Three weeks catch up post

Three weeks ago I was still getting over the cold although I had to be in work by Wednesday. Then I was at a conference for work. This had a study day beforehand that looked useful. I suppose it was, in that it made me aware that a lot of what I want to learn about a piece of software is not going to be in any book! Oh and that some statisticians still think that small sets of numbers which follow neat tidy patterns so you can work out the result, is what all statisticians like to use so they can get a feel for things. It was all right for me, I followed but I am not sure that the average member of the audience did. There was one other statistician in the group of about fifteen. The computer suite where the teaching was was okay but I am beginning to think that the one thing that was missing was the teacher being unable to see what was going on on anyone's desktop. That meant the lecturer had no idea when people were faking interest out of politeness as he had lost them half an hour ago.

That evening had arranged to meet up with a friend through ship of fools who lives in York. We went first to a pub on Goodramgate and then up a flight of stairs to the Thai restaurant. The pub was at least in a midweek early October evening a locals' pub, the sort of place where there are groups of guys sitting together having a comfortable chat before going back home. The Thai was the sort of place you'd have to be a local to spot. Its entrance was a rather plain doorway between two shops and then you had to go up a narrow flight of stairs, there is no way you could get a wheel chair up there, it isn't wide enough. The upstairs room was one of these open plan restaurants in much the same way as you find in big Chinese places but the room was probably only the size of a couple of living rooms knocked together, so not so huge you were lost in it. The food was delicious, well I like spicey, hot food (one of the dishes had ginger in it) and the price very reasonable. So rather than ending either sitting in, in a small cramped room or ending up being co-opted for a committee and going to its meeting, I had an enjoyable evening. Unfortunately I paid for it the next day with something that started like a migraine but I was able to knock it with strong pain killer but I was still overdrawn so did not stay until the end of the afternoon session, going home once they had had the session I was at the conference to go to, nor did I make the colour evening at Herringthorpe that evening.

The weekend however was spent writing an essay. It actually went quite well despite the fact my normal four day spell had been reduced to two and a half, as there was a departmental meeting on the Monday morning and I felt I ought to attend as the VC was coming and so a stronger whip than usual and that evening was a rehearsal for a reading my writers group were going to do on the Thursday. I had done a couple of writing sessions earlier in the month as I knew I would be short of time so the writing was easier than if I had come cold to a half baked idea. This one is probably my most successful writing to date for my thesis.

The reading on Thursday went well. We were more varied this year, we had a screen writer as well as the usual collection of novelists and the few poets. Actually we brought back a poet who has gone on to bigger and better things, so there were still three of us this year. We met at the Quaker Meeting House as the old venue wanted to charge. I am guessing but it would have helped if there had been clear information from the start. The road on which the Quaker meeting house goes Cathedral, Vegetarian Cafe (Blue Moon), Bar, Quaker Meeting hour. The bar must had been decorated by someone with weird taste. It was in what used to be offices, maybe even offices for the cathedral or the burgesses. There were preservation orders on various bits, but not apparently on the office walls so they had left the plaster ceillings as they were but knocked out the walls to make a big space. They also had cardboarded over the back windows and painted them white. Then had decorated in would be nineteen seventies wall paper only it was not "cool" enough so rather than being brightly coloured it was all in shades of black grey, silver and maybe the odd bit of red. To add to it someone had thought hippie curtain ideas would go with the wall paper and there was a bead curtain. Strange indeed.

The following weekend I had to write a presentation to give the following Tuesday for my supervisor and also made it to Herringthorpe. So it was very intensive. I just really did not have the time to do it earlier. In someways it took less time than I expected, partly because I realised I could take some of the presentation directly from my presentation to elders. Herringthorpe is weird. Lets put it this way, I went to another parade service, attended two services a month both of which were parades. Numbers were down but might be due to being second parade, not liking all age worship, swine flu, the minister preaching elsewhere etc. What they got was a proper all age worship, actually done fairly well by one of the congregation's lay preachers and his wife plus the music group. Most of the congregation there seemed to be enjoying this. This individual had some of the persona of a stand up comedian which helps. Still no hymns I don't recognise but now I have to add the fact that the congregation are perhaps less conservative about worship than the minister. Lets say it is not living up to its reputation actually I am going to go as far as to say St Andrews Sheffield might well have got on very well with Pauline as their minister if worship style was what counted. In fact I could see grumbles arising about how conservative she is.

Then on Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. It went well, I didn't even get wet, despite leaving my waterproof at home. I ended up buying another ink pen, just a cheap one. Anybody wanting a cheap cartridge pen just let me know, John Lewis' own brand seem to do the cheapest I think for all of £3. The one I bought on Tuesday was from the stationary shop at the University main buildings and cost over twice that. I had a bit of a panic over the presentation. On Thursday I emailed my supervisor asking about projection for a powerpoint presentation. He said as we weren't meeting at Selly Oak there would not be. The problem was not the lack of projection ability which I got over easily by borrowing a pc from work which has a screen you can turn around 180 degrees but the fact that as far as I knew we were at Selly Oak indeed he had specifically emailed me to ask me to relocate to there from his office. Fortunately I bumped into him in the foyer of the Arts Tower and checked that the session was at Edgebaston.

Wednesday I was teaching a course. It showed me how much I relied on knowing how students were doing to know whether I had to repeat something. They had put the desks into straight lines and I could not see what was going on on the screens so I was never sure if students had followed what I was doing or not. It previously had had machines around the edge and although people tended to sit at machines and twist to see the screen it was possible to know whether a student was lost, following or gone off on their own tangent. The only ones that concern me is when a student is lost and I don't realise.

Not surprisingly after those two days my body decided it was not doing Thursday so I spent most of the day in bed.

Friday was back in work and then over to my parents. Ruth came over for a meal, she turned up earlier in the afternoon hoping to help mum with the garden. Mum allowed her to sweep up the leaves and does not seem to have developed a list of jobs she is not telling Ruth about. Dad decided to provide wine with the meal for Ruth and myself although he and mum drank water. I was dispatched downstairs to pick a bottle and as Ruth was there the FairTrade one was the obvious one to choose. Mum had cooked venison. This was Dad's choice. It was delicious but I am half wondering if Dad is going to keep on wanting Mum to cook venison whether a slow cooker would not be a held. Saturday I set up the Freeview box for Mum and Dad. Fortunately it came without a SCART cable so we had to go and get one of those, a trip to B&Q was therefore in order, which gave me the excuse for taking mum to buy some plants as she was worrying over blank bits of earth, particularly in the front garden. Ruth if next time you are down there are a couple of heather plants in the back garden in pots then they are to be planted in the front garden, I am hoping mum has chance to plant them before you go. The snag with the freeview box is that it will need retuning twice in the next month. I have left the manual out with Dad with the quickset up instructions on the page that tell about retuning. Basically you have to get it to reset itself.

I caught the train back and there were a couple of retired ladies who were originally from Bury and a man from Sheffield sitting in the seats opposite. The man was with his wife and three kids. The man had an off the wall sense of humour and the ladies who were going home from Derby had had a bad day and needed a laugh and were ready to play up to get it. There was just a lot of good humoured teasing and joking around arranging a Baileys ice-cream and coffee party!

Today I was over to Chesterfield for the last time with my PhD. I was giving the report to church meeting. However John Marsh had been preaching the previous sunday, plus it was half term week and then some absent themselves simply because it was church meeting. The result was a smaller than usual congregation, although there were about twenty three people present. The main item was my report. I think it went well. It was an interesting time to do it, as David is leaving in a couple of weeks and therefore they are getting very much into sorting out how things will happen during the vacancy. Some of this showed during the church meeting. Helen took a couple of paper copies of the report to put into the pastoral profile, fortunately it does not have my name on it. The report might look like a light weight piece of work, but talking to mum and Dad tonight I worked out to produce a report with such a depth of knowledge behind it, would mean employing somebody at least for two days per week for two years! In other words although only five pages long and a lot of that pictures, there was a lot of careful selection from a huge amount of information. I in the end culled it right down to a central message which was basically that they needed to decide what sort of congregation they wanted to be and then work to be that, rather than doing nothing so as not to risk displeasing anyone.

Cold stops play

Right onto News this week. The only problem is what news, the cold (it wasn't 'flu it just a sore throat, coughing, plenty of phlegm and an occasional bout of sneezing, but still very tiring) has kept me largely indoors. On Tuesday there was an event welcoming Research Students and there were desks with information which needed staffing. As one of the few specialist research staff I felt I should be in. Coped fairly well that day, but the next day realised I was in work but just staring at a screen and when I talked I quickly started coughing my head off. So I went home and slept all afternoon.

So apart from that what have I done. Well I have read two and a bit books. The two books read are by Fannie Flagg (she wrote Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle stop Cafe) the first Standing in the Rainbow was enjoyable, largely American nostalgia but actually quite a good story about women and politics hidden amongst the rest. The second Can't Wait to Get to Heaven I cannot recommend, the nostalgia has upper hand in the book and it shows. Heaven is portrayed as the home of 1950s radio host "Neighbour Dorothy" and it is Universalist in the extreme. She gets around how do you deal with bad behaviour in heaven by largely not having anybody who is likely to behave badly. Can battered wives still be beaten up by their husbands? Can people still be treated unfairly and allowed to starve? I am not necessarily strong on judgement but a portrayal of heaven where everyone gets in, that does not deal with the problem of evil doesn't seem to me to be healthy.

The book I have not finished is The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa and I highly recommend it. It is written from the perspective of an iguana and is set in Angola but the book does not get its title from him, I am not going to tell you as it will spoil the story. The Iguana watches the human life that goes on in the house of Felix Ventura, a second hand book dealer, who also creates pasts for people. It is fairly short, well written and the story has enough twists and turns to keep you reading through it.

Other than that, yesterday I put together the handout for my talk to church meeting at St Andrew's Chesterfield, have done some transcription and slept a lot. Oh I also made an arch out of plasticine (it is for the presentation to St Andrew's Chesterfield)

The result of the cold meant that I did not get over to Manchester. I was probably infectious, the cold is exhausting and I had to back for today as I was starting at Herringthorpe. So it was just not going to work. However I went to Herringthorpe. I think I have just about sorted the turnings on the round-a-bouts but I may keep using the SatNav for the number of times it gives me totally impossible advice when driving through Sheffield city centre. I keep being told to go straight on, when I can only turn left or right, or to go right and right again when all I can do is go straight on. For those that are wondering there is a nice cut through the city centre that gets me out from having to sort out how to cope with the awkward part of the ring road. If it had not worked I think I would have taken to doing the ring road in the other direction. Today however I sussed coming back. I left the parkway at the right place and also managed to go back up behind the law courts. Now all I have to do is suss how best to get to where I have to park the car. It may still turn out that going to Western Bank roundabout and turning in is the best idea! Got in and went to sleep for a couple of hours.

I doubt that I will find time to write next weekend as I will be both presenting to St Andrews Chesterfield's church meeting and writing for my next supervision. Once I finish that then I will need to prepare to present a "the experiences of a Novice ethnographer"