Irregular Posting

Notice At present this blog is not being updated regularly as I am in the final stages of writing my thesis. I am still regularly updating my thesis progress reports if you want news

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.

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