SHOTTON Colliery parish church celebrated its 150th anniversary last weekend, a lovely occasion which will echo at least as far as Saturday's At Your Service column.

The hymns were happily familiar, too - more familiar yet had we not left the order of service on the blessed 213 bus. Among them was Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun.

Almost everyone remembers Jesus Shall Reign. Among its more memorable couplets is: "Let every creature rise and bring, peculiar honours to the king."

At school we thought it funny peculiar, of course. Chambers Dictionary knows differently.

Among eight definitions before "odd" and "strange" are "belonging exclusively", "special", "characteristic" and "very particular". A peculiar (spelt "peculier" on the beer bottles from Masham) was also an ecclesiastical parish outside episcopal jurisdiction.)

At Shotton, as in many other churches, the honest word "peculiar" has now been deleted in favour of "the highest". The hymn suffers as a result, as many more hymns have done in the name of political correctness, irksome inclusivity or to stop the first form from sniggering - weasel words to "modern" tunes.

In order to avoid further low notes amid high praise, someone should begin at once a campaign to preserve the original words of our finest hymns - peculiar hymns, with real meaning. Who would valiant be?

RECORDING the 250th anniversary of Osmotherley Methodist church last Saturday, the AYS column observed that it was up a narrow alley, known to the Thornaby-born chapel steward as a "passage". The Sheffield-born minister called it a "ginnel"; other Yorkshire folk prefer the term "snicket". Chris Eddowes, now in Hartlepool but born in Sheffield, e-mails to insist that in her South Yorkshire childhood they knew it as a "jennel".

Until she started teaching, adds Chris, she'd also never heard of a chabby - somewhere between a child and a babby.

Chambers acknowledges none except the right of passage. What else do folk call the straight and narrow?

IN its role as the Echo's unofficial ombudsman, the column has also been corresponding with Jean Foster in Hunwick over the mistakes which can creep into all newspapers.

On the same day, for example, we wrote of a "damming" report - at least watertight, though - and, yet again, of "ex-pats".

Jean's originally from Kerry, so might be considered an expatriate, too. In Ireland, she says, they tell jokes about Kerry folk the way that the English tell Irish jokes.

Why did the Kerryman wear two condoms?

Ah, to be sure, to be sure.

WE all make 'em, of course - mistakes, not condoms - as Frank Robinson reports after spotting a postcard in the window of his local shop in Thornaby. "Bridal gown for sale, with vale." Something to do with all this unholy Tees Valley alliance, it must reluctantly be assumed.

REPORTING last week the addition of 45,000 new words to Collins Scrabble Dictionary, we noted that "northern" newcomers included alien forms like dowly, ennog, yoker, chog, kerky, slart, slutch and trabs.

Sparrowfart is included for the first time, too, but that may be considered universal.

Alf Hutchinson, raised in Richmond but now in Darlington, was familiar with dowly. "My dad used to say he was nobbut dowly," says Alf. "It meant he was feeling a bit down in the mouth."

For the rest we turn to Geoff Howe, local champion and secretary of Darlington Scrabble Club. The game, available in 30 languages, sold 500,000 copies in Britain alone last year.

Yoker means to spit, says Geoff, ennog is a back entry ("I assume to a building or yard, but you never know"), kerky is a Midlands word for stupid, slart is a cross between a slut and a tart and slutch between a slut and a bitch. Trabs is a Scouse word meaning the sort of trainers the youthful wear on their feet.

Chog has at least five meanings, none of them very suitable for consumption with the cornflakes.

Some definitions came from UrbanDictionary.com, others from the Scouse Dictionary. And the rest? "I cheated and e-mailed Scrabble HQ," says Geoff.

LITTLE new to report on Jimmy Murray, the 1940s MP whose maiden Commons speech is said to have demanded to know why there were no dum-tits in Meadowfield Co-op. Ian Whittaker in Durham points out, however, that Murray was the member for NW Durham - in which the Brandon and Byshottles area then sat - and not for Durham City as last week's column supposed. There've been several re-drawings of the parliamentary boundaries since then; doubtless there'll be several more.

KEN Lyons was a security man at the British Juggling Convention and Yo-yo Championships. No strings: honest. "They were all really nice people and it was a fantastic occasion but the council insisted on security," he says.

Ken, from Stockton, got in touch after last week's note on yo-yos to report that the national title was won by a 14-year-old. "He was brilliant, knocked the old hands into a cocked hat," he says.

The championships, near Derby in April, embraced everything from unicycle hockey to Rubik Cube speed solving, from lasso to club swinging and kite flying (which some of us perfected years ago). There was even something called "Christian juggling", which sounded like a hangover from The Gladiators. "As many people will never have seen anyone juggling while giving the Christian message before, they will become entranced by it," claimed the guy's website.

The Convention had a website, too. "And to think," it concluded, "that you believed juggling was just a load of balls".

...and finally, Bill Lawrence in Newcastle reports that W H Smith's book stall on Birmingham New Street railway station is trying to shift over 100 picture postcards of Barnard Castle.

No one knew why, or even where Barney might be.

Bill's theory is that in rifling through the blessed B's, someone in the warehouse inadvertently included Barnard Castle - but couldn't it also be that Barney is an awful lot bonnier than the Bull Ring?

Suggestions welcomed: on a picture postcard, of course.