ON one occasion beneath the headline “Dawn and dusted”, the At Your Service column (1994-2011) would annually attend what the churches call an Easter Sunrise service, almost always outdoors.

Frequently freezing, venues ranged from Redcar beach to Captain Cook’s Monument. At Durham Cathedral, 5am, we’d been greeted by the bishop.

“What are you doing here?” asked the Rt Rev Tom Wright.

“Working, what are you?”

This Easter, 4am alarm, we head again for the wilds of Weardale, the temperature down home a balmy 4C but three fewer atop Middlehope Moor.

Bunnies abound. The lady driver slows to ensure their safe passage. An Easter message, or what? The five o’clock gritter heading in the opposite direction may have something to say, too.

It should have been the 27th time that Weardale’s church folk have gathered up there. Rather it’s the 26th. One Easter the weather was so vile they never ventured beyond Eastgate car park.

The first year that we attended, the day after the Queen Mother’s passing in 2002, was almost as bad. A chapel-going chihuahua called Zaccheus poked a cautious head from its basket and decided that it preferred a dog’s life.

Last Sunday was different. Risen indeed, the sun peers cautiously, but with near-solar powered synchronicity.

Two guys carry a large cross, perhaps rugged, but definitely not old. After last year’s service they laid it in a nearby copse, returned on Good Friday to check its survival and discovered that the cross had been stolen.

The service is led, compellingly and cogently, by Sue Peat, a Methodist deacon. “A day of hope over despair,” says Sue, perhaps wise enough – unlike us – not to have listened to the 5am news on the World Service.

Inevitably the dawn chorus includes Thine Be the Glory, Christendom’s greatest hymn, but also Go Tell It On the Mountain. 1,500 feet up we sing it with gusto, though not as well as Peter, Paul and Mary.

Thereafter in Eastgate village hall there’s a sun-blessed and splendid Easter breakfast – hot cross buns, simnel cake, hot buttered toast, pace eggs, proper coffee, good conversation.

Sadly amid the hot cross bun fight, no one’s up for a spot of gentle jarping. A correspondent in The Times the other day outrageously suggested that there are North-East folk who cheat at the annual head banging, a calumny on a region.

By 11am it’s tipping down – but the early risers have had a tremendous start.

FIFTY years to the day since they were formed, the weekend soldiers of the 223 (Durham) Field Dressing Station RAMC – long name, combat medics in short – were back on parade for a golden jubilee reunion.

Whilst it may not, regrettably, be said that old soldiers never die, they looked in pretty good fettle, nonetheless.

If not quite a reversion to Your Country Needs You back in 1967, it was certainly the case that Old England would be grateful for a few hours of their time.

“It may never happen, but….” said the recruitment posters, and south Durham responded magnificently and unconditionally.

Sometimes the volunteers called themselves the SAS, which stood for Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes the Swat Team. Swat was Some Weekends and Thursdays. The regulars called them Stabs, of which the first three-quarters was “Stupid Territorial Army” and the rest must be left to the imagination.

The unit had been raised by West Auckland GP Cedric Scott, several recalling that they’d seen the doc about a bad back and come out on the front line. Though many had been DLI men, only three had any medical experience: the trained killers became trained carers.

Dr Scott, who became a full colonel, had attended the 40th anniversary, told them to report back ten years thereafter and that it was an order.

Sadly, he himself died in 2013, aged 86, and went to his maker in khaki with a name badge stitched to the chest. “When he gets to wherever he’s going they won’t be able to mix him up with anyone,” said Gwen, his widow.

The unit was just a few months old when joined in camp at Church Crookham in Hampshire by a (very) wet-eared young reporter from the Northern Despatch in Darlington.

Scrapbooks still tell the story. “Boozers are out in the modern reserve army,” said one headline, though clearly no one went hungry. Seven of the 94 at Church Crookham were cooks.

Agog, we’d also noted that semi-detached houses in nearby Fleet were on the market for up to £4,000.

They were transferred from Bishop Auckland to Newton Aycliffe in 1984, subsumed elsewhere in 1995. A decade ago, the column had noted that the Barnard Armoury in Newton Aycliffe had posters seeking sperm donors; perhaps because they have enough, the posters now talk of sexual orientation monitoring, teasing and bullying and environmental heath sustainability development (which, clearly, is the stuff to give the troops.) Former miner and male nurse Alan Brunskill, who joined the Army as a boy bugler and became a TA major, was the only man who served 223 throughout. “The powers-that-be thought we were some kind of second class citizens but they soon learned better,” he said.

“It was a family unit and that helped but we weren’t playing at soldiers, we were working bloody hard at it.”

Ian Wilkinson, back from Australia, thought them the best outfit in the TA. “We won all the competitions, even shooting. In the end they stopped the medics entering.”

“We just all pitched in,” said Peter Fretwell, 83. “An awful lot of it was down to Col Scott. He was very proud of us.”

None knows if it will have been the last post. “I don’t think” said Alan Brunskill, “that we’re fading away just yet.”

STILL in Newton Aycliffe, we recalled a couple of columns back how the late and lamented local councillor Tony Moore, having dived into the town’s swimming pool in an attempt to escape the demands of local government, was somewhat irked to be overtaken in the fast lane.

“Excuse me, Tony,” said his fellow swimmer, “but can you do anything about my daughter-in-law’s council house?”

It prompted an email from David Walsh, deputy leader of Langbaurgh Council, laid up in East Cleveland hospital in Brotton after his knee gave way beneath him and thus, he reflects, a sitting (“or at least horizontal”) target.

Recuperation may not have been helped because it was the week the council tax demands went out. “Apart from those moans, understood and acknowledged, I’ve also had to deal with staff concerns over missed wheelie bin collections, charges for waste disposal at a local landfill, the state of a children’s playground and right-to-buy regulations for housing association tenants.”

Tony Moore died after a heart attack while swimming. David Walsh, much more happily, limps to tell the tale.

...AND finally, Don Cowan in Guisborough spots in last Saturday’s Echo crossword the wonderful clue “It sounds like a slight gain for Amos, for example (5.7)”.

The answer – oh, come on – is minor prophet. Another major contribution next week.