This week feels as if it has been very busy despite not having writers group nor going to Bible study. However that was counteracted by teaching on Tuesday and being on a training on Thursday plus editing my essay on Friday and Saturday. So busy. Also Dad was at SST, and somehow as he was sleeping at home each night, as it was in Manchester I did not register this and so on Monday I did not ring mum as I normally do when Dad's away. This all came out in the wash when I rang on Tuesday as it was Dad's birthday and found that Mum had been cross with Dad for coming in so late.
Thursday I went to a postgrad training in Birmingham. Well it was instructive in at least one way, they talked about supervisor-supervisee relationship and I realised a lot of what was wrong from my perspective was organisational rather than due to the actual relationship. However the volcano erruption in Iceland made the trains very crowded even when I was aiming for the less crowded ones as people could not fly down from Edinburgh to Heathrow and such.
Friday and Saturday were quiet days. I was tired after the day in Birmingham, as I had to leave the house at 6:30 and did not get back until 18:30 which makes a long day. I also did a silly thing. I was downloading email from Btinternet as they have my account numbers for the train fares and I had to delete messages on my mobile phone. I have today found that deleting them from my mobile also deleted them from my BT account. So I have lost about two months worth of recent messages. The problem is I cannot find anyway to delete stuff over a month old or put it in a separate folder. Yesterday I also received a Tesco shop and got a drawing scanned in. So at last I can try tackling an web-page for a walk rather than a site.
Today went to Herringthorpe for the their annual general meeting. They are distributing the reports by email to those who have email accounts. They are also presuming that this will save paper. I am not at all sure. The thing is that if you are photocopying you can do double sided but most home printers don't. They did not send me any so I will have to download them from the web. I wonder if the problem with finances are that we tell people what we need to meet demands, but not what we could do if we raised extra. The thing is that if a congregation meets the basics then anything beyond that can be used in creative ways either for evangelism or to provide better facilities or for service of the neighbour hood. I came home from it and slept for three hours without difficulty.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
On fixing computers and pilgrim books
Monday was a bank holiday, I spent largely on Thesis, well once I had written up the worship of the previous day, and been down to Staples to buy a computer. I then put the essay into Excel, a line per sentence, then counted the letters in each sentence (I later found a method of checking the number of words) and sorted them onto words. I have since spent some time tightening up the language. The nice thing about doing this, is that it concentrates you brain on the specific meaning on that sentence and trying to write as succinctly as possible. So far I have edited during the week 29 sentences and saved over 30o odd words. I won't do as well with what remains as I started with the longer sentences. I then will order back into the essay form and see what it looks like. There is some issues still to be included so I probably need to save over 600 words.
Tuesday I got into work having realised just as I was dropping off on Monday that the courses I was teaching were not in my diary. Unfortunately I could not check the dates of courses at home. So first thing Tuesday checked. The good news was that the first two dates had not clashed. The bad news was the third clashed directly with my next supervision. This meant that I had to do cancel the course as the chances of me being able to rearrange my supervision were even smaller. Also I ended up without a working phone line at home. I would not have noticed this except I was home at lunch time. I went back into work and was able to establish fairly easily that there was a known outage covering most of South Yorkshire. It was the phone companies fault but as they had engineers working at it, I was not concerned. However I was a bit surprised how unhappy I was just knowing I was off line and yes my phone does receive email if I want it too (not to self, must clear out the inbox again)! I will have to work that one through
Wednesday, I started the day off on a low note again as I managed to loose my church keys. I could not find them before I went into work despite hurriedly in a panic looking in all the essential places. By lunch time I was fairly convinced that despite my not finding them earlier I had actually put them away in the right place. So I went and looked there again. I found them tucked in firmly to a clump of papers(I had had the papers out so they were well wedged) at the back of the right draw were the keys. I am actually learning not to do some things in a hurry regardless of the lack of time. If I do them in a hurry, I either do not do them well or I forget what I have done and that confuses life later. I also saw the doctors from the Jessop. They were disappointed in the results, but agreed that it looked as if the cells were changing over time.
Thursday I think the third of the four books on pilgrimage came. Ian Bradley's Pilgrimage: A Spiritual and Cultural Journey is a souvenir book, is sumptuous book published by Lion, lots of good photographs, and given it is by Ian I suspect that the prose will be well informed and readable. I certainly intend at some stage sitting down and reading through the first half that looks at the the history of Christian Pilgrimage, the second part of the book that looks at modern pilgrimages I will probably spend less time on. The second is Making a Pilgrimage by Sally Welch. This is a rather more practical book if you are puzzling over what Pilgrimage actually means today. It is written by someone who has obviously been on pilgrimages (its not just the stories she tells but the way she speaks of it echoes some of my more limited experience). There are some things I would say that I suspect she would not and visa versa but the text is a good brief guide. However do not expect any history except very briefly in passing. This book is also published by Lion, but it is small enough and light enough to take with you, something I would not want to do with Ian's book. Finally there is the dud of the three. The Spiritual Traveler: England, Scotland and Wales by Martin and Nigel Palmer. It was the subtitle "The Guid to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes in Britain". Well it does not live up to that subtitle. Firstly it is not comprehensive even of Christian sites. For instance it has Lindisfarne on the Scottish pilgrim route but North East Britain from Whitby north is teeming with religious sites, you could do a pilgrimage easily for that area and not see them all. Indeed St Cuthberts way does seem to have become a modern pilgrim route. However my main gripe is that it claims to be an authoritative text to pilgrim routes. It isn't. As far as I can see it does not take one of the traditional pilgrim routes and write about it, although it may use some as part of larger routes. Rather it gives a list of routes that connect by motorised transport various religious sites. These are not pilgrim routes, they are suggested itineraries for would be car pilgrims. Don't get me wrong, I am not against using cars for pilgrimage, the problem is that there are historical pilgrim routes, it was easy to find such routes of Heritage Paths Website which covers Scotland. Intriguingly on that website the 1930s map has Cailiness spelt as Killiness. So I was hoping for something that actually looked at the historical routes as well as gave modern options. So as "A guide to Sacred Sites with suggested routes for pilgrimage" it is fine but it is not what it says on the tin.
Friday I was in work again, I have to give up two bank holidays a year so Monday was one of them. Therefore I was in work on Friday. I picked up from the Broomhall Breakfast two up to date copies of getting help in Sheffield City Centre. I've recently come across two people begging in the area, I don't give money but will give food and such. I suspect at least one of them may find having it as a reference might be useful. I have to see if I see them again. The last time I was at the Tescos on West Street the man was not there, and I have not been past Waitrose yet. Also on Friday sussed what probably was causing the downness, as it is time of the month. Only unusual in that it was before the start rather than after. Maybe a sign I am managing things better.
Saturday I was busy. I decided at last to get rid of rather a lot of electrical junk that seemed to accumulate in my flat. It included the old printer, my old computer (neither of which has worked for a couple of years), a heater and a lot of wires. I was not completely successful as I managed to leave a bag of wires that are dangerous so removed from the church before anyone gets ideas, and a calculator whose screen has gone. I did this by hiring a car for an hour and a half and taking the stuff to the tip. I suspect the cost of the car was about as much as I would have been charged if I had got the bin men to do it, and they would not have taken all the little bits. They have a barrier up I am pretty sure to stop people coming in with lorry loads but people were happy to direct me right around to where electrical stuff was dumped. I wonder what they made of it. Anyway got back and decided to install the new printer. I had decided that the reason the old printer was not working was because I had not managed to install properly the drivers over the internet having lost the disks. Never make such assumptions. After struggling with this one, I discovered the REAL reason. Nothing was wrong with the printer but the wire connecting it was damaged! So I changed the wire, I had no less than four wires from previous printers, and it installed perfectly. Well perfectly once I had sorted that it was relatively straight forward if not 100%. Then I went into town basically to shop at Marks and Spencers for some ready meals. Also it was a warm day and I was feeling uncomfortable in my clothes. I wanted a loose floaty top, none in Marks but I went onto Blacks and they had one in, in a reddy-purply-pink on sale for twelve pounds.
Today I went to Herringthorpe. My drawing during sermons is still creating interest. I finally got an explanation that seemed to satisfy people. I said I was having difficulty paying attention during sermons, then heard of somebody drawing during seminars and thought, if I draw the sermon I will have to listen to it. That seemed to satisfy in a way that other equally true explanations do not. I will have to give some thought to why that did. The service was good, surprisingly not on one of the later resurrection passages, but rather on Christian hope. The congregation I think stood up well but the Sunday School was very small and therefore the rows in front of me were largely empty. As far as I could see there were no little ones at all, junior school and four later senior school. It was interesting the number of senior children that came. I came home and had a bacon and marmalade sandwich and a bottle wine. Then slept for a couple of hours.
Tuesday I got into work having realised just as I was dropping off on Monday that the courses I was teaching were not in my diary. Unfortunately I could not check the dates of courses at home. So first thing Tuesday checked. The good news was that the first two dates had not clashed. The bad news was the third clashed directly with my next supervision. This meant that I had to do cancel the course as the chances of me being able to rearrange my supervision were even smaller. Also I ended up without a working phone line at home. I would not have noticed this except I was home at lunch time. I went back into work and was able to establish fairly easily that there was a known outage covering most of South Yorkshire. It was the phone companies fault but as they had engineers working at it, I was not concerned. However I was a bit surprised how unhappy I was just knowing I was off line and yes my phone does receive email if I want it too (not to self, must clear out the inbox again)! I will have to work that one through
Wednesday, I started the day off on a low note again as I managed to loose my church keys. I could not find them before I went into work despite hurriedly in a panic looking in all the essential places. By lunch time I was fairly convinced that despite my not finding them earlier I had actually put them away in the right place. So I went and looked there again. I found them tucked in firmly to a clump of papers(I had had the papers out so they were well wedged) at the back of the right draw were the keys. I am actually learning not to do some things in a hurry regardless of the lack of time. If I do them in a hurry, I either do not do them well or I forget what I have done and that confuses life later. I also saw the doctors from the Jessop. They were disappointed in the results, but agreed that it looked as if the cells were changing over time.
Thursday I think the third of the four books on pilgrimage came. Ian Bradley's Pilgrimage: A Spiritual and Cultural Journey is a souvenir book, is sumptuous book published by Lion, lots of good photographs, and given it is by Ian I suspect that the prose will be well informed and readable. I certainly intend at some stage sitting down and reading through the first half that looks at the the history of Christian Pilgrimage, the second part of the book that looks at modern pilgrimages I will probably spend less time on. The second is Making a Pilgrimage by Sally Welch. This is a rather more practical book if you are puzzling over what Pilgrimage actually means today. It is written by someone who has obviously been on pilgrimages (its not just the stories she tells but the way she speaks of it echoes some of my more limited experience). There are some things I would say that I suspect she would not and visa versa but the text is a good brief guide. However do not expect any history except very briefly in passing. This book is also published by Lion, but it is small enough and light enough to take with you, something I would not want to do with Ian's book. Finally there is the dud of the three. The Spiritual Traveler: England, Scotland and Wales by Martin and Nigel Palmer. It was the subtitle "The Guid to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes in Britain". Well it does not live up to that subtitle. Firstly it is not comprehensive even of Christian sites. For instance it has Lindisfarne on the Scottish pilgrim route but North East Britain from Whitby north is teeming with religious sites, you could do a pilgrimage easily for that area and not see them all. Indeed St Cuthberts way does seem to have become a modern pilgrim route. However my main gripe is that it claims to be an authoritative text to pilgrim routes. It isn't. As far as I can see it does not take one of the traditional pilgrim routes and write about it, although it may use some as part of larger routes. Rather it gives a list of routes that connect by motorised transport various religious sites. These are not pilgrim routes, they are suggested itineraries for would be car pilgrims. Don't get me wrong, I am not against using cars for pilgrimage, the problem is that there are historical pilgrim routes, it was easy to find such routes of Heritage Paths Website which covers Scotland. Intriguingly on that website the 1930s map has Cailiness spelt as Killiness. So I was hoping for something that actually looked at the historical routes as well as gave modern options. So as "A guide to Sacred Sites with suggested routes for pilgrimage" it is fine but it is not what it says on the tin.
Friday I was in work again, I have to give up two bank holidays a year so Monday was one of them. Therefore I was in work on Friday. I picked up from the Broomhall Breakfast two up to date copies of getting help in Sheffield City Centre. I've recently come across two people begging in the area, I don't give money but will give food and such. I suspect at least one of them may find having it as a reference might be useful. I have to see if I see them again. The last time I was at the Tescos on West Street the man was not there, and I have not been past Waitrose yet. Also on Friday sussed what probably was causing the downness, as it is time of the month. Only unusual in that it was before the start rather than after. Maybe a sign I am managing things better.
Saturday I was busy. I decided at last to get rid of rather a lot of electrical junk that seemed to accumulate in my flat. It included the old printer, my old computer (neither of which has worked for a couple of years), a heater and a lot of wires. I was not completely successful as I managed to leave a bag of wires that are dangerous so removed from the church before anyone gets ideas, and a calculator whose screen has gone. I did this by hiring a car for an hour and a half and taking the stuff to the tip. I suspect the cost of the car was about as much as I would have been charged if I had got the bin men to do it, and they would not have taken all the little bits. They have a barrier up I am pretty sure to stop people coming in with lorry loads but people were happy to direct me right around to where electrical stuff was dumped. I wonder what they made of it. Anyway got back and decided to install the new printer. I had decided that the reason the old printer was not working was because I had not managed to install properly the drivers over the internet having lost the disks. Never make such assumptions. After struggling with this one, I discovered the REAL reason. Nothing was wrong with the printer but the wire connecting it was damaged! So I changed the wire, I had no less than four wires from previous printers, and it installed perfectly. Well perfectly once I had sorted that it was relatively straight forward if not 100%. Then I went into town basically to shop at Marks and Spencers for some ready meals. Also it was a warm day and I was feeling uncomfortable in my clothes. I wanted a loose floaty top, none in Marks but I went onto Blacks and they had one in, in a reddy-purply-pink on sale for twelve pounds.
Today I went to Herringthorpe. My drawing during sermons is still creating interest. I finally got an explanation that seemed to satisfy people. I said I was having difficulty paying attention during sermons, then heard of somebody drawing during seminars and thought, if I draw the sermon I will have to listen to it. That seemed to satisfy in a way that other equally true explanations do not. I will have to give some thought to why that did. The service was good, surprisingly not on one of the later resurrection passages, but rather on Christian hope. The congregation I think stood up well but the Sunday School was very small and therefore the rows in front of me were largely empty. As far as I could see there were no little ones at all, junior school and four later senior school. It was interesting the number of senior children that came. I came home and had a bacon and marmalade sandwich and a bottle wine. Then slept for a couple of hours.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Time fuddled foxes, busy Holy week and a quieter Easter
Happy Easter to you all, and may in some small way in the coming weeks the experience of the resurrection become real to you.
I forgot to tell you last week of the resident who got a shock due to the clocks going forward. At about quarter to ten last Sunday a fox decided it would take its normal route to a safe eating place around the old Jessop's hospital, presuming that as previous Sundays at this time nobody would be around. It came around the front of the hire car I was using only to be faced with me less than two feet away trying to get in. It stopped in amazement for a few seconds before heading across the University car park opposite and under the fence to where the new practice rooms for the Music Department are.
The week has been busy but the rhythm has been different. Monday I had to be in for 9:00 as we had a Customers Services section away day. The department is split into three sections: technical services, business services and customer services. The lines of course blur in all sorts of ways but that is how the boss decided to structure it. The away day was, as those reading last week will have noted, called at short notice. There were deliberate absentee-ism from people who loathe these events. Then there was a personality test based on shapes, the actual work was produced by Susan Dellinger and I am surprised how good it was, given that all we had to do was pick a shape. The questionnaire on the website gives me a different answer but then it picks up the other part of my brain by using words. Intriguing I suspected that one guy and I would end up with opposite personalities, we often are on opposite sides with things. That was exactly what happened and not just that, whereas I did it before the guy was finished, he took a long time over it.
Then Monday to Friday at 7:00 pm there has been a service for the Herringthorpe congregation. Pauline held a half hour meditation service on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday was a Maundy Thursday service at Broom Methodists, and they came to the Good Friday service held at Herringthorpe. The services led by Pauline were fine, small attendance between 12 and 20 for the meditations and upto about fifty for the Good Friday service. She had bothered to prepare something and involved people in readings. The one at Broom was not. There were comments at the start by Herringthorpe people on the lack of turn out, which was blamed on the weather. However if the present minister has produced such poor quality services in past years I wonder if that has driven people away. Right my problems include that he decided to use hand washing, which might just be something ship of Fools has sensitised me to, but I also have chapped knuckles at present and do not want my hands washed more often than is necessary. Secondly he adapted the Methodist Maundy Thursday service which is both a foot washing and an eucharistic service. Now if he had done this properly I would have no objections but if you are not doing eucharist on Maundy Thursday it behoves you to remove the Eucharistic language in the service even if that does mean altering the prayers. Then he asked us to leave in silence the chapel and to wait until in the entrance hall to exchange greetings and hugs. I'm sorry, you have guest at this worship, the effect of that is to make them leave quickly so as not to observe the displays of affections of the hosts. Given than he also relied totally on himself to lead and did all the readings (Herringthorpe could easily have provided a reader from those that were there even at short notice). It felt ill prepared.
As a result of having these in the evening, I took the mornings off for the rest of the week. This gave me time to write up the evening services, and I did not have to spend the whole of Good Friday trying to recall what had happened the previous week. Instead I ended up having a fairly quiet day. The morning was spent largely doing nothing, well I slept to 11:00 a.m. so there was not much of the morning left once I had done this but the afternoon I managed to get to Waitrose. Indeed every morning has had its task as well as writing up: tuesday-meet Cliff to sort the sound system hum, Wednesday - go to Tescos as I was getting very short on a couple of things, Thursday - go to Carsons to get some scanning done (only the machine was broke so I could not) but I met Justyna there and learnt that she had got her PhD and been commended for the statistics.
Saturday was a day off, out of the business of life. I spent most of the time writing up a piece on Kirkmadrine for the Galloway Pilgrimage website Morag and I are slowly developing. A very small part of the site may go on line in may. If and this is the big if we can get the first set of webpages together. The next task is to try and get a walk written up as a walk. It can only be an example as really the only walk we have done so far is part of a much longer circular walk. We have the notes of the walk it is just that we have not done the entirety. There is at least another pilgrim site to add for that walk as well. I also put on a chicken, and catalan sausage casserole into the slow cooker. Unfortunately the temperature gauge has broken and I was not thinking too much so I left it on high while I went into town. It was not burnt but too much of the liquid had evaporated. I made the mistake of adding more stock instead of water and so the dish is slightly too salty for my liking.
Today I was back at Herringthorp for their Easter service. Pauline described the communion elements as pure symbols, I had to point out to her afterwards that there was no such thing as a "pure symbol" for a symbol to be a symbol it has to reference something else (normally bigger), to illustrate this I used the toilet symbols of man and woman, and pointed out they were only symbols, but very few men would walk through a door with the woman sign on it. The other way around is not as taboo, women are allowed in to clean and do other tasks! The only pure symbols there are, are those that have lost their association some of which are religious. I came home from there, ate lunch and slept for at least an hour and a half. Since then been pootering, writing this and chatting with my parents on the phone.
I forgot to tell you last week of the resident who got a shock due to the clocks going forward. At about quarter to ten last Sunday a fox decided it would take its normal route to a safe eating place around the old Jessop's hospital, presuming that as previous Sundays at this time nobody would be around. It came around the front of the hire car I was using only to be faced with me less than two feet away trying to get in. It stopped in amazement for a few seconds before heading across the University car park opposite and under the fence to where the new practice rooms for the Music Department are.
The week has been busy but the rhythm has been different. Monday I had to be in for 9:00 as we had a Customers Services section away day. The department is split into three sections: technical services, business services and customer services. The lines of course blur in all sorts of ways but that is how the boss decided to structure it. The away day was, as those reading last week will have noted, called at short notice. There were deliberate absentee-ism from people who loathe these events. Then there was a personality test based on shapes, the actual work was produced by Susan Dellinger and I am surprised how good it was, given that all we had to do was pick a shape. The questionnaire on the website gives me a different answer but then it picks up the other part of my brain by using words. Intriguing I suspected that one guy and I would end up with opposite personalities, we often are on opposite sides with things. That was exactly what happened and not just that, whereas I did it before the guy was finished, he took a long time over it.
Then Monday to Friday at 7:00 pm there has been a service for the Herringthorpe congregation. Pauline held a half hour meditation service on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday was a Maundy Thursday service at Broom Methodists, and they came to the Good Friday service held at Herringthorpe. The services led by Pauline were fine, small attendance between 12 and 20 for the meditations and upto about fifty for the Good Friday service. She had bothered to prepare something and involved people in readings. The one at Broom was not. There were comments at the start by Herringthorpe people on the lack of turn out, which was blamed on the weather. However if the present minister has produced such poor quality services in past years I wonder if that has driven people away. Right my problems include that he decided to use hand washing, which might just be something ship of Fools has sensitised me to, but I also have chapped knuckles at present and do not want my hands washed more often than is necessary. Secondly he adapted the Methodist Maundy Thursday service which is both a foot washing and an eucharistic service. Now if he had done this properly I would have no objections but if you are not doing eucharist on Maundy Thursday it behoves you to remove the Eucharistic language in the service even if that does mean altering the prayers. Then he asked us to leave in silence the chapel and to wait until in the entrance hall to exchange greetings and hugs. I'm sorry, you have guest at this worship, the effect of that is to make them leave quickly so as not to observe the displays of affections of the hosts. Given than he also relied totally on himself to lead and did all the readings (Herringthorpe could easily have provided a reader from those that were there even at short notice). It felt ill prepared.
As a result of having these in the evening, I took the mornings off for the rest of the week. This gave me time to write up the evening services, and I did not have to spend the whole of Good Friday trying to recall what had happened the previous week. Instead I ended up having a fairly quiet day. The morning was spent largely doing nothing, well I slept to 11:00 a.m. so there was not much of the morning left once I had done this but the afternoon I managed to get to Waitrose. Indeed every morning has had its task as well as writing up: tuesday-meet Cliff to sort the sound system hum, Wednesday - go to Tescos as I was getting very short on a couple of things, Thursday - go to Carsons to get some scanning done (only the machine was broke so I could not) but I met Justyna there and learnt that she had got her PhD and been commended for the statistics.
Saturday was a day off, out of the business of life. I spent most of the time writing up a piece on Kirkmadrine for the Galloway Pilgrimage website Morag and I are slowly developing. A very small part of the site may go on line in may. If and this is the big if we can get the first set of webpages together. The next task is to try and get a walk written up as a walk. It can only be an example as really the only walk we have done so far is part of a much longer circular walk. We have the notes of the walk it is just that we have not done the entirety. There is at least another pilgrim site to add for that walk as well. I also put on a chicken, and catalan sausage casserole into the slow cooker. Unfortunately the temperature gauge has broken and I was not thinking too much so I left it on high while I went into town. It was not burnt but too much of the liquid had evaporated. I made the mistake of adding more stock instead of water and so the dish is slightly too salty for my liking.
Today I was back at Herringthorp for their Easter service. Pauline described the communion elements as pure symbols, I had to point out to her afterwards that there was no such thing as a "pure symbol" for a symbol to be a symbol it has to reference something else (normally bigger), to illustrate this I used the toilet symbols of man and woman, and pointed out they were only symbols, but very few men would walk through a door with the woman sign on it. The other way around is not as taboo, women are allowed in to clean and do other tasks! The only pure symbols there are, are those that have lost their association some of which are religious. I came home from there, ate lunch and slept for at least an hour and a half. Since then been pootering, writing this and chatting with my parents on the phone.
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