A Cold causes limited damage

Right lets see about the last week:
Last Monday the books were finally available from my writers-group. If you want a copy please let me know, we are officially charging £4. Those who want a copy please let me know. Sarah I will put your copy in your pigeon hole and another for Derek Collins. Alright its partly me showing off as I did the layout as well as the first pieces in the book (I did not collate so had no say over that). However in my opinion the second piece is from a novel that really should be published. Because I wanted to see what the finished product looked like and so even though I new I had something virusey but was keeping going. On the night Jude read a superb piece and she is not always the sort of writer I find easy to get on with.

Tuesday I still had the virusey thing, although some of the symptoms in shared with a cold it also put me off eating, not made me nauseous but just meant I rarely felt like eating. However as I had a team meeting and a advice session with someone in Education, basically I am helping her to do her analysis in NVivo by partly being more expert than her on using NVivo, partly being a sounding board and partly by just saying “yes you are doing fine”. Fortunately I had called off house group on the evening because I felt that with supervision the next day it would over tire me. So I went down to Waitrose to shop and to buy some cold suppressants for the next day. I wanted the same ones as worked last year but when I got there they had added guaifenesin which is an expectorant but it also interacts with amiltryptyline which is one of the drugs I am on. I took some once before accidentally and it is not pleasant, even on the low dose I am on. The problem was then that I had to find an alternative. It made my shopping twice as long as I would have liked.

Wednesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. Things went smoothly, my supervisor suggested that I really needed to do a re-write rather than an edit of the paper as my language had got too caught up in the editing. The difference between a re-write and an edit is with a re-write I start with a fresh document, take each section and write from memory what is important in that section having read the section first. With an edit I take the actual words and try to put them into a better form. His conclusion is that I need to limit my editing. The good news is that I seem to have ended up with a weekend to do this because everything else has to be done earlier in the month.

Thursday I finally gave into my cold/virusey thing and spent most of the day in bed. I surprised myself in that I slept until after mid-day. However had I needed I suspect I could have gone into work.

Friday I was up and in work. Admittedly I came home slightly earlier than I normally do but I was working fairly well and not just sitting there doing nothing. Stuart came around in the evening to have a glass of wine (he brings the wine) and eat garlic bread. One of the ironies of life that at present we manage to meet more regularly in a purely platonic way than we ever did when we were going out.

Saturday was one of those in days where I did bits and bobs. I went down town on the afternoon, to buy soya flour (I make a form of scrambled egg for breakfast that uses it and soya dream as well as egg). Also bought some page dividers, I will shortly be on my third folder of written work for my PhD. When I have filled this one I will really be down to serious writing of my thesis. Actually I suspect before then. One thing I did not manage to sort is how to finish my work flow process for poetry. I write it in a small note book originally maybe do two or more drafts, then I produce a more polished piece for my writers- group, but after that there should be a final edit and then put somewhere to keep. The choosing what to keep them in is what is puzzling me and my current work folder is getting rather full!

Today I went to Herringthorpe, it took longer than usual due to the verge being tidied. This seems to largely consist to litter picking rather than actually gardening and certainly does not involve any work on the road. However one lane either way of the parkway is closed. I also ended up parking in the Doctors car park due to be late and there being a baptism. Today we had the blessing of a parent and the baptism of a child. There is no need to tell me that that is liturgically awkward, someone prepared to make promises on their child’s behalf that they cannot make for themselves. There is nowt as queer as folk. If anyone had said to me at the start of this thesis that I would have to spend a good portion of my thesis on the sacraments, I simply would think that they were talking through their hat but in St Andrews Chesterfield one of the major flash points was communion and at Herringthorpe it is baptism. The congregation is split between adult baptiser and fairly strict paedo-baptists. There is also the strong feeling that they see these families at Baptism then don’t see them again. The big question, what does it mean to belong?

Next week is busy, I am hoping on Wednesday to call around at the doctors surgery after a prayer meeting at the church and see if I can persuade the manager to give me an interview. What is really interesting is that in some ways the boundaries between Herringthorpe and this Doctors surgery are not clear cut and they need to get along. On Friday I am off to ASSESS at York.