Teaching and Fairtrade Breakfast

Right lets see about my news for this week. Firstly let me say for those who may be confused that I have not had a migraine all week. The day I was likely too was Thursday and I was in work all day that day. Friday I did not make breakfast but that was because of a bad dream which left me feeling yuck and insecure out of my bed. It wore off by 11:00 a.m. but was not pleasant and as I had no reason other than breakfast I thought I would indulge myself.

Monday I got told I was a saint, by somebody who I had helped out, well I had spotted something in her analysis that I was not aware of because of how she presented it to me, by doing that I was able to reorganise her analysis so that it made sense and tell her how to do it. Then I got into a conversation with a group who are working to develop a model for the reaction of the fallopian tube to sperm cells. This is in the long term to reduce the number of in-vitro and in-vivo experiments that are required. Quite possibly it will also lay the background information to help with infertility. I went to writers group. It was good to make it and took the work I had written from two weeks earlier when I did not make it. The piece was short to the point of brevity but it worked. It is interesting how people caught the references straight off when they were English to pancake day while those who weren't didn't. What is also interesting is that although I got questioned on that I did not get questioned on my reference to Candlemas and yet Candlemas is definitely the lesser known date in the religious year. So I wonder what sense they made of that reference or how they understood it, maybe they thought it referred to Christmas which it does in a way as Candlemas is the feast at the end of the season.  I have another poem on the boil but somehow doubt that it will be in a form when I can take it to writers group this week. It is taking its time to mature and as yet there are few phrases and little form.

Tuesday I went to Bible Study at Rotherham, they are onto the second of the DVDs from Challenging questions. It was about having integrity in your life which in my view is far more fundamental and pertinent to most people's day to day life than questions of divorce and sexual morality. I tend to feel that if we got integrity right (and very few do) a lot of the questions about sexual morality would become more straightforward. However by integrity I don't just mean honesty, I also mean integrity and respect within relationships and I care not whether that is just friendship or marriage. That is respecting another persons integrity is part of being a person of integrity. I am however struggling with the attitude of the group quite a bit as it is rather self congratulatory.

Wednesday I was teaching so spent the morning preparing. I am realising that while I don't like the early start if I teach in a morning I also get quite tired if I teach in the afternoon. Some of this is the style by which I teach which relies hugely on memory and visual prompts. Another reason why I am not impressed with Nicky Gumble being able to talk for 45 minutes with little reference to notes. I did it for two hours on Wednesday! If I can do it he can do it. Then there is a bit of Nicky Gumble fan club at Herringthorpe. The group went well although half the sets of notes for the class did not turn up until half way through. I also need to write a further bit on organising nodes.

Thursday was quiet but busy, I saw someone on the afternoon, but then found their data was incomplete, so they wanted to get complete data before we went on with the analysis. Installed the software I will use to help the group working on a model for the fallopian tube (or the software up to a point as I expect to have to move to R at some point in order to cope with the model)

Friday apart from the bad dream went okay, I actually managed to get some transcription done, so it was only ten minutes of transcription as I am not good at settling but the more times I actually manage to transcribe anything the more chance I have of settling. Then wrote up some notes on house group and read through some essays I wrote earlier which may well be useful for my current essay.  James and Ruth no need to worry the current essay has a word limit of 2000 so I cannot just pull the essays together which would be 9000 words. What it does do is to give me some references to deal with the and some ideas with which to play. However brevity is going to be the challenge. I need to think what is essential to put within the essay.

Saturday again I managed transcription, then went into town and did the little bits of shopping that needed doing included in that was buying the books with the book token Jean and James gave me. I only got one book by Paulo Coehlo because that was all they had in; by buying it, meant that Waterstones had none on their shelves. I got a variety of other books including one by Rose Tremain and The Testament of Gideon Mack (Dad has already indicated that he wants to read it after I have finished). Oh I also made spicy sweet potato and carrot soup. Having tried it today I can say it tasted good, the only thing I found disconcerting was adding coconut cream to the soup turned it from orange to yellow. I was not expecting that.

Today I went to Herringthorpe for their FairTrade breakfast. This attracted about twenty people. They seated themselves largely in families, I joined a couple of ladies who seemed to be sitting together. It turned out one of them was from St Barnabus' Church in Rotherham and had brought her neighbour, who had dislocated her shoulder and fractured the socket, to the breakfast. The neighbour was not chuffed with the family who she felt weren't pulling their weight. The clearing up was shared out. My hands seem ideally styled for shutting the legs of church tables. Other people struggle where for me it is the job of seconds to squeeze the legs towards the edge and fold them down. It is very frustrating as I know I can do it quickly yet spend three or four times the time it would take me, watching others struggle. Herringthorpe had Simon Copeley to preach today as Pauline was still away. I have the feeling I should know recognise his name for some reason, other than him being one of my dad's former students, but for the life of me I cannot think what it was. Also his wife has moved to Herringthorpe and he will be settling there in the near future. At the moment I feel as if there is something missing in my awareness.

Supervision in wintry weather

Lets see what has happened this week. Monday was a quiet day with no writers group in the evening so I went down to Waitrose instead and did some shopping which meant I could last until Thursday without problems. This was necessary as I had bible study on Tuesday and a supervision on Wednesday.

Tuesday, night was bible study night at Herringthorpe. The congregation obviously was running a Holiday Bible Club, I think Champions Challenge so still using Scripture Union rather than writing their own. The major difference I spotted was that the songs seem to have gone over to having a professionally recorded CD to sing to. This means the music style has changed more towards pop music (multiple instruments, performance bits) rather than the older ones that drew more on folk style (simple catchy tune and lots of actions). However I am fast concluding that congregations often don't realise when they have something special happening. In this case the Holiday Bible Club seems to be attracting local Muslim children. This to something labelled "Holiday Bible Club" organised by a Church and held in a Church building. The main church building being where most of the stuff happens. The most useful course I did for watching Alpha or other HTB videos is the course on visual culture, it gives  a whole way of looking at them that makes one wonder about the intention. Is using one of their videos trying to get the same effect as the old six feet in the air pulpit, i.e. putting Nicky above contradiction. The meal had a smaller attendance than usual but there were a larger than usual number who came to the Bible study. This may partly have been due to the holiday Bible Club, some people were both workers and attended Bible Study, but it may also have something to do with the minister being away.

Wednesday was a trip down to Birmingham for supervision. It was one of the occasions when my supervisor asked to meet at Selly Oak. This as a rule does not seem to bode too well. The last time he did this he changed it back to Edgebaston without telling me! This time he was half an hour late. The secretary came up to say he'd be about ten minutes late when he was already twenty minutes late. I think I got the message right when I said that he would be there in ten minutes. He was. An emergency had happened and as head of college (read Dean of Faculty for more normal terminolgy) he had been the one where the buck stopped. The snag this time was he was giving a paper at a seminar at the end of supervising me. So there was no ability to shift times later. The one thing that did come out is I am once again persuaded I am going to have to use heavily fictionalised accounts of some events, simply now because of some of the character of St Andrews. That means extra work, as normally anonymising is just done by broader brush strokes but I am going to have to actually write fictional accounts of events because the people themselves are so much part of that congregations character. However the upside of it was I got to the seminar. This was Birmingham Urban Theology Forum, yes that is the right web page, Chris just needs to update it more regularly. The talk was about crossing boundaries of faith with the opening talk from the Nishkam Centre and then talk from someone from Finland about Religious Diversity in Finland. The important things that struck me was first of all once again Martin's insistence that you needed to listen and what people were saying in a situation might be very different to what the dominant discourse was. In this case that people had a religious community to which they belonged and only belonged and by talking with the leaders of that community you could gage what the local people wanted. Community was any way something that white English people did not have. The other thing were two things mentioned for interaction between communities. The first was the fact that any faith group wishing to engage with dialogue with another faith groups requires  the group first to earn the respect of the other faith group, secondly that all people require for interaction to happen that they are allowed to maintain their dignity. This however meant I was back late from Birmingham, catching the 6:00 p.m. train rather than the 5:00 p.m. train, which meant that I was tired and hungry when I got in.

Thursday I had a migraine. Not a bad one, just a routine one and given all I had done the day before not too unexpected I think it was a fortnight between it and the last migraine maybe just over and it cleared nicely

Friday was a feel good day, I got to Friday Breakfast, went into work, some trousers I had ordered came and I actually got on with something. I also got my hair cut about three weeks after it should have been. I also sorted out something for someone doing their PhD. It meant a re analysis but it also makes her talking about the end results easier. I really should have spotted it when she first came to me, but until I saw the pictures I did not "get" that her design was a level more complex than I thought. I also managed to sort out how to test php on my home computer without having to upload everything to a website. Morag this means that we can use basic html and such for longer, the cludge I have used is pretty simple at present but it means every time we write a new page I don't have to edit every single page! I want to see if I can do something slightly more complex with PHP so we don't have to enter each page title twice.

Saturday was during daylight surprisingly good. I did some transcription, alright not much but some, I wrote up last weeks bible study and I found a place that will scan documents for me to flash drive, as both my printer and works printer are refusing to do so.  I got my medicine and realised I do not need to phone for it anymore, they automatically will get me an update for me in two months time.  I also made dhal, this time cutting back on the water drastically, only one cup and a tin of tomatoes. That was plenty. Then I went and fell in my study/backroom. Yes I know I should be tidier. Unfortunately I caught my right knee on the edge of the foot of my desk. I doubt it did any more than bruising and the minor swelling associated with a nasty bruise but because of the way the joint works, walking was difficult yesterday and this morning, as the injured part was compressed if I put my leg straight and it did not like that. Oh I changed the other pages around so they now all work with php.

Today I should have gone to Herringthorpe, but when I woke to three to four inches of snow and it still snowing that just did not feel possible. At least two reasons, the walk up there was going to be uncomfortable at least even without snow due to the fall the day before and doing it through snow felt one too much. Secondly the roads weren't clear, even traffic on Hanover way was going slowly as I think it probably had not been gritted yet. I was also tired, whether this was just the cold coming through or what I don't know but I do know I felt happier in bed. I got up around lunch time, have since made bread (Hovis Granary this time) which I am enjoying this evening. I will eat it up during the week. I am almost certain that one of the reasons my bread does not seem to rise as much as I would like is that it is too dry but any more moist and it gets very sticky to handle which does not help kneading.

On being disorganised, book launch and visiting parents

As it is late I will give highlight rather than a full run down. The first big date was Wednesday 3rd, I first went on a priority course, which turned out to be more useful that I expected. I realised that certainly when compared with my sister I am not an organised in the way she is. Don't get me wrong, I can organise, I do it all the time and I do it well. Most people assume it is natural too me, or do until they see the mess lurking in odd places. I don't think you could grow up in the environment I did without getting an ability to be organised. All things are relative, a child of my mother, who is superb at organising (not my opinion but that of Sally Hare), who is mathematically gifted so in a very systematic culture and is single, is going to be good at organising. However, I was always the one doing homework at the last minute, my sister had hers done before she finished school for the day, I tend to surround myself with clutter in my private space, public is tidy and at eighteen my Aunt bought me a card which said "my final answer is 'maybe'". What I am trying to say is my base preference is different from my cultural preference. That is I can be organised and am very good at getting myself to be but I also need to acknowledge that I have to balance that with disorganisation on other areas or the organisation becomes unstable. This is actually quite freeing. For a start I have stopped hassling myself over why I don't do things. Not taken them off the number of issues that I have to tackle but acknowledged that even if I do get them sorted then I will need to put the word "temporarily" as I am always likely to backslide into disorganisation. Certain areas I probably need to be organised in, with others I actually need to relax and let myself be disorganised. Now all I need is the wisdom to know the difference.

Secondly on that Wednesday I went to a book launch at Waterstones. A former member of my writers group had just got her first book published, Northern Soul Revival. The book launch happened despite it snowing and Sheffield going into its usual snow neurosis (somehow, even though if everyone had driven home normally they would have got home, drivers panic, rush home and clog the roads up so badly that they end up getting home later than normal) I have part read the book, it is partly set in Sheffield, partly Tasmania and partly in Seeley a fictional North Yorkshire town. Its a romance in the genre "boy falls for girl next door, girl not so keen"; and yes I have got the genders the right way around. Only as it is modern its more complicated than the traditional one. It is not the normal sort of fiction I read, actually I don't think I would even try and read it if Claire had not been part of my writers group but as she was, I am making the effort. In my estimation not great literature but perhaps a bit closer to reality than your average Mills and Boon. We went onto Bears and Bungalows for a meal out afterwards, the meal was good, Lincolnshire sausages and mash (I'll ignore the onion gravy except to say I ate the onion but ignored the straight gravy). There is at least another one novel being incubated in the group which in my estimation is both publishable and better than this one but if you like a romance and know Sheffield or Tasmania, why not give it a go.

Thursday I had a back to work interview. For some reason the sorting out of how I functioned I decided that what I needed to do was to actually write out for my return to work interview (due to time off with migraine) what I was doing. This was good in two ways, as I discovered later this is the sort of information the person demanding the interview is likely to quieten down with. Secondly it identified one thing I had dropped back on since just before Christmas and I was able to go and supplement that which seems to be working well at present. I have only had one migraine in the past fortnight. So lets see if this works.

The weekend was a writing weekend or at least I did write on Friday, Saturday and Monday but Sunday was taken up with a major church meeting at Herringthorpe. It was very useful from my perspective. Some of the differences became clear. They were very clear over who their parish-audience was, all right it is straightforward in a way St Andrews Chesterfield wasn't but I think they may have partly created it, where St Andrews Chesterfield had failed as in some ways their siting is very similar but whereas there is a failure for a community centre to happen at St Andrews Chesterfield, there very clearly is one at Rotherham. It looks like what was a roundabout with a church and a pub on has developed so now there is quite a shopping area and a doctors surgery. The doctors surgery at one time used the church but now have their own premises across the road from the church. They also are a caterpillar congregation. If you like they plant congregations where members are, then if members move on from the mother church, the mother church closes and moves in with a daughter church. So the congregation moves like a caterpillar.

Tuesday I went to bible study, I don't think there was as many there for Nicky Gumble's talk on sex. I wonder if it was the topic, the age range is certainly older than the congregation as a whole. However not much else to report about that. Wednesday I managed prayer group and then started dealing with writing a document on presenting data. Friday I worked at home. Partly as I had to get the essay I wrote the previous weekend into its final form and the papers sent off for my supervision but I also had a visit to the osteopath at which he discharged me. I actually he also "fixed" my shoulder that had been playing up since just before Christmas.

Then it was over to my parents for a weekend. It included finally getting the rest of daddy's bird feeder and setting it up. For some reason I had managed to put 9 Deneway Close instead of 8 when I ordered and we had to wait until the neighbours who lived in 9 got back from Australia. So Saturday's big event was putting up the feeder. It is now up, although leaning at a greater angle than I would like. This is despite getting a Spyra Base Ground Socket to hold it up. I suggested that Mum and Dad actually get someone who is a handy man and has a concrete hole saw to come and cut a hole in the paving as that way they can have the feeder where they want, and it will stand upright. Other than that we ate slept and read, oh and went for very short walks.

This week I am down to Birmingham on Wednesday, hopefully have a quiet weekend although there is another church meeting on Sunday and I must remember to photocopy the voting form so I can vote using the original. Yes all the forms are numbered and they know who has each number as they are technically having two ballots at once, an overall ballot of all people connected with the church and the church meeting ballot. Complicated or what.