Some will be happy, some sad, to see them go. Here is a last look at the North- East's last prefab bungalows in Marske

HALLOWE'EN night, Marske United v Penrith Town; Arngrove Northern League division two. Former Marske chairman John Hodgson arrives in a full-face monster mask and is a little disconcerted when everyone says: "Now John, how's it going?"

Amid the weird and the wonderful, the dark and the demonic, it's possible also to discern something faintly epochal, however.

Behind the bottom goal, the North- East's last prefabs are coming down. Trick or treat?

"It's the colour I can't stand more than anything," says Ethel Evans, 60. "We've been consulted about the new bungalows, they're out of this world. It'll be wonderful."

"I'm not very happy, it'll be very sad to go," says Jim Barnes, 74. "I called this little house Journey's End because I thought I'd see my time out here. I still wish I could."

In the three years after the war, it's reckoned, around 160,000 prefabs were built in Britain at a cost of £213m. Some thought them pre-fabulous, homes fit for heroes; others believed them makeshift, and sharp shifted. None thought they'd last; they weren't meant to.

The prefabs had two big bedrooms, lounge, kitchen and dining area, bathroom, separate toilet. They even had fridge and flushing toilet. If not perhaps ideal homes, they seemed to many to be so much better than the pokey two-up two-downs from which they'd come. The 1940s were the space age, but they were only meant to last ten years.

The Echo archives have a 1962 picture of prefabs in Green Street, Darlington in which green seems quickly to have turned to brown. Museum piece, Eden Camp near Malton has had a prefab on display since 1992.

The prefabs at Marske-by-the-Sea, in Southfield Road and in East Meadows, have withstood not just what time and tide can hurl at them but the whipping winds off the North Sea, too. Residents have now been offered new bungalows, built by Yuill under contract to Coast and County Homes, on the same site.

Jim Barnes, who lives with a disabled friend, has had to sell his double bed in order to squeeze into the small second bedroom.

"I'm really sad to have to come out,"

he says. "Coast and Country have been fine, but if the houses had been better maintained by previous councils, there wouldn't have been these problems.

"The new bungalows seem to me to have been built back to front. You can't see anyone passing, and it'll be lonely. I had a lovely garden here, but it's just a pocket handkerchief in the new one."

Ethel and Norman Evans - he a familiar busker on Redcar High Street and awarded the MBE for charitable services - moved to Southfield Road nine years ago.

Norman has suffered for many years from multiple sclerosis.

"We're getting a bungalow adapted for the disabled and it's out of this world,"

says Ethel. "Part of the problem here is keeping warm. The night storage heaters are a pain in the backside, cold in the evening and stifling when you woke up. I think that's why I get so many colds. The new place will be lovely."

The last of them is expected to be flattened by the summer. If they build any more they'll be called modular homes.

Witch report, the match was very entertaining, too; like the prefabs, it could almost be a permanent fixture.

C LICHES abound. We wrote of them last week, in response garnering a harvest of hate-words from top - as in "top of the programme" - to bottom, as in "bottom line".

Some disliked "literally" - "I'll be literally 30 seconds means ten minutes at least" - and others, as well they might, loathed "luxury". Others barely turned from the back pages.

Everyone knows that "reached the top six" means sixth and that "are now in the bottom five" means fifth bottom; everyone knows - but Malcolm Conway in Eaglescliffe elucidated - that a legend is a slightly above average footballer who's played more than a dozen games for his club.

The sports desks aren't alone, of course.

A journalist on another paper (shall we say) recalls that when things were quiet he could always ring the late and greatly lamented Newton Aycliffe councillor Tony Moore and get him to demand a probe. "It meant absolutely nothing, but it was always good for a page lead."

Peter Wilson in Barnard Castle supposes that the ubiquitous "actually" actually means "er", Barry Wood in Edmondsley objects to the addition of "ality"- as in directionality - to so many words, Pattie Smallwood in Acklam, Middlesbrough, objects (among much else) to the overuse of "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"

at this time of year and to "sinful desserts".

"Genocide is sinful, child cruelty is sinful.

Treacle sponge is not sinful (and a mini-treacle sponge even less so)."

Thanks to all others who contributed.

ANOTHER cloud on the horizon, we'd also objected to the recent habit among TV weather forecasters of scattering the word "old" - as in "chilly old wind" - like snowflakes in a force nine. It also annoys Eric Gendle, in Middlesbrough. "It almost becomes hypnotic, so one has no idea of the actual forecast." The record holder so far is Philip Avery - "six in one short forecast."

A MORE muted response to the request for mondegreens - misheard song or hymn lyrics - though Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool long thought that REM sang "Calling Tom Baker" and not "Calling to wake her".

As befits an elder of the United Reformed Church, she also believed that Neil Diamond sang of "The Reverend Blue Jeans".

Barbara Laurie in Bishop Auckland supposes that her first mondegreen concerned the national anthem. "I was listening to it as a small girl when my mother whispered a joke about the king liking plums.

"Since I didn't know about victorious', or even jokes, I took it seriously. When listening to the national anthem ever since, I have been unable to avoid the vision of God sending the monarch baskets of ripe yellow plums."

IAN Cross, among those critical of cliches, swears that he drove past a Darlington cemetery the other day and saw four fellers carrying a coffin. When he returned an hour later they were still at it.

"I think," says Ian, "that they'd probably lost the plot."

and finally, those within earshot may like to tune into the still-experimental Bishop FM community radio station next Tuesday morning (10am-noon) when five Shildon lads take the air.

One's me, what sailors and tug-of-war teams call the anchor. The others are George Romaines, still affectionately remembered for his years on Tyne Tees Television's One O'Clock Show; all-round sportsman and all-round gentleman Jack Watson; former boxing champion Tommy Taylor, now LibDem leader on Wear Valley District Council and the Reverend Graham Morgan, joint minister with his wife Emma on the Shildon Methodist circuit.

Graham's a Shildon lad by recent adoption, remembered for his ministry in Darlington and for his books of ecclesiastical jokes.

The station, recently granted a five-year licence by Ofcom, can be heard within around eight miles or so of Bishop Auckland on 87.7fm or on the internet. Like the minister's joke books, it should be a laugh a minute.