ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

HERE are a couple of yed-scratters of the watery kind for our amateur historians and elbow-benders to ponder over.

TC of Birchley St Mary's asks: "How did the Twelve-Yarder, a local pond , get that name?" For, he says, it certainly doesn't measure up, in any direction, to that dimension."

And a Parr octogenarian wonders how a small flash of water in her hometown district came by its title of The Vanny?

Yet another brain teaser comes from the veteran elbow-bending fraternity of the Carr Mill Hotel.

They've been harking back to childhood days when side-street cricket was played with home-made bat and old tennis ball, against a wicket chalked on a gable end.

Whenever anyone skied the ball into neighbouring backyards they were deemed to have 'petered' it and were thus declared out.

Which Peter gave his name to that well-worn yet odd expression? Or is there another explanation for how the term entered into schoolboy vocabulary?

PLEASE write to me at the Star if you've any answers.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.