YOU may or may not know that you can read this ramble on-line on the Darlington and Stockton Times' excellent website.

However, I fear something is lost when it appears in digital form. In the paper it's hidden away like a naughty secret only to be found by the intrepid, the forewarned or the regular reader. On-line it becomes a bit more in your face and often people who are unaccustomed to its ways end up reading it. In short, I've had a few complaints from people who start with "I read your piece on-line...". To those people I apologise for any offence caused. To others, let's discuss Jericho - the new ITV series about the building of a viaduct set in the Dales in the 1870s? It looks truly brilliant.

Hard work, hard drinking, fights and debauchery, all with a scenic background.

The press release describes the show like this: "It focuses upon the shantytown of Jericho, home to a community that will live, thrive and die in the shadow of the viaduct they’ve been brought together to build.

"Rough, rustic and remote, yet with a wild west, carnival atmosphere, Jericho is a community of pioneers, settlers and outcasts, people with secrets to hide and those looking to start again."

It continues: "The terrain is hostile and if the land doesn’t break the colourful community of men and women - navvies, entrepreneurs, street urchins, prostitutes, families, wives, girlfriends and lovers - it will take seven years to complete."

I know, I know. It sounds more like a documentary than a work of fiction - a post-watershed version of The Dales starring Ade Edmondson. The Dales Nights perhaps.

Apparently the writer sat in the corner of one of Bishopdale's many pubs on a Saturday night to find inspiration.

Anyway, I was asking the oldest boy to do something or not do something or be in by a certain time or out (of bed) by a certain time the other day when he pulled the old "it's like a prison here".

"Yeah but in prison you exercise for half an hour a day and you get three square meals a day," I replied with only a couple of cog turns.

I chalked one up for parents.