A friend once observed rather sharply that "anyone's diary, mine or Pablo Picasso's, is bound to be 99 per cent boring, of concern only to his friends."

On the eve of my departure for Lapland, however, the same friend presented me with a copy of Samuel Pepys' diary, as though prolonged exposure to the land of the midnight sun might make me less than civilised.

Evidently, some diaries are better than others. The cover of Better to Travel Hopefully shows a chirpy looking David Hope leaning on the saddle of a bicycle. I don't know if the former Archbishop of York actually did cycle round Ilkley when he became parish priest at the town's St Margaret's Church.

David Hope's introduction spells out his modus operandi as a diarist. "A diary is not like a novel, which is more organisedReal life is often haphazard, and doesn't always develop in the right order!

"A diary is more like a series of photographs taken from different anglesBetter to Travel Hopefully contains hundreds of snapshots of my life in and outside St Margaret's, but the theme lies in a phrase of the poet George Herbert: Heaven in ordinary'."

George Herbert is a regular feature in this book, which chronicles David Hope's first year of parish ministry in Ilkley. Just skimming a few pages I saw at least two references in passing and on page 175 four lines from his poem The Elixir. The prophet Elisha puts in an appearance on 104, offering the authors the chance of a payoff that would make Terry Wogan blush.

"There's a strange story in 2 Kings 2 of how a group of boys got more than they bargained for when they jeered at him, Go away baldhead!' He cursed them in the name of the Lord', and along came two she-bears which mauled 42 of the cheeky urchins (children of our Family Service please note).

"I rather feel for poor Elisha. Today he would have brought some hair-restorer or asked himself the question which every balding gent poses sometimes: Toupee or not toupee?'"

Dear me. By contrast, page 149 concludes with Mr Hope in what might be called Robbie Williams mode: "Belief in angels is not a rather quaint option giving comfort to the fanciful. It springs from an awareness that there is more to the universe than we can at present conceive, just as there is more to an iceberg than appears on the surface."

The only quaint notion here is of a Church of England minister confessing to an unequivocal belief in God. Trendy vicars apologising for their beliefs is one of the more tiresome features of Cool Britannia.

He touches on this himself on page 186, asking how Christianity is to be advanced in secular multicultural Little Britain in which there is "widespread misunderstanding - ignorance even - about the beliefs expressed in the creeds, our basic statement of faith?"

Thinking about the poor in Africa is one suggested answer. Setting loose a couple of Elisha's she-bears among the alleged faithful at the next Church of England Synod might be another.

l Better to Travel Hopefully, by David Hope with Hugh Little, published by Darton, Longman and Todd at £9.95.