PROBLEM: how to fish a dumped bath, washbasin and toilet out of a beck down a 20ft slope. In these health and safety conscious days, Redcar and Cleveland Council officials immediately had to set about a risk assessment, to use another bit of modern jargon.

Spectator's man on the spot - in deepest East Cleveland - did his own assessment: clamber down through the brambles, throw a rope round the offending objects, get beefy men at the top of the slope to pull. And, bingo! The bath, washbasin, loo etc - pictured, right - are hauled up, loaded on to a truck and away.

But a council media statement talked of the intrepid workers having to abseil down in "surely one of their toughest assignments".

Council cabinet member Coun Sylvia Szintai said: "I hope people will appreciate what a difficult and sometimes dangerous job our staff do to ensure the area isn't blighted by the flytippers."

The only risk Specator's man could see is that the workers might have got their feet wet in the beck.

Tracks of my tears

MORE than 30 years ago, Railway Magazine got rather precious in an editorial comment about a scene in the 1970 film The Railway Children in which three youngsters are rewarded after having trespassed on the track to halt a train following a landslip.

When Spectator saw the film again recently, he was struck by something much worse - the sight of schoolboys holding a race through a tunnel and along the track while staff blatantly turn a blind eye.

In retrospect, and with knowledge of railway tragedies involving young people in the North-East, perhaps it's now a film whose safety aspects should be assessed with a more critical eye, despite its undeniable charms.

These include the enduring final scene, in which the father figure returning from wrongful imprisonment appears like a wraith from the clearing steam accompanied by Roger Webb's piano rendition of the theme music. After almost 40 years, it's still guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye.