A bit late in the day to be egalitarian, the column finds itself a token male at the Women's World Day of Prayer.

While not what might be termed mammoth, these columns' usual gestation period is uncommonly lengthy, nonetheless. Sunday to Saturday offers six days to labour the points.

This one's different. The service didn't even begin until 2pm yesterday, and barely time to spit thereafter before someone's demanding to know - deadline teatime - when the poor little scrap's going to be ready for bed.

It's a bit like all those years ago, writing football reports for the Pink, when the final whistle blew at 20 to five, when phones still cost twopence and had buttons A and B and when the vans, running on adrenaline, were on the road before most of the crowd was home.

This was the Women's World Day of Prayer at St Augustine's Roman Catholic Church, Darlington, an ecumenical service repeated yesterday in 180 countries and in 1,000 languages across the globe.

Officially it's described as "a chain of Christian prayer", though almost all the chain gang are women. Men and children are also welcome, though none of the latter and precious few of the former were in evidence.

"Are you the honorary female?" asked Anne Gibbon, mischievously, though we were shortly joined by Councillor Roderick Francis, Darlington's mayor, and by a parishioner called Duncan who'd come to offer support.

Showing a leg, as it were.

Nowadays, of course, such mixed blessings are commonplace. There are men in the Women's Institute, dads in the Mothers' Union and lasses in the Church Lads Brigade. The Labour Party candidates' shortlist in Bishop Auckland may be sexism's last redoubt.

The less avoidable inequality, alas, is that women live twice as long, and it wouldn't do to speculate on the reasons.

Among the congregation was Millie Piper, 94-year-old widow of the long-serving former Rector of Hurworth, Joan Lazonby, widow of a former parish priest of Haughton (and of Witton Park) and Beryl Gready, whose late husband was Vicar of St Cuthbert's, Darlington.

Mrs Piper, still actively fundraising and sustained by two glasses of hot water each morning - doctor's orders, about 75 years since - had missed one Women's World Day in 67 years; Mrs Lazonby had been to almost as many.

"It's a wonderful occasion, helps make you think of so many different people in other parts of the world and about their problems and not just your own," she said.

Now always on the first Friday in March, the annual service began in 1919 when two other prayer days were united. Using the same basic service, the people of Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand are first to celebrate the day, those on St Lawrence Island, off Alaska, the last.

Each year's service is written by women from a different country, this year's from Poland - free of Communist control since 1989, member of the EU last year and where 85 per cent of Christians are Roman Catholic.

Parts of the order of service carried the original Polish text, a language which appears to have more accents in improbable places than the average episode of Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

The theme was Let Our Light Shine, the congregation of around 150 almost all bareheaded. Church attendance is no longer a hat parade, nor the centre aisles milliners' row.

The service began with the sharing of bread and salt, symbols of hospitality and friendship. It was not, it should be confessed, the column's customary Friday afternoon fare; ham and pease pudding sandwiches in the Brit are more frequently on the menu.

We prayed for peace and for the people of Poland, sang hymns like Shine Jesus Shine and God Whose Almighty Word - the latter to the tune "Moscow", did they know that in Warsaw? - heard Major Lynda Hunt, of the Salvation Army in Newcastle, talk about inner light.

Major Hunt recalled that after the familiar instruction to go into the world and preach, someone had once added "and sometimes you might need to use words".

Mrs Gibbon, an occasional correspondent hereabouts, had earlier wondered what the opposite of a misogynist - a man hater - might be. That was food for thought, an' all.

Towards the end everyone lit a candle, an increasingly popular practice in churches. Waxing logical, it seems to be a bit dangerous among cack-handed congregations. Just as in football matches a first aider must be present, shouldn't churches have a chap with a high pressure hose stationed surreptitiously in the vestry?

As it does every year across the world, the service finished with John Ellerton's wonderful hymn, The Day Thou Gave Us Lord is Ended. . .

The sun that bids us rest is waking

Our brethren 'neath the western sky,

And hour by hour fresh lips are making

Thy wondrous doings heard on high.

It ended after about 75 minutes, extra time if not penalties, the ladies off for tea and tongue wag in the church hall, the gentleman hurrying off for a little penitential brow beating - once more left holding the baby.