MENTALLY still in overdrive, physically decelerating a little, former Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev David Jenkins, will be 80 next Wednesday.

"It has struck me lately that I really am getting old," he says. "It's absurd, of course, but I always assumed that I wouldn't. I just thought I'd always be young."

The landmark birthday will be celebrated quietly - "We've never really marked birthdays in a big way" - at the home in Cotherstone, in Teesdale, into which he and his wife Molly moved permanently in 1994 after ten years at Auckland Castle.

Though ecclesiastically in the diocese of Ripon and Leeds, it's administratively in County Durham - land, as the road signs remind us, of the Prince Bishops.

Many thought David Jenkins a prince among bishops. Some supposed him the devil incarnate. Though his confidence in the existence of God is unshaken, he says, his faith in the established church has been much challenged.

"I suppose I am almost ashamed of the Church of England at the moment, the way it squabbles over women priests and women bishops, the way it gets hysterical about a person's sexual orientation.

"There are so many global problems, and religious people fight about such silly things.

"I remain convinced that there is a god, and that he knows me, but I have to say that I am either damned if I know or blessed if I know a great deal about him."

No bishop of modern times has made bigger headlines, or turned a phrase with greater dexterity, or been more anxious publicly to wrestle with the great truths - two falls, two submissions or a knock-out - and to inspire others to join the fight.

Though he admits to depression in his early Durham years - "I had no time for my relaxation, it was absurd" - there seemed always to be a twinkle in his eye, and sometimes a wink as well.

So does he envisage a contented old age? "Yes, I think so. The fact remains that, to use the old fashioned term, the ways of faith have wilderness as well as sun. I have been very fortunate in many ways."

For the first time since he left the army in 1947, his diary has blank weeks. For almost the first time, he is starting to say no.

"I don't take too many train journeys any more, especially those which involve changing at Birmingham, and anything over ten miles I ask people to drive me. I see becoming 80 as an illuminating light, or maybe it's a ringing bell."

Still, however, he is a familiar preacher in the village churches of the Deanery of Richmond. Still he ponders every address at length, if only to the four or five gathered together.

"I don't have any sermons," says Bishop David. "I think people prefer me to have a little chat rather than hear a great long sermon."

Cotherstone has a light snow covering when we arrive, the birds more anxious than ever to partake of the Jenkins' doubtless celebrated largesse and to form an orderly queue at the feeding boxes.

There are nuthatches and a family of gold finches, visiting long tailed tits, an occasional robin and maybe a siskin. "One of the rarest visitors is the sparrow," he says. "Ridiculous, isn't it?"

He still reads The Times, Financial Times and The Economist, files cuttings assiduously and academically, has a Northern Echo reading neighbour drop in anything which may be of interest from these pages, keeps in close contact with his four children and his grandchildren.

There's still a substantial post bag, too, some of it "very touching". The bishop still replies to everything by hand - "I never learned to type, not even with two fingers" - is still convinced that there's another book in him but wonders if it'll ever get out.

To date, his three main projects this year are leading the three-hour Good Friday service in Ripon Cathedral ("an activity I must face up to - for several years I have devoted Good Friday to private prayer"), leading a University of the Third Age weekend conference on religion in the 21st century ("a little something to think about in my 80s") and the launch by Durham Business School of the David Jenkins Centre for Business and Society.

"The centre," says its launch literature, "is a response to the seemingly endless spate of financial scandals that undermined society's trust in big business corporations."

That one will have him thinking furiously, he says. "I was lucky enough to be able to think quite quickly, and to change gear, and I think I still can. I might as well die thinking about men's problems."

Between all the thinking, or perhaps as its accompaniment, he reads, walks, listens to music, watches his birds and plays Scrabble with Molly, his wife for 55 years and, he says, a "wonderful" cook - who usually wins.

"She disputes it but in the scoring record, which I keep, she beats me by six games to every four." They play by their own rules, he adds.

They also have a substantial collection of videos, among which Yes Minister and Dad's Army are favourites.

Like millions more, he has been moved by the horrors of the tsunami, struggles to explain the relationship to a biblical god, suggests that history may offer perspective.

"The first thing I thought about when I heard was the jungle camp on the road to Japan when we heard that something like 200,000 had been killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These things have happened before.

"It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be terrified by it, or anxious about it, but we have to remember the past. I almost approach it by quoting Lieutenant Corporal Jones. "Don't panic."

So when that eventful life and search for truth are weighed in the balance, when he has at last to account for himself, will God beckon him into the Kindgom with the words: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant"?

David Jenkins says that he hopes so, believes that he has fought the good fight as well he might, adds the half forgotten caveat E&OE.

E&OE? "Errors and omissions excepted," he says, and smiles, enigmatically, once again.