MONDAY 19 NOVEMBER

ALFIE JOEY
Due to my innate stupidity, I gave you the wrong date for Alfie's first show. It's actually on Monday 26 November. Sorry.

THE LONDON DOG WALK
I thought this was a really charming idea. Dogs featured in some of the best and most popular stories ever told, of course, and to have some of them commemorated with plaques and benches round the bandstand in Battersea Park is really touching. Gromit, Lassie, Greyfriars Bobby, Bullseye (from Oliver Twist) and Toto will all be there. It's made we wonder, though, why so many other animals go unremembered - or at least uncommemorated - especially if they played important roles in the real world. The famous World War I pigeons, perhaps. Or Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington's horse. And here in the north-east we should surely have
some sort of memorial to the humble pit-pony, whose life was as dark and miserable - and often just as short - as the pitman's himself. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it. A sculpture of a miner and his gallowa would be truly awe-inspiring in Durham City's Market Place - a fitting replacement for the statue of the appalling Marquess of Londonderry which has besmirched it for far too long.

JESMOND
Whatever anyone else tells you, there is no doubt at all that Jesmond does not mean 'Jesus' mound'. It is Anglo-Saxon Old English 'Ousemouth', altered by the Normans to sound pleasanter to their ears. Nor does Pity Me mean ' small lake' (petit mere). And don't get me started on Quakinghouses or Glororum.....
Today's What's In A Name question is......What's the English name of the country its natives call Suomi?

THE WATER OF TYNE
Lorraine Bulloch, of Heaton, asked to hear this in our local music slot. I hope she doesn't mind me saying that I think it's awful. Surely Sting and Jimmy Nail could have dropped the mid-Atlantic popsong accent; it's not The Wahder 'f Dine, after all. Sorry, Lorraine.

A LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN
'First Worcester is flooded and now Tabasco. Can we expect to see a thousand islands under water by the end of the year?'
I thought that was clever!

ER.....
Kev has just sent me an intriguing set of visual puzzles and booby-traps. Read the words in this triangle aloud.






Notice anything odd?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.