Middling along

The only problem with that familiar doggerel "Tid, Mid, Misere, Carlin, Palm, Paste Egg Day" is that it seems to be one Sunday short of a Lent course.

On that reckoning, at any rate, it's probable that last Sunday was "Mid", though attending St Mary's at Middleton-in-Teesdale was entirely coincidental.

In many ways it was just an everyday story of country folk, though the upper Teesdale churches have their first woman priest - Amanda Pike said to have been a breath of fresh air, even in those breezy parts - Neil Ruddock commutes between his high hills smallholding and his job on the London Underground and Joan and Ken Staley were celebrating their golden wedding with a blessing.

Like pollisses, golden wedding couples appear to be getting younger.

Joan, one of two churchwardens, had been there for an hour before the 11am service. Ken, she said, would arrive five minutes before kick-off, as usual.

They'd met in Middleton and never wanted to leave - "I suggested it after we married; he turned it down flat" - though Ken worked at the Whessoe, in Darlington and Joan for 20 years taught maths at Sunnydale school in Shildon.

"It was a standing joke in the staff rooms that they all owned bricks in the church from all the raffles and things they supported," she recalls.

Two days previously, the day of the golden anniversary, they'd held a party for 60 friends and family at Middleton Masonic Hall, declined presents, raised £610 to be shared between the Great North Air Ambulance and Teesdale Fell Rescue.

"One thing's certain," said Ken, arriving on cue, "we're not leaving Middleton now."

Others suggested it might have been better to have come two weeks later, when they dedicate the new hymn books, Hymns Old and New having been replaced by something a bit more up-to-date.

Getting on 40 are present, including quite a few children. Numbers, families and organisations have all increased since 38-year-old Amanda - born on a farm near Scarborough, married to Simon, mother of three teenage daughters - blew in two years ago.

She's also in charge of Holy Trinity, Egglestone, of the lovely little church, humbly dedicated to St James the Less, at Forest-in-Teesdale and part-time deanery youth worker at the secondary schools in Staindrop and Barnard Castle.

Ordained priest in 2002, she served curacies in Boston Spa and near Hull before beginning her dales diary. "The vicar back home at Cloughton, near Scarborough, was one of the first women priests and I think that was God's way of jollying me up a bit," she says.

"There were one or two comments elsewhere, but here I've had no problems at all about being a woman. It really is a privilege being here; that's no exaggeration."

There's been a church on the site of St Mary's since at least the 12th Century, the present building erected in late Victorian times but with many relics of earlier edifices. A separate bell house, dating from around 1558, was restored as part of the Millennium celebrations. The bells of St Mary's sound again.

A chancel window is dedicated to Canon Leslie Thompson, rector from 1951-81, another to Richard Watson, the Teesdale lead miner and poet. We also affectionately recall Gregory Linden, rector for 15 years after Canon Thompson and once depicted in these columns as looking like a vicar from a Giles cartoon. He took it with a Carl Giles smile.

The service lasts exactly an hour, good old hymns like Lead Us Heavenly Father and Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, a chap in the front swaying from side to side with the music, for all the world like a human metronome.

One of the readings includes a warning to those who complain - "as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer" - Amanda's sermon's about water, physical and spiritual, offering the revelation that the human body is 67 per cent water and a rather nice joke reproduced elsewhere.

"Water is something we take for granted and yet we couldn't survive without it," she says. "Spiritual water is freely available to everyone."

They're a good bunch, warmly welcoming. Neil Ruddock, accent still more Metropolitan Line than Middleton-in-Teesdale, talks enthusiastically of the family's decision to move north - via Lincolnshire - and of what might be called the Underground movement.

Working a four-day week, he usually leaves Darlington station at 5.55am on Monday, often pops back on Tuesday and by Thursday evening is back home and ready to start the weekend.

"It's always been in my blood, I think. We now have a little house, a smallholding and six acres, chickens, ducks and tranquility. As soon as we saw this place we knew it was right; we've been here a year and I haven't even looked in the loft yet.

"There's no rushing about up here, no traffic jams, no pollution. People are more trusting and more to be trusted. It's a harbour of calm, if you want to put it that way."

Tunnelled out, he in turn will soon be made churchwarden. This has been a Mid-term report.

Amanda Pike to whom thanks, also essayed one of the better pulpit jokes of recent years - about the traveller in the desert, close to collapse because of lack of water.

After crawling for two miles, he comes finally to a habitation where he's greeted by a chap who tries to sell him something from a great array of silk ties.

"You idiot," shouts the poor traveller. "Can't you see, all I want is water?"

The tieman apologises, explains that they have no water but points him towards another place another two miles through the sand.

Arriving hours later, he gasps for water to the immaculately dressed chap who greets him at the gate.

"Oh we've plenty of water, sir," says the doorman, "but I'm afraid you can't come in here without a tie."