PEOPLE sometimes ask me how I came to have spent the last 40-odd years living in Bellingham, when I had never heard of the place until several weeks after I joined the Courant in 1973.

It all came about when I was young and foolish, and absurdly determined to make a good impression on my new employers.

I could not drive a car in those days, so relied on my tiny little 90cc Yamaha step-through motorbike to get around the hills and valleys of my new Tynedale stamping ground.

It was a bit of a comedown from my previous big and beefy British 650s, but after a serious accident on my lovely BSA Golden Flash, Mrs Hextol ruled that I was only allowed one step up from a pushbike if I didn’t learn to drive a car.

We were living at Haydon Bridge at the time, and one winter’s day I volunteered to cover a meeting of Bellingham Parish Council that night.

I had only a vague idea of where Bellingham was, but I knew it was a fair way, and would yield enough loot in the way of travelling expenses to fill the Yamaha’s petrol tank, with a bit to spare.

However, when I set off from Haydon Bridge, the night skies took on an even darker hue, and the feeble headlight of the bike was soon picking up the odd flicker of snow.

The flicker soon turned into a blizzard which obliterated much of the road, but as it was as far to keep going as it was to turn back for home, I slipped and slithered my way ever onward to the capital of the North Tyne.

I arrived at the town hall looking like a pocket sized version of Conrad Dickinson en route to the South Pole, with my wellies full of melted snow, and a face like a deeply-embarrassed pomegranate .

The meeting had already begun, but the kindly parish counciillors abandoned their agenda to fuss round me, making sure I had a warm seat next to the radiator, rustling up a cup of coffee from the kitchen and handing me a whole packet of disgestives before resuming the business of the day.

As I thawed out, I reflected on the difference between these kindly countryfolk and the pomp and ceremony of the borough council I had previously covered, with the mayor’s red robes, tricorn hat and political bickering far more important than the welfare of a lowly hack.

Purely by coincidence, there was an additional item not on the agenda that night, with the parish council asked to give its views on the allocation of tenancies of the 27 new houses on which Bellingham Rural Council had squandered its bank balance before its forced marriage with four other councils to create the new Tynedale Council.

My name happened to be on the list of potential tenants, and a councillor who I had never met until that night recommended I should be given a house because of my Scott of the Antarctic dedication to get to the meeting that night …

“The village needs more young people like him who divvent get put off by a bit advorsity,” he declared in his rich North Tyne brogue, between pungent puffs on his pipe.

When the meeting was over, I was hustled across the road to the Rose and Crown inn, where I was given the seat of honour beside the roaring coal fire, and plied with hot toddies and whisky macs until the snow relented, and the snowploughs had cleared the way back to Hexham.

Several weeks later, I was notified I had been allocated a house in Bellingham, and so began a love affair that continues to this day.

Before I was diverted to more weighty matters, covering Bellingham Parish Council for the Courant was a constant source of joy, not least because of the presence of larger than life parish clerk Martin Sumner, who infuriated the councillors, but delighted me, with the extraordinary exuberance of his minutes of meetings, replete with majestically irrelevant references to historical figures such as Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand and the Diet of Worms

I attended a meeting of Bellingham Parish Council the other night, for old time’s sake, and was gratified to note that items under discussion still included the overgrown state of the riverside footpath, the clutter of advertising boards at the entrance to the village and the mysteries of the Manorial wastes of Bellingham.