THE first of these on-your-knees columns appeared on April 16 1994, a somewhat trepidant account of Sunday morning proceedings at St John's in Shildon.

"It is to be a sort of parish church Down Your Way," the Vicar explained to his congregation and so - with ecumenical exceptions - it has rudimentarily remained.

It was the church where I'd not only been baptised, but a generation later became churchwarden, church council secretary, parish magazine editor and drinking companion to successively susceptible curates.

"A pillar in a bright yellow suit," as the inaugural column colourfully recalled.

A return had been planned to mark the tenth anniversary, advanced 18 months because of another Shildon engagement last Sunday morning.

For wholly chilling but strictly charitable purposes - promoting the town's drugs awareness week among young people, apparently - I'd been volunteered to stand in the stocks whilst wet sponges were propelled in that general and fairly unmissable direction.

The Vicar and the polliss were also to be incarcerated whilst others laughed their stocks off. Not only was the big baby to have another head wetting, but a wonderful opportunity to return to St John's without the occasion being a funeral.

You know what they say in the Bible, mind, about a prophet not being without honour except in his own country.

Now as in 1994, the vicar is Fr Raymond Cuthbertson, a Sunderland season ticket holder and former chaplain to Darlington FC. Now as then also, Bertha Pallister was among the congregation.

She's 94, determined to have a Queen's telegram like her father - "after that I don't mind" - and had been church council treasurer when the fledgling journalist held all those other parochial responsibilities.

Bertha, who once had a sweet shop but would be wonderful even if she'd sold rat poison, recalled a 1970 meeting at which the then vicar had tried in vain to gain the secretary's attention.

Eventually, she said, it had been explained that the scribe been far too busy admiring the treasurer's hat.

"I still have that hat," she said.

"I still think of you and your twin brother," said Jean Coley. Eeeh, she added, your poor mother.

St John's is a Grade II listed building, built in 1834. These days it is much changed, and entirely for the better. Meeting rooms have been created, spare capacity used imaginatively, sermons shortened. Though the organ still resounded and the hymns were happily familiar - wrong tune to "Firmly I believe", fellers - the choir procession, sadly, was nothing like as long as it used to be, either.

The Rev John Scorer, full time chaplain to Durham Constabulary, celebrated communion. Fr Raymond preached, a sermon with football allusions as it had been all those years previously.

One of the readings had mentioned Macedonia, the team which had severely embarrassed England in mid-week. "Enough to send a shiver down your spine," said Fr Raymond, who'd not only been present when his beloved Sunderland succumbed to West Ham United the previous day but had also lost a £1 bet with the bloke next to him on what's the only dog in the Bible.

It's the greyhound, apparently, somewhere in the Book of Proverbs.

The ten minute sermon, on the story of rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, also quoted Groucho Marx. It was original, theatrical and memorable for all the right reasons.

After coffee upstairs, we adjourned a few yards to what generally is known as the Town Square but which had become the Sunday morning stocks market.

Opposite, appropriately, was a shop called Maxi-freeze. On the attendant roundabout, the music machine played "Oh Boy".

The Vicar had also announced that the pair of us - "a wonderful brace" - would be in the stocks. "When Shildon folk heard that, they started queuing two Saturdays ago," he added.

For protective purposes, victims were issued with a transparent garment labelled an emergency poncho, allegedly the deluxe version because it had holes for the arms. Whilst possibly useful as a cat litter, the emergency poncho proved entirely useless as a waterproof.

Nor were the sponges the baby's bottom jobs familiar in Boots, rather the huge industrial equivalent with which it would have been possibly to scrub down several elephants.

"Like a gentle punch," said Simon Cowan, the recipient polliss, perhaps more accustomed to such things.

The photographer from the Shildon Record was there, too, though he declined to stick his head through the hole marked "Muggins."

"I've a medical condition," he explained. "What," said PC Cowan, "hydrophobia?"

The polliss, properly plant potted, took it on the chin and - more painfully - elsewhere. The column copped for a bucket full. Fr Raymond was heard to utter a number of expletives, none of which sounded like "God bless you."

As the church clock struck 12, we all adjourned to Old Shildon Club. Like happy days at St John's parish church, it was the one we had had to come back for.

* The principal Sunday service at St John's is at 9.30am. Fr Raymond Cuthbertson is on (01388) 772122. Information on Shildon Children Against Drug Abuse from Michael Hardy on (07831) 378887.