Forthcoming attraction

IT’S the first Sunday of Advent, that great season of anticipation, marked biblically by John the Baptist’s exhortation to make straight the way of the Lord.

It seems rather less prophetic – and altogether less prudent – for the Reverend Robert Williamson to announce at 8am communion last Sunday that Mr Mike Amos will be in attendance at the special Advent service that evening.

Perhaps it explains the disappointing turnout. Perhaps the fearful weather has something to do with it, too. Maybe we’re just both voices crying in the wilderness, the Baptist and I.

Mr Williamson is vicar of St Cuthbert’s, in Darlington Market Place, the town’s chorally magnificent but still rather unsung parish church.

The bells peal exhortation of their own, ding-dong merrily, across the snow-clad town.

They come in boots and with snow poles, in galoshes and green gaiters.

Were a St Bernard to lollop in with half a barrel of best brandy round its neck, it would not in the least be surprising.

Mr Williamson, however, has again to brave the cold after realising that he’s left his dog collar in the car. It prompts the recollection from those in the warmth that the Archbishop of York symbolically snipped his collar in half earlier this year and still doesn’t wear one. None of us, however, can remember what he was protesting about.

The photographer notices that one of his images is on St Cuthbert’s Christmas card, decides again suing them for royalties. Season of good will.

Nick Barker, the engaging Archdeacon of Auckland, is dressed rather as Captain James Oates might have been before heading off into the Antarctic and announcing that he might be gone for some time.

Captain Oates, it will be recalled, has yet to make it back. Since the archdeacon lives but half a mile away, it’s to be hoped he made base camp more safely.

“Let’s face it,” says a friendly lady in the pew behind, “who’d turn out on a night like this?”

“Well there’s me and you.”

“I know,” she says, “but my husband’s in the choir.”

It’s an ecumenical service for all the town centre churches, including Salvation Army and Society of Friends. Choir apart, the congregation may barely be 50. Those who stayed away miss a pre-Christmas treat.

T HE theme’s “Towards the Light”, the order of service reprinting the theological line that all the darkness in the world can never put out the light of one small candle.

It’s different with light bulbs, though. Once, were a bulb to pop, the verger would simply shin up a ladder and screw in a new one. Now, health and safety, they’ve to bring in scaffolds and stuff. Last time they changed five bulbs, it cost St Cuthbert’s £700.

A thought no less gloomy, the church’s Christmas-themed stained glass window is away for repair, its space boarded, after someone shot at it through the protective grill. They reckon it’ll cost £4,000.

It is not, of course, the most terrible thing to happen in St Cuthbert’s churchyard during 2010.

All the darkness in the world sometimes seems to have strong local representation.

T HIS is conversely, coruscatingly, joyful, a service of expectation carefully planned and, from the moment that the choir enters by candlelight, beautifully executed.

The choir is led by David Ratnanayagam, the director of music, and would grace a cathedral. The organist, no less uplifting, is Andrew Kingscote. His wife – they also serve – turns the pages.

Mind, it’s another sign of the times that when the organist plays Bach’s choral prelude Wachet Auf, there are folk like me who know it only as the music from the Lloyd’s Bank commercial, the one with the black horse.

We sing Advent favourites like Lo He Comes and O Come O Come Emmanuel, maintain the theme with hymns like Thou Whose Almighty Word – chaos and darkness heard, and took their flight – listen to anthems like “And the glory of the Lord” from the Messiah.

After that one, like an Arsenal goal, the instinct is simply to stand up and holler.

Inevitably, too, there’s that timeless reading from the ninth chapter of Isaiah about the people who walked in darkness having seen a great light. It’s read from the King James Bible, the 400th anniversary of which will be marked next year.

It’s to be hoped that, beginning with the Christmas Day gospel, we shall hear a great deal more of it.

There’s also a reading about joy, which is not to be confused with Mr David Cameron’s search for happiness.

“Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved,” it says. “Joy is not the same as happiness. We can be unhappy about many things, but joy can still be there.”

The readings are by members of the different churches, one lady reading in Braille. There’s no sermon; no need. The service says it all.

There are prayers for those affected by the severe weather – “those whose isolation and loneliness are increased”

– a final hymn, a little round of applause for the organist who richly deserves it, a struggle back into the thermals and, for the choir, a walk across to the pub.

However depressing the weather, however encircling the gloom, this was the year’s most invigorating service.

Truly a red letter day in the Advent calendar; truly the light fantastic.

■ David Ratnanayagam gives an organ recital in St Cuthbert’s, Darlington, at 7.30pm on Saturday, December 11. Tickets are £10, £8 concessions, pay at the door. St Cuthbert’s principal Christmas services are at 4pm and 11.30pm on December 24 and 8am and 10.30am on December 25.