STILLINGTON’S a village between Stockton and Sedgefield, one of those places with its feet in Cleveland and its heart in County Durham.

Once it had a blasted ironworks, more recently a workmen’s club which, memory suggests, had been the talk of the town.

There’d been a station on the Clarence Railway, even a Slag Row until, Victorian sensitivities being what they were, it was changed to North Street instead.

It was to Stillington that the column was invited to chair a “Question Time” forum, organised by five local churches. The panel was to include Toby Howarth, the Bishop of Bradford, and a couple of trainee priests from Cranmer Hall, in Durham.

The email’s unequivocal – “7pm, Stillington parish hall”. As the pips squeak seven, I find myself outside St John’s church as the lady driver (bless her) heads off for some late night shopping in Stockton. She’ll return at 9.30.

So where’s the parish hall, for heaven’s sake? None knows, save that in the chip shop they insist that village hall and parish hall are one and the same and the village hall is as dark as the hour before the dawn.

Finally enlightenment. “Oh that meeting,” says a lady walking her dog at 7.45pm, “it’s in Thorpe Thewles.” Thorpe Thewles is perhaps three miles away, the country roads gloomy and the direction uncertain.

There’s nothing for it but endlessly to walk Stillington’s empty streets, past the William Cassidi primary school – named after a 19th Century vicar – past darkened Darchem, past the little industrial estate where a sign proclaims “Start here, go anywhere.” Or nowhere, as the case may be.

That I’m not accosted by the cops is either because Neighbourhood Watch is asleep on the job or because I no longer look suspicious. On a fiercely frustrating night, that may be the most anguished thought of all.

IT wasn’t always thus. About a dozen years ago I found myself in Wick, in the early hours, having witnessed the climax of Mrs Sharon Gayter’s world record breaking run from Land’s End to John O’ Groats. It was 1am. Since the first train south left at six and the next at lunchtime, there seemed little point in bunking down. About 3am, the Northern Constabulary interrupted the fourth lap of the burgh, demanding to know what I was doing. “Waiting for a train,” I said. The Scottish polis never did have a sense of humour.

I WOULDN’T care, but I’d done the homework – boned up on the bish, got the crack on Cranmer.

The latter was from a 2016 book called Making Reverend by Matt Woodcock, himself a former journalist on the York Press, chronicling his two years at Cranmer (or vicar factory, as he calls it.)

Matt had discerned the call to ministry whilst driving to Selby magistrates court, an improbable Road to Damascus. “I felt the overwhelming urge that God had something to tell me,” he writes. “Either that or someone had spiked my pot noodle.”

The sub-plot’s about their attempts to start a family, ultimately employing IVF. Finally it worked, and in duplicate, though Anna Woodcock’s pregnancy snoring made for a slightly mixed blessing. “It’s like trying to sleep next to Bernard Manning with a cold,” he recalls.

Insightfully and amusingly described, vicar factory had its ups and downs, soothed at low level by Durham’s plentiful pubs and on a higher plane by Sister Cecilia Goodman – “my inspiration, my guide, my revealer of holy mysteries” – of the Bar Convent in York.

Sr Cecilia had also agreed to guide him after ordination, last year – “doing life and faith without my beloved nun would leave me bereft”.

On the day that we were gathering in Stillington, or Thorpe Thewles or somewhere, Sr Cecilia’s death notice (“unexpectedly”) appeared in The Times. “Much missed for her spiritual counsel, friendship and wisdom,” it said. She was 68.

ON International Women’s Day, a date which may be considered coincidental, I’m invited to address Mowbray Probus Club, all male, in Thirsk.

They’re affable, mostly elderly. Members include a chap who was manager of the Shildon branch of Timothy White’s the chemist in 1956 and who may thus be responsible for suppling the parental home with regular sloshings of California Syrup of Figs (and Seven Seas of cod liver oil.)

It’s a chance to stir a few Thirsk memories: the first media interview with a little-known vet called James Herriot, seasonal forays with Bill Foggitt the weather man, the Thirsk Gentlemen’s Domino Dinner – held every year since 1915, menu beef or beef – at which in 2010 I came second after leading by a street at half-time.

It was the biggest fall from grace, the subsequent column supposed, since Newcastle United led the league by 12 points in 1995-96 and still contrived not to win it.

Chiefly, however, Thirsk remains memorable for Harry Whitton – retired electrical dealer, local author, column correspondent and incorrigible name dropper.

“Here is a photograph of me and Princess Anne,” he’d write, or “Lord Howard de Walden once told me” or “I enclose a letter from Sheikh Hamdam Maktoum.”

Teased terribly, he died on Christmas Day 2005. Several months later a letter arrived from his solicitor, enclosing a £500 cheque from his estate.

Though many may similarly have been tormented, Harry’s magnaminity remains unique.

GRATIFYINGLY, nonetheless, another gentleman at Mowbray Probus has brought carefully preserved copies of At Your Service columns from what are known as the Hillside Parishes, north of Thirsk.

One’s a visit to St Mary’s in Leake, Palm Sunday 1995, where the vicar was the Rev Patrick Reginald Andrew Reid Hoare – known to all as Toddy – and the donkey was called Annabelle.

“They’ve been sharing Palm Sunday services for ten years, old pros the pair of them,” we wrote.

The other’s an account of the Easter daybreak service, 4x4s lined up like a pre-dawn point-to-point, on the other side of the A19 at Over Silton.

Usually beneath the headline “Early to rise”, AYS attended any amount of dawn services, from the beach at Redcar to the cloisters of Durham Cathedral to a perisher beneath Captain Cook’s monument.

None may have been colder than the 6am gathering on Middlehope Common, high in Weardale, organised by the Methodists, but attended by an ecumenical Chihuahua called Zaccheus who also liked the CofE in Crook.

Without exception, they were memorable ways to greet Easter. It may be time to rise to the occasion once more.

TWO days after Thirsk, I’m officially opening the beer festival at Darlington Rugby Club, an occasion requiring no physical exertion, but which stirs the memory, nonetheless.

Perhaps ten years earlier, I’d addressed the club’s annual dinner, the repast delayed because the kitchen also had an afternoon function and simply had too many mouths to feed.

The meal was served about 10pm, the speaker rising (reluctantly) shortly before midnight. It might have been better simply to have been turned into a pumpkin. Words, and common courtesy, failed me.

Mowden Park, formerly cross-town rugby rivals, had been rather more accommodating at their dinner. They simply threw bread buns at me and, since the team wasn’t very good at the time, most of them managed to miss.