I always regarded Victoria Wood's work as brilliantly funny, but I now see that its primary function (in my eyes) is to spread joy. She was a northerner, born in Lancashire. There is something about 'northern' humour - more widely northern personalities and perceptions - that speaks my language. I suppose the technical name for her approach is 'observational humour'.  Her's was always kind, perceptive and affirming of our (often quirky and conflicted) human nature. Here is a compilation of her series Dinnerladies. Such marvellous dialogue, timing and portraits of the kind of people I grew up with.

Victoria Wood: comedian, actress, lyricist, singer-songwriter, composer, pianist, screenwriter, presenter, producer, director, impressionist and entertainer. More importantly, she was a good human being.

I had been summoned by algorithm to a screening in older men for abdominal aortic aneurysm. It meant a trip to the Old Kent Road Surgery, a dreary place with a crowded, pinched waiting room and mirrored wall plates – why I wonder: the sick generally don’t wish to see themselves. The nurse doing the screening was cheerful and human. She announced, after applying gel and the ultrasound scanner to my abdomen, that ‘it looks perfect…. and you are not pregnant’. Such encounters make the day.

Seen in the West End yesterday: a stylish man sporting a sharp haircut and expensive-looking clothes. A tattoo on the rear of his left upper arm, so not visible to him (as an aide-memoire, say) but to those following. In a rather well-chosen typeface too. 

It read: "Attached to Nothing, Connected to Everything".

I didn't dare interupt him to ask about this. I imagine he is announcing his commitment to non-attachment and interconnectedness. I can only respect all that. But his collection of designer-labelled shopping bags seemed to confuse the message.

Who says the Church has no sense of humour? This, from General Synod Written Questions and Answers

The Revd Barney de Berry (Canterbury) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops:

• Q104 Does the church have a settled and agreed theological definition of lust, where is that stated, and what is it?
  
• The Bishop of Lichfield to reply on behalf of the Chair of the House of Bishops:
  A There is no official definition of lust agreed formally by the Church of England.

Should we be worried when risky behaviour seems cosy? My friend Fr John Rowe felt that church life - unintentionally - ran the risk of 'trivialisation by repetition' in making the Eucharist (Holy Communion, the Mass) so common a feature of its liturgical life.

Repetition can be a good thing, or at least carry good effect, and my own regular celebration of the Eucharist, and participation in it, has had many good, habit-forming effects (I believe). But I see his point, and it is one I share and like occasionally to highlight, by commenting, when asked, that I celebrated the Eucharist and 'no-one was hurt'.

I don't want anyone to be hurt. Of course not. But I want us to be changed by it; even shocked and shaken (or if not shaken, stirred). And that's, surely, the danger of too much repetition of this central liturgical happening of Christian life: the weight-carrying, meaning-carrying message and narrative which the Eucharist embodies and asserts ought not become 'just a thing'.

I have sometimes heard other clergy speak in emotive and disturbingly cosy terms of celebrating the Eucharist "and encountering Jesus there" and of finding such daily liturgical adventures to be essential to life.  I am uneasy with this kind of perspective. Encounters with the Risen Christ are not confined to liturgy (there's surely a case for saying the Risen Christ might be far more interested in speaking to us in the ordinary business of living). And liturgy should shake us up from time to time. Hard hats on.