Long post involving a picnic, various socials and a broken PC

Monday the 12th was writers group social and it was held at the Bath Hotel which is technically my local and I do go in it more often than any other. I would guess between once and twice a year, I also vaguely know the owner. Indeed at one time I was on teh edge of their social group. Something I did not cultivate as it is also the social group of the head of my department. The connection is basically we live on the same street but I have lived here longer! The evening was pretty pleasant until 9:00 pm when the band started up in the other room.  That also seemed to be the key for other people coming into the back room where we were, and between the noise from the band and the other conversations I could not follow what was being said so decided to go home. There was a good turn out as well. I would more than there had been for the last few weeks but then we open it up to former members as well as current ones.

Tuesday it was the last Bible Study at Herringthorpe and Roy led it on Peter and the need for change. He got so strong on leadership being about getting inspiration from the Lord and then acting on it, that even his son Steven had to tackle him on it. Roy is struggling with the committee nature of the URC and I am afraid this is coming out. I suspect he needs both to see revelation happening in a meeting, rare but does happen and also to hear why it is done in that way.  Anyway I am well briefed in committees as listening rather than speaking.

Wednesday was a fairly normal day although we did have a tropical rainstorm in the evening just about the time I wanted to go shopping. It was falling in bucket loads and ever so often the wind would pick it up as it splashed onto the roof opposite and create a white line of spray. It was tropical even in the time it lasted and I waited half an hour, walked down in light drizzle and it was fine by the time I walked back from the shops.

Thursday my computer started giving notice that it was going sick. It decided to download the managed service from the network for some reason. As I don’t have the password it could not. I switched it off and it came back okay but the puzzlement of what happened left me feeling insecure with it.

Friday was my day off and it was a writing weekend. As always with a writing weekend I was tired so did not make Broomhall Breakfast. I did however manage to decide that I really should re-write the essay. That sounds like editing but it was largely not. What I had to do was give an account of Cafe Church and how it is part of mission. Surprisingly there are no books solely on Cafe Church. The problem then is that although it has been part of emerging church, it also was for a time part of alt.worship and I suspect is going mainstream evangelical at least in some of its more commercial forms. So it is not something that one can just by a text on the overarching topic and read the relevant chapter.Well earlier in the month I had done some searching on Amazon and found “The Hybrid Church in the City:Third SpaceThinking” which as cafe church is often described as “third space” and hybridity is obvious, part cafe part church, oh and it was by Christopher Baker, well not Johnny Baker but still the same surname. Well it was but not in the way I was thinking. It’s first section is a serious bit of sociological writing on hybridity mainly based on Homi Bhabha theory. It was a lever which allowed me to create a greater depth to my paper, with analysing Cafe church as a deliberate hybridisation and that this meant that there was a change in the discourses in it. However to get that far I actually had to do some serious reading.

Saturday I picked up the hire car for the weekend. I had ordered it from Hertz as Hertz worked out cheaper for two days than did citycar for the day and I had no time worries. I ordered an Corsa as I enjoyed driving that on holiday but instead got a Seat Ibiza Ecomotive which was quite pleasant to drive and hiring for two days meant that I could do a shop at Waitrose with a car which makes life lots easier.

Sunday I took a break from essay reading and went with Herringthorpe for a picnic at Cannon Hall. It was interesting to go, in that the people who went were predominantly from the younger age range of the church. I know what the weather was threatened. My decision on the morning was either had to cancel or to trust God. On setting off I drove Frieda home. Frieda is one of the older people of the congregation and is getting quite frail.  I suspect that really she should be in sheltered housing, a wardened flat would be ideal, but she has a large pre-war semi-detached house with a large well kept garden. The family who keep an eye on her were going to have to do an extra car journey so I volunteered. She is the sort who wonders why I would see her to the door when she has just told Pauline in front of me how she fell over and knocked herself out on her own front door step. She is generous to a fault herself. However I managed to loose the car keys after letting her in. It turned out to be a mistake on my part when I had accidentally dropped them into my bag when I had tried to put something else in it and they had fallen to the bottom. The picnic at Cannon Hall was much like a cross between childhood picnics there and church picnics of my teenage years. So we sat closer to the carpark than in my childhood but still did not go around the house. I went to check what I recall as where we picnicked and the flat stone bridge is still there but the stepping stones have gone (well misplaced, the route of the ford was still clearly there) and the bank access to the river has become overgrown. It was obvious nobody had picnicked there for a long time. There also was a game of rounders. The team I was on won, not due to me, but due to the fact we had the only lefthander on our side and she could hit a ball. Odd because I am almost sure there was another lefthander young enough to play. There is now a little cafe by the carpark but the ice-cream van still serves good ice-cream or appeared to do so from what I saw others eating.

Having finished the essay on Monday, Tuesday saw me back in work and then onto Bible Study Social in the evening. I think this is an end of term event. I remembered my lactase tablets which meant I could eat fairly freely and not worry over whether I was eating too much milk for my system. This is tricky with buffets for although I can do cold meats and salads without a dressing or none creamy, there is often milk in things you don’t expect, such as sausage rolls. It also meant I could eat a small chocolate muffin without worrying though my main dessert was strawberries and raspberries. Afterwards Pauline decided for entertainment that we would have a beetle drive. Now as far as I know Beetle drive was pretty standard non-conformist culture. It has enough skill in it not to be gambling and some people are very good. Tony Burnham if I recall correctly used to win every time. They had just mastered throwing the die quickly. The quicker you can shake it the more goes you have before the shout of Beetle. Well a lot of them had not played before and of course the table with four people on it won, as the others had six.

Wednesday I spent time with Cliff in the church making minor changes to the sound system. Basically fitting a draw to the cabinet which means things no longer are stuffed on top and likely to fall down the back so perhaps loosening the wires. We took out the minidisc player. The technology is obsolete and nobody after Barry left actually got it to work. Then my computer went on strike properly. I spent the afternoon trying to sort it and gave up just before 5:00 pm.

Thursday was not a good day. My computer was in a huff and the technician who would see it went home sick. Eventually I borrowed a computer off Alison the senior departmental secretary and finance guru, which meant that I could handle Margo’s queries about meta-analysis. I also composed an email explaining the situation to my boss who is away until Monday. It is totally frustrating to know that the machinery you need for your job is

Friday was better, I made breakfast which was quiet. I don’t mean nobody came I mean that people who did come were not as talkative as usual and if anything tended to drift off into sleep.Then I got into work and my PC problems had been passed to Dave a colleague who I have known ever since I started in the department. He got the van boys to collect it and bring me my old computer out. This I have not used for two years and was then five years old. so not a modern machine but one I know that is trustworthy. I am running old software on it as it does not have the spec to run more modern stuff but it works. I am wondering if it is worth trying to turn it into a Linux machine when I am in safer waters. It would mean that it was usuable in such emergencies, indeed I would also be able to run SPSS linux and R on it. If this works then I will keep two machines the older always being a Linux. Also on Friday was the works Barbecue. Work only has two departmental dos in a year. The Christmas Party and the Barbecue, therefore I try to go to both. I wonder why sometimes I go but I still feel I ought. Apart from the music, maybe next year I will bight the bullet and put stuff up for people to use, but I presume people are not going to like it, but with some of what was inflicted on me, I cannot see that a few Christian choruses would be too bad.

Saturday morning I spent largely collating stuff for my next supervision, it was amazing how much I had done and how often I had forgotten to keep a record of what had happened. Maybe I will end up having to include these letters as part of my data as sometimes the only record is in these. Then I went down town. Big mistake, town was heaving from the Tramlines Music Festival and they had a continental market as well. Some of the normally busy shops were quiet because it was that difficult to get to them. I think there only were a couple of other customers in Lush when I went there and there did not seem to be any queues in Waterstones but the food part of Marks was still busy.

Today I did not go to church as I needed space to try and sort out what I wanted to do over the summer for thesis, what holiday I had left and what changes I needed to make to the interview schedule. All trivial jobs in themselves but they were not getting done and with them not getting done meant I was not getting on with other things that needed doing. Since then I have slept and talked to my parents and written this letter.

Brainstorming and Ruby Weddings

Monday I was teaching a course. There was some complexity over organising it as I had other things to do on the Monday morning, which meant that I had to fit it in at times that people did not necessarily expect. However I think my decision that first thing rather than later was good. The course went I think better than I felt it did, at least from the feedback that was given me. I suspect how well I think things go actually depends on how well rested I am. If I am well rested then I feel as if I am working well with the subject. On the evening it was the writers group final meeting for before the summer. It went fairly well. The piece I took was not my usual standard but I was not surprised about that, It had a weaker start and although the language had been tightened it had not been tightened enough.

Tuesday was a managers meeting for my team. As with three other people I only manage myself well that is not true, but I manage things rather than people. The thing was that I was able to check with my boss and she agrees that a blower heater is not a sensible solution to heating problems in my office (the central heating is no longer able to pump water through the upstairs offices). As we are only there for another year I am going to suggest a mixture of temporary secondary glazing and more sensible portable heating. On the evening went out to Bible Study at Herringthorpe. I am not sure that it is working properly and I am at present trying to gently challenge the presumed hegemony on teaching. Oh the leader started to draw a distinguishing line between spiritual and practical/profane. It is one line I have learnt to be increasingly sceptical about. The profane is often used to symbolise the spiritual and the spiritual can have practical/profane implication. He also said that ministers should decide the spiritual because God only speaks to individuals not to committees. That would be fine if God only spoke through the apostolic channel but God also speaks through the prophetic channel and the prophetic typically speak from the margins and the outside.

Wednesday I collapsed with a migraine. Actually I had noted that a migraine was hovering the last few days so I decided that the most sensible option was to let it come on Wednesday and get it over with. It was three weeks since the previous one so they are again spreading themselves out.

Sometime during the week I came across two different definitions of Liberal Christians. One was someone who accepted the Liberal tradition of interpretation of the Bible which often means a set of views such as: accepting evolution, dismissing male headship and the contextualisation of the bible. The second is somebody who believes that a variety of views should be tolerated within the church and respect for alternative opinions is important. The argument was not that a person isn’t both, but that a person needn’t be both. So you could have someone who accepts creationism but believes that those who accept evolution are valid. That person maybe described as liberal even though their personal theological stance isn’t. Equally people can accept the liberal tradition but feel that those who accept creationism really are not thinking reasonably and should be challenged by the powers that  be in the church.

Thursday I was up and ready for work, indeed so up and ready I managed to find time to walk the slightly longer way in. Basically walk up Broomspring Lane and then down Glossop Road to the department. I hope to be able to do this more often over the summer. At lunch time I met with Cliff to do a check on the sound equipment in the church. When looking at the speakers it was felt that the speaker by the choir is actually aimed at the bookstall at the back. Now don’t get me wrong books are important but they don’t need to hear the service. However on investigating the ladder Cliff found that the rubber ends of the ladder were so old that they had gone hard. He did not feel safe going up it so we left more exploration for a later date.

On the evening I went across to lead a brain storm for the youth group at Herringthorpe URC so that they could collect ideas to make a video for me introducing the church to people their own age. I suggested that they might think of it as going onto the website. There were only four there, normally there is about seven or eight but the scouts were having a social. It is odd but I think I am beginning to know most of the youth group. Certainly the four there to me were not strangers to me. It was interesting that among the important things for them as for older people were the relationships they have with people. I am also beginning to think that we need to think of how we use electronic media in pastoral care. Just as the phone call became part of the tools for pastoral care, so for the younger  generation (i.e. the under seventies in this case) are using electronic systems to keep in touch and know how each other are doing. They don’t exclude the traditional like visiting but where as churches might have in the past rung around to see who was coming to an event, now for younger people it is probably more efficient to send a text. It does the same thing. At Herringthorpe facebook is actually one of the tools of keeping in touch with people. I started using it to put up photographs of events, if I put them up for friends of friends then anyone who has Pauline the minister as a friend can see them without them being available to the whole world.

Friday was busy for all it was a day off. I went to Broomhall Breakfast, then onto PJTaste to pick the present for Fleur and Walters Ruby wedding. Then I went down to Waitrose as I realised I was out of instant coffee and breakfast cereal. I was tired after that and the day was stuffy warm so I went to bed for an hour. I am not sure I actually sleep but pictures flicker across my mind. One of them this time involved a flying gingerbread woman. Then I sat down and wrote up the brain storming from the previous evening before catching the bus out to the Dicksons for a pleasant evening.

Saturday was Fleur and Walters Ruby Wedding. This involved me getting a train to Stockport, getting a taxi to my parents, dropping my stuff for the weekend then going in the taxi back to the station with them and then meeting up with Ruth on the train. We got there to find Marion coming outside and wondering where Fleur and Walter were as they had not arrived yet. It was about 12:25 when she actually said that. Fleur and Walter and family were doing all the catering themselves although they had hired a room in the town hall in Macclesfield. This meant for once Walter was working the room while Fleur was trying to check that everything was going fine and talk with the people who wanted to talk to her. The major success at keeping the children happy and entertained were old fashioned balloons, which were thoroughly enjoyed. Bubbles were less successful, as the mixture was tipped on the floor rather than bubbles being blown. The two youngest spent most of the time following their mothers around. Anyway at the start of the meal I realised that I had forgotten to pack my medicine. I needed to take the evening tablets as whereas I would be okay today I would have had a migraine tomorrow, going by past experience. So I hitched a lift back with the Dicksons, who then ran me to the station while Ruth saw my parents back to Stockport. I caught a train back and have spent this morning being quiet at my parents while they went to church.

A good end to a busy week

This past week there has been no shortage of news most of it pleasant so don’t worry there is plenty for me to write about.



Monday it was my writing groups bi-annual assessment. It went very well I think. We met in the Elders room. The way we sat meant that Jenny, I and Margaret were all sitting together. The assessor is a published poet so our tutor had chance to show off the group. Jenny is quite a mature poet and indeed has had several poems published, I am not claiming the same for myself but I did a quantum leap with my ability just before Christmas so I am a good person to demonstrate improvement. Finally Margaret is in the final stages of writing a book, it is the one book we all want to read. I don’t suppose it is my normal style, welsh dark gothic in style but the twists and turns are quite incredible. So she was good to show off the standard of prose that is achieved by the group.


Tuesday was just bible study,  They got onto the validity of infant baptism. Now a days I don’t particularly go into the rights and wrongs of it, but I grew up with the arguments.  One guy decided to be adamant of that adult baptism was the only answer, so I said that there was other opinion and that it could be argued as well. I got him to admit that the New Testament did not state categorically either way.


Wednesday was NAG meeting and I presenting what work had been done so far. It went well with people wanting to talk about things. I sensed a real enthusiasm in the group for the route we have mapped out. I presented a shortened version of the form today. What was interesting was that most people queried area even though we had not done a precise area decision. The area was sort of “around the church”, rather than “in your local urban priority area” which is about a mile away. Talking today I sense that we are only starting from scratch because previous projects have not really considered fundraising as part of the project. They seem to have had a contact centre which firstly the church lost control of because the funding came through the probation service and secondly when the funding ran out the probation service just shut it. This seems to be a repeated pattern for their community work. With some the grants needed to make it successful would have been minimal e.g. a regular sum towards the provision of taxi services for elderly people so they could get.


Thursday  was quieter than expected because the youth group found that most of its members were away in Oxford. However I spent the afternoon helping to run a stall for the department on a university Open Day. Even though I was on the grave yard shift, we still had a number of inquiries including one from a mother whose son had lost the stuff he had collected and wanted fresh but did not dare come and ask. He will have to get out of relying on mum to pick up the pieces pretty quickly if he gets to University. Actually for awhile I have noticed that students tend to come in two forms to University. There are those whose behaviour and dress suggests that they are still children while others seem to be full adults. I am not sure what the underlying cause is of this marked discrepancy.


Friday was a full day in work, or would have been if time of the month had not intervened. That said I was up and functional by the afternoon. I needed to sort out the stuff for a course I am doing on Monday and to do that I needed to talk to a couple of people in the building where my office used to be. This was fortunate as there was yet another burst pipe on Glossop Road, they seem to happen every summer just when the weather is at its warmest. This one meant that there was no functional toilets. So the trip over to the other building was chance to go to the loo. Oh in the hot weather I have been making strong mint and green tea and cooling it. By strong I mean very strong. When cold it can either be drunk 50/50 with lemonade or in a mix with wine and tonic water. Both are delicious and cool tasting.


Saturday, hmm was quite a day. I started the fairly early, probably because my body registered that it had a lot on that day. Before 9:00 a.m. my doorbell went and a postman announced that he had a parcel for me. This surprised me, as normally I have some clue when I am due to get a parcel, but there was no hint of anything. However I let him in to the block and he brought a parcel up to my flat. It was addressed to me. What is more it contained a mju tough 8010 camera.. I certainly was not expecting that! I hunted for documentation and found a letter from   Merrell; only then did I remember that when I had bought a pair of shoes a couple of months back I had filled in details and agreed to go into a draw. It appears I was runner up! I thought that was always something that happened to other people.


However I did not have time to set it up because I was off to “Fun at the Fair” at Herringthorpe. It was an attempt to do something different with a summer fair. Basically combining it with a fun day for families. The weather was superb, perhaps slightly too much breeze towards the end. They had also managed to persuade a Mums and Tots group that use the premises to have a stall. The Brownies and Guides both had stalls and I think the scouts did but that was very token. There was a good mix of church and non-church families just sitting around. Improvements would be things like, making the fund raising fifty-fifty for groups, also developing a range of cheap have a go games, with small prizes such as ping-pong balls into jam jars, or the old fishing game or drop a 5p on a £1 at the bottom of a bucket of water. Rotherham has an odd feel. I am trying to place why the fact that its urban deprivation feels worse than that of Sheffield or Chesterfield. Some of it is easy, the railway station is a dive, for starters; just beside it is a river with a chantry chapel and a historic pub. The sort of place most towns would spend money on developing as fashionable pub. Admittedly Tescos did it no favours with their warehouse of a supermarket being built alongside it but in other places that simply would not have been allowed. The town centre is dominated by the Minister but if you are outside Rotherham you would hardly know it. But these are symptoms rather than causes.


Today it was off to church at Herringthorpe and then church meeting. Pauline put in a reference to “We limit not the Truth of God” by George Rawson. I commented to her that that seemed rather appropriate as today is the 4th July! For those who don’t get the reference the hymn she is quoting is a paraphrase of Pastor John Robinsons address to the Pilgrim fathers when they left Plymouth. At coffee I bough a bar of Traidcraft Organic Dark Chocolate which is seriously yummy. Actually one of the things with being involved in the Needs Assessment Groupis that in giving the report I got response from people I would not otherwise have got, including stories of previous community outreach. After that I came home and slept!


This week is quieter, yes I know that is not going to be exactly difficul., I am teaching tomorrow and am running a brainstorming session for the youth group on Thursday. I hope I can be back to my normal car by then. Then at the weekend I am attending Fleur and Walters Ruby Wedding and then spending the weekend with my parents. I must look up trains for that soon.