Oriental mysteries

FIRST, a little mystery of the Orient. Why did the council change the name of Japan Street to Ruby Street but leave China Street intact and inscrutable?

Japan Street was in Darlington, just off North Road. China Street was nearby as – with no obvious connection – are Wales Street and Denmark Street.

John Barr, still in Darlington, reckons the name change happened in 1927, largely as a result of pressure from his Aunty Betty, a linguist and teacher who lived, uncomfortably, in Japan Street and had worked at both Polam Hall and St Mary’s Grammar School in the town.

John’s just discovered his Uncle Charles’s conscription form, dated 1916. His address is given as 21 Japan Street. By 1927 it had been changed, Ruby Street deemed less offensive.

“I don’t know why it was done,” admits John. “Great Britain was not at that time unfriendly with Japan, although Japan was more friendly with Germany.”

None of the amateur historians in the pub could suggest why his Aunty Betty’s life could have been so clouded by the Land of the Rising Sun, either.

Suggestions most welcome.

Not even Tiananmen Square, sundry other human rights violations and the threat of a global environmental catastrophe have persuaded the council’s international affairs department to do anything about China Street. Probably they think it’s named after a tea set.

WE’D walked down China Street 11 years ago, following an overheard remark on the 213 bus – it all happens on the 213 bus – that Elvis Presley was alive and well and living half way along. That he couldn’t be traced is probably explained by Peter Jefferies who, coincidentally, sends this photograph of a house in Elvet, Durham. “You have to hand it to the LibDems, the tourists will flock here,” he says. The King must have shifted.

FOLLOWING a trip on the East Coast main railway line, last week’s column mused upon what on earth a “hand baked biscuit” might be.

Still seeking hands-on experience, arch Sunderland football fan Paul Dobson from Bishop Auckland noticed at Arsenal’s swanky new stadium on Saturday an advert for a “hand crafted” pie and medium soft drink for £5.70. Make the soft drink a lager and a pie and a pint would have been £7.20. Though the lad has a finger in very many pies, Paul wasn’t tempted. “I’d like to have watched them hand craft the pies,” he says.

“Unfortunately, I just didn’t have the time.”

GOING by the board, last week’s column talked about jigsaw puzzles, and for Howard Robinson it really is all coming together. “I seem just about to have cornered the world market as a jigsaw artist,” he admits.

Howard’s the artist who was commissioned to produce a puzzle – just 500 pieces, mind – for George Bush’s 60th birthday. Though unable to contact him last week – he was on a working holiday in Florida – we have since been interlocking.

He was born in Shotton Colliery, now works from the Old Forge in nearby Wheatley Hill – east Durham coal mining country – where Alan Hood was one of the region’s last horse-shoeing blacksmiths until being kicked in a particularly painful place and adopting the maxim about discretion and valour.

Howard’s dad was a blacksmith, too. “I actually spent time here watching him,” he says.

He was asked by Waddington’s to produce jigsaw designs after doing posters for Athena. Now he works for 38 different jigsaw companies worldwide, a very large piece of the action, as well as designing T-shirts for the likes of Warner Brothers and Disney.

“Among the biggest growth areas is Fiji, they’re selling thousands every day” he says. “You can see why in Alaska, but can you imagine being in Fiji and sitting doing a jigsaw puzzle?”

As we’d supposed, hard times suit the jigsaw industry. “My royalties cheque last quarter was the biggest ever. You’d have thought times might have been hard at Christmas, but not in jigsaws.”

The secret’s attention to detail, everything carefully researched and photographed first. “I go all over the world researching. One of the big companies asked me to do an Indian on a horse and I spent months working on it. You can’t have a Cheyenne necklace on a Navaho chief.

“The day after I put it on the website, I had an email from a Navaho called Two Crows who was really helpful and put me in touch with some chiefs. However many pieces it may be, I think that one’s going to be big.”

ALL this began with the 24,000 piece puzzle, claimed to be the world’s biggest, being tackled by recordbreaking ultra runner Sharon Gayter, from Guisborough.

Twelve days into her latest marathon – the jiggy, not some extraordinary athletic endeavour – she reckons to be about a quarter finished.

“I’ve done the enjoyable part, the lovely balloons and the colourful sails, all the rest just seems to be black and blue but I’m determined to finish,” she reports.

The really good news is that, following last week’s column, Sharon did a live chat with BBC Radio Tees – an hour before Bill, her husband, had himself an interview for a vacuum tanker driver’s job.

“Luckily they’d listened to the radio that morning,” reports Sharon. “The main topic of conversation became jigsaw puzzles and he walked away with the job.”

Bit by bit, it’s coming together for good old Bill, too.

WHOLLY coincidental, news that flights between Teesside and Heathrow are to be scrapped broke at the same time as a letter in the Telegraph from Dr Christopher Ankcorn in Pinchtinthorpe, near Guisborough.

Durham Tees Valley, he notes, charges travellers 50p for the mandatory plastic bag for small toiletries and things. “Since these cost about 1p each and most of the airport’s million- plus passengers need one, the airport must make half a million pounds a year out of this.”

Perhaps bmi could ask them for a sub.

TREPIDANTLY two weeks ago, we touched upon texting, and the arcane language of the art. It brings the following from Dave Gill in Eaglescliffe: “Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosnt mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae.

“The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef, but the wrod as a wlohe and the biran fguiers it out aynawy.”

…and finally, a message for the cigarette- smoking young lady at Consett bus station last Wednesday evening who enquired if I had 10p she could lend. Polonius’s famous advice to Hamlet – “Neither a lender nor a borrower be” – still holds very true. There would be very slightly more chance of a buckshee 10p, however, if only the wretched kids knew the difference between the two.