Right what has this week brought. Monday was washed out with a migraine. I just curled up and slept. In some ways it was worse than normal in that the whole time I was feeling rotten, in other ways better, as it only lasted one day.
Tuesday I awoke and realised not only had the migraine left, it had also left me in a state I would call anti-migraineous. If migraines make me feel rotten, not want to be bothered with anything and want to curl up in bed, then this made me feel as if I could tackle everything that I was okay, I was slightly more bothered than usual and that I was able to do what I needed to do. That was good in some ways. I had plenty of energy to go to Herringthorpe for a Bible Study. I even sorted out what to eat by getting a pasty from the student shop. Not so good in other ways, I had two Amazon parcels and was too much in attentive to check they actually had in them what they said they did. Herringthorpe does bible study differently. It may have started with an Alpha group. They have a fellowship meal at 6 p.m. in the church which people don't have to go to, then at present they split into an Alpha group and a bible study group. They Bible study group go through to the church, and Pauline gives them a talk on the passage of scripture they are looking at for about three quarters of an hour. The Alpha group I presume watch a video in the hall during this. Then everyone comes back for coffee. Then it is into small groups, the bible study dividing into two. Neither group is led by Pauline. What is noticeably is they have a lot of people who are happy leading groups like this.
Wednesday was officially my quiet day. Still busy but nothing major. So I did a shop and other regular chores.
Thursday was off to Birmingham for a supervision. I had booked myself on an earlier train having got muddled over times (my diary said 12 noon my brain said 2 p.m., my brain was right). It meant that I had plenty of time at Birmingham, time to search for leads and such, time to buy a Birmingham hoodie (I wore and old one on Tuesday and people just seemed more relaxed about me being there if I wore something that said which University I was at). I also was in the one place in the country that was not flooded. I don't think I even had to cope with a mild shower. A funny-peculiar of the day was I went for a Taxi on the way home. Being the law abiding sort, I let the person in front of me get into a taxi first, only for the taxi driver to ask me where I was going, and then ask her to get out and get the next taxi. It turned out he had kids to pick up so could not do the long journey she was asking for. There were plenty of taxis. Another is I picked up the book "Worship and Liturgy in Context: studies and case studies in theology and practice" printed by SCM. It sounds like a general book on worship. Now let me start giving you clues its editors are Duncan B Forrester and Doug Gay. It has two articles by David Fergusson. Other names I recognise include John Bell and Norman Shanks. The chapter titles are clearly all based in Scotland. There really should be a hint, other than the editors names, on the cover that its perspective is definitely Scottish.
Friday was a bitty day, just never seemed to settle. I know this probably was partly coming in from Birmingham, partly that I had reason to take my lunch very early and partly just my brain working over time the day before.
Saturday I went to St Andrews Sheffield and spent a couple of hours just fiddling around with bits of equipment around the audio desk. Nothing much really, just testing every microphone, sorting out stuff that had just been stuffed into boxes and so on. We seem to have equipment breeding. I know its breeding, they had the box to put an electric guitar output straight into the mixing desk. I can not imagine that on any occasion St Andrews has regularly had someone playing the electric guitar. It might just have had someone playing the acoustic guitar on a handful of occasions, and the person would normally have been a guest preacher. I wonder what pieces of equipment have to breed to create one of those and why by natural selection it survived where something more useful, such as a phantom power supply box has not. Mind you I did find no less than 3 electrical extension leads of which one was of unknown origin. Otherwise wrote up last Sunday's notes.
Today I got to Herringthorpe. They were celebrating Bible Sunday, so they had Gideons in to present and they also gave Bibles to the children. They give bibles to children in Junior Church who are in years 2,7 & 12 of school. Children who already have Bibles are allowed to choose books as an alternative. What was clear was that they were giving them age related Bibles. They claimed they did not give kids new bibles if they already had them, but I would be rather concerned for any lad who in year 12 was still using the Bible he was given in year 2, I think I would want him to have something more adult although something aimed more at the year 7 might be more appropriate. The links are just to examples. Oh the other thing is that I have discovered Herringthorpe has its contingent with Pauline who thing "she's not Elizabeth Caswell is she" and tend to stay away. What is more this group appears to include at least one older person (I'd guess about eighty). If as I suspect, Pauline has actually moved the church to more mainstream URC in ethos then maybe I am going to have to revise my ideas that older people and Charismatic praise band led worship do not mix easily unless the older person is a long time charismatic. I suspect in fact what it was is they like Elizabeth's charisma and Pauline does not have that.
This week will finish the SPSS course. Now what dramatic thing do we expect this time, having had a burning building on the previous session for this course. Next Saturday is both Herringthorpe's Christmas fair and David Legge's induction at Sherwood. Otherwise a pretty normal week.
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