Busy week preparing for Christmas

This last week included the carol service. The wreath was a big task again. Next year I am going to have to do things differently. Lynn and Sandra(twins) who pick about 50% of the greenery are away visiting Lynn’s daughter in Australia from November to January or February and then the greenery that is sprayed needs spraying in advance or spraying not using the aerosol paints we use at present due to the solvent. I suspect that what will be needed is a preparation day when others help collect and prepare the greenery, there might be other activities as well. The pictures come out far more blue than I recall the actual wreath being. It looked positively pink at the Carol service.


Having done this on the Tuesday on the Wednesday I threw a migraine. Al right I know largely why, not taking extra medication on Tuesday morning to prevent migraine and then not drinking enough water during the day.


With that over with I started to think earnestly about Christmas. Friday and Saturday I spent a lot of the time doing Christmas things like shopping. I had planned just to shop on Friday, but I realised part way through the day that I was not really up to finishing the shopping that I planned so decided to do the food shop at Waitrose the next day. I did however manage to make rum truffles by following a recipe  and managed to up load all my essays to date for my PhD. That allows me to move them from my main computer to this one which I will take with me on holiday and also to print them out at work so I can read through analyse them and come back with some idea of what my PhD is actually about. I also managed to write a round robin (if you want to read it, it is the next post down, but there is nothing there that is not elsewhere and in more detail. I  bought a pack of Christmas cards and will send these with the letter to a few people who I keep contact with at Christmas time. 


Today I went to both the morning service and to the carol service. The carol service was better attended this year with about seventy people there. This still was not the packed church that they have at St Andrews Chesterfield and it was a far more traditional in its readings. Pauline decided to read a piece of poetry, it was a fun piece, but I am not sure it worked being read aloud. Maybe my writers group are getting to me, they always read poetry several times before commenting, or maybe it just needed a performance rather than a reading. The rhythm and the rhyme tended to drown the meaning for me. There was however a good group chatting around and having mince pies afterwards.

Christmas Round Robin 2010

December 2010

This is just a quick note to stick in with the Christmas cards to let people know how life is going. The year has been busy, I have to keep reminding myself that I am trying to do 80% of a full time job and 50% of a full time degree and somehow those have to fit together. I basically get around to planning the University’s Advent Wreath after my December Supervision and Christmas happens after the carol service.

Health wise I am actually lots better this year. In January I had a resurgence of migraines so sat down and asked what I had changed. In the end all I could think of is that I might have with changing supplements slightly dropped my magnesium intake, so I went out and got some and the change started almost immediately. Since then other little things seem to have helped, changing to a quieter office (I had the choice of a noisier one or a quieter one and I had realised that if things got noisier I was in trouble), stopped eating prawns and some minor messing with other supplements. The net result is not only fewer migraines but I have substantially reduced the medication for depression.

Holidays are often taken up with doing PhD work but I spent almost a fortnight with my God-family in the Rhins of Galloway. As I go up there regularly and what we do is between family excursions is go for walks and explore religious sites often at the same time but interspersed with drinking lots of coffee and ginger-beer while eating chocolate. There is a lot of Christian sites covering the whole of Scottish Church history, from Pre-Celtic to the Covenanters. However although the big ones such as Whithorn are known many of the smaller sites are largely unknown. We decided to create a website that gives people information on both the sites and on the walks in the surrounding area.

I also attended a conference of the Society for Liturgical Studies. One of the problems with my PhD is there isn’t a developed academic community to talk to, so I end going to conferences that overlap with my discipline.  A surprising amount of identity work is done around worship and sacraments in both my congregations. So I find myself regularly writing about liturgical events or discussing liturgical controversies. The Society was interesting to say the least, an organisation who expressed the desire for more Free Church liturgists to join, who defined liturgy in such a way that most Free Church liturgist would not be interested. They also kept referring to people from the Reformed tradition.

Otherwise I am as busy as usual, if anything work at the University is busier than it has been for a while. I am not sure if this is part of the University refocusing on research due to the economic climate or me being in better health so more pro-active.

Hope that you have a good festive season and that during next year the blessings outweigh the sorrows. With Love and best wishes, God Bless Jean

From a supervision to an Advent Wreath

Lets see how things have been. I cannot remember back to the start of last week although I know the snow was still making travel difficult, indeed if you know where to look around here in Sheffield (i.e. below the normal snow line) you can still see traces of snow, not much, and the rain today has done something to get rid of the dregs but still there. Oh I got snow boots on the Monday which made walking a lot easier. Snow boots are fairly similar to walking boots but stiffer, lighter, warmer and with a better tread so less likely to slip. However at work someone recommended Yaktrax which you put on over shoes and have coils for gripping the snow

Wednesday I was down to see my supervisor. He had emailed me on Monday to say don’t come if travel is dicey. I was watching the weather but by Wednesday it had definitely started to pick up. I was also watching the trains through the website the Narional Rail Enquiries disruption page and spotted that alternate trains seemed to be having difficulty. As one of the delayed trains was the one I was planning to get, I was able to set out and get the train half an hour early which was only five minutes late leaving Sheffield but then behind a stopper to Chesterfield. This meant it was delayed by about half an hour, so I got in the time I would have otherwise. On the journey Derbyshire was thick with snow,with the ground all white up to Derby but after that you started to see tall grasses coming through the snow and such, by the time I got to Birmingham everything was outlined in white by frost not snow. It turned out that my supervisor was going on information from his sister. She lives east of Sheffield and the snow has been worse out that way. There is noticeably more snow remaining in Rotherham than in Sheffield at present. The supervision went well and though the journey back was delayed it was otherwise smooth, until I got to Sheffield when there was a huge queue for taxis so I decided to go for the tram. This meant a wait for the tram and cramped travel but I suspect the wait was shorter than it would have been for a taxi. Apparently a shooting star went over while I was waiting, unfortunately I was looking the wrong way.

Friday started with a departmental meeting. This meant I missed Broomhall Breakfast and had to do a quick-turn around at work to get there. The meeting was poorly attended I assume in part due to the snow. I started picking the greenery for the Advent wreath for the chaplaincy. On the evening I went up to James and Jean for a meal. It was a lesson in how badly Sheffield public transport was effected by the weather. I got to the bus stop shortly after 6pm and by 6:30 pm no 40 bus had been by. A full 120 had gone by and the 52 seemed to have sorted itself out but no 40. At which point I and a French Lecture caught a taxi that dropped him at Slayleigh Lane and then took me onto James and Jean. After that the meal was uneventful but a thaw had set in that day and I was slightly concerned that if the temperature dropped below zero, that the Close which my flat is on, would be inaccessible by car, as there were puddles lying in the snow on the road leading to it.

Saturday was busy. I needed to shop for bits for the advent wreath and other practical shopping. Then on the evening went to Herringthorpes Women’s Christmas Dinner. This year only a dozen attended compared with between twenty and thirty last year. Pauline dropped out at the last minute due to Alex being ill but one of the other ladies took her place. The chatter was general this year, about family and what was going on in each others lives. I got to here about NHS winter weather planning in quite a lot of detail due to sitting near two nurse-managers.

Sunday I made a strategic decision to stay at home on the morning as with all the time spent out over the weekend I needed some time in. I also had more greenery to get for the Advent wreath for chaplaincy. On the afternoon I went to Herringthorpe for their Cristingle service. The car park still had quite a bit of ice/snow on it as indeed had the pub the previous evening. About a dozen kids came to the service. A former scout master from the church brought his grandchildren so it was not just a selection of the usual suspects. At Herringthorpe they make up the oranges during the service including making the cuts for the candle in the top. A good atmosphere to it.

Yesterday was a fairly normal day in work except I went to cut more greenery for the Advent Wreath. This year on both Friday and Monday I have taken time out of work to cut the greenery, it means that I was not going out after dark to cut the greenery which I have done previous years. In the evening I went with my writers group to the Frog and Parrot, fortunately for us there was no DJ or live band that evening, just fairly loud background music. The pub was fairly busy when we arrived but quietened down as the evening went on and we continued to natter.

Today was the carol service at the University. I was again in charge of making the Advent Wreath. There had been communication problems in advance. I said Advent Wreath and I think they started looking for something about a foot in diameter with eighteen inch candles. What I was talking about was something six foot wide (the base is a metre wide) and has candles between 2 ft and 4 ft. It was not helped that they lost the candles and did not think to ask the office manager who knew exactly where they were. Anyway it all worked on the day as you can see from the photos. Next year I will have to plan the work flow differently as we can’t spray the greenery in the Octagon which means it will have to be sprayed, probably at St Andrews (hopefully outside in the garden at the back) on the Sunday. Lynn and Sandra who are half the team will also be in Australia so I need to do some thinking. However the comments were good, and there was an acknowledgement that something like that had to happen to create an atmosphere in that room. It was interesting that the party afterwards was quieter. I think quite likely as Will the former chaplain had felt the need for a Christmas party and I don’t think the present one does.

Coping with snow in Sheffield

I think this will be highlights as I can’t remember over the fortnight to give details.

By the time I got back from Writers Group on Monday 22nd, I had a burning sensation at the back of my throat, which normally heralds a cold; so I looked in my work diary and as the next day was free in work, I took it off and bombed the cold, the result of which is that it did not develop.

The next day I had some premonition of the coming weather as I ordered snow boots and a down gilet and snow boots unfortunately they have not arrived yet. I also was helping out with the Arts and Humanities PG Open Day. They call it an open day but it lasts about four hours in the afternoon and it is mainly Sheffield Undergraduates who come.

The weekend was writing weekend. It was also church fair at Herringthorpe on the Saturday but the snow arrived overnight and as I had no duties, plenty of writing, I cancelled. I did get to church on Sunday although the congregation was reduced as more snow had fallen over night but then there was a Baptism which increased the numbers. So the church was still fairly full. The writing was progressing well although I am struggling to find methods of talking about the ways the congregation uses space as part of creating an identity. Part of it is that I am realising that I have to cope with a different understanding to space to that that is assumed with other theorists of religious space. The nearest I can get is sacred space in the Reformed tradition is four dimensional with the time boundaries being as important as those in the other three dimensions. This is not the essay I intended to write, there is something about introversion and extroversion that needs writing but I am cautious over how to deal with this. I was ahead of myself so went to writers group on the evening.

Tuesday I think proved my dedication to teaching. The gig I did had only come through the previous Thursday when finally the Social Science RTP decided to contact CICS and see if we had anyone who teaches NVivo. If they had actually gone back through their records they would have seen my name for having done this in the past but doing something sensible like that isn’t what they are about. So I got on Thursday an urgent email. There was no way I could write anything special especially as it was a writing weekend, but I do have a 2 hour course I give to introduce academics to NVivo but even to do that straight requires some preparation as I work off my memory. The other snag was that it had to be given twice on the afternoon to two different groups. So that already was a tall order, when you add that it was the day the snow settled in, and although about 12:30 pm the roads were clearing by 13:30 it was coming down harder than ever. Then the students were protesting over cuts to Higher Education and staging a sit in. I’d never been to the room which was in the bowels of Bartolome House. It seemed to go okay. There were only eight I think to the first time but upwards of twenty to the second and therefore I finished after 18:00 p.m.. Unfortunately despite my best efforts to gather all my cold weather gear stuff when I left, a glove remainded in the room and when I noticed I did not have the energy to go back and look. In the midst of me doing this my university email account was switched to Gmail.

It was still snowing on Wednesday. I went in late due to the previous days length and the place was like a ghost town. What is more remarkable is for the first time I was sent home by University due to poor weather. That is not to say it was the first time I have gone home early due to poor weather but that has normally been my decision, this time the senior management in the University told everyone to leave before dark, so when the flood lighting started coming on in the building opposite I thought it was time to leave. I walked down to Waitrose and promptly saw another member of staff had also used the early leave to go shopping. Also met up with a former colleague who was doing a quick shop. Also bought myself a pair of gloves but these were women, and with my long fingers even large women’s are really too small, I can wear them for a while but the fingers always end about half way down the bottom segement of my fingers.

Friday I made it too the breakfast albeit late. On the way back I came across a mum, who I presume is the wife of one of the overseas students, pushing her daughter in a pushchair to playgroup. Daughter was squalling, Mum believed it was due to not wanting to go to playgroup but I suspect by that time it may have had more to do with absence of hat, mittens and blanket. I am not quite sure what to do, the quicker that child got to playgroup the better.

Yesterday I mainly did two things, I cooked a big pot of sweet potato, carrot, ginger and chilli soup. It was going to have coconut in it but I could not lay hands on the coconut milk I thought I had so it had to make do with Soya Dream instead. I think if I was making it for anyone else but myself I would cut back on the amount of Chilli I put in. I also went shopping. I went into Blacks as well as buying yet another thermal base layer (can one have too many) bought another pair of gloves. So will have a spare pair while up in Scotland however I suspect there will be no shortage of takers for them.

This week I have a trip to Birmingham planned provide the weather is such that the trains are running. If the current forecast is right, this should be the case. After that I can start Advent properly and just to make sure I am due to go out three times over the weekend socialising. I also will be collecting greenery for the Advent Wreath at the chaplaincy, the carol service being the following Tuesday. I will cut back on greenery and paint (only four cans this year I think not six)