John North: Sallying forth in the face of fire and brimstone

IT was the first day of Ken and Kathy Smith's honeymoon, and not at all the wedding reception which the happy couple had anticipated. Awaiting them as they stepped from the plane was a media maul and 50 placard waving protestors, warning of fire and brimstone and chanting the 46th Psalm - about the raging heathen and the desolation awaiting the earth.

Yet Ken couldn't just recite the 46th Psalm from memory, he could probably play it on the cornet, an' all.

Both he and his bride are devout and lifelong Salvation Army members - inadvertently arriving at Stornoway, capital of the Hebridean island of Lewis, on the biblically denounced first-ever Sunday flight.

Beyond our Ken? "Well it's quite amusing to think of him and Kathy accused of being wicked sinners," says Vincent Smith, his brother and best man. "There's going to be some terrible leg pulling when they get back."

The couple were married last Saturday at Shildon Salvation Army Citadel, where Ken, a 55-year-old music teacher, has been songster leader since 1970.

Both innocent victims of failed marriages, they had been reunited 30 years after last seeing one another at college - and though Kathy moved from the south, the God fearing couple lived in separate houses either side of Bishop Auckland until the wedding.

"Kathy thought it was a bit odd when she organised the hotel for the Sunday and was told there were no flights," says Vincent.

"She assured them that there were, because she'd just booked one, but she and Ken had no idea of what they were letting themselves in for. I think Ken was just disappointed that he wasn't interviewed by the television people - he'd have told them he was bringing the Gospel to Stornoway."

The protest was organised by the Free Church of Scotland and the even stricter Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland - known as the Wee Frees and the Wee Wee Frees are so hair shirted that they don't even approve of hanging out washing or reading novels on Sundays.

"Look at those hundreds of thousands of people in London for the Countryside March on a Sunday," said the Rev John MacLeod.

"Two days later, England experienced the biggest earthquake it has seen for ten years. I can't think of any reason for anyone to break God's law and use Sunday flights."

Safe from the Wee Free kings and their wrath, Ken and Kathy are expected home this weekend. Remember the Sabbath? How could they possibly forget it?

PERHAPS our islands were always at risk from the (allegedly) ungodly. The Vikings' first British landing was on Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast, prompting the scholar Alcuin to write that "the holiest place in Britain is given prey to pagan people."

The observation is recalled in Island of Light, Canon David Adam's latest book of Celtic prayers from the place where for 12 years he has been vicar, and with marvellous photographs by the Rev Robert Cooper, priest-in-charge of Sadberge near Darlington.

David Adam, 66, was a curate at St Helen's Auckland and Owton Manor, Hartlepool and also spent 23 years as Vicar of Danby, on the North Yorkshire moors.

Robert Cooper, who took his photographs whilst on a summer sabbatical, stages a slide show of those and other images at Sadberge on November 8.

So many books are stacking up in the Christmas rush that we may have to devote a column to them. This one, beautifully produced, is published by SPCK at £8 99.

THOUGH today's offering has an undeniably ecclesiastical air, it is a broad and a liberal church to which these columns adhere.

Two weeks ago, for example, the At Your Service column was at Kirk Merrington, near Spennymoor, prompting letters from 85-year-old George Skaife in Easington (the one near Saltburn) and from Tony Sharkey in Warrenton (the one in Virginia, USA).

George Skaife was brought up in Kirk Merrington; Tony Sharkey moved in close orbit - Byers Green, Leeholme, Ferryhill, Chilton - without ever landing there.

For Mr Skaife the column simply stirred happy memories, his mother's dedication to St John's church and his father's hard shifts as the county council lengthsman from Merrington to the bridge high over the A1 at Ferryhill.

"He used to say that wherever you went in Durham County, you could see St John's church sitting like a match box on top of the hill."

For Mr Sharkey, whose exiled e-mail address begins "dncanny", the column struck an altogether more sinister note.

We'd mentioned the still visited tomb in Kirk Merrington graveyard of John, Jane and Elizabeth Brass, children from a nearby farmhouse hacked to death at their home on January 2 1683 by Andrew Mills, a farm labourer.

"If you look closely at the inscription on the stone," says Tony, "you will see that a word - if my memory serves me correctly the word is 'hanged' - has all but been obliterated and the stone has a deep groove where the word once was."

Legend has it that the killer's father, who was blind, felt for the offending word with his fingers and rubbed it daily over a long period with the ferrule of his walking stick until it was effectively erased.

Mills, who claimed to have been guided by the devil, was chased and caught by a company of soldiers returning to Brancepeth Castle. Though declared insane, he was sentenced to hang and placed in a cage near what is now the Thinford roundabout.

Contemporary accounts tell of a tortured death over two days, the condemned man attended by a beautiful but mysterious young girl who climbed the scaffold to feed him bread and milk but was never seen again.

The gibbet stood for many years, after which it was cut into pieces and sold as charms to the gullible. They said it worked wonders for warts.

PIPED music of the wholly acceptable kind, the centenary of the organ at Cockfield Methodist Church will be marked with a special concert on the evening of Saturday November 9.

Made by Nelson's of Durham, the two manual organ cost £130 plus - they found some old bills stuffed down the back - £30 for gold leaf painting on the pipes.

Folk up there still also talk about a 1947 concert by Reginald Foort, pictured above, then the BBC organist, who regaled them with everything from Teddy Bears' Picnic to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

"They were queuing from here to Evenwood Gate," recalls George Dixon, whose grandfather, Ralph Wallace, was organist from 1903-57 and received an illuminated address to mark his golden jubilee.

Also on the 1947 bill was Arnold Grieve, a bass baritone from Middleton-in-Teesdale who sang, among other things, The Holy City.

Mr Grieve - now 89, still in Teesdale and singing, he says, as well as he did 20 years ago - will play it again a week on Saturday and much looks forward to the reprise.

"I remember all those years ago singing a very difficult piece from Handel and Reginald Foort didn't even need the music," he says. "He never played a wrong note; absolutely remarkable."

George Dixon, Cockfield lad and retired head of Heighington primary school, will present the evening. Neville Kirby, who also learned the organ at Cockfield Methodists, brings the Gainford Choral Society to enhance the entertainment. The celebrated Andrew Christer from Darlington will be organist.

There's not even an admission charge. "We'll catch them," says George, "on the way out."

...and finally in this surrogate edition of the Church Times, a note on the column's old friend the Rev Clive Mansell, Rector until a couple of weeks ago of the rural parishes around Burneston, near Bedale.

Ahead of his installation on November 16 as Archdeacon of T onbridge, Clive and family have moved to Tunbridge Wells - as in Angry of Tunbridge Wells and now with something to put ink in their pens.

The Sunday Times reports growing ire among church folk in that genteel Kentish town that a lap dancing club is to open in their midst. In Burneston, Kirklington and Wath, of course, lap dancing meant nothing more than bouncing the baby on your knee.

Whatever is the Archdeacon to do?