Many a slip

THE snow is no longer deep and crisp and even, as it was when Good King Wenceslas looked out.

Rather it is hard and frozen and villainous, compelling a change in the usual pre-service topic of conversation.

Usually folk compare medical notes, an inter-denominational but oddly competitive exercise, employing long words that end in “ectomy”

and “otomy” and seldom sparing the detail. Now they’re comparing ice patches.

“Our street’s just awful,” says a lady in the pew behind.

“Oh I know, but ours is terrible,”

says her friend, as if “terrible” were the nadir. Freezing point; skid row.

Gillian Horton, the minister, announces beforehand that the church’s Christmas cards are stuck in Germany and may not arrive before the big day. Should they make it, Gillian adds, they should be handled with care.

“Don’t risk life and limb,” she pleads. “If it’s a choice between a Christmas card and a fractured hip, don’t deliver the Christmas card.”

The snow doesn’t even look nice any more. Harrowgate Hill Methodist church, conversely, is absolutely magnificent. They’re holding a Christmas tree festival, all 19 gloriously decorated, last weekend and this.

There’s even a tree fragrantly decorated with gold, frankincense and myrrh. Still time to breath deeply and take it all in.

THE church is just off North Road in Darlington, junction of Lowson Street and Bowman Street, opened in 1903 at a cost of £1,260 and to seat 450 people.

“This is one church,” the column observed when recording the centenary, “that isn’t about to become a second-hand furniture showroom.”

Times change. When local Methodist restructuring proposals were revealed earlier this year, Harrowgate Hill was one of those which would remain as a mission centre but lose Sunday services.

Thereafter, something of a Plan B appears to have emerged. Gillian, Darlington’s superintendent minister since September, is reluctant to discuss it.

“It’s not in my gift. It’s a trustees’ decision; we can only recommend,”

she says. The proposals, she adds, are under review.

Unusually for a minister, she has come back to the town in which she was raised. She left for university at 18, studied modern languages, worked as a teacher and a technical translator, took a second degree in theology and became a Methodist local preacher.

“I had decided there was absolutely no way I was going into the ministry,”

she recalls. “Then the atheist who was doing my work appraisal told me it was obvious I was going into the ministry and it made rethink.”

The biblical bit about a prophet not being without honour save in his country – “and in his own house” – clearly didn’t apply.

“We talked about it and agreed it was a good match. Not many people remember me from Darlington, anyway; there’s been quite a patch since I was 18.”

“She’s a breath of fresh air,” says Brian Simpson, the Christmas tree festival co-ordinator. Someone else supposes her combative and clearly means it as a compliment.

The new superintendent, however, has never read the At Your Service column. “I’ve heard of it,” she says, in the guarded manner of someone who’s heard of influenza but would rather not catch it for Christmas.

Nothing should be read into that, of course. It seems entirely possible that the breath of fresh air could become a force eight to be reckoned with.

MAYBE 40 are present, mostly getting on a bit and almost all female. The minister’s only problem is that she’s forgotten her hay fever stuff. “Your trees are gorgeous, but forgive me if I start sneezing,” she tells them.

An offer from a congregation member is declined. “I don’t believe in sharing medication. It’s not good practice,” she says.

The service follows the Advent story of John the Baptist. “Probably all most of you remember about John is that he dressed funny and ate locusts and wild honey,” says the minister.

There’s a reading about his warning of wheat being sorted from chaff and of the wrath to come. “It’s good stuff, isn’t it?” says Gillian, and may have a twinkle in her eye when she says it.

The Reverend Paul Walker, it may be recalled, used the text “O generation of vipers, who warned ye to flee from the wrath to come” as the text of his first sermon at St Mary’s, Barnard Castle. Then he sat down again.

Gillian’s accent is such that, mistakenly, I take her to be from Lancashire, a sort of cross between Victoria Wood and the Vicar of Dibley.

She insists that she hasn’t written a sermon – “I know what you’re like”

– and that instead she’ll tell a very short story. It’s the familiar one about the wind and the sun arguing over who can first get the coat off a chap’s back.

“It’s probably the only thing you’ll remember this morning,” says Gillian, self-effacingly and then delivers a sermon – a highly cogent sermon – nonetheless.

The hymns include Joy to the World. There are prayers for the lonely and depressed and for church member Elsie Waites, 80 that day, who’d suffered a head injury a few days earlier in a fall on the ice.

The theme, altogether appropriately, is about guiding footsteps and travelling expectantly. It could well be the thought for the day. There’s no sign of the ice melting; many a slip, they still have to get themselves home.

■ The Christmas tree festival continues today from 10am-1pm.

Admission £2. Tomorrow’s services are at 10.30am with a carol service at 6pm. There’s Christmas Eve family worship at 5pm and Holy Communion at 11 15pm.