Two hectic weeks

On Tuesday the week before last I got to do another interview. At it for the first time I heard a rumour of both arguments and people leaving the church. This has been confirmed about four or five times since but that was the first hint and I do not know why. It is always in the second year that you get such hints, I am not sure whether people deliberately keep you in the dark or whether it is more that you don’t pick up the clues. What I am noting is that when a fall out happens there nearly always is a financial crisis afterwards. I am not sure this is deliberate but I suspect it may be. I would be more happy to have a direct and non emotive relationship if I had not been through stuff previously.

On the Wednesday I finally made it to the chaplaincy communion. Will Lamb has moved onto being Vice Principle of Westcott house and the new chaplain Anglican chaplain is Jeremy Clines. He is one of those people whose path occasionally crossed mine, I suspect the first time, at a coffee room late one night at High Leigh during a Chaplain’s conference I was attending in an attempt to try and work out what role I was trying to perform as Chaplaincy contact after taking it on after Fleur’s departure, and then both the Anglican and Methodist Chaplain’s changing over the summer as well. It was an interesting situation. Then he managed to email some time later. This puzzled me, as the email wasn’t spam but about a tour he was organising to Jerusalem. Although I recognised the name, I wondered where he had got my email address from as I had definitely not given it. So I did some hunting and realised he was on supervisor’s, supervisees list. For those putting 2+2 together I am pretty sure you are right in making 4.

Thursday that week saw Cathy and her kids coming over. We did not go swimming, firstly Sam had been swimming that morning already (he trains with the county squad) secondly the cold had been nasty and upto the day it was definitely unwise for me to swim. I had found an Indian Day at the local library and as it seemed to be one of a set of days running over half term. We stopped off at the Millenium galleries on our way up for a coffee. Sam had a fantastic hot chocolate with hot melted chocolate, cream, tiny marshmallows and a chocolate stick. Hannah had a Coke (Dad was not around so rules were being relaxed, as Coke makes Sam hyper). Then up to the Winter Gardens. They were recruiting for a craft tour for children Sam’s age and older although parent and siblings could come along. Sam decided not to so we went to see what the Indian day at the library was like. I had spotted that the library had a series of days on all week on a drop in basis. As it was half term I suspected that they were aimed at Primary school children, so maybe a bit young for Sam but not drastically. What I saw and what Cathy confirmed the age group aimed at were pre-school. Admittedly we turned up and the next thing I knew Hannah was colouring in, but there was obviously nothing for Sam. He solved the issue by getting the book he had to review for homework out and so I got out my reading book and we went and sat in the teen part of the library in comfy chairs and read. I think it helped Sam that I was reading as well. Then we went on and got pizza from Antibos. Neither of the kids finished theirs, although Sam ate over half. This is surprising given the amount of exercise Sam gets.

Over the weekend I was writing. The big task was to take the article I am writing for Anaphora and try and get it flowing again. To do this I took the article section by section and wrote it out by hand, then typed it into the computer again. I just hope that it worked. The idea being that if I am writing by hand I am unlikely to be editing it. I suspect it now really needs a good edit, too much waffle but that is as far as I can go.

I was hoping before the weekend that I would be able to cope without taking Friday as a work at home day, however by the end of worship on the Sunday I knew that there was not only Yorkshire Synod on the Saturday at Herringthorpe (I had offered to help with the sound) but that there was a church meeting on the Sunday at which I would be reporting the outcome of the interviews. So no chance of just doing evening service on the Sunday as I had planned. So it was obvious that I would have to have Friday working at home to get ready for Sunday and that I also would need time to rest afterwards so needed to take today off. I was inducted into the sound system that Sunday. It is no more complex than St Andrews except they record to tape. They want to move to mp3. What is different is beside it they have someone doing the audio visual. This basically consists of a PC with Zionworxs on it and a couple of projectors. It is fairly easy to use. If you want to have power point you just open the powerpoint and if Zionworxs is open it can be seen in the control panel. The one at the front is pretty powerful but the one at the back is just a normal projector. If they are using sound they feed it through the sound desk.

Tuesday I tried to get to Bible Study, it was a wet night with the sort of South Yorkshire wet, where the roads are running with water. I got to the car, and I knew the windscreen wiper was faulty but as it was usable I had not reported it. Well that night it broke before I even started driving and after ten to fifteen minutes of trying I was not managing to fix it. So I was now late and wet. I rang to cancel, they offered me another car but being both late and wet that was not on so I came back for an early night.

Friday I got my supervision papers ready and the presentation. He has not written back to me cancelling so I presume it is on. I have done the Training Needs Analysis done as well as quite a bit of other stuff. It gets more and more ridiculous every year. Part of the problem is that I actually have a half way decent research record due to my job and I certainly can trace and find papers and such very quickly. Also picked up the hire car. Again I got an upgrade, this time to a Ford Zetec. The only problem is that I am deliberately choosing a Corsa as it is a far nicer car to drive than the Zetec as you have far better visibility.

Saturday was synod. Actually it was fun as I was one of four people on the audio-visual desk. I was the second sound person. That meant I was there but beneath most people’s radar, the only two who spotted me were Sarah and James, even though I read at the final service. Most people were not expecting me to appear in that contexts so did not fathom who I was. It was interesting the blind spot it created. The two exceptions were Malcolm Hanson and maybe Kevin Watson who asked my opinion and I think got rather more than he expected. I suspect Kevin is trying to work out who I am and I am at present not helping. He has enough info if he wants to find out to do so. It was a lot of voting and little discussion. Most votes were unanimous (I think there was only one that wasn’t) and yes Yorkshire Synod has straight votes still. I think the more consultative approach would have added significantly time-wise to an otherwise already full agenda. I am far more in favour of it in situations where there is real debate to be had. The big decisions were largely uncontroversial because fairly thorough soundings had been done in advance. Two of them were reporting the conclusions after fairly thorough investigations and another was just realising that they weren’t really capable of doing what they were set up to do, so returned a neutral report. Oh can somebody please send Nick Maskell on a presentation course. When he is good he is very, very good but when he is bad he is horrid. A sure sign of someone who has ability but needs training. Training does not produce brilliant presentations, it stops people producing bad ones. Three presentations by him: one was brilliant, one perhaps middling and one was a classic how not to do a presentation.

Sunday was interesting, Three new elders appointed a new secretary and a new treasurer. The treasurer was an obviously popular choice. I suspect people had had him in mind for when the present one retired for quite a while. They also voted for their charity for this year. It was interesting, last year there were at least three candidates, this year there was one. There was also the feeling that the people who nominated the charity in previous years had not been pulling their weight (the nominators of this years charity will pull their weight without a doubt, in fact unofficially it has been a church charity for quite a while).

Today after a cold but bright weekend the heaven’s have opened and Sheffield has had water running down the roads again. Returning the car was not fun. Firstly I have to get to Hertz. On foot that is easy, but by car it is anything but, then I had to walk home. Had a brainwave however and rather than trying to find blue hard boiled sweets and making stained glass cookies I bought silver card and blue plastic and will make stain glass ornaments using that. This year there does not seem to be as much to do for the Advent wreath. This is something I have been working towards for a number of years and up to now have not achieved.