LAST weekend marked Plough Sunday, said by the Darlington and Stockton Times - infallible on such earthy matters - still to be celebrated in some country places by "much drinking of ale, morris dancing and mummers plays."

It wasn't quite so boisterous in Forcett, though the January parish magazine records - indeed pictures - "refined wassailry" after the carol service. In Forcett we drank coffee.

As sure as night the day, Plough Sunday was followed in medieval times by Plough Monday. Twelfth Night would just have passed; it was time for North-East farm labourers to get themselves back to the land.

Youngsters would go round the doors begging "Penny for the plough boy", the Plough Fool would ceremonially be executed and no less gloriously resurrected and those who failed to give might find their front gardens ploughed next morning.

Whatever it said for tradition, it said little for the straight and narrow.

There's little of it about nowadays, such practices perhaps transferred to Mischief Night, or most others. In Forcett, however, the Plough Sunday custom has been gently dug up again.

It's a hamlet near Scotch Corner, or as near Scotch Corner as anywhere else much. There's an attractive church dedicated to St Cuthbert - part of the Stanwick group of parishes which also includes Aldbrough St John, Caldwell, Eppleby and Melsonby - and though there's no pub, a Forcett and District Games League, too.

Last time we wrote about the Forcett Games League, memory suggests, was when a team was expelled for failing to attend the annual meeting.

About 25 attended last Sunday evening's service, led by the Rev Stan Haworth, the group's priest-in-charge, who'd restored the Plough Sunday service last year.

Mr Haworth - e-mail address stantherevman - studied at St John's College in Durham, has been a priest in four different dioceses but appears to be working his way back north.

The congregation included Sam Herdman, organist for 40 years and now president of Darlington Operatic Society after a lifetime's service to it, Bob Jarrett who attends St Cuthbert's in Darlington in the morning and St Cuthbert's, Forcett at night, and 67-year-old Ernest Anderson, churchwarden and working farmer.

"I'd go crackers if I retired," he said, and also insisted that he wasn't a "fantastic" Christian.

"In farming you work with nature. If you don't see something special in a calf being born, or wonder what might have created it, then there must be something wrong with you."

He also said that farmers were always optimistic. "Fiddlesticks," someone replied, or something slightly less ecclesiastical.

Once a plough would have been carried into church (as still it is at Masham). Such things are now physically impossible, they symbolically used a blade mould instead.

"I would still encourage you not to fall over it," Mr Haworth told his congregation.

The church is reckoned around 300 years old, though none seemed terribly sure. The tower, or parts of it, may be Saxon, the east window is stained stupendously, an "F" crest is painted on the pew ends.

The service was "Prayer Book" Evensong. Psalm 29 about the Lord making cedars to skip like a calf, hymns like We Plough the Fields and Scatter, the sermon about God's plough.

Afterwards, the three men of the congregation who still work on the land gathered at the chancel steps. We said prayers for farm and for home, for the millions in poverty and hunger and for food in due season.

Mr Haworth blessed the plough, wished God speed to plough and ploughman, farm and farmer.

"God speed the plough," we replied, and retired gratefully for our coffee.

Ough-my-gawd!

CLEARLY a man of letters, the Rev Stan Haworth suggested in his sermon that "ough" - as in plough - could be pronounced in eight different ways.

Nough said, perhaps, but he may still have underestimated the difficulties. Why else would self-effacing academics at Loughborough University refer to their seat of learning as "Lowbrow"?

The problem, as these little things tend to do, occupied several letters pages in The Times during 2002. Bidding began at six different pronunciations, was raised to eight and might have hit 11 had not "hiccough" been disqualified as simply a misspelling of "hiccup" - a hiatus, as it were.

A chap in Lancashire wrote that the Red Rose county had three places called Claughton, separately pronounced Clayton, Claffton and Clawton; someone in Gloucestershire knew three families called Houghton - pronounced Howton, Horton and Huwton.

The ough-my-gawd factor may have been summed up, however, in a poem by Bennet Cerf:

The wind was rough

And cold and blough;

She kept her hands inside her mough.

It chilled her through,

Her nose turned blough

And still the squall the faster flough.

And yet although

There was no snough

The weather was a cruel fough.

It made her cough

(Please, do not scough)

She coughed until her hat blew ough.

The same Times letters column also carried a query about why an escalator's handrail always travels faster than the steps, but that seems of no relevance whatever to the At Your Service column.

THE sudden death of David Garood, best known as organist at St James the Great church in Darlington, has also deprived Trimdon Station Methodist Church of its organist at the 5.30pm service on Sundays. They'd greatly welcome a volunteer replacement - contact 01429 882130.