A chance in hell?

There appears not to have been weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth as a result.

It's written by the Rev Paul Thomas, Oxford educated Vicar of Nether and Upper Poppleton, near York. A subsequent leader in The Guardian seemed chiefly taken with the quaintness of the village names, which didn't seem quite so relevant.

One of Advent's best loved hymns, come to think, has the line "From nether hell thy people save." That may not be wholly relevant, either.

Mr Thomas, unlike Dante, supposes that there is no reason for all who enter to abandon hope - that's if anyone enters at all.

It was put more simply, though no less cogently, by the Rev Dr Michael Thomspon, superintendent of the Bishop Auckland Methodist circuit, in a sermon at South Church chapel in 1999.

Dr Thompson, said by the At Your Service column to preach animatedly - "like a Fellow of the Royal Histrionic Society" - supposed, like Mr Thomas, that a God of infinite love could hardly visit eternal damnation upon his less principled people.

"If it was simply a question of what sort of life we had led, where would I stand, or where would you?

"He is as generous to those who have done much as to those who have done little, and my suspicion is that he is as generous to those who have done nothing.

"At the end of the day, at the end of this earthly life, there will be full pay for all."

It was not only a very good sermon but, after almost ten years writing At Your Service, the only one I can still remember.

IT was Jean Paul Sartre, French philosopher and eminent amateur goalkeeper, who supposed that hell was other people. As the football results came in about five o'clock on Saturday, hell was being chairman of the Albany Northern League. Readers may have hellish suggestions of their own.

RON Davies-Evans, a local preacher on the Darlington Methodist circuit, sends with his Christmas card a copy of last Sunday's sermon. A first.

It was entitled Slow Down, its theme - crudely paraphrased - that the brakes should be put on the Christmas rush and that if God had meant us to fly about so much he'd have given us blue tails, and wings.

Ron also encloses a Christmas message, which we reproduce (above). Readers can doubtless work it out for themselves, but the answer's below.

THE only man who's handed over his sermon at the end of the service - a welcome guard against misquotation - is the Rt Rev Tom Wright, the new Bishop of Durham, with whom we were due to have lunch last Friday.

Unfortunately Mrs Wright was bad, and will at once feel better for the knowledge that in her husband's new diocese, being bad has nothing to do with sin, the world and the devil, but with illness. You know, as in bad in bed.

Bishop Tom had wanted to talk about a five-page feature in this month's Country Life, all very grand, extolling the architecture and beauty of Auckland Castle, the bishops' official residence but also offices, flats and, increasingly, a function venue.

He's also had a letter from one of the Church Commissioners rubbishing a recurring report that the castle is to be sold for £10m to help patch up church finances. It appeared in one of the Sunday broadsheets; a phrase about work and idle hands creeps venially to mind.

LESS pardonable, perhaps, is the misuse of the English language by those who really should know better.

In last Wednesday's paper, an English teacher was sought for Richmond School - "1,380 on role". He'd better get there fast, supposes Tony Ford in Northallerton.

Tony, a journalist for 42 years until his retirement in 2001, thought that he might supplement his pension by offering assistance to commercial website compilers on how to write good, clear English - "especially those to whom it isn't second nature".

The business, still on-line, was called keepwrite.co.uk

It failed.

Apart from a North-East hotel and conference centre, which paid for 34 A4 pages of corrections - 265 mistakes - there wasn't a single taker.

Tony's admitted defeat. "Keepwrite gathers dust and I tend my garden now. My foolish mistake was to think that it would matter."

LYNN Truss would argue otherwise. Eats, Shoots and Leaves - her punctuation primer - is Christmas's most improbable bestseller.

An e-mail from Ken Pellant recalls that a popular T-shirt in 1970s Australia carried an image of a wombat with the caption "Eats, roots, shoots and leaves". The reference, adds Ken, was to the dubious lifestyle of the white Australian male. "Roots" was a euphemism; the wombat was innocent, OK?

SPEAKING of things grammatical, Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool wonders if Santa's little helpers are subordinate Clauses.

SO finally back to our friends in the clergy, and to the Rev Frank Campbell - Church of Scotland minister, Evenwood Town football programme editor and thoroughly good egg.

Frank received a letter from LLN, a German lottery company, telling him unequivocally - so far as he or anyone here can tell - that he had won a cheque for £12,000.

If he reacted within 24 hours, the letter added, his winnings would double. "This means that you receive two cheques for £12,000 each, making a total of £24,000."

Out of what he terms a spirit of morbid curiosity, Frank reacted within 24 minutes - "to see how they could wriggle out of it".

He has been disappointed; LLN didn't even try to wriggle out of it. Apart from subsequently telling him that he'd won £1, and debiting his account for a much larger sum, they have ignored completely his claims for £24,000.

The minister has now written to the procurator fiscal and to sundry other Scottish worthies requesting that they not only help hold the company to the letter but investigate them for fraud. Similar stories are familiar and the minister still awaits his Christmas present.

Should even it exist, that Other Place might freeze over before ever he receives it.

The column returns on Christmas Eve.

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