Monday was quiet, very quiet in many ways. I spent some time trying to see what I could do with nxview and raw photographs but in the end downloaded an add on to GIMP called UFRAW as the version of NXView that came with my camera seems to be a cut down version and much more about organising slides than converting raw files. The UFRAW seems to give everything the full NXView does and more. You can see some I did on flickr . Otherwise a quiet day.
Tuesday was a supervision day so it was off to Birmingham in the morning. The train was smooth, on the evening I caught the 5:00 p.m. train out of Birmingham New Street. I have learnt that it is a good one to catch. The office workers aren't out yet and the conference people aim for the 4:30 p.m.. There are major works in the quad a Birmingham as they are fixing a service tunnel and the weather was unpredictable, there were showers so I ended up having lunch in the common room. It is exam time and that means fewer students around but not as few as vacation time, so I managed to get a computer to check emails before seeing my supervisor. The supervision went well and I am on track. I need to get down to transcription. Now all I need is the discipline to sit down and do that little by little.
Wednesday I woke rough but not much the worse for wear so went into work slightly late. At lunch time only Cliff and I ended up at prayer meeting so ended up talking with him. I passed Janet Brown's card onto him as she was having difficulties with getting her computer online. Cliff sorted it on thursday but warned that the computer was very near the end of its life. Cliff is if anything conservative in what he condemns. Otherwise a quiet day, I shopped on the evening, partly as Tuesday I was in Birmingham but Waitrose also seem to have Tuesday like the old fashioned Monday and lots of things are out of stock by Tuesday evening. Wednesday evening I can nearly always get what I want. I also hit on the brainwave as my dishwasher was not draining properly, of putting in some drain unblock, leaving it a while then running a wash through to see if that would clear it. I don't know if it did clear it, because someway through the first wash the dishwasher blew the fuse circuit it was on. I reset the circuit and fitted a new fuse but on plugging it in the fuse blew again. I decided this probably meant that it had given up the ghost. If it was just the electrics that had gone it might have been worth getting an engineer but it wasn't draining properly and it was leaking and I had been nursing it along for a couple of years. The only place locally that stocks such dishwashers (they are the compact sort and really quite rare) that I am aware of is John Lewis. So I went onto their website and found that they only have one in. So that was the decision made for me. However it took me a hour to get the order through. The new one is 75% more expensive than the old one was, but it has major advantages too (like the inside is metal and not plastic so less likely to crack and leak). I doubt it is as simple as my old one which was very basic.
Thursday afternoon was the interview with David and Tricia the minister and wife and my placement congregation. However my brain had been working over night and I realised that un fitting the dishwasher was not something I really felt up to doing. So I emailed Ted and asked if he would do it for me. I also had to go into work to print out the paper work for the interview. There were several noticeable things about the interview with David and Tricia. That they did not mention that it was an elderly congregation, that they were worried about the level of socialising (too low, in a congregation I can barely keep up with the social events). They worried about people class difference being barriers in a congregation that values people for "being able to do X for anyone". X varies from "talk to" "do anything" "can ask anything of" but being open to all is also important. I gave probably about an hour back, about what I had found out. David was incredulous that I could find so much out in such a short time which had taken them about ten years. David wanted me to write a Grove book on how to hear a congregation. I won't do that until I have finished but I guess I might refer him to "Studying Local Churches" and suggest he dips into chapters as they take his interest. I think he was surprise that I affirmed his impression that there real was no community around the church. Yes it is in the middle of suburban housing but it is actually on the join of several housing estates and these face different directions so all of them have their back on the church.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been dominated by a migraine, largely my fault for not giving into it on Friday or Saturday (I got myself up for a doctors appointment on Friday plus Ted came around to unfit the dishwasher and to do a short shop on Saturday which just seemed to be more than my body was ready to take). Hopefully it will clear overnight and I will be ready for work tomorrow.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
the Lows and highs of a fairly quiet fortnight
If I recall rightly the last letter was just after Zachary's baptism. I threw a migraine on the Monday, which sounds like bad news but having done almost a fortnight without one and then only getting one for a day, I was actually pretty pleased. It is not ideal but it is lots better than one a week often lasting more than one day which is what it was at its worst. However it meant I missed writers and I had actually done the home work. In fact the previous writers had also clashed with migraine (the bank holiday meaning that there was a fortnight between). Now all I need to do is write something for this weeks homework.
I think the rest of the week was uneventful on the whole. I was doing a piece of semi-qualitative analysis at work and found it absorbing and draining with the level of concentration required. I could only do a couple of hours at a time and then I was drained. Wednesday Cliff and I spent about half an hour playing with the sound system. We managed to turn the organ on and we could recreate the feedback. Then Cliff switched the organ off and the feedback disappeared much to his surprise. The question therefore was how was the feedback being created. In the end we traced it to the fact that the organ and its speaker were both earthed which meant that an electrical loop was being created and this was then picking up the signal from the audio loop and transmitting that out of its speaker which is behind the pipes of the old organ and therefore behind the microphones. Hence we were getting feedback. Arrgh, three bits of kit working together to produce problems.
The weekend was a writing weekend but with a lot of other bits and pieces going on as well. Friday I had thought we had Greek in the morning as did Sarah. It turned out that Ted had either not registered the time or we had not picked up his apologies. However as Sarah was around, she decided to stay for coffee. I think we both felt it was time we did a catch up. In some ways it is quite different being a participant-observer in a congregation to being a member. There are boundaries which I have had to keep. I cannot expect the congregation to provide pastoral care for me, but that means I need to keep in with the system at my home church. I am fortunate in having a minister who understands what participant observation entails and elders who have gone out of their way to sustain the contact. Late afternoon I saw the cranial osteopath and then I deliberately took the evening off and baked a ginger cake.
Saturday I had a Tescos delivery and I imagine something else but I cannot quite fathom what and there is nothing in my diary but Sunday I felt I really had to get over to Chesterfield as it was a month since I had been at a service. I decided that I preferred to go to the evening service. The thing that I found remarkable is that I had both the essays written before I went to the service on Sunday. I had Monday morning booked off but I had to be in work on Monday afternoon. As there were two essays I sent one to Ruth and one to James and both were promptly returned. James doing his after being released from hospital on Tuesday morning. The thing was that writing for a change came easily and was not a struggle. This is unusual, I normally require over two clear days and I only got one and two bits of other days. Moreover I wrote quite a bit on the Friday, I just wrote it, but on my first day writing I rarely do anything good, yet this time when I had very little available time I did. I don't know what makes that the case.
Actually one of my meetings on Monday was cancelled but I still got to a meeting which was about me putting things up on the web. Then got complements on what I wrote for writing group on the evening. One person called me brave, I suppose if the people I had written about had been me then that would have been brave, but they weren't me, just imagined other me-s, if you get me. They both revealed and hid bits of me. I wasn't them but I did not state how I wasn't them.
Tuesday was just a work day, nothing particularly interesting going on and anyway I was tired so not up to creating things to happen. I did shop but really shopping on a tuesday is a bad idea, Waitrose always seem to restock on a Wednesday. However Wednesday was housegroup. I end up arguing with someone who said he had a "full" understanding of eucharist, if he had used the word "sufficient" which I think is what he meant I wouldn't have argued but a full understanding of eucharist is a lot to ask. The more time I spend listening to people talk about eucharist the more I am persuaded we are talking partial models and the big problem is when we think our models give us more than a partial understanding. Of course we would need to tease out what sufficient is, but that is not the work of a housegroup. I took Wednesday off work as I was tired.
Thursday was another quiet day although I finally got the book of photos I'd ordered from my holiday. Let me do some explaining. I spottend that Photobox, the firm I often use for prints, now will make up books from photographs. I thought rather than forget to put them into an album I would just order them straight as a book so ordered the smallest number of pages A4 book they do. It was posted the Wednesday before last and should have arrived on the Thursday. However the packaging meant it would not go through my letterbox. So the postman took it back to the depot but only put the card through on the Friday. So on the Saturday I asked them to be delivered to my work address by the internet on the following Tuesday. They did not manage to but delivered it last wednesday to the wrong address but the person receiving it recognised my name (we are actually in the same department). So left a phone message on my voice mail in work. I then rang her on Thursday and she brought it over, the address if only next door to the actual building.
Friday was also quiet though I got to have a good talk with Jean Dickson at the breakfast. She'd only got to bed at 2:00 a.m. and because she had the bananas for the Broomhall breakfast and could not bear to have to throw some away she came down for the 8:00 a.m. start. She was just going then to do a shop at Waitrose having not got one done the day before. There were plenty of staff at the breakfast. Then on the evening I had a evening off and got to bed by 8:30 p.m.. I was shattered even if Jean could manage on less than six hours sleep. Actually I hope she got a nap later on in the day.
Saturday was a shock to the system. A day with nothing planned. So I got up, shopped for a bit, came home got myself lunch, did some painting as I had an idea for a piece that I wanted to do, spent some time on the internet and then went for a walk with my camera, and end up by preparing a reading for today. A busy day but no "have to"s in it. Well if you except the reading.
Today I had my parents over as Dad was preaching at St Andrews Sheffield. Dad turned up just after 10 a.m. so as to be at church by 10:30 a.m.. So I gave him and mum a Green tea and finished my breakfast. Then we walked up to church. Dad is walking so slowly that I was not prepared to try and cross Upper Hanover Street without a pedestrian crossing even if the traffic had major redirecting as they were retarring by the tramstop. The sound system worked perfectly this week. I am not sure why as there are two options, one I deliberately put the lectern at 45 degree angle to the front of the church. This means the microphone is not pointing at the Organ speaker, or Douglas put the wires around the other side of the organ. I know that turning the lectern helps but does not cure and so it may well have been moving the wires. On the other hand as Derek pointed out it was a very simple service to mike. I also briefly demonstrated how to use the battery tester and how to use the lolly pop microphone.
James and Jean Dickson had invited my parents and I to join them for a meal at Antibos. As James was still in hospital at the time (yes he managed to be admitted twice in one week), Jean asked Derek along. Antibos is an Italian restaurant in West One and reliably does good food. The meal was pleasant and although there was background music it was not intrusive. While we were at the meal, Jean got a phone call from James saying he was now home having been discharged (Graham their son had collected him from the hospital). Dad thoroughly enjoyed going there after the service. I hope they are as good in a fortnights time when we go there to celebrate Dad's 50th anniversary of ordination. Mum and Dad stayed onto about six then drove home getting in well before dark.
I think the rest of the week was uneventful on the whole. I was doing a piece of semi-qualitative analysis at work and found it absorbing and draining with the level of concentration required. I could only do a couple of hours at a time and then I was drained. Wednesday Cliff and I spent about half an hour playing with the sound system. We managed to turn the organ on and we could recreate the feedback. Then Cliff switched the organ off and the feedback disappeared much to his surprise. The question therefore was how was the feedback being created. In the end we traced it to the fact that the organ and its speaker were both earthed which meant that an electrical loop was being created and this was then picking up the signal from the audio loop and transmitting that out of its speaker which is behind the pipes of the old organ and therefore behind the microphones. Hence we were getting feedback. Arrgh, three bits of kit working together to produce problems.
The weekend was a writing weekend but with a lot of other bits and pieces going on as well. Friday I had thought we had Greek in the morning as did Sarah. It turned out that Ted had either not registered the time or we had not picked up his apologies. However as Sarah was around, she decided to stay for coffee. I think we both felt it was time we did a catch up. In some ways it is quite different being a participant-observer in a congregation to being a member. There are boundaries which I have had to keep. I cannot expect the congregation to provide pastoral care for me, but that means I need to keep in with the system at my home church. I am fortunate in having a minister who understands what participant observation entails and elders who have gone out of their way to sustain the contact. Late afternoon I saw the cranial osteopath and then I deliberately took the evening off and baked a ginger cake.
Saturday I had a Tescos delivery and I imagine something else but I cannot quite fathom what and there is nothing in my diary but Sunday I felt I really had to get over to Chesterfield as it was a month since I had been at a service. I decided that I preferred to go to the evening service. The thing that I found remarkable is that I had both the essays written before I went to the service on Sunday. I had Monday morning booked off but I had to be in work on Monday afternoon. As there were two essays I sent one to Ruth and one to James and both were promptly returned. James doing his after being released from hospital on Tuesday morning. The thing was that writing for a change came easily and was not a struggle. This is unusual, I normally require over two clear days and I only got one and two bits of other days. Moreover I wrote quite a bit on the Friday, I just wrote it, but on my first day writing I rarely do anything good, yet this time when I had very little available time I did. I don't know what makes that the case.
Actually one of my meetings on Monday was cancelled but I still got to a meeting which was about me putting things up on the web. Then got complements on what I wrote for writing group on the evening. One person called me brave, I suppose if the people I had written about had been me then that would have been brave, but they weren't me, just imagined other me-s, if you get me. They both revealed and hid bits of me. I wasn't them but I did not state how I wasn't them.
Tuesday was just a work day, nothing particularly interesting going on and anyway I was tired so not up to creating things to happen. I did shop but really shopping on a tuesday is a bad idea, Waitrose always seem to restock on a Wednesday. However Wednesday was housegroup. I end up arguing with someone who said he had a "full" understanding of eucharist, if he had used the word "sufficient" which I think is what he meant I wouldn't have argued but a full understanding of eucharist is a lot to ask. The more time I spend listening to people talk about eucharist the more I am persuaded we are talking partial models and the big problem is when we think our models give us more than a partial understanding. Of course we would need to tease out what sufficient is, but that is not the work of a housegroup. I took Wednesday off work as I was tired.
Thursday was another quiet day although I finally got the book of photos I'd ordered from my holiday. Let me do some explaining. I spottend that Photobox, the firm I often use for prints, now will make up books from photographs. I thought rather than forget to put them into an album I would just order them straight as a book so ordered the smallest number of pages A4 book they do. It was posted the Wednesday before last and should have arrived on the Thursday. However the packaging meant it would not go through my letterbox. So the postman took it back to the depot but only put the card through on the Friday. So on the Saturday I asked them to be delivered to my work address by the internet on the following Tuesday. They did not manage to but delivered it last wednesday to the wrong address but the person receiving it recognised my name (we are actually in the same department). So left a phone message on my voice mail in work. I then rang her on Thursday and she brought it over, the address if only next door to the actual building.
Friday was also quiet though I got to have a good talk with Jean Dickson at the breakfast. She'd only got to bed at 2:00 a.m. and because she had the bananas for the Broomhall breakfast and could not bear to have to throw some away she came down for the 8:00 a.m. start. She was just going then to do a shop at Waitrose having not got one done the day before. There were plenty of staff at the breakfast. Then on the evening I had a evening off and got to bed by 8:30 p.m.. I was shattered even if Jean could manage on less than six hours sleep. Actually I hope she got a nap later on in the day.
Saturday was a shock to the system. A day with nothing planned. So I got up, shopped for a bit, came home got myself lunch, did some painting as I had an idea for a piece that I wanted to do, spent some time on the internet and then went for a walk with my camera, and end up by preparing a reading for today. A busy day but no "have to"s in it. Well if you except the reading.
Today I had my parents over as Dad was preaching at St Andrews Sheffield. Dad turned up just after 10 a.m. so as to be at church by 10:30 a.m.. So I gave him and mum a Green tea and finished my breakfast. Then we walked up to church. Dad is walking so slowly that I was not prepared to try and cross Upper Hanover Street without a pedestrian crossing even if the traffic had major redirecting as they were retarring by the tramstop. The sound system worked perfectly this week. I am not sure why as there are two options, one I deliberately put the lectern at 45 degree angle to the front of the church. This means the microphone is not pointing at the Organ speaker, or Douglas put the wires around the other side of the organ. I know that turning the lectern helps but does not cure and so it may well have been moving the wires. On the other hand as Derek pointed out it was a very simple service to mike. I also briefly demonstrated how to use the battery tester and how to use the lolly pop microphone.
James and Jean Dickson had invited my parents and I to join them for a meal at Antibos. As James was still in hospital at the time (yes he managed to be admitted twice in one week), Jean asked Derek along. Antibos is an Italian restaurant in West One and reliably does good food. The meal was pleasant and although there was background music it was not intrusive. While we were at the meal, Jean got a phone call from James saying he was now home having been discharged (Graham their son had collected him from the hospital). Dad thoroughly enjoyed going there after the service. I hope they are as good in a fortnights time when we go there to celebrate Dad's 50th anniversary of ordination. Mum and Dad stayed onto about six then drove home getting in well before dark.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Supervision, Interview, Holiday and Baptism
For those of you who are not on my support group list, I have had another supervision. It went well. There is a paper there but it needs more work on my PhD thesis before it will really come together. Bits are beginning to fit together but the analysis always comes later after the description. I am doing a lot of thinking at present about the relationship of right believing, right relating and right behaving. They are of course always held in tension within faith but I am thinking that the centroid of the the triangle has actually moved.
Right the busy Sunday, or how the Sheffield Marathon stopped me getting to Church. The plan for Sunday 26th April was that I would go to church at St Andrew's Chesterfield and then onto Helen and Patrick's for lunch and would then interview them. So I booked my car well in advance. I should have been slightly cautious as it went missing on the Thursday prior to that. I knew the marathon was on, the car I booked was not on the route but I knew I'd have to go through Ecclesall to get to Chesterfield. So I was early. There was no car there. Rang Whizzgo and got them to rebook it. Fine I would still get to church on time.
Only I asked for a car on the marathon route, and arrived just after marathon runners started running by, they could not let me have the car to 1:00 p.m. which was too late. So I rebooked. I was going by memory and asked for Brown Street instead of Charles Street. This resulted in me having to walk down to by the station (the spaces are just outside The Showroom, Sheffield's independent cinema). Again it was on the route but I think either the runners were past that or not expected until late morning. So I got the car out but now had to get out of Sheffield City Centre. It was an interesting experience. I actually wonder how much the shops lost that day as the city centre custom was decidedly down even when I got back. It was now about 10:50 and I could not see anyway I could get to St Andrew's Chesterfield for 11:00 a.m.. So I decided to miss the service and turn up afterwards, pretty sure that Helen and Patrick would be there.
As I got into Chesterfield I suddenly realised I had not put the spare batteries in for my recorder. So I went and stopped at the Little Chef to see if they had any. They didn't which meant I had to brave Tescos at the next roundabout. There was no a question about whether Tescos had batteries but there was a huge one over whether I could find them in a store that stocked so many things. I went through the electrical goods there but there were none that weren't packaged with something else so went into the food stuff part and eventually found them about half way along the aisle by the cash tills. Well that is half of the food store that I did not have to go through I suppose. I then drove onto Chesterfield and waited for the service to end. Then onto Helen and Patricks for lunch, we went in my car, as I don't pay for petrol only for the time I have the car. Helen does not believe in running two cars if only one can do the journey. Patrick had to go to the bank to withdraw money so they could pay the builder before they went on holiday. The interview went smoothly, I then drove Helen back to Chesterfield for the two counties service. I did not go to the service simply as I had so much writing up to do after the interview.
Had a migraine on Monday, obviously overdoing it well that and the shopping on Saturday.
Tuesday was in work and running around like a mad thing. This always happens before I go on holiday.
Wednesday it was up to Drummore. The journey to Newcastle went fine, Cross Country were splendid. Scot rail however were into money saving and after two coaches had broken down in two different trains they had combined the good coaches together to form a train. The only thing was there was no toilet on either of the coaches. Not bad if you are travelling for half an hour or so but on a four hour journey it is not good. What is more they did not announce long stops (one in Carlisle and one in Dumfries) so if you were in the know you could have got off the train and gone to the loo but not if you weren't. Needless to say I was popping by the time we arrived in Stranraer. Morag and the girls turned up to get me off the train.
Rather than giving a day by day description I will describe some highlights of the holiday.
Lets be clear the B&B I stayed in is great, it is run by Diane Gilmore and on a clear day you have views of five kingdoms: Scotland, England, Mann, Ireland and heaven, from your bedroom window. Diane is very good host and will cater for most guests peculiar behaviour, if she copes with mine she will cope with anybodies. She also does Reiki. If you want to find out more Diane has a website where you can read more . Despite what Diane saying it is coastal it is about a mile from the nearest beach about as far as you can be from the sea on the Mull of Galloway. Morag was laughing at the insurance guy who had asked her if she was inland from Stranraer. I guess the correct answer was something about being on a different part of the coast near there. Morag is all of 100m from the beach.
I bought an SLR camera. This was a surprise to me but I was getting near a crisis point and not being able to find my own camera before I went precipitated it. I have found it since, bottom of the rucksack I take to Birmingham for Supervisions which I had checked before I went. I do quite a lot of photography while I am there and some of it is used for publicity purposes by Tony and Morag. The results of the photography on both mine and dad's camera can be see at Flickr.
I became a friend of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. That is not as odd as it sounds. The place Morag likes going for coffee is Logan Botanic Gardens which is just the other side of the penisula. Faced with going for coffee on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday as definate on my first visit I thought that paying the £20 to become a Friend might well end up saving me money as entry was £4 a time. In actual fact we only went four times: Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Thursday. Friday we stopped at Sandhead after shopping in Stranraer, Monday we took the girls somewhere, Tuesday we went to Mull for coffee and Wednesday I took Morag out for lunch at Port Logan. The gardens are spectacular at this time of year with many varieties of Rhododendrons in flower. The gigantic rhubarb is not very spectacular yet but we did see pheasant chicks. I got out my paints and painted a postcard for my parents which I promptly lost (now found and I will try and post it on Monday). You will see lots of flower photos.
We built a labyrinth. Oh nothing permanent just pebbles on a beach. The design was mine but the girls and Morag did much of the laying of the pebbles while I collected them and carried them from higher up the beach. We actually made two but the first one was just a trial to see if it would work. I need to spend some more time working on designs the twists were pretty simple on that one and they need not have been and no it was neither the Chartres nor the Classical labyrinth though obviously related to the classical labyrinth. I find it intriguing that those two labyrinths are the only two produced when I know that the classical is only one of a family and that there is a whole other family that is not represented. I would call those cyclic labyrinths. I have not worked out which family the Chartres fits into or whether it represents yet another labyrinth family. Then I have not worked out the way to draw it without tracing it from a copy. There do seem to be similar ones that are no identical.
Perhaps the most holiday of days was Saturday afternoon (the morning I spent at Logan Garden with the girls) which we (Morag, the girls and I) went to Wigtown and viewed the osprey on its nest. There is a live video link from the nest in the town centre so we could watch what was going on without disturbing the birds. It was fairly uninteresting, an osprey sitting on a nest was all I saw. We then had coffee at the Reading Lasses where the girls devoured two large pieces of chocolate cake. Morag and I made do with coffee and carrot cake (well actually Morag had the carrot cake as she had not eaten anything since breakfast and it was now about 3pm, the girls had had plenty). Then we went onto St Ninian's cave which entailed a walk of about a mile there and a mile back. Cait was ahead of us all the way there but was tired on the way back and walked stooped holding my hand although she did not hang on my arm. Then it was off to the Steam Packet Inn at the Isle of Whithorn which was fully booked but quite happy to give us supper in the bar. Then home with an attempt to stop at Kirkmaiden. We had gone past it by about a mile by the time we stopped to check the map and with two tired girls going back was not really possible. On the way back a deer jumped out in front of the car. Fortunately allowing Morag time to brake otherwise we would have come home with a huge quantity of venison.
Wednesday was Morag's birthday. I took her out for a meal at Campbell's Restaurant at Port Patrick where they set us in front of a window. It was not the same standard of view as at the B&B but it was a good enough view and to Morag's surprise I was quietly entranced by the small going-on that I could see from the window: gulls, tourists and clouds. We then went back to Drummore and up to her Aunty Yvonne's for tea having collected Jenny on the way back. Cait was already there making pancakes for the party.
Thursday we took the girls to Portpatrick to buy icecream. Lets me be honest good quality icecream is readily available in the area courtesy of Cream of Galloway but I had promised the girls superduper icecreams after their spotting efforts in the car on Saturday. To get something a bit different like a flake in their icecream we had to take them to Portpatrick. This also meant that we found that the fish and chip van at Portpatrick now does lovely chips (to keep the girls from being too hungry as tea was going to be late we shared a portion between us).
One day someone from the church called around to deliver Morag's copy of Life and Work. She also seemed to be on a recruitment campaign for the church telling me how much they liked having new members. The word desperate comes to mind when you start trying to recruit holiday makers to your congregation.
The journey back was not good. The tractors finally caught up with me (when I am driving the area I rarely come across tractors although others seem to encounter them frequently) but they had to resort to hitting a railbridge outside Stranraer to do so. This delayed the train I was on by about two hours. I fortunately had bought a saver ticket and so I could travel on any train and not two apex which might be cheaper. However they then went and cancelled the train at Dumfries. This caused major hassle as I have a heavy case and that meant instead of one change I had at least three having to catch a local train to Carlisle and then at least two trains on from there. I weighed up the options at Carlisle, realised that by the time I got to Newcastle I would be facing rush hour traffic without a booked seat plus possibly having to change at Doncaster or York. For a while I was optimistic of changing at Stockport at there was a train to Birmingham but it was going through Warrington and not Manchester. So I finally settled on getting a train to Leeds (Carlisle-Settle route) and catching a train home from Leeds. The result was that I was not home until about 8pm at night.
Today I went to St Andrews Sheffield as it was Zachary Wheat's baptism and I am still officially Elizabeth's elder. I have kept telling them that for both our sakes they should change that. As it was I arrived there and found myself busy, the sound system is playing up and then as Ian Cooke was away I was asked to sign the baptismal certificate as Elizabeth's elder. The baptismal party was huge, easily numbering the same number as the congregation and there were to my eyes clearly people who would have been invited who did not make it. The elders were encouraging the party to sit fairly far forward but Helen and Patrick (Elizabeth's Aunt and Uncle) plus family were having none of it and sat firmly two thirds of the way back. It was interesting in the fact Elizabeth only made the baptismal promises and Jon made supporting promises. Afterwards there was cake to be served and I ended up handing it out then helping with putting things away once the baptismal party had left. Fleur and Walter were there but with being Zachary's grandparent and Fleur being a former minister I knew there would not be chance to chat as other people would have claims on there attention. They looked as if they were well and we did manage to exchange greetings.
Right the busy Sunday, or how the Sheffield Marathon stopped me getting to Church. The plan for Sunday 26th April was that I would go to church at St Andrew's Chesterfield and then onto Helen and Patrick's for lunch and would then interview them. So I booked my car well in advance. I should have been slightly cautious as it went missing on the Thursday prior to that. I knew the marathon was on, the car I booked was not on the route but I knew I'd have to go through Ecclesall to get to Chesterfield. So I was early. There was no car there. Rang Whizzgo and got them to rebook it. Fine I would still get to church on time.
Only I asked for a car on the marathon route, and arrived just after marathon runners started running by, they could not let me have the car to 1:00 p.m. which was too late. So I rebooked. I was going by memory and asked for Brown Street instead of Charles Street. This resulted in me having to walk down to by the station (the spaces are just outside The Showroom, Sheffield's independent cinema). Again it was on the route but I think either the runners were past that or not expected until late morning. So I got the car out but now had to get out of Sheffield City Centre. It was an interesting experience. I actually wonder how much the shops lost that day as the city centre custom was decidedly down even when I got back. It was now about 10:50 and I could not see anyway I could get to St Andrew's Chesterfield for 11:00 a.m.. So I decided to miss the service and turn up afterwards, pretty sure that Helen and Patrick would be there.
As I got into Chesterfield I suddenly realised I had not put the spare batteries in for my recorder. So I went and stopped at the Little Chef to see if they had any. They didn't which meant I had to brave Tescos at the next roundabout. There was no a question about whether Tescos had batteries but there was a huge one over whether I could find them in a store that stocked so many things. I went through the electrical goods there but there were none that weren't packaged with something else so went into the food stuff part and eventually found them about half way along the aisle by the cash tills. Well that is half of the food store that I did not have to go through I suppose. I then drove onto Chesterfield and waited for the service to end. Then onto Helen and Patricks for lunch, we went in my car, as I don't pay for petrol only for the time I have the car. Helen does not believe in running two cars if only one can do the journey. Patrick had to go to the bank to withdraw money so they could pay the builder before they went on holiday. The interview went smoothly, I then drove Helen back to Chesterfield for the two counties service. I did not go to the service simply as I had so much writing up to do after the interview.
Had a migraine on Monday, obviously overdoing it well that and the shopping on Saturday.
Tuesday was in work and running around like a mad thing. This always happens before I go on holiday.
Wednesday it was up to Drummore. The journey to Newcastle went fine, Cross Country were splendid. Scot rail however were into money saving and after two coaches had broken down in two different trains they had combined the good coaches together to form a train. The only thing was there was no toilet on either of the coaches. Not bad if you are travelling for half an hour or so but on a four hour journey it is not good. What is more they did not announce long stops (one in Carlisle and one in Dumfries) so if you were in the know you could have got off the train and gone to the loo but not if you weren't. Needless to say I was popping by the time we arrived in Stranraer. Morag and the girls turned up to get me off the train.
Rather than giving a day by day description I will describe some highlights of the holiday.
Lets be clear the B&B I stayed in is great, it is run by Diane Gilmore and on a clear day you have views of five kingdoms: Scotland, England, Mann, Ireland and heaven, from your bedroom window. Diane is very good host and will cater for most guests peculiar behaviour, if she copes with mine she will cope with anybodies. She also does Reiki. If you want to find out more Diane has a website where you can read more . Despite what Diane saying it is coastal it is about a mile from the nearest beach about as far as you can be from the sea on the Mull of Galloway. Morag was laughing at the insurance guy who had asked her if she was inland from Stranraer. I guess the correct answer was something about being on a different part of the coast near there. Morag is all of 100m from the beach.
I bought an SLR camera. This was a surprise to me but I was getting near a crisis point and not being able to find my own camera before I went precipitated it. I have found it since, bottom of the rucksack I take to Birmingham for Supervisions which I had checked before I went. I do quite a lot of photography while I am there and some of it is used for publicity purposes by Tony and Morag. The results of the photography on both mine and dad's camera can be see at Flickr.
I became a friend of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. That is not as odd as it sounds. The place Morag likes going for coffee is Logan Botanic Gardens which is just the other side of the penisula. Faced with going for coffee on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday as definate on my first visit I thought that paying the £20 to become a Friend might well end up saving me money as entry was £4 a time. In actual fact we only went four times: Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Thursday. Friday we stopped at Sandhead after shopping in Stranraer, Monday we took the girls somewhere, Tuesday we went to Mull for coffee and Wednesday I took Morag out for lunch at Port Logan. The gardens are spectacular at this time of year with many varieties of Rhododendrons in flower. The gigantic rhubarb is not very spectacular yet but we did see pheasant chicks. I got out my paints and painted a postcard for my parents which I promptly lost (now found and I will try and post it on Monday). You will see lots of flower photos.
We built a labyrinth. Oh nothing permanent just pebbles on a beach. The design was mine but the girls and Morag did much of the laying of the pebbles while I collected them and carried them from higher up the beach. We actually made two but the first one was just a trial to see if it would work. I need to spend some more time working on designs the twists were pretty simple on that one and they need not have been and no it was neither the Chartres nor the Classical labyrinth though obviously related to the classical labyrinth. I find it intriguing that those two labyrinths are the only two produced when I know that the classical is only one of a family and that there is a whole other family that is not represented. I would call those cyclic labyrinths. I have not worked out which family the Chartres fits into or whether it represents yet another labyrinth family. Then I have not worked out the way to draw it without tracing it from a copy. There do seem to be similar ones that are no identical.
Perhaps the most holiday of days was Saturday afternoon (the morning I spent at Logan Garden with the girls) which we (Morag, the girls and I) went to Wigtown and viewed the osprey on its nest. There is a live video link from the nest in the town centre so we could watch what was going on without disturbing the birds. It was fairly uninteresting, an osprey sitting on a nest was all I saw. We then had coffee at the Reading Lasses where the girls devoured two large pieces of chocolate cake. Morag and I made do with coffee and carrot cake (well actually Morag had the carrot cake as she had not eaten anything since breakfast and it was now about 3pm, the girls had had plenty). Then we went onto St Ninian's cave which entailed a walk of about a mile there and a mile back. Cait was ahead of us all the way there but was tired on the way back and walked stooped holding my hand although she did not hang on my arm. Then it was off to the Steam Packet Inn at the Isle of Whithorn which was fully booked but quite happy to give us supper in the bar. Then home with an attempt to stop at Kirkmaiden. We had gone past it by about a mile by the time we stopped to check the map and with two tired girls going back was not really possible. On the way back a deer jumped out in front of the car. Fortunately allowing Morag time to brake otherwise we would have come home with a huge quantity of venison.
Wednesday was Morag's birthday. I took her out for a meal at Campbell's Restaurant at Port Patrick where they set us in front of a window. It was not the same standard of view as at the B&B but it was a good enough view and to Morag's surprise I was quietly entranced by the small going-on that I could see from the window: gulls, tourists and clouds. We then went back to Drummore and up to her Aunty Yvonne's for tea having collected Jenny on the way back. Cait was already there making pancakes for the party.
Thursday we took the girls to Portpatrick to buy icecream. Lets me be honest good quality icecream is readily available in the area courtesy of Cream of Galloway but I had promised the girls superduper icecreams after their spotting efforts in the car on Saturday. To get something a bit different like a flake in their icecream we had to take them to Portpatrick. This also meant that we found that the fish and chip van at Portpatrick now does lovely chips (to keep the girls from being too hungry as tea was going to be late we shared a portion between us).
One day someone from the church called around to deliver Morag's copy of Life and Work. She also seemed to be on a recruitment campaign for the church telling me how much they liked having new members. The word desperate comes to mind when you start trying to recruit holiday makers to your congregation.
The journey back was not good. The tractors finally caught up with me (when I am driving the area I rarely come across tractors although others seem to encounter them frequently) but they had to resort to hitting a railbridge outside Stranraer to do so. This delayed the train I was on by about two hours. I fortunately had bought a saver ticket and so I could travel on any train and not two apex which might be cheaper. However they then went and cancelled the train at Dumfries. This caused major hassle as I have a heavy case and that meant instead of one change I had at least three having to catch a local train to Carlisle and then at least two trains on from there. I weighed up the options at Carlisle, realised that by the time I got to Newcastle I would be facing rush hour traffic without a booked seat plus possibly having to change at Doncaster or York. For a while I was optimistic of changing at Stockport at there was a train to Birmingham but it was going through Warrington and not Manchester. So I finally settled on getting a train to Leeds (Carlisle-Settle route) and catching a train home from Leeds. The result was that I was not home until about 8pm at night.
Today I went to St Andrews Sheffield as it was Zachary Wheat's baptism and I am still officially Elizabeth's elder. I have kept telling them that for both our sakes they should change that. As it was I arrived there and found myself busy, the sound system is playing up and then as Ian Cooke was away I was asked to sign the baptismal certificate as Elizabeth's elder. The baptismal party was huge, easily numbering the same number as the congregation and there were to my eyes clearly people who would have been invited who did not make it. The elders were encouraging the party to sit fairly far forward but Helen and Patrick (Elizabeth's Aunt and Uncle) plus family were having none of it and sat firmly two thirds of the way back. It was interesting in the fact Elizabeth only made the baptismal promises and Jon made supporting promises. Afterwards there was cake to be served and I ended up handing it out then helping with putting things away once the baptismal party had left. Fleur and Walter were there but with being Zachary's grandparent and Fleur being a former minister I knew there would not be chance to chat as other people would have claims on there attention. They looked as if they were well and we did manage to exchange greetings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)