Hair colour and Summer Fairs

High lights this week include the fact that emails were sent out from me telling people what we were planning to do next year and I got emails back that allowed me to adjust the plans so that people could teach. I much rather make these alteration before we hit crises rather than afterwards. Then I made a date for seeing Pauline and also I worked a full week for the first time in ages. That does not mean I have been sick every week but holidays and bank holidays mean I have not had full weeks in work. Oh and I have not had a migraine today after a very heavy day yesterday.

So the week on the whole has been quiet. The regular rhythm of going to work and such. I was at writers group on Monday which went well. Tuesday was just a normal day and Wednesday the only exceptional thing was that I had Dr Nagi to see me and I did a lot of programming for him for his thesis. Data reorganisation mainly but I had learnt one or two tricks so things that could have taken days took minutes. The current favouring of area under the curve worries me. It seems to measure two things together, the level of the variable for which it is calculated and the time that data has been kept for the variable. This would make sense if there was some idea of cumulative damage done by the variable being either too high or too low but normally the variable itself is seen as an indicator of disease progression. They need to have some sort of baseline but starting point isn't a good one. Thursday I took half my day off as I was expecting to be tired after Wednesday and also to try an split a recording up. Friday at last we had a greek class again and have them set up for the summer. I also got my hair cut and it is back short and manageable again. For those who don't know my hair is getting lighter but not going grey. Cathy's I think is doing the same. At an event recently someone for the first time I can recall commented "You'd burn easily with your colouring?". The answer was such a definite "yes" that I have always wondered why people saw me as not having the pale skin, blue eyes look and put it down to having brown hair. So I put it now down to people seeing my hair colour as something of the red scale. Of course its only brown because my genes are indecisive, my mother has black hair and my father red. So my body compromised and I got brown as did Cathy. However the black pigment tends to stop being produced once we hit forty and the result is that our hair is slowly turning a pale red. Most people would see this as a blessing, but oddly when I found I was first doing this I felt most miffed. Going grey was a sign of getting older, going a washed out sand was not a sign of anything in particular and just another half colour to cope with.

Saturday was the Summer Fair at Chesterfield. I got there for around 10:30. I was not the first there by any means but I was fairly early. There was Marion and John plus a friend of Marion, also Nancy and Bill . John would have been there at 8:30 in the morning if he could have but had to wait until 9:00 a.m. for a lift from Bill. Actually people come in shifts, you get the early birds like these, then you get the over lunchers which Helen and Patrick fall into and then you get the catering ladies who do the teas in the church and who only arrive at lunch time. In actual fact John and Bill had an easier job of it this year as the scouts had largely set up the tables. I went to lunch with Marion and John which actually worked out as a brilliant break as they both went to get ready while I could just sit and make notes on what I had seen on the morning. I think the person with the hardest stall this time was Ethel, not because she did not have enough stuff but because she had too much stuff. Seriously the table was loaded when she went home for lunch and she came back to find more stuff had been brought while she was away. At the end of the afternoon the table still looked half full but she had probably sold a table and a half of stuff. I am not surprised she was too tired to make Just desserts on the Evening. The problem with being photograher is that you walk miles during the day. At about 4p.m. I realised that my legs were aching with the walking and standing I was doing. The problem is that you are always moving and on the go and you cannot have a chair to sit down for a while. I also missed the mid afternoon tea and coffee run. I was therefore worn out by the end of the afternoon so I asked Helen for a lift back to the station which she did while Patrick was counting the money. I was rather disconcerted to find on getting into a taxi at Sheffield station to find my legs just folded at the knees rather than try and step up into it.

I took Sunday rather quietly going only to the evening service and getting up when I was ready. The service was on the holy spirit and at one point the tea urn decided to boil in the background. I wasn't the only one in the group to think "Help that isn't Pentecost happening again" when it did so. I calmed myself down by reminding myself that God does not seem to like exact repetitions.

Yesterday was a bit of a washout as I seem to have got a sinus infection from somewhere. I presume it was left over from the cold a couple of weeks back and that having a glass of wine on Sunday stirred up a histamine reaction and that set me up for it. Yesterday at 3:30 p.m. I realised I was fanticising about being in my bed at home having taken pain killers so I thought that the best thing was that I would go home and see what an hour or so in bed would do which meant missing writers group.

Today I have been out to Rotherham to visit Pauline and to see the church. It must now be the largest church in the former district unless one in Doncaster beats them. They have a weekly congregation of about 120 so bigger than St Andrews when I first attended it back in the 1990s. Actually if they are going to set assessment on things I suggest they do a weighted mean of members, attendance, income and reservers and then subtract from that an allowance for new members and children. I suspect we would see growth much quicker with that formulation than any other. The manse like the one at St Andrews is directly connected to the church grounds and they are looking towards extending their buildings even further than it is already, replacing the activity hall with a community hall, that is building a new two storey building. The membership is local the furthest distance travelled is five miles.

Then home relax and finish writing this up.

Later this week I have annual church meeting at Chesterfield and a funeral on Friday as well at Chesterfield. Actually only the second since I came and it is of someone I interviewed. I have to decide how I handle transcription with his wife and there is one photo I took that I also need to think about. I am not playing politics with the church but how do I stop myself being used for politics and is it even right to.

Cold stops play

This week should be fairly short as there is not much to report due to having a cold mid week.

Monday a normalish day, got to work, did somethings came home and went to writers group and I do not think there is anything more too report on. Tuesday and Wednesday were a washout. However on Wednesday the weather decided to rain. Whats more that it would rain Sheffield style for something like six hours. Sheffield style is heavy rain for short periods, normally two hours maximum. Manchester and west of the Penines does the other style which is gentle rain fairly steady for long periods of time. It starts with about four hours and works up from there. The noticeable thing is with Sheffield style rain you cannot avoid puddles as entire roads and pavements have an inch or so of running water. That's right the waters moving, in fact in less than fifteen minutes after the rain storm has stopped the roads are clear. On Wednesday afternoon and evening my flat windows looked as if I were taking it through a carwash. UK people will have seen the pictures on the news. The video on this page should give you some idea of what it was like .

Thursday I was back into work and had a productive day for once, I just seemed to get on with work rather than think about it. That meant a lot got done that had been hanging over my head. Don't ask me what the reason was, I just sometimes get days like that.

The mood wasn't totally over on Friday so I got somethings done on my thesis. Another interview transcribed (alright all I had to do was about five minutes of it but it was done), some reading. However before I did all those I went to check on the water levels in the cellar. The good news was that pumps had definitely worked. The bad news was that there was evidence for about eighteen inches of water having been in the cellar. I am pleased that the pumps worked, I am cautious about the water level. There was no sign of the water level going above the electrics but it was higher than I would have liked, but that is just cautious me.

Saturday I went out with St Andrew's Chesterfield for a meal at the Sandpiper Hotel Chesterfield. There was a good turn out for it and everyone seemed to have a good time. However if ever I get to organising anything that hotel is probably not on my list. The meal was standard hotel food. There were highlights, what I believe was a really rather good bread and butter pudding, but there were low lights as well, the cod tasted as if it had been kept warm too long (and we were if anything early in for lunch) and the fruit salad they did had watermelon in which in my eyes was a pointless expense and detracted from the rest of the fruit salad. I have nothing against watermelon, particular freshly picked in the shade of trees after a long walk. However when served in an English fruit salad against strawberries, kiwi fruit and pineapple, it contributes absolutely zilch to the flavour and gives an unpleasant gritty texture in the mouth.

Today I have had a day off. Slept in late, finished typing up the description of the meal yesterday and written this. The reason for the day off this time is there is no way I will be having a day off next weekend. It is church bazaar on the Saturday, followed by AGM on the Sunday and Just Desserts on the evening. I may miss just dessserts.

This week I have a meeting with my boss and need to get out some emails to staff at the University. It would also be a good idea if I got another recording broken down for transcription and some serious reading done. Then there is the bazaar on Saturday and I am photographer again so plenty to keep me busy. There is also a possibility of another interview at the end of the month, fingers crossed as this one would plug a major gap.

My fathers celebration of fifty years in the ministry and other things that happened this week

Well Monday was a day and a half. I started off forgetting I had a dentists appointment until ten minutes before it was due. The dentist is only five minutes walk from my flat so not dire but I had not had breakfast. So I went to the dentist and then came back and had breakfast. I think the postman also delivered one of my guarantees on my dish washer (I have two, two-year ones, one from John Lewis and one from the manufacturer). I then got into work and I think was quite busy although no appointment. At 5:10 p.m. I checked my googlemail box and realised I had an email from Pauline Calderwell (Loosemoor or Parkin) as she was taking my placement for next year with Herringthorpe to church meeting tuesday (the next day) evening, would I mind putting together some information about it. I went home, got myself something to eat and sat down and typed. By 7:00 p.m. I had a document to send to her, there was no time to get it to proof readers so it had to go out as was. Then it was onto writing group for the evening.

By Tuesday morning my migraine had returned. However I am suspicious that I had a low level tummy upset. My reason for this are two fold. The migraine was preceded by a couple of days when I lost interest in food, followed by the fact the dominant symptom was nausea, which is exceptional for me although it is sometimes a secondary. So am hoping that now I am clear for a good long time

I was better by Wednesday so went into work. I had two appointments on the afternoon. The first involved an intense lot of programming which was very involved the second was some thinking outside the box. Two very different queries and my brain was not really functioning A1. Then on the evening I went to Chesterfield for a celebratory meal to mark the end of House groups for the year. I counted about 15 people around the table and at least two or three were away. So out of a membership of seventy the house-group has a following of about twenty. Interesting that the first person plural pronouns were seen as far more threatening than the second person plural. Are people conditioned to "you" meaning somebody else?

Thursday I was in work in the morning. In about ten minutes I sussed the programming problem that had had me baffled the day before with a simple statement rather than a lot of complex calculations (ten lines instead of twenty, so far more elegant, yes even computer programming has its own aesthetic value system although it is closely related to those of mathematics). Then it was home to await my new dish washer. They turned up promptly just after two having had difficulty finding the flat. I directed them in and watched as they unloaded my order. The only thing was they unloaded a huge washing machine (instead of a small dish washer) so I went down stairs and told them that that was not my order. I think they were hugely relieved when they found out how much smaller and lighter my order actually was. They did not install it, I think this was a good thing as they seemed barely competent as delivery men.

Friday I took the morning off and got some transcription done and then went into work. I sort of had an appointment on the afternoon but guessed it was a mistake, however it through out the concentration part of my brain. Otherwise an ordinary afternoon although at 4pm it started to rain (well actually do the Sheffield impression of a tropical rainstorm) and it did not start to slow until about 9:00 a.m. the following morning!

Saturday was the main celebration for my fathers fiftieth years in the ministry. He decided in the end that what he wanted to do was to go out for a meal with Doug Thacker. The choice of restaurants being what it was on a Saturday midday (limited) we ended up at Antibos. As it was Italian I think dad was expecting cheese things. However this is a good Italian restaurant and so Dad had Barrimundi, Mum had lamb shank, Doug had sea food risotto and I had the same main-course as Doug but with pasta instead of rice. I think Dad enjoyed the time with Doug. I sent another picture of them walking together back to my flat obviously deep in discussion, to Reform with a spiel.

Today it was over to Chesterfield where there was a service to mark the second anniversary of the joining of the Scout troop. It was a good service if only because it demonstrated quite palpably that the church cared about the Scout troop. The service was based around the three stages: Beavers, Cubs and Scouts; with each linked to a bible passage and there was a presentation to the recently retired troop leader from the church. Tea and coffee was served in the hall afterwards, and many of the Scouts brought their parents in for coffee. That is correct it is the children who say "Can we have a drink please?" The more cocky ones actually come for a drink without asking their parents which means that we find parents coming in and saying "have you seen ...?"

Next week all I have is writers group on Monday and the church meal on Saturday. So somewhat quieter and I will split my day in two again so that I can get some more transcription done. Hopefully ted will come and install my new dishwasher.