IT'S THE first day of Lent, a traditionally penitential occasion of which I am reminded by publication of a book called Lent For the Not So Holy.

It's written by Whitby-based Anthea Dove, whose husband Chris observes - as well he might - that "some of us find Lent quite a daunting prospect."

Inevitably it also stirs memories of the column, 30 years ago, in which I tried to ask leading regional figures what they were giving up for those fastidious 40 days and nights.

The Rt Rev George Snow, 6ft 7in Bishop of Whitby and father of the Channel 4 newscaster, had no doubts. "I always try to give up picking my nose, old boy," he said.

Bishop Snow's nose became the stuff of episcopal legend. Though entering the terms "George Snow" and "picking" and "nose" into Google draws 26,000 hits, the most recent reference to his self-denial was in the Sunday Times only last November.

You read it here first. As may possibly be observed in the world of nasal excavation, it was a scoop.

NOW half frozen to death in Rockford, Illinois - "last week the temperature reached -26 Celsius" - former Darlington lad Brian Madden has also been spinning his way around the Worldwide Web.

Officially he was after Whitworth spanners, probably little to do with the riverside hamlet of that name near Spennymoor. What he eventually found, on e-Bay, intrigued him.

A page from a 1772 Gentleman's magazine, it was a drawing by Robert Whitworth headed: "A plan of the River Tees and of the intended navigable canal from Stockton by Darlington to Winston, in the Bishoprick of Durham."

The canal would have gone through Cockerton, once a village distinct from Darlington but now subsumed by it. "My old father used to mention Cockerton Docks as a kind of joke," says Brian, former landlord of the Ball Alley pub in Stanley.

"He told me about the intended canal, but I always took it with a pinch of salt. Now I know he was right."

The 27 mile canal had first been mooted in 1768, chiefly to carry coal from the collieries around West Auckland, with a further six miles of tributaries to Croft, Piercebridge and Yarm. At a total cost of £64,000, there would have been 328ft of locks, four road bridges, 22 private roads and 39 private bridges.

Brian bought the page for $85, perhaps history's biggest investment in the ill-starred project. It was unable to gain financial backing; Cockerton missed the boat.

COCKERTON Docks, it's said, became a familiar ice-breaker at Civic Theatre pantomimes. "Anyone here from Cockerton Docks?" some jolly Jack would ask. (Near Shildon, no more obviously, we had Middridge Docks.)

The Darlington & Stockton Times also recalled that proposed sinking fund back in December 1953 when a 70ft barge - a banana boat, bound for Africa via Liverpool - was hauled on two heavy tractors through the town centre.

"One would have imagined," wrote the D&ST man, "that Cockerton Docks would spring quite readily from the history books."

By then it was the Great North Road, not some straight and narrow waterway, which ran - "an attenuated course" said the D&S - through the centre of town.

The banana boat, said the D&S, took 33 minutes to pass through the town. Though the A1 is long diverted, these days it takes longer to get up Northgate.

FOUNDED in 1731, The Gentleman's Magazine was the Britain's first general interest magazine and the first to give Samuel Johnson regular employment. There being precious few of us left, it folded in 1907.

SETTING a rabbit away even more assiduously than usual, last week's column wondered what a "Scotch hare" might be.

Peter Jefferies in Durham, Chris Grant in Richmond and 81-year-old Mr J Bell in Stanhope are unanimous that a Scotch hare was a skinned cat and that the excoriation originated on Tyneside.

"My father always maintained that the only way you could tell the difference from real hares was by examining their spine," adds Mr Bell, anatomically.

The fullest account, however, was in a 2003 edition of the Northumbrian Bobby - the force magazine - in an article written by the late Barney McCaffery, who'd been an inspector in Gateshead.

The scene was Felling - THE Felling, readers suppose - in 1885, the villain a tailor's wife called Ann Little. Fond of a drink, even at an exorbitant twopence a pint, Little tried to make ends meet by stealing a gamecock.

When the constabulary searched her house, they also discovered the skins of 19 cats. When they searched the garden - guided by the smell, McCaffery supposed - they found another 40.

Perhaps not crime of the century but Little big time, nonetheless, she admitted at first feeding them to her family - as "rabbit pie" - and then selling them round the pubs. By then, they'd transmogrified into Scotch hares.

"It is not surprising to learn," added McCaffery, "that several cases of dysentery were reported in the area."

For stealing the gamecock Little was fined 40 shillings, for showing that there really was only way to kill a cat, given three months hard labour.

Back in Felling, she was assaulted by an angry customer - thus sowing the seed of the still-familiar doggerel with which the whole thing began:

Two lovely black eyes

Oh what a surprise,

Only for selling

Scotch hares in the Felling,

Two lovely black eyes.

ANOTHER definite article, last week's column also wondered how The Slack - that hamlet near Butterknowle, in west Durham - came by its curious name. Chris Mills, whose e-mail address incorporates The Slack, points out that a "slack" is a geographical term for a "side shallow valley" - the valley in this case being the combined becks of Grewburn and Crow Howle before they join the Gaunless. Thanks.

...and finally, we may be able to top the story in last Thursday's paper of how Hear All Sides stalwart Christopher Wardell was asked not to wear his bowler hat - "security reasons" - in a Darlington pub.

This one was a long time ago, too - the same year, in fact, that Bishop Snow's privations became public.

It was the Red Lion at Langthwaite, a small village above Reeth, in North Yorkshire - farming country, walking country. Customers were therefore rather taken back when a notice appeared forbidding caps and hats in the bar.

For declining to doff, some were even asked to leave the premises.

An awful lot of water has flowed down the Arkle Beck since then, but two things remain constant. The pub's in the same family - and you still can't wear a cap in the Red Lion.