The church not far from me was a working model not a museum so I chose evensong and polished my shoes. I should have known there’d be a catch.

The building was thirteenth-century in parts with Georgian and Victorian repairs. It was of the solid stone that seems to rise organically from the land itself. Grown not made. The colour and substance of battle. The battle to hew it out and shape it for God. It was massy, soil-black and defiant. Across the architrave of the low front door was a plastic banner which said JESUS LOVES YOU.

‘Move with the times,’ I said to myself, slightly uneasy.

I walked inside across the cool flagged floor, the particular church cold that no amount of gas fires and overcoats can penetrate. After the heat of the day it felt like the hand of God. I slid into a dark pew with a tree on the door and looked for my prayer book. There wasn’t one. Then the tambourines started. These were serious tambourines the size of bass drums, flaunting ribbons like a Maypole and studded round the side like the collar of a pitbull. One came down the aisle towards me and flashed at my ear. ‘Praise the Lord,’ said its owner, desperately trying to keep it under control. ‘A stranger in our midst.’

The entire congregation except for me then broke into a melody of Bible texts and scattered shouts liberally set to music. The magnificent pipe organ stood shuttered and dusty, we had an accordion and two guitars. I really wanted to get out but there was a burly beaming farmer standing across the main door who looked as though he might get nasty if I ran for it before the collection.

‘Jesus will overcome you,’ cried the minister. (God the wrestler?)

‘Jesus will have his way with you!’ (God the rapist?)

‘Jesus is going from strength to strength!’ (God the body builder?)

‘Hand yourself over to Jesus and you will be returned with interest.’

I am prepared to accept the many-sidedness of God but I am sure that if God exists He is not a Building Society.

I had a boyfriend once, his name was Bruno. After forty years of dissolution and Mammon he found Jesus under a wardrobe. In fairness, the wardrobe had been slowly crushing the resistance from his lungs for about four hours. He did house clearances and had fallen foul of a double-doored Victorian loomer. The sort of wardrobe poor people lived in. He was eventually rescued by the fire brigade though he always maintained it was the Lord himself who had levitated the oak ever upwards. He took me to church with him soon after and gave a graphic account of how Jesus had come out of the closet to save him. ‘Out of the closet and up into your heart,’ raved the Pastor.

I never saw Bruno after that, he gave me his motorbike as a gesture of renouncement and prayed that it might lead me to the Lord. Sadly it blew up on the outskirts of Brighton.