Menfolk, typically, are charged with the fabric, the walls, guttering, roof and drains. But it is women who, in smaller ways, make the house of God a proper home.

Some years ago, the Sunday school pupils at my village church in East Sussex put on a Candlemas play. It involved, of course, a doll-child and a lot of tea towels, but the prophetess Anna was a star turn: stooped, powder-pale, with a stick and in a long grey shawl. She was the colour, roughly, of the pillar she hid behind for most of the action, before emerging to croak out that this was the Awaited One, the Saviour of Israel.

It struck me then that many of her audience could have played the part with aplomb. Most of our congregation (like myself) are women past 70, with familiar afflictions of corns, arthritis, hard-veined hands and croaking voices. Like Anna, we hide behind pillars much of the time. But whenever the call comes for polishing, dusting, finding the Remembrance Day cross, making cakes or sweeping the eternal yew-tree needles by the south door, we are there. Whenever in church you glimpse rubber gloves, washing-up, a dustpan or a lump of Oasis, a modern-day Anna will be near.

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