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.
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