When Trinity Sunday coincides with Brian Harvey Day

It occasionally happens that Trinity Sunday coincides with Brian Harvey Day.

On 31st May 2005, Brian Harvey of the boy band East 17 ran over himself with his own car after eating too many jacket potatoes.

And I looked into the history - sometimes troubled, it has to be said, of Brian Harvey and East 17. And I noticed that after many line up changes, only one original member of what is called E-17 now is still in the band. I'm not even convinced that they're all from Walthamstow.

And this isn't unusual, of course. People of a different generation will remember Syston's finest, Showaddywaddy. Still touring. Only one member left from the good old days though.

Or Genesis fans will argue that Genesis weren't Genesis when Peter Gabriel left. Or Steve Hackett. Or Phil Collins. And were Take That still Take That when Robbie left? Or when Jason did?

We don't apply the same criteria to other groupings of course. Nobody claims Liverpool aren't the same football club because the original line-up aren't still playing. It's the club that matters. Nobody says the London Symphony Orchestra aren't the same organisation as when they were founded, or Marks and Spencer fundamentally changed when Spencer left the band.

And I think we can learn a lot about the Trinity from that.

Melt Down in the Moot House

And so as the temperature passed 90°F in the Moot House this afternoon, we had to face a terrible fact.

Not that the world is becoming increasingly hot, though that is disturbing.

Not that the most powerful men in the planet are engaged in a ceaseless flurry of activity to stoke up the warming. Through "drill, baby drill," and endless unnecessary data centres, churning out pictures of trolls carrying badly-rendered Union Jacks and American flags in the cause of "patriotism". Because what says "authentically Ingerlish" more than trolls with bizarre fingers and back-to-front Union Jacks in a computer-generated image that costs the earth?

No.

Worse even than that.

The tea lights have all melted.

So we have spent the afternoon combining them into a giant tea light in the shape of Andy Burnham, "King of the North". Whose puzzled looks and puffing cheeks are now topped by a flame rising from the top of his head, as we celebrate the Feast of St Andy. So we will eat us black pudding pies this evening, and prepare for the liberation of England from something undefinable by a bloke we'd half forgotten. Or, at least, its liberation until in 2 years' time the Labour party panics at the state of the polls and installs Angela Rayner, Jess Phillips or Nigel Farage.

Still - I hope all the Beaker Folk enjoy the Northern Pie Experience. We've packed plenty of tripe in with the black pudding. You can't get much more authentically northern than that.

Trinity Sunday Sermon - pre-release

Every year we get the stress from the people preaching on Easter Sunday. The illustrations that are blatantly heretical. The crying because the vicar has gone away and left the curate to preach (mostly the congregation crying rather than the curate).

So I'm saving you the trouble.

Before you even get near Trinity Sunday. 

It's a traditional three-point sermon, based on insights from three theologians:

1. 'Tis mystery all (Charles Wesley)

2. It's a mystery (Toyah Wilcox)

3. A mystery it is (Yoda)

We may have the wrong Yoder.