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.