Last week was pretty okay as a Holy week. I got to the Maundy Thursday evening service. I am deciding that David Legge is a straight Zwinglian. Possibly even on factual side of that. It shows itself in the form of the communion services which is not always the case with those of Zwinglian persuasion. Interesting question: is the congregation Zwinglian in their eucharistic theology. There are signs that that might be the case although that is not what I would expect with an ex-Presbyterian (I am more used to them tending towards Lutheranism).
Oh I have also found the "quick" method to get my writing juices flowing at least slowly. The answer seems to be to hand write my ideas for the first day. I will write very little but by the second day my word speed is about up to passable on the computer. Don't know why it works but it beats trying to write on a computer for two days before the ideas start coming. I know I should try and write 500 words a day even if it is sociological nonsense but I never do. I always write up until my deadline and then break, read, observe and interview, realise it is almost the deadline time again and start the intense writing. Mind you by the end of this academic year I will have written 90,000 words approximately with another 60,000 to be written before I start "writing" up.
Sunday was hectic. With being on placement with a congregation I really should be at their worship on Easter Sunday. This is after all the high day in the Churches calendar and there is no sign at my placement congregation that it thinks we should not keep the basic Christian calendar despite being ex-Presbyterian. Query: Both the ex-Presbyterians I have known have communion on Easter Sunday, however I have known Congregational churches choose to have a celebration service instead, which would be a method of lowering the fuss on that day. Why are ex-Presbyterians into communion on Easter Sunday. I would say amongst ex-Congregational churches of my experience it was more common to have communion on Maundy Thursday than Easter Sunday. The Chaplaincy at St Andrews did not have communion at its main service on Easter Sunday the one year I was up for Easter. So where does the tradition come from?
Anyway I got home after the service, having left slightly earlier than I usually do but people were leaving pretty quickly, dropped the car off at the parking space about 1:00 p.m. having come back via the Ecclesall Road due to road works on my usual stretch and the fast route likely to be blocked with traffic, was tempted to go via Nether Padley (about the same distance but on slower roads). Went to the toilet, grabbed a glass of water and emergency food supply and changed my shoes before setting off to the station. Fortunately when I got to the station Marks and Spencers was open so I got a sandwich and a packet of crisps. I then went to the till but with normal Sheffield politeness the man sent me to get a drink as the food cost £2:38 without the drink or £2:00 with the drink. I picked up my pre-booked ticket and caught the train half an hour earlier (around 14:10) than I planned so had to phone my parents to say this. I also learnt there was no 13:40 train. I had booked the later train as just too many things could have gone wrong, a service over run, getting lost on the way home as I was on an unfamilliar routte, having to fill the car with petrol and so on. They conveyed it onto my sister. For those catching trains to and from Sheffield, from the Manchester end catch the one about twenty minutes past the hour at Manchester (25 minutes at Stockport) and from Sheffield the 10 minutes past the hour train. The reason being these are run by transpeninne who genuinely seem to want to make a go of the route. The trains are normally three carriages or more long, so not as crowded as the other ones, run on time, more of them and actually give the cheaper advance tickets. What is there not to like.
I therefore got to Stockport at around 3:00 p.m. and Mum and Dad had just pulled up at the Station, I simply dumped my bag in the back and we set off for my sisters for Dad's 80th Birthday celebrations. The meal was great. Unlike Christmas when there is always enought to feed most of the neighbour hood as well as ourselves this time things worked out almost exactly right. It was helped by the fact that Cathy knew which of the two desserts most people were going to choose. I got Sam and Hannah Easter presents. The irony being that the biggest hit was the t-shirt I got for £4 from a closing down sale (albeit one that has been going on for at least three years, somehow I don't quite believe it).
The last couple of days I have been spending with my parents. At least the time I have been awake I have been spending with my parents but I seemed to want to go to sleep at the drop of the hat. Dad got 14 birthday cards and a basket of house plants from the church for his birthday. The house plants have been passed onto my Mum who will no doubt tend them when she has the time. Still I'd like to find someone who could do some redesigning of the garden. The idea of my Mum balancing on narrow beds in order to tend the top of their garden is not good even if she is the most agile eighty year old I know, often beating me at getting down to something on the floor.
Oh anyone want to read about Chaos then James Gleick's book "Chaos: Making a New Science" ) is an easy read. Its left me itching to get at the mathematics of it to see if I can actually get my head around it. Hope you have a good Easter week
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