THE morning after the many splendoured day before, the new Bishop of Jarrow walked down the drive and started work in earnest. It was the Rt Rev John Pritchard's first day at the face, as probably they used to say in Boldon Colliery, a chance - if only metaphorically - to get his hands dirty.

Boldon Colliery is in the north-east corner of the Diocese of Durham, where Shields Gazette meets Sunderland Echo, seagull meets spuggie and the Crown, the Big Club and the Boldon Golden Chippy were quietly recovering from a Saturday night fervour of their own.

Bishop John, 53, is suffragan - right hand man, in non-church terms - to the Bishop of Durham, though the card from the Sunday School welcomed him to the "Sea of Jarrow" and he seemed entirely happy to be adrift on it.

Son of a Church of England canon, he was born in Blackpool, worked as a tram conductor in the school holidays, watched Stanley Matthews play football, enjoys cricket (as all good bishops should) and spent eight years in senior positions at St John's College in Durham before becoming Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1996.

Among that venerable post's disadvantages was that the telephone would ring at all hours, sometimes with those seeking higher authority than his. "There'd be midnight calls from Australia from people claiming to be God and wanting to speak to the Archbishop of Canterbury," he recalled.

So soon after the announcement of the Archbishop's retirement, John Pritchard may indeed be the only Church of England bishop not being tipped somewhere or other as the Primate's successor.

Bishops of Jarrow have usually lived in Durham, though the last one - the admirable Alan Smithson, who revealed that "episcopal" was an anagram of Pepsi-Cola - had a house in Pittington and Bishop John and his wife are moving to a new place in Harlow Green, Gateshead.

Until it's finished they are billeted in the temporarily empty vicarage of St Nicholas's, Boldon Colliery. Sunday morning, neighbourhood church, seemed the perfect place to start.

He had been consecrated in Durham Cathedral the previous afternoon, 45 fellow bishops sharing the hands-on experience, the procession taking about 15 minutes to wend its way from the cloisters.

"It was magnificent, absolutely breathtaking," said Elizabeth Reay, one of St Nicholas's churchwardens, though she confessed to once or twice looking at her watch. ("We knew what time the bus was going.")

"It was awesome without being anxious," said the new bishop. "Whilst kneeling alone before the Archbishop was a vulnerable moment, I was conscious of not being alone."

At St Nic's, built in 1882 but now handsomely and imaginatively re-ordered - "you'd be surprised how many are grateful just for a toilet in church," said Elizabeth - there aren't many more than 45 altogether. It's High Church without teetering over the edge, the congregation augmented by a white robed team of servers and choristers.

The bishop thanks them for the warmth of their welcome, warns that "irregular contours" might mark the service, acknowledges the difficulty (as does the column) of every service being different.

He also anticipates familiarisation problems not just with the little microphone at his chest but with the mitre on his head and the pastoral staff, as well as the crosier, in his left hand.

He'd been quoted £500 (plus VAT) for a hand carved crosier, protested - "It seemed ridiculous; I'm a northerner, I know the value of money" - but was eventually convinced of its worth.

No staff discount, as it were.

The crosier carries the crosses of St Augustine (for Canterbury) and St Cuthbert, for Durham, and there has never been a bishop who couldn't manage ten minutes to a coterie of confirmation candidates on the life and times of his pastoral staff.

His sermon is on witness, touches upon England's 1966 World Cup final victory and upon Botham's test at Headingley, supposes that those who saw them were "a living witness to the last time England were any good at sport."

It brings the first laugh of his epsicopate and the second follows quickly - if a little hesitantly - upon it. John the Baptist, he says, would not be very comfortable at Parochial Church Council meetings. Nor, it is possible to imagine, are very many others.

"If the church here is a microcosm of the church in the diocese then we can all take heart," he adds.

Afterwards there's wine and cake as well as the usual tea and biscuits; Elizabeth Reay says how honoured they are to have him there for his first service, the Bishop returns in conversation to his crosier.

It's the sort that can arrest sheep by the ankles. "I am not here," he adds, unprompted, "to cut people off at the knees.

""I am here to support, to encourage and to be a shepherd in whatever contemporary way that means."

Whether they will follow the new Jarrow Lad remains, of course, to be seen. If first impressions are all they say, however, the Rt Rev John Pritchard was off to an episcopal flier.

Carefully he lay mitre and crosier on a table at the end of his first shift down the Colliery.

"Eeeh," someone said, "he's lovely."