This is The North East | News

Striking a blow for workers
YOU are young, said the judge to the eight men in the dock. "When you have served your sentences you will have the world before you. I can only hope that afterwards you will be able to lead useful and happy lives."

Notes from a small village
JUST as the old man was in London, holding his first press conference as England football manager, there were some boys in Steve McClaren's garden kicking a ball about.

What's the name of your game?
'MAC-NIFICENT... Mac from the dead... Macca's crackers." Surnames are a gift to sports headline writers. These witty efforts appeared yesterday morning, inspired by the name of the Middlesbrough manager, Steve McClaren.

Duchess of York's Daughter. Mother and Baby "doing well."
THIS was the front page headline in The Northern Echo exactly 80 years ago today announcing the Royal birth.

Our big, black airborne neighbours
TO YOU, Easter probably means yellow spring chicks and cutsey likkle bunnies. But in our house it means rooks, black and highly dangerous. We live beneath a rookery which, with spring springing, has burst into a cacophonous commotion of new life. For the past four weeks, the rooks have been viciously vandalising the tree tops, wrenching off long twigs with their beaks and flapping them unsteadily back towards their nests.

The end of a tragic line
'I'LL show you the chap who was my driver for two-and-a-half years," said Major Ian English. The green grass beneath his feet was neatly striped and springy; the white headstones in front of him were straight and clean; the rims of his eyes were red and rheumy.

Getting carried away
ON Wednesday afternoon, we rapidly discovered ourselves swept up in a political storm in a teacup. It was all about the word 'rapid'.

A very different stroke
'HIS sister, Bertha, was in the sports shop business with him, and she was on holiday on the south coast when she read in the paper that he'd been selected as England captain for the first Empire Games," says Jack Hatfield of his father, "so she had to pack her bags pretty sharpish and come home."

Inspiration born of revolution
THE rugged beauty of Weardale has brought inspiration to many artists - landscape painters and nature-loving poets - but never can it have been said to have inspired a pop overture to a revolution aboard a Russian ship.

Something of a grey area
The A178 is a journey to the end of the world, to the place where the North-East fades away into the sea and the sky, where land loses its form and gradually churns into water.

Farewell, finally, Feethams
AN earthmover rolls slowly across the grass. Almost sorrowfully, it holds out its long arm. In its bucket, it tenderly cradles the lifeless remains of a crush barrier, the barrier's black legs hanging limply over the sides.

Into the realms of cabbages
THANKFULLY, World Cabbage Day passed without incident last week. Cabbages, boiling with anger, did not take to the streets, demanding equality for cabbages, or the vote for cabbages or that cabbages should become kings.

A cause for burning the boats
ONE of the great joys of Holy Island is seeing the tide creep over the causeway. When the tarmac is covered, that's it - there's no way out. The mobile phone can ring and ring, but there's no point answering it.

The kanga who may roo the day
WHEN I was a boy, I lay awake on a warm summer's night and, from behind the safety of my dark curtains, listened to the birds' final flourishes of the day in the churchyard opposite.

Crimping a concrete jungle
THE most extraordinary fact of the week comes from the Royal Horticultural Society. It says that 47 per cent of front gardens in the North-East are at least three-quarters paved over.

Could it be PC to be minging?
THERE are many worthy questions that one might ponder concerning the Liberal Democrats, but surely none is more confusing than the correct pronunciation of the name of their acting leader.

Nailing a good story
Now, since the wicked fiend's at large,

Caught short by trivia
PERHAPS it says something about our education system, but many of the books in the shops - and under my Christmas tree - are trivia based.

A message with a cutting edge
CRAMMING my Christmas cards into the pillar box the other day, I remembered how it is the lot of columnists at this time of year, and particularly on this kind of day, to write a seasonal column.

Let them eat cake
I WENT looking for something else, but the book just fell open and the story simply leapt out. It's too good to close the covers and put the book back on the library shelf, so here, apropos of nothing, it is.

Monument to a classical way of life
ONE of the most vertiginous walks in the North-East is up the footpaths which scale the Swale's cliffs in Richmond.

The genius, the monster, and me
Mr Ottakar saw the book and the book looked good.

Divided by more than money
SETTLING down on the train to London to discuss the North/South divide with David Miliband this week, my mind was soon wandering faster than a 125.

Founder of the awkward squad
REBELLION is in the air. On Wednesday, Tony Blair's majority of 66 fell to just one as Labour backbenchers voted against their own government. Traitors! Treason! Betraying their own leader! But they followed a long and noble tradition begun 81 years ago by a Durham MP.

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