Throe-back language

FAMILIAR territory, last week's column had another go at falling standards of both written and spoken English. Education, education, education as a former prime minister once observed.

Judy Watson concurs. "I was relieved to find someone who feels similarly to me about the ongoing ruin of our language," she wrote, and felt better for sounding off.

Among much else, last Wednesday's column mentioned the Lib Dems' leaflet in Crook for tomorrow's Durham County Council elections - "You're two Liberal Democrat candidates". We now discover that the malaise has spread.

The leaflet for Bishop Auckland Lib Dems Neil Harrison and Sam Zair, doubtless worthy lads in many ways, not only prominently carries the same ghastly gaffe but has misplaced or missing apostrophes, a split infinitive, a grade-one literal and - Great Curse of the Modern Age - a proliferation of unnecessary capital letters.

They also talk of a "bottom up review of council spending" which may apply to the Durham County Hall functionary who - with thanks to another Gadspy - produced a bulletin boards memorandum last Wednesday. Under "Type of notice" it said News, under "Title" it said County Hall and under "Description" it said Flag Flying - 23 April.

The notice took the trouble to announce that the Union Flag was flying to mark St George's Day. Perhaps a "bottom up review"

means that someone's going to get his backside kicked.

NONE of us is perfect. Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland isn't alone in returning whence it came Saturday's headline about the electronic tag which "broke in the throws of passion".

The gentleman did rather seem to be hurling himself at the poor young lady in question, but it's possible we meant "throes".

The ever-vigilant Janet Murrell in Durham, meanwhile, spotted in the classifieds this ad for "Stainless steel desert folks" and for £10 is duly impressed.

"Much cheaper than asking Anthony Gormley to design them," she says.

THE Durham diocesan newspaper tells how the Reverend Sheilagh Williamson of St Columba's in Darlington has been "serfing the net".

This is probably just one of those unfortunate homophones on which we all get crossed lines but could be useful, nonetheless.

There's a danger, after all, of many of us becoming in thrall to the magic machine.

It's certainly useful, though. Read on.

KEEPING it in the family, very likely, one of the assistant referees in last weekend's FA Sunday Cup final between Coundon Conservative Club and Hetton Lyons Cricket Club was Mr Michael Granda from Shropshire.

Though the gentleman seemed quite youthful, there is clearly a potential problem for families of that name which like to differentiate between, say, Granda Smith and Granda Jones.

An electoral roll search, with thanks to Mr John Briggs in Darlington, reveals that 15 adults in the UK have the surname Granda, though there are no Grandmothers, Grandfathers or Grandmas. To some surprise, 146 people have the surname Nana.

None is a Father or Mother, not by birth anyway, though there are 18 Mothers and more than 200 Fathers. There are just two called Brother but a whole band of Brothers, five called Nephew and 11 called Niece, two called Aunt and 47 called Uncle. (Some of them, of course, will be ladies who will merely be Uncles by marriage.) Just four people have the surname Daughter but 35 may be called Son, while there are 33 Daughters but no Sons. There are five Grandsons and five Stepsons, but no Granddaughters at all.

Sixteen adults are part of the Kith family, just two of the Kin. There are, of course, lots of Husbands and Younghusbands.

Ex-husbands may simply be a matter of time.

ONCE there was a family business on every street corner, Steptoe and Son perhaps the most famous. Dickens wrote of Dombey and Son, Cat Stevens sang of Matthew and Son.

In Chorley, Lancashire, there's a J Gilmore, Son and Granddaughters Ltd; in Derby, Don Philpott, Daughter and Granddaughters do business as a limited company.

Perhaps the best known family firm of all is Smith and Nephew, the huge healthcare products provider, formed in the mid- 19th Century by Thomas James Smith, a pharmacist who specialised in cod liver oil. Smith never married. The "Nephew"

is not some partner of that surname but Horatio Nelson Smith who came on board in 1896, just months before TJ died.

LAST week's widely reported story of the hospital appointment letter which went to Stanley in the Falkland Islands instead of Stanley in north Durham recalled continuing confusion closer to home. A third Stanley - now sometimes known as Stanley, Crook and sometimes as Stanley Hill Top - is just 20 miles south of the one in Derwentside.

Stanley United, the now-defunct Crook area side, even held a reunion in the 1990s at which the most successful former player was Tommy Cummings, a Sunderland lad who went on to make 434 Football League appearances for Burnley and to play for England B.

Despite a season on the hill top, Tommy was two hours late for the reunion. He'd gone to the wrong Stanley.

The story also reminded Dorothy Howard in Darlington of the letter she sent last year to her cousin in West Auckland, 11 miles away. It arrived several months later, having completed the 25,000 mile round-journey to West Auckland, a suburb of the New Zealand capital.

Dorothy's charitable. "The post office must have been having an off-day," she says.

RECENT columns have recounted similar confusion with taxi firms, and because there's more than one Captain Cook museum.

Gordon Thubron in Newton Aycliffe tells of a friend at Durham University who, working late into the early hours, spotted several weeks ago a taxi from a Stockton company waiting patiently outside his office.

After an hour, he went out to ask if he could help. He could. The student for whom the driver was waiting was at the university's Teesside campus, the precise location from which the poor chap had just come.

LAST week's column also recalled a poll which had voted Kenneth Williams's "Infamy, infamy, they all have it in for me" the funniest oneliner in film history.

David Walsh in Redcar prefers the scene from Dr Strangelove in which Peter Sellers, as President Merkin Muffley, has to separate a US Air Force commander and the Soviet ambassador who are brawling in the Pentagon's operational headquarters.

"Please, gentlemen, no fighting in the War Room." That one made the top ten, too.

Noting that the egregious Get Carter car park in Gateshead is at last to be demolished, Brian Redhead in Aiskew, near Bedale, recalls the one-liner - no less memorable - when Bryan Mosley, otherwise Alf Roberts in Coronation Street, is thrown to his death by Carter from the top of the aforesaid multi-storey.

Mosley has just met developers working with him on a building project. Hearing approaching police vehicles, one of them stiffly adjusts his tie. "Something tells me," he says, "that we're not going to get our fees on this job."

and finally, Anne Gibbon in Darlington spotted a paragraph in the Echo about Hurworth village hall having had its wooden floor varnished and looking for a second-hand floor buffer to help keep it in good condition.

"Anyone with an old buffer to donate"

was asked to contact Mr Hugh Jackson.

Usual price, decidedly unpolished, this one hopes to be back next week.