My neighbour said a retired canon called Roger had been drafted in to do the honours, and off we trooped.I confess, like Madame Bovary, to be dazzled more by the trappings than the doctrines of religion. When my son was a chorister, the hairs on the back of my neck would prickle when he and his angelic cronies came down the aisle, dispensing Ave Marias and Agnes Deis like so many well-drilled larks. Even so, having spent my formative years at a convent with bells and smells and Latin mass, I have become familiar with and partial to the mumbo jumbo of religion. Even Father John, the headmaster of my high-Anglican boarding school, who liked to dress up as Jesus with a crown of thorns and the prettier sixth form girls gathered close around him as disciples, couldn’t destroy the essential mystery. Alas no more.Roger, the retired canon, welcomed us and said he hoped he wouldn’t forget anything because he had taken four services in the last 36 hours and felt a bit knackered.

He would pass us immediately on to a lay reader called Hayley to explain the theme of the service. Themed pubs, themed restaurants, why not themed matins as well, with fishing nets and lobster pots decorating the altar and angels dressed as mermaids? Hayley said that today’s theme was a play on the word presents, or presence. Jesus was present right here right now, she said, but he was also a present. What presents had the children had for Christmas? A baby doll you could feed with a bottle, said a child.

“Is it the kind that wets itself?” asked Roger with interest.The litany of Christmas presents was briefly interrupted while we sang “We Three Kings of Orient Are”. Roger said he remembered asking a small boy what the second wise man had brought baby Jesus, and he had replied: “Frankenstein.” How we all laughed. “Now, I want some children to come up here and do some bashing,” said Roger producing tambourines and drums. “See if you can make as much noise as you did in the children’s service yesterday.”They could, and they did How we all clapped.