LAST Sunday, my wife and I walked the two miles across the golf course here under the South Downs to the 8am Prayer Book Service at St Mary’s parish church and the dewy grass sparkled white like so many dropped sixpences in the brilliant early sunlight.

I think we’d had the first night frost of the autumn. On these rare paradoxical occasions you can see even less in the exceptional light than what you can in the pitch dark. We came in dazzled and guiltlessly enjoyed mackerel for breakfast. I say guiltlessly because I see mackerel has been restored by the EU fisheries commissars to the list of fish which have recovered from their decline and are now therefore no longer on the banned index.

The purpose of my column today is simply to cheer us all up. I know that glorious summer has pulled down its shutters and the evenings are drawing in, but this should not forbode a season of discontent. Autumn is often the loveliest time of the year. We get some serene days full of pastel shades when at three o’clock in the afternoon it seems brief summer again.

And then I look out over the green pleasantness and recall that line about being young and easy under the apple boughs. And Mr Eliot’s more considered line about history being now and England.

What I missed when I moved to be Rector of St Michael’s in the City of London were the harvest festivals I enjoyed when I was a country parson in Yorkshire. In our village there was the church and the chapel and, while I wouldn’t dream of saying, that never the twain shall meet, there was, let me say, frequently an emotional distancing.

For example, one of the more righteous – well, self-righteous anyhow – ladies of the Methodist persuasion, a farmer’s wife whose build put me in mind of that old wrestler Mick McManus, disapproved of our summertime Anglican frolics at the Garden Party and disdained some of our suntanned C of E ladies “in their leisure wear like boiled sweets half-unwrapped”.

This superabundant Methodist stalwart disapproved of the raffle and would solemnly declare: “It’s no use to me. I always win a bottle of wine – something useless like that.”

One year, we would go to the parish church for the service and the next to the chapel. If they came to us, the Methodist minister would preach, and if we went to them, then I would do the job. I chiefly remember the Methodist ladies choir seated high and lifted up behind the organ, far above the Minister’s lectern in their fancy hats – like boiled sweets, you might say, over-wrapped.

Anglican village lads invariably got the giggles. The ladies sang with such vibrato that you heard the anthem twice. The other funny thing was the Methodist Minister’s style of prayer. It was described as extempore – that is to say heartfelt and made up on the spot and not like the vain repetitions of the Church’s Book of Common Prayer.

Except, for all their vaunted spontaneity, these prayers were always the same. And usually they began with a strange phrase: “Dear loving heavenly Father, we would ask thee…”

And I couldn’t help thinking what’s all this “we would” preamble? Why not just ask the Almighty straight out?

God is, after all, our friend who doesn’t stand on his dignity and so he doesn’t expect us to approach him obsequiously, as if he were Baroness Virginia Bottomley.

Enjoy the autumn, mellow, close-bosomed, sunny, maturing and all that…