East services from Bishop Auckland would be taken over by Arriva. So another shade is drawn, another route deracinated.

Once extravagantly hued, bus travel now offers a variation on Mr Henry Ford's famous observation that customers might have any colour they wished so long as it were black.

For Ford black read Arriva turquoise, the colour of a sanatorium netty.

The timing was coincidental, some would say serendipitous. A few days earlier, Mr John Lambard from Wolsingham had sent a graphic and lengthy letter about the multi-coloured merry-go-round that was once the bus network around Bishop.

There was an appropriately jaunty map, too, routes radiating to Woodland and West Hartlepool, to Tyne and to Tees.

He recalls 20 operators with names like Dauntless, Heather Belle and Favourite Direct serving 25 routes from half a dozen different departure points; he recalls Bond Brothers and Stephenson Brothers, Eden and OK, remembers when a dupe wasn't an innocent abroad but the relief bus which every day would follow the eight o'clock from Bishop to Darlington, in order to ease the overcrowding.

"On a recent visit to Bishop Auckland bus station I was amazed and saddened by the paucity of colours and variety of buses using it," he says.

Time was when there was Wilson's of Willington and Anderson's of Evenwood, when GB stood not for Great Britain but for Gillett Brothers, their subjects no less dutiful in their allegiance.

"I know it smacks of anorakism," says John - anorakism and neologism - "but I felt I should get it down on paper before I forget such interesting times."

HE'D been brought up in Bishop Auckland in the 1940s and 50s, remembered Featherstones' of Hamsterley and Shaws' of Byers Green, recalled bus trips with his parents to places like North Bitchburn, High Wham and Simpasture - on the edge of what now is Newton Aycliffe, but in his childhood a wartime munitions factory, much blessed with Aycliffe Angels.

John recalls the concrete railway station, the armed polliss on guard duty - "observed with childish awe" - and Mrs Lilian Stevens, who sold cigarettes to the muck-and-bullets munitions workers from a roll-top desk in her semi-detached sitting room.

She became Newton Aycliffe's first postmistress; her daughter still has a shop in the town.

Up in High Wham, Cockfield way, they went to see Robert Blackett, drift miner and horse keeper, whose trotter called Jane Eyre became a favourite at country shows.

Mr Blackett was also in the habit of riding his hunter to the Cross Keys at Hamsterley, imbibing freely and returning by way of equine automatic pilot. Just like the Arriva, no doubt, his four-legged friend never let him down.

BISHOP Auckland became a bus town in 1912 when Mr EB Hutchinson, who'd registered four vehicles in the Lowestoft area, for some reason changed gear and moved the company to the North-East.

It became the United, remaining in Cockton Hill until 1932 when the headquarters again moved, to Grange Road in Darlington.

John remembers six stands in the Market Place, other starting places in Chester Street and South Church Road, in Princes Street and in Bondgate, outside the Sun Inn - now happily rebuilt at Beamish.

Today's services are concentrated on a fairly gloomy bus station, to which - £3.20, single - the column took itself on Tuesday.

Mr Peter Sixsmith in Shildon had also reported sightings of all manner of alien Arrivas, automotive oftcumdens, brought from the south with Go gone in order to make up the numbers - the No 1, the 12, the 88, the 104.

It looked much the same as always, only more turquoise, save for a clutch of drivers hanging around like kids on their first day at a new school, waiting to be told which classroom they were in and why everything ended in ology.

There have been teething troubles, shall we say, the language considerably more colourful than the bus fleet.

Admittedly there is still the hourly Weardale service, which may the Traffic Commissioners bless and keep for ever, admittedly a flat-pack Eden and a single Go North-East double-decker, sitting there egregiously like a conked-out cuckoo in a turquoise nest.

For the most part, in every direction, is the colour of Henry Ford's aphorism. It could become the last bus of all: forever Arriva, amen.

The good guide to overcrowding

A LINGERING lunch yesterday helped draw to a happy ending the remarkable story of the Pagendam family and the Black Bull at Moulton, near Scotch Corner.

It also marked a milestone birthday for Audrey Pagendam - friends say 75, Mrs Pagendam says you should never ask a lady her age - who with husband George took the Bull by the horns 42 years ago.

Awards followed apace, the first Good Food Guide entry - and one of the first in the North-East - in 1966. "We only had 26 seats, we just couldn't cope with the subsequent rush," recalls Mrs Pagendam.

"I remember ringing the Good Food Guide and asking to be taken out, but a very snooty lady told me that it was they who decided who went in, not me.

"After that, people would come clutching the guide. The waiter would tell them not to let Mr Pagendam see them with it."

It was the age of the Berni Inn, of well done steak and badly done Black Forest gateaux. "A pioneer of gastronomic excellence in the North-East as surely as George Stephenson led the railway revolution," the Eating Owt column observed of the Black Bull a few years ago.

The 1985 Good Pub Guide entry was on the recommendation of Countess Peel, a few years later the Bull went trans-Atlantic, lauded in the New York Times. People particularly loved the Brighton Belle Pullman carriage out the back.

The 2006 Good Pub Guide talks of substantial and unusual dishes and jolly waitresses.

George, also a wine merchant, died in November 2000. Sarah, their daughter, manages the pub with her mother - but now it's on the market.

"Sarah says it's not sold until there's money in the bank, and there's no money in the bank yet. You'll be the first to know," says her mum.

They called it the Last Fling lunch, invitations sent to some of the country's leading restaurateurs, Mrs Pagendam aiming soon to put her feet up.

"I remember my birthday 42 years ago, hoovering the bar at midnight with tears rolling down my cheeks. George asked me what was wrong, he didn't believe in having a day off on your birthday. I'm hoping to have a few more off now."

CHRONICLING world renowned folk singer Julie Felix's appearance at Frosterley village hall, last week's column suggested that she wasn't part of the Baez Tapestry. Ivor Wade in Darlington points out that someone got to the pun first: it was the title of a double CD by singer and songwriter Carole King, still performing (to Ivor's obvious delight) at the age of 62.

HEADLINED "Hearth of the matter", we told on March 30 how Ray Sparks, a metal detecting enthusiast from Newton Aycliffe, had found an intriguing plaque near Eshott airfield, in Northumberland.

"This fireplace," read the plaque, "is a gift to the airwomen of RAF station Eshott from the people of Ceylon, 1943."

Mystery burned bright. Why a fireplace? Why Ceylon? Neil Harper in Catterick Garrison now offers a plausible, and no less intriguing, explanation.

During the war, says Neil, a number of Royal Canadian Air Force groups were stationed around Yorkshire. Most were sub-named after places in Canada.

One was "Vancouver" group, of which 102 squadron - based at Pocklin gton, east of York, was named Ceylon. Ceylon - and now the fireplace quest grows really warm - is also a place in Canada.

"On returning from German raids, many of the bombers were forced to land where they could, especially if they were in difficulty," says Neil.

"I believe the fireplace may have been presented because many of the airwomen were nurses and may have helped the injured crew on their brave return."

The line about the "people of Ceylon" was probably their little joke; the smoke goes up the chimney just the same.

...and finally, news from the Ovate Arena: Jackie Smalley, everything he's cracked up to be, became at Peterlee Cricket Club on Monday evening the first man to retain the world egg jarping championship. "He's spent the last 12 months perfecting his grip, but unfortunately it's cost him dozens of eggs in the field trials," reports head-on organiser Roy Simpson. So far there's been no word from the rival jarping camp at Howden-le-Wear, but it can only be a matter of four minutes.