NEVER upwardly mobile, the column eschews cellular telephones. They are child's play nonetheless, as witnessed by the universal growth in text messaging.

Text messaging, for the happily uninitiated, represents a sort of telephonic shorthand, a speechless one-way street accessed through the telephone's digital display.

Some of it is symbolic. :-) turned through 90 degrees represents "I'm happy." The Ltl Bk of Txt Msgs" was a huge bestseller last Christmas.

The Rev Tony Buglass, Methodist minister in Pickering, North Yorkshire, offers further elucidation via a Christian website called Ship of Fools - www.ship-of-fools.com - which ran a competition for the best text message version of The Lord's Prayer.

The winner was addressed to dad Hi Fr., Matt 6: 9-13 agn pls. Cheers. C u in ch.

The Lord's Prayer in our illustration is on the Methodist chapel wall at Worsall, near Yarm, from which the At Your Service column comes on Saturday. Some might suggest that the original 62-word version says it all quite nicely. But that's another text book entirely.

RALPH Wilkinson, Sunderland football fan and owner of the celebrated No 22 Coniscliffe Road bar in Darlington, noticed a Sunday Times advert offering news of his favourites direct to his mobile.

At a cost of around £1.50, he rang the advertised number. It referred him to a website. He accessed the website; it directed him back to the number he'd just rung.

For another £1.50 he rang it again; it pointed him towards the website....

Ralph's now sticking to the radio. Another message received loud and clear.

...and Chris Willsden, also in Darlington, might still be waiting to see what develops after taking advantage of Safeway's offer to have photographs printed while you shop. Around 25 minutes, they claim.

Stephanie, his wife, took some wedding pictures in last Friday. "Ready on Monday," said the assistant.

Chris withdrew, snap decision. "I know women like shopping," he says, "but not even mine can trolley for three days round Safeway."

THE photocopier is pretty low technology these days, of course, though it might still be wise not to emulate Northallerton-based Hambleton District Council, where Ian Cross wanted some planning documents copying. "That'll be £1.35 a page," they said. Ian went along the road to the County library. They did it for 10p.

IT'S doubtful whether anyone's tried to text message The Ballad of Eskimo Nell, but still e-mails and more traditional communications arrive in the lady's salacious wake.

Mention in that connection of RAF Cold Hesledon, near Seaham - and of its sister radar station at Seaton Snooks, near Hartlepool - prompts a recollection from Harry Watson in Darlington that former Durlia club steward Joe Vincent's post-war European package holiday - by converted Dakota - that took off from Seaton Snooks aerodrome.

"The assembled company weren't having any of it but then Joe produced the brochure - Seaton Snooks airport, no less."

"I'm sure your readers will know more about this improbable airport," insists Harry. We may land lucky once again.

SINCE the column has had a somewhat poetic theme of late, Pat Cariss in Killerby, near Richmond, wonders if anyone can help her recall Christmas 1965.

With colleagues at the ICI nylon works in Billingham, she had adjourned for a little festive frivolity - accompanied on the guitar - at the Kings Arms in Wolviston. Songs included a folky number about a duchess's visit to Middlesbrough, and a chorus that still waves flags inside her head:

The procession it started at Ayresome

Passed the park and museum as well

Passed Kirkup's fruit stall

And the Boro town hall

And into the Baltic Hotel.

Can anyone, asks Pat, provide the verses or explain the importance of the occasion.

Though the Baltic must not be confused with the Arctic, perhaps there will be a refrain.

A MORE recent royal visit to those parts found its way into the Court Circular - the official list of royal engagements - two weeks ago.

The Duke of Edinburgh, clearly getting all the best jobs now that he's 80, had had a morning visiting sewage works - first at Hendon, Sunderland, and thereafter to Northumbrian Water's Regional Sludge and Effluent Treatment plant at "Bran Sands, Teesside, North Yorkshire."

Campaigners have long fought to have the Middlesbrough and Redcar area returned to Yorkshire, whence they came. Is the Palace admitting that they've won?

NOT even our old friend Bill Taylor on the Toronto Star - via the Echo's Bishop office - can trace Nell's authorship. "By the oddest coincidence I found it on the Internet a few weeks ago," he writes. "Until now I always thought it was Robert Service."

Ernie Reynolds in Wheatley Hill, a rare visitor to this particular shore, has a book of 140 such "wartime" songs - five bob, 1967 - and supposes that Nell's legend may simply have been embellished through time and space.

Stockton folk singer Eddie Walker, who may also be able to throw light on the Duchess of Linthorpe Road, wonders if he mentioned his friend the Yukon gold digger from Hamburg - "you'd recognise him right away, a sort of German Desperate Dan" - while Alan Archbold in Sunderland in one breath supposes that Nell could run longer than the Forsyte Saga and in the next tries heroically to change the subject to collective nouns.

In the Grey Horse at East Boldon they've been looking for an appropriate embrace for barmaids. A gossip and a skive have been suggested; Alan quite likes a cattery. A pull may be best of all.

So finally to the version of the Lord's Prayer - the longest - which forced the crew of Ship of Fools to their knees:

Hi Dad, still in the same old homestead? Dig your name ol'fella. "Thy kingdom come", what's that mean? Anyway, expect me some time in next 20 years (or earlier) -still trying to be good. I like bread, the more the better, but will not try to get too greedy. Overlook any little naughtiness won't you, and will try to do the same but am only human. Bye."