On the day after Christmas

The end of term year ended up as busy as the last six months. I did not manage the University Carol Service as I was teaching on that day, and I also missed the Sunday before Christmas at St Andrews as a cold was coming on and I decided that curling up in bed and trying to get rid of it pdq was a good idea. If I can catch a cold on first indication treat it pretty fiercely (stay indoors, bed rest, vitamin C, eucalyptus and tea tree oil etc etc) then sometimes I give my body enough of a boost that it manages to fight off the cold before it gets a hold. If I don’t then I am in for the full blown thing.

The Monday and Tuesday of the week before Christmas I was in work and busy, but the Wednesday which was my last day in work was works party and therefore even though I was not going I felt justified in not making any appointments for anyone to see me. This gave me a lovely day, when I just pottered around doing all the sorty out things that needed doing but had been sidelined in the general melee of business. So my desk is slightly tidier than it was, I think I have sorted the emails for next year and so on.

On the evening I had an invite around to a friends open house. It was one of those occasions when I went knowing I would know almost no-one. It turned out to be a great event. The date is set because it is her son’s birthday but the children have the “party” before and the adults start turning up about 7:00 p.m. for chilli including vegetarian and wine. You have people from all ages spread through the house talking to each others from a vast variety of ways of life although University employees y managed to buy a good selection. Sam my nephew has unusual tastes for a thirteen year old lad (and always has had), they therefore ordered one dish with very hot peppers in it (Sam loves these). We managed to warn my father not to have that dish but mum did not pick up on this and got one of those peppers in her mouth and it spoilt the other wise superb meal for her.

Friday I took easily, walked into Stockport on the day basically to buy things I had forgotten a timer and a carton of Christmas compote. The whole place was busy but not excessively, think a normal Saturday afternoon rather than the last before Christmas.  I did a similar trip on Saturday to Heaton Moor for cough medicine for my Mum who had caught a cold off my father but while his inhabited his nose, hers went directly to her chest. Unfortunately the closest one was shut. I suspect for holiday season at least as the roller shutters were full down. On the evening I decided that rather than go with my parents to their church I would see what the local Anglican was offering at 7:30pm on Christmas eveniannah buying a chinese for evening meal. They had come down so Mum and Dad could be involved in preparing the veg for Christmas dinner. They had some difficulty finding the local chinese as the onilm.  By the way has anyone seen a non-corny portrayal of an angel on film. My tendency is to think that you are better off not portraying those pieces as they always fail. This one was very average for films.

Christmas day was as normal. Mum and Dad made it to church in the morning as there was no snow this year. Dad said it was as well as could be expected, it being Christmas day and all age worship. Then they had a sandwich before we went up to Cathy’s for the main meal at around 3pm.  The  table needed setting as I was bringing the table cloth and therefore they had not managed to set it. Meanwhile Hannah and Sam managed to open their presents. In fact as there was a twenty minute wait we all did, but Sam and Hannah’s were acting as Santa’s elves and handing them out. Sam dutifully hid his Birthday presents behind the sofa so as not to open them until his Birthday (tomorrow).

The meal was delicious as per usual, but what should I expect from my sister. Unfortunately the  TV had removed the Gruffalo from our after lunch slot and replace it with Ratatouille, which is fine but not the same.  Admittedly this was ng. I am cautious to call it a service, it consisted of a film of the nativity interspersed with Christmas Carols. I don’t even think the carols were chosen with how they would relate to the film.  By the way has anyone seen a non-corny portrayal of an angel on film. My tendency is to think that you are better off not portraying those pieces as they always fail. This one was very average for films.

Christmas day was as normal. Mum and Dad made it to church in the morning as there was no snow this year. Dad said it was as well as could be expected, it being Christmas day and all age worship. Then they had a sandwich before we went up to Cathy’s for the main meal at around 3pm.  The  table needed setting as I was bringing the table cloth and therefore they had not managed to set it. Meanwhile Hannah and Sam managed to open their presents. In fact as there was a twenty minute wait we all did, but Sam and Hannah’s were acting as Santa’s elves and handing them out. Sam dutifully hid his Birthday presents behind the sofa so as not to open them until his Birthday (tomorrow).

The meal was delicious as per usual, but what should I expect from my sister. Unfortunately the  TV had removed the Gruffalo from our after lunch slot and replace it with Ratatouille, which is fine but not the same.  Admittedly this was because a Gruffalo’s Child was on later but still the Gruffalo was just about the right level for after Christmas dinner and Ratatouille was too sophisticated and complex. Yes I cope with complex every day of my life, but after Christmas lunch I want simplicity.

Anyway we came home about 7 O’Clock and Dad decided at 10 pm at night that we MUST eat up the rest of the smoked Salmon that evening. Needless to say we have not felt much like food today so much so that Dad has changed the evening meal from soup from scrambled eggs. I am not sure I am even up to soup.

Summary of the year or Round Robin

This is my attempt to give an impression of the past year, it therefore does not handle the news of the last week in particular, so apologies for those faithful followers of Chattering for whom much of this can be repetition. I am going to work this through on themes rather than give a month by month account.

Firstly therefore let me turn to my PhD. I am now in the final part of the process prior to submission and that is actually writing it up. This is not the same as being a student in “writing up” state, I need to get a pretty good first draft done by the end of June 2012 if I am to be allowed to be in that state from September 2012, the formal “writing up” state is for people close on submission, I am therefore still a fully enrolled student. However it does means I am no longer doing active field work and and am spending a lot of time either with pen and paper, computer or checking books. It also means I have stopped going over to Herringthorpe URC on a regular basis. It was quite a strange feeling to be leaving doing placements after four years. Herringthorpe was a good congregation, different from St Andrews Chesterfield. Some of the differences were just down to dynamics of size, Herringthorpe is almost twice the size of St Andrews Chesterfield and things that functioned at St Andrews failed at Herringthorpe. Not much with respect to the thesis, but there were times when I realised many people at Herringthorpe behaved as if it was the size of St Andrews, for instance you were expected to know who the treasurer was by just mentioning his name. Fine at St Andrews where you did not need even that often as the treasurer was the one with the cheque book, but at Herringthorpe more difficult particularly as they did not fill any sort of treasurer type roles during morning worship. Another thing which became clear is that the two strands “Presbyterian” and “Congregational” related differently to their traditions. Presbyterians were always conscious of being Presbyterian and doing things in that way. Congregationalists never named the tradition, it was always this is “how we do it”. They never felt any need to identify it as “Congregational” or “Independent” or “Reformed”. I suspect to many English Presbyterians this looked like a lack of tradition when in actual fact it is the mark of a dominant tradition. Anyway  with now writing up I have started a blog which keeps notes of my progress. If you want to know how I am doing please make a note of it. Finally as you will see there, the Society for the Study of Theology held a postgraduate meeting in Edinburgh a few weeks back and I presented a paper at that. I am not planning on writing up the paper for publication at present but might well do so once my thesis is done as it is practically publication ready.

Work wise, the year has been more of the same. That does not mean no change, it does mean that for the most part the style has not changed. Perhaps the biggest change is that I more and more being consulted and then cited as a resource during research bids. This means that I am in the process from the start. Some of this is actually down to the fact that I can talk a number of research dialects and therefore am a pretty good translator of ideas between different departments who are doing research. I think I am involved in two to three active bids. It will be interesting to see what comes out. I am also moving some of my teaching into videos just to cope with demand. I am not able (and never have been) to meet the demand for this particular course. My real reason for not trying this earlier is that I do not see it as a particularly good course, very old fashioned talking head. Anyway my hand has been forced and I now need to find the time to actually get it into a video form. I suppose equally remarkable is this year I have not moved offices but am still in the same one as last Christmas, according to estates we should be moving out of there about Easter time. This is a slight delay on the original date for leaving the offices which was sometime in mid 2000.

Health wise my energy levels are improving an enabling me to cope with both the thesis and the increased work load at work. Nothing major just the slow improvement that keeps happening, it is of course far too slow for my liking and I always have a tendency to over stretch myself. I still get migraines but these are less frequent so maybe I am getting better at pacing. Unfortunately the same could not be said for all around. The New Year started with the news on Ship-of-Fools that the person who was the brains behind the bulletin boards (Erin) died very suddenly from flu at the age of thirty-nine. Dad has also lost several  friends, this started with the death quite suddenly of Roger Tomes a long term colleague of his, then in the autumn Doug Thacker died, at a respectable age of 83, but they had known each other since University days and kept in touch and finally Fred Able died. To crown things for him his Aunt died in November. She was in her nineties and family relationships had been distant for a while but she was also the last of that generation to die.

Other family news seems to fairly mundane. Mum and Dad tick along, alternately wondering at how well they manage and at other times getting on each others nerves. Mum is doing particularly physically and Dad is doing very well mentally, but the reverse could not be said. However one compensates for the other, and they seem to keep going. They had a holiday at the Christian hotel in Grange over Sands which seemed to go well despite the weather. The advantage of doing it this was was the chance to have company in an evening. Cathy and family seem to doing fine. Adrian, Cathy’s husband, was made redundant just before Christmas and after three or four months of looking and not finding anything he particularly wanted he decided to go solo. He is picking up a decent amount of work, partly because his former firm is passing work in his direction, but he is also making contacts elsewhere. Sam is doing well at school, still very good on the violin and at swimming with an interest in astrophysics. Hannah seems to be doing well, is much better at settling to read than Sam ever was and is enjoying dancing as well as swimming although in that she will never make Sam’s class.

I spent New Year up with my God family and again went up for almost a fortnight at the end of September beginning of October. My God-daughters are doing well though both have changed schools. Jenny because she was going up to high school and therefore travels now to Stranraer everyday and Cait because she became quite unhappy at the local school. The timing of the autumn rather than spring one, was partly due to Morag’s study pattern and partly because the Wigtown Festival was on at that time. However it worked really well for me as it allowed me to have a break between placement and writing up. In some ways it was a quieter holiday than previous ones, despite there being a lot on at Wigtown, I was not in the mood for setting out at the start of day and coming in late to attend things I was only vaguely interested in. Two of the days I just spent looking after Dora their dog, combing her hair and taking her for long walks along the beach during which she chased any seagulls that decided to take off into the air. While they were sat on the shore she really was not that interested. I will hopefully be up with them again for New Year.

So now all that remains I think is to wish you all that your lives may be touched by the joy that comes at Christmas and that during the coming year you might have the energy to meet the challenges and enjoy your achievements.

On a winters evening

I got to Edinburgh on time and headed Northwards along the Dundass Road, towards the B&B. It is not far, it was cold and the lights in Central Edinburgh  were bright. These days like many city centres they have fairgrounds running in the centre of town. Princess Street was shut due to work on the trams but this just meant the fair had spilt out onto the road. The B&B was comfy, I had opted for a room without a bathroom but was slightly put out to discover that the bathroom was on another floor. The room however met my standards of comfortable. That is they had a table/desk in the room. So many rooms have nowhere you can really write a letter or read in comfort.


On the evening I met friends off Ship of Fools.We met up at Ma Bells, as I was walking up there I noticed that there seemed to be snow on the ground. This was confirmed by ship of fools friends I met at The Bow Bar  which was a small bar serving a huge range of whisky, although most of the time we drank ginger beer. We then went on to look for food, unfortunately at this point we got fooled by a restaurant that still had out its early evening menu and when we got in the price were about double what we were expecting. So we ordered starters and sides and I really don’t know how I could have eaten more than what I got.Talk was varied, including one or two St Andrews University acquaintances and how they were doing, talk of J.K Rowlings prior to Harry Potter, that Anglican hegemony on Ship of Fools and so on. One of the people there was something like a Doctor of Epidemiology only because she could not be a Doctor of what she wanted to be, Doctor of Pain, her speciality is pain management. Of the five of us three were involved in the conference the next day. Another was a househusband waiting to be a full time carer, his wife’s career in Mechanical Engineering had took off in a way that his in English literature/philosophy hadn’t.


My father was right in part about New College being cold. That was the heat was very unevenly spread. On the Tuesday I thought the whole college was cold but from Wednesday lunch time on I ended up in too warm rooms. The previous evening it had been mentioned that it was part of J.K Rowlings inspiration for Hogwarts. Having been inside it I could say that it was not just the impressive front. It does have a splendid dining area and ancient halls as well, but the big thing was just how complex the internal layout was. It was clearly a building that had been built and rebuilt over the years. Some of the seminar rooms had windows for the lower half of the room! Flights of stairs seemed to go off at random and I am not at all sure how New College would have got on with standard University room numbering. For those unused to it the numbering usually consists of two numbers, the first being the floor and the second the room with either 0 or G being used for ground. So my office at work is something like 2.17 (second floor, room 17) and my supervisors at Birmingham is something like 8.21, eighth floor, room 21.

Well there were enough URCs to have URC seminar as that is what seemed to be where I did my paper. I suspect that ironically, my cafe paper, which is on ethnography of worship would have had a higher attendance. I also suspect that being put in a seminar labelled Reformed theology put people off. I later sat through a paper of Schleiermacher and his eucharistic theology. The thing is that I was reminded just how easy it is for me to inhabit his thinking without having done major reading, I know the corrolaries and the ramification before the speaker stated them. It is something I nearly always can do when dealing with Reformed thinkers but not when dealing with theologians in other traditions. That does not mean I have to agree with the Reformed thinkers, it just means I know where they are coming from. I have written a more indepth blog about my assessment of the conference on my thesis blog


Travelling back was interesting. I got down to pick up my case from left luggage (the choice of hiking it up the hill to New College and then through the stair filled corridors, or paying £7 for left luggage at Waverley, meant leaving it at Waverley won) just in time to get the last direct train to Sheffield (it leaves just after 6pm). Unfortunately the weather had caused a train ahead of it from Glasgow to fail and it was running about an hour late. The thing is when a train is that late it tends to get later and later, so instead of getting in around 9 p.m., it was after 11 p.m. Fortunately I had booked the next day off work as recovery time. However I did get a really good taxi driver who not only knew where my flat was (a rarity) but got my bag out of the cab.


Thursday and I was back into work, actually not much happening but I managed to get up a short video on how to produce evidence for working, but by the evening my head was aching and I decided that there was possibly a migraine on the way and I better go home and see if an early night would fix it. Unfortunately the next day the dregs stayed with me.  The only thing I actually did was to put a plastic layer over a window that does not shut properly, as this is right by my thesis computer I wanted to stop the draft that came in through the crack and made that place uncomfortable. 

However I managed to go to the Dicksons for evening meal. It was a good time although I was not really hungry. The previous weekend they had been celebrating their golden wedding. This included a couple of meals out and cake and champagne at the church. Unfortunately I then went and forgot to take my medicine so yesterday although I managed to write and get to the station to try and sort tickets I was sort of off colour, and today I have felt fragile but made it to church. The congregation is interesting, there is probably a better spread of ages than when I joined almost twenty years ago, but that is largely due to the loss of people at the older end. The recruitment at the younger end remains much the same. The problem is that it is not high enough to sustain the congregation. However the way I was feeling I just drank coffee and then came home to sleep for a couple of hours and am now feeling much better.

Chattering on a train ot Edinburgh

It is about a fortnight since I last wrote. I will try a thematic rather than a day by day diary. Work has been busy, too busy at times as I can see items slipping off my to-do list by me not getting time to do them. I am at one trying to get a course I give onto video, don’t worry I won’t be appearing, only my voice and what is on the computer screen! The problem was when I agreed to it I thought it would simply be recording the course I had giving, nice easy and simple. However the software is on my computer in my office. That means I need to record it separately. If I am doing that it makes sense to record it in five minute to ten minute segments and not as the whole hour. If I am doing that it also makes sense to upgrade it to the most recent form of the software. In other work what would have been a three hours of work is not going to take more like thirty hours and I need to find the time. This is not helped by the fact that I am very busy with lots of things going on that are taking me out of the office.

The first of these was I had a trip down to Birmingham for a supervision session. It was one of those rare occasions where there really was nothing to talk about, the stuff I was writing for my thesis was long winded but otherwise largely fine. One section of about a thousand words was really in the wrong section and another bit needed cutting but otherwise not much. I have it down in too much detail at present and will need to shorten it at some stage. This is not surprising, I am aware of writing in detail in order to delay when I have to write something more difficult. Nor had Google scholar been finding anything particularly interesting to read. Sometimes it turns up that is very useful; other times it turns up things with no connection at all. I like to do it at Birmingham as it saves me having to do complex log ins. However as I discovered yesterday my machine at homes seems to know when Birmingham has a registration and when Sheffield has and will ask me for the relevant login! I was impressed especially as I got hold of the original of a paper I have quite a tendency to quote.

Writing is going smoothly with still around two thousand words a week. I have written about using writing as an analytic technique, more accurately creative writing. The whole process of re-creating a person or an event forces you to think of details that you just pass over when experiencing. For instance at St Andrews the kitchen was down the hall, therefore if they have coffee after church they had to somehow get hot water into the church. When I had coffee after church it just happened, but when I sit down to describe it I am faced with “how did they do that?” question. Now that fact has no real relevance to my thesis, but when I a person acts in a certain way perhaps makes a speech I need to work out why, not just accept it as happened and that is often very theoretically insightful. For instance why was it Bill who found the way through and not Ethel, why does the Pentecostalism of A grate at Herringthorpe but that of his close friend B just sits happily and so on. These are questions novelists are used to asking themselves, what seems odd is the no ethnographer has spotted this connection between portrayal and analysis. As an ethnographer my first resource is my notes and interviews and not my imagination but I am still faced with the conumdrum. I also have started the first serious theoretical piece in that I have started writing where my research is with respect to the methodological research tradition. It is pretty much mainstream ethnography but at the more postmodern/playful end. That means a variety of things, firstly I can and do write in the first person when it is me who does something, I also need to give an account of my research position and to reflect on the way characteristics of my identity have interplayed with my research. Perhaps more controversial is my use of auto-ethnography to try and establish a space other than the congregations themselves from which I can talk of the Reformed tradition or more accurately what it means to be a Reformed Christian within the URC at the start of the twenty first century. The account because it is me, this is a piece of academic research and because what I am is partly because of what others have been, will involve interacting with the literature of the tradition but it is not simply another formulation it is an attempt to try and tease out how I personally experience the tradition.

Yes I was on strike on Wednesday 30th November, the UCU was out and as I belong to the UCU I was out. This had an interesting effect of my work and I suspect of many academic staff, in that what actually happened was the work got scrunched up into the remaining working days in the week. This actually meant very little time to do the background work. This was not helped at all by the fact that I discovered that I had manage to do an analysis on a partial data set on Friday rather than the full one and that when I did the full one something I thought did not happen appeared to happen. I need to find what is wrong with the graph, I suspect it is the form it is in, in which case it is easy to rectify, but it won’t be rectified until Thursday as I am at a conference at the start of this week. I am also acting as a “translator” between computer science and human nutrition on quite a big research proposal. It was interesting, at times the computer scientists were assuming I was a nutritionist, when in actual fact I had just been working on with the nutrition researcher for nineteen years. I probably if pushed could also do a good impression of a researcher into kidney disease.

Last weekend and the reason I did not post was that I was at my parents. They had been down to my great aunts funeral and my Mum was quite taken with this part of my father’s family who she really does not know. To be fair Dad only knows those of his generation, the paths divided I suspect about the time he went out to South Africa and they did not reconnect when he returned. This Great Aunt who died was in her nineties but was also an aunt by marriage and I think married to a brother who was younger than my Gran. There is not much prospect of us connecting as they seem to be spread throughout Southern England and we are solidly Northern in residence. There is now I think no known relatives of Dad’s in Birmingham. Other than this they seem to be getting on. We had a massive hunt for a pattern for the jumper Mum is knitting for Dad, only for Dad to eventually find it in his study. So I have now tied the pattern to my Mum’s knitting bag. The only difficulty was that the trains there and back were standing room only! I was shattered by the time I got in despite the fact that I got a fairly good standing space.

Today has been a bit of a learning experience. I picked up my purse when I went to the station but forgot to check my debit card was in it. It normally is but yesterday I ordered a book for my thesis and forgot to put it back! So I ended up at the station with plenty of time but unable to get my ticket. Only option really was to buy another and I went to the desk in trepidation expecting it to be very expensive. It cost only about twenty pounds more than my original (I just hope I can cancel the tickets and get some sort of refund as it is still not the sort of money I like to toss about. I fortunately (due to previous experience) was carrying an alternative credit card. I really must see if I can find a solution to this. I really am not sure that apart from going to London there is much point in getting saver tickets. London prices are just ridiculous if you do not buy in advance, but when not doing so, the difference is much smaller.

Chattering on a foggy November day

Thought I’d start with a bit of poetry well not mine and I did not have a camera at the ready to capture the texture of this morning so from John Clare:

"So dull and dark are the November days.

The lazy mist high up the evening curled,

And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;

The place we occupy seems all the world."

-   John Clare, November

It gives a feel for what the feel and texture of the weather is like here at present.

Well Monday was the sort of work day where I could do with a bit better pacing. I had two heavy (i.e. energy consuming) meetings on the morning. The second of which was a meeting with the Doctoral Training Centre which delivers research training for Social Science doctoral students and early researchers about creating a core of material that people can use to become more proficient at using NVivo. The result is that I am going to try and record my course onto Echo 360 and try putting it up on the web so people can use it when they want. I don’t think this is particular special as NVivo already has a lot of tutorials up on line and that will be part of going further. In the evening went to writers group and took a poem about the safe from Hanover which was left discarded in the builders rubble. Don’t think it worked as well as last weeks but I am glad to have written it.

Actually Tuesday and Wednesday were relatively quiet days in work, time to catch up, review some of the training I have been too and sort out where to head next. I am hopefully going to get to look after a group of webpages, I just suspect I need to find out who is the departmental webmaster. Also spent some time on a project on nutritional information in Men’s Health Magazines. It is certainly shall we say interesting, although the last few weeks have been spent trying to weed out the useless categories (e.g. anyone know what cabbaggin is? No nor do we but we guess it comes from cabbage).

Thursday was busier, editing a paper in the morning and also spending the afternoon reviewing work. My boss is going to have to learn that it is no longer possible for her to assume that when she has a spare hour she can just book it with me. I have significant amount of time booked every week up to Christmas. Partly that is with teaching which starts the week after next .
Friday I managed Broomhall Breakfast, and stayed on after to help put away as Sarah had gone early and there weren’t many of the men hanging around. then went into town to do a weekends shop and finally sat down to write. I got a fair bit written but am conscious that I need to go back over part of what I have written to finesse it. It is writing about writing always somewhat tricky. Anyway I have just done a final go over it and sent it to my proof readers (thanks Ruth and James) . I was using pomodoro technique  it does seem to work quite well for these writings up. I ended up with over 3,000 words this week, hmm. I think word count wise I will be able to take Christmas and New Year off, well maybe writing after New Year.

Yesterday I sat down and finally got all the interviews I had done at Herringthorpe and not sent copies out of, ready to send out. That was twelve different envelopes with CDs, forms and a covering letter plus a reply envelope. I had the bad habit of interviewing people for an hour and twenty five minutes and CDs only took an hour and twenty minutes so I was often having to split the interviews. I thought I was going to run out of CDs so ended up with a quick journey down town to buy CDs and labels for the envelopes. However the envelopes are filled and now just need posting (next Friday?)

I should have been at the study day for the Society for Liturgical studies but they were so badly organised that by the time I knew I was going other things had cropped up. The big problem with a study dayl in London is you have to book early to find reasonable priced accommodation nearby and I did not fancy an early train in and a late train out, especially as I had given my word to be a church meeting today (to deal with the technical equipment). However one of the organisers wanted to ask me about a paper I had written. Well one of his questions was fine, had I selected the church I wrote it about (yes and no) but the second was about my analysis method and that is part of the creativity in my thesis I had to give quite a thought out reply and also felt I needed to copy my supervisor in on it.

Today I went to St Andrews for worship this morning. It was Music Sunday and included one of the Middleton boys playing a piece called siesta on his guitar as well as the choir performing a couple of pieces. Stuart was reading a passage so I knew he was not working today. Church meeting was discussing Zero Intolerance/Radical Welcome . I am aware of many misgivings about the campaign, I also happen to think it is a good thing, not because of the stuff it does but because it says “We do evangelism”. I have a theory that as evangelism has had low profile on many of the denominational central bodies (it was seen as the duty of the local church and therefore not their business) it has been seen as not important by the local church, now with the centre clearly putting effort into it, local churches are perhaps going to raise it on their own agenda whether or not they participate in the actual campaign. Almost certainly I suspect in twenty years time we will look back at it as a crass first attempt, but hopefully we will have developed skills to actually make this sort of evangelism work for us. However I suspect most people are for it, in the same way most people are for motherhood and apple pie. However the “welcome” here intended is far more than a friendly handshake at the church door. It is in the end a commitment by the congregation to be open to change that is required if new people want to join. I am not saying new people should not change, but I am saying the change is not just one way. We, those already there, have to be prepared to change as well. That is deeper, much more difficult and I am afraid I suspect many in the church aren’t ready for it.

Lets be clear it is easy to tackle the headline issues that are open to discrimination, such as race or sexuality; you can talk about those and get an understanding by the congregation but difficulties such as coping with boisterous children in worship amongst a group of senior citizens, honouring different peoples cultural norms and creating an environment that supports those with chaotic life style whether due to working patterns, drug abuse or poverty is often more difficult and more challenging. The big problem for being welcoming may not be the settled gay couple with two jobs who enjoy classical music, but the young married couple with four kids who have a can of beer in the pushchair, go out for a quick fag during the sermon and use expletives in conversation or the older man with a drink problem who wets himself during a service (neither of these are not hypothetical, I have seen them in church and I have seen congregations struggle). The prejudices do not necessarily fall where we think they do.

Anyway during setting up the audio visual Sarah brought a long extension cable on a wind up reel but it was not winding. Fortunately I realised this before it was put in use. Mum and Dad’s church had a heater fuse because they used a cable while still wound. So we used others and I brought it home and unwound it and rewound it. As it now easily unwinds and winds again I think I will take it back to the church. Stuart came around later on, mainly I suspect because he rang the Dicksons and they were slightly abrupt with him and he wondered why. The answer was simply because he rang them immediately on them getting in from church meeting and it really was an inconvenient time. He really must learn not to take things so personally.

Chattering of the first week of winter

Well by Monday evening there was a definite change in the weather, so much so that the heating was not warming the committee room through until the second half of writers group. I checked the temperature in the room and it was set fine and the heating was clearly on so I just presume it was time to warm up. There were more there this week than last although not a full house yet. We will be very squashed in that room if we ever do get a full house as we are carrying a member over our quota, she is unlikely to actually come again this term as she has had major brain surgery.

Work wise a lot of what I have been dealing with has been at the design stage, although I must admit that some of it is due to argument about an analysis and wanted to claim I had done the wrong power calculation so I went back and did it for the way the person wanted to analyse it and got the same result. I suspected that it would, I wish some statisticians knew better how data behaves and understood that if an approximation gave one result it was quite likely that a more formal analysis would concur. I also heard this week that one of the outline research bids that I am involved in has had the go ahead to submit a detailed proposal.

Tuesday I went home for lunch realised I had a headache so took a pain killer and then went quickly to shop at Tescos for essentials before going back in. Hoping that it was just a headache. Needless to say the person I saw that afternoon had to put up with me in the throws of a migraine. It was not the pain that annoyed me, the painkiller took care of that, it was that my brain would slam on the emergency breaks half way through going down a particular line of enquiry. Anyway I did the meeting then headed home. I also sent apologies for the next day, knowing me I could possible have made the meeting in Preston but I would have been functioning as if I had a semi-migraine and then would have had to have had a proper one the next day when I had a training and another meeting.

The training was actually pretty useful and it was not the style of training I tend to prefer. What I like to have is a training which gives me something to think over and apply, while this one was very much a how to sort of training. It was called Networking for Women and the trainer was prepared to do the basics, such as give you ways to open conversations, telling you how to rephrase what you do and reminding us that networking is about finding out information, not really about giving it and certainly not about doing deals. Deals are done later on follow up of over coffee. It was good because it was so practical.

On the evening I went down to Waitrose to do a small shop although most of the shop for the weeken was being delivered by Tescos the next day. On going through the subway Neil  the guy who is often there begging was there again. For those who are not familiar with Neil’s story he is ex-army and homeless, he mainly begs for the money to pay for his accommodation for the night as far as I can tell. He has been in hospital twice this year and I suspect with illnesses related to being homeless. He smokes but he is not a drinker (I am pretty sure of this now) and has taken ownership of an abused dog. This time he had a friend with him called Chris. Chris is fairly new to being on the streets of Sheffield, he is probably an alcoholic and certainly has mental health problems. According to Neil (Chris was that scared of me he could not talk to me) Chris was staying with the Occupy Sheffield Protest and sleeping in some of their accommodation. Neil was basically directing him towards Archer project and someone from the protest was trying to organise him into seeing a doctor.  The fact was Neil who has next to nothing was helping someone who had even less. The good news was that Neil looked as if he might have an offer accepted on a council flat.

This weekend has been spent mainly on thesis. I have proof read my paper, it still needs some smoothing but I think it is in a state to send to my supervisor. I heard during the week that it had been accepted. I know I was expecting that as it was in line with the conference theme, a lot of PhD students in my opinion have a single talk which is basically “this is my thesis” which they wheel out on numerous occasions. That is not my approach and never has been. That meant that the paper I submitted was likely to be more on topic than quite a few papers. It also meant that I find it easier to stay to the time limit. My thesis is too big and unwieldy to be presented in twenty minutes. I also have decided not to do a Powerpoint and concentrate on familarising myself with the text. I can do this there are enough changes in tone and pace in the twenty minutes for it not to be difficult to keep interest. A review of how the writing up process is going is on this post in my thesis blog

Last night there when I went to bed there was lots of flashing lights from Ambulances and police cars on Hanover Way with the whole of anti-clockwise lane of traffic sealed off. The news this morning said that there had been a person killed on the pedestrian crossing. It is not the first time this has happened, I can recall at least two other occasions of people being hit by vehicles there, and one of the times was a youth worker at Hanover Methodist. I am not sure how it is going to play locally.


Today i may have made a bit of breakthrough with the editing and going from initial writing to first draft (I know normally first draft is normally the initial but for me the initial writing is done using a series of short periods (half hours) where I just try and write as much as possible. It is a good way to get ideas out of my head and onto the page. First draft is what I do at the weekend with those pages, where I read, type in and do a lot of the pulling in of references and rephrasing.  This is an adaptation of the method proposed by Robert Boice in his book “Professors as Writers” he calls the intense fast getting ideas down generative writing. However I was finding then that the getting from that to a basic text was taking forever as I would keep getting distracted. So I decided to take a look at Pomodoro Technique as suggested by the Thesis Whisperer . It got me through the last half of editing a second draft of part of my thesis quickly. I really must try and see if it will mean I spend less time getting a second draft next weekend and therefore more time with the books that feed the writing process. or doing the administrative side such as sending out recordings of interviews.

Now the cherry tree has lost its final leaves

I noticed this week that the last leaves have fallen from the cherry tree and today even the sun had a chill to it.

This week has been slightly less hectic although I was writing the paper. Monday I spent some time being interviewed by a colleague at work because he discovered that he did not quite know what I did. I decided to describe myself as a research whisperer. That is not that I am the researcher, but often when a researcher gets into difficulties, particularly with the analysis stage, I am able to provide them with the know-how to get them over them. Actually I do everything from help prepare research bids to reviewing comments by reviewers and deciding on best method of approach. However the skills I am employed for is the ones that involve using analysis software.

Meanwhile Dad was over in Sheffield with Mum for Doug Thackers funeral. I describe Doug as Dad’s best friend, he was one of the few people Dad made the effort to keep in contact with over the years. This is not me being rude about Uncle Jack, Dad’s relationship to Uncle Jack is far closer to that of brothers than best buddies including the ability to wind each other up totally!  Nor is this a reflection on how Doug held Dad, although I  know Doug appreciated the fact that Dad when he was there listened as Doug could talk. The funeral was very clearly designed by Doug and Leslie Green (another old friend of Doug’s). Though Doug’s Christian life was mentioned there was no mention of either family or of Doug’s achievements and I think Dad felt that it was a good funeral.

On the evening was writers group, it was good to be meeting again and to be concentrating on writing. Unfortunately there were only six of us there and I had brought the shortest poem I had. This meant they had fifteen per word to analyse it! I think I will take a longer piece this week.They keep teasing me about putting together a collection, I think largely because my poems are often on the short side. The big problem with this is I don’t know how to select those which are good and those that aren’t.

Tuesday was fairly quiet, well I had a review of a bid to the Nuffield foundation prepared by one of the brightest students in last years human nutrition programme. The aim is to get enough money so she can be employed to do the work. She is bright, hard working and a very good researcher so I hope it comes off. The project is also interesting as she is looking  at choice in school dinners. After all there is no point in the world in providing kids with superb meals if they are going to choose pizza instead and in Secondary School they can often do just that.

Wednesday should have been busy, spent the morning editing and paper, then prayer meeting at St Andrews and then I was back to meet someone who is the most incompetent researcher I have ever come across. Well he had a cold so did not make it. I think I was grateful. So I spent the afternoon going through a paper looking for places where it related to policy, this was not difficult, it was all there and required minimal editing to bring out the nuances that were hidden in the text. Sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes to create new enthusiasm for a piece of research.

Thursday was training on the morning. I am afraid that I suspect the solution to my tendency to prefer to do things that seem safe in my office rather than go out and get things done with other people is to rather get out and do it. I am competent and able to do it, I know that because when I do, I tend to succeed at what I do, but for some reason that never builds into wanting to do it more. Actually it sounds as if I better get on with working through Ask for it. Their other book “Why Women don’t Ask” started a noticeable change in attitude and I suspect this will help further. The afternoon was spent devising coding schemes or at least helping somebody to. This is one of the few times I have been through the whole process.

Friday, I was woken by time of the month cramps so rather than go to Broomhall Breakfast I took pain killers and got a hot water bottle and went back to bed. Fortunately by 11:30 a.m. I was up and ready to type up the paper I had written in the morning slots. I was being very strict with myself over word limit and it is about 1850 words long, I now have to consider if I put in the bit I dropped from the beginning which is about the standing of theologians within the Reformed tradition (ambivalent at best). It strengthens the conclusion but is a bit tangential to the rest of the paper.

On the evening I went around to the Dickson’s for dinner. James is a bit the worst for wear having had another arm injury and has not been great the last few weeks. Jean says he has not been doing much but I know from her response he is still doing things she wishes he wouldn’t. They seem to be enjoying Rosie and the boys living in Sheffield and were pleased with the milk and gluten free biscuits because Alex had told Jean off for not having biscuits for him during the week!

Saturday saw a quick trip into town and then me trying to spend the rest of the day reading, unfortunately I was just out of sorts, I presume due to time of the month. Anyway I managed to settled down to read. Oh I spent more time on Belden C. Lane’s book “Ravished by Beauty” . It is a very useful book to think with. I am not sure that it informs me as much as other books on spirituality but it is very interesting what he does. Firstly he does not treat the Reformed tradition spirituality as above reproach, he takes seriously the times it has gone wrong and done harm (he is looking a ecological spirituality). He however is very good on the positives and is making an interesting case for the centrality of desire for God within the Reformed tradition and that without it or with it wrongly directed the Reformed tradition becomes a dead weight. He also highlights the tension between the immanence of God and the transcendence and that if we get them out of balance we get into trouble. In this bringing of the emotions into the central area of what has often been seen as an over intellectualised set of rules he is challenging.

Today I went to worship, it was Shirley Knibbs preaching and I am sure Dad would have approved, even might have been tempted to mutter a quiet amen under his breath in the hope that nobody heard him. However she caused consternation by choosing an Old Testament reading from the Wisdom of Solomon.  Ian Cooke spotted it first and came across to see David Hill about not being able to find the reading in the Bible. So they set about trying to find a Bible in the church with an apocrypha in it. They failed so I went home and got one, just in case Shirley did not decide to read it herself (she did). Eventually it turned out there was one in the Bible that is normally placed on the lecturn, which is a large print one I bought for evening service years ago but is the one large Bible that is in a modern translation in the church. She talked in the introduction about having oil for our lamps and brought an oil lamp to show us. She said if she had been organised she would have had the oil and would have lit it. I immediately thought “not in St Andrews, not unless you told the elders first, or you will have at least one elder leaving church to get a bucket of water”.

Chattering from a quiet weekend which was necessary after a busy week

Lets see about news at this end. Well last Monday was going to be one of those busy days that was not too hectic. I was helping someone from Linguistics about logistic regression and giving them general advice, in the end I suggested they gave a different statistic completely as that would make sense to the reader while the complex mathematical ones that used analogies from other statistical methodologies were most likely to confuse. Linguists are rather specialised in their approach to statistics, they tend to work with counts and the statistic they use are therefore specialised. This is not a problem for someone like me who has dealt with them on and off for over a decade, but it is a problem for those who are used to techniques that use other measurement techniques. There are not many subjects where it is more important to learn logistic regression and modelling of count data before you learn normal regression. On the afternoon I had Simon but only Simon so I could cope. I did not have writers group on the evening as it was half term but that was good as I had a supervision on the Tuesday.

However when I got home at lunch time and checked my personal email, there was an email from the Department of Theology and Religion at Birmingham telling of the postgraduate conference held by Society for the Study of Theology(SST). Now to get this in context, my doctorate is officially a in Theology (the Department of Theology and Religion, which is where my supervisor is based, offers a variety of subjects to be studied at doctoral level but not Congregational Studies so I ended up with the generic one). However as my training and my supervisors predilections tend more towards sociology of Religion, I normally follow the organisations associated with this. However I glanced at it as I do all emails from the department and stopped short. STT was holding a postgraduate conference and the title was “THEOLOGIANS AND THE CHURCH “. Well that picks up a major strand of my thought, how do congregations interact with tradition and with being Reformed that has to include theology.  Then I look at the date (5th and 6th December) and the closing date for enrolment and submission of abstracts (31st October) gulp! Do I really have the energy to turn things around in that short time. Anyhow I fire the email off to my supervisor and by the end of lunch time I know that his reading of the situation is exactly the same as mine.

Tuesday dawns and it is supervision day. It is one of those days when I felt like I was running on caffeine. I got to the station and there was a broken down train on the East Coast main line so all the trains from up North to Birmingham were delayed. Indeed the train before mine left in my train’s slot. This makes it easier to get through to Birmingham than going between slots as they just take the signals for the next train but it means from then on they have the wrong trains coming into Birmingham as the Reading alternates with a Plymouth train. Anyway I hung on for my train expecting that the train beforehand would be crowded (late trains nearly always are) and I had a booked seat on my train. Indeed mine was running even later. The Edgebaston campus was positively thronging with students who had started to soak in, so the computers were all busy in the main student common room in the arts Tower. I know somewhere in there there are Postgrad and staff rooms but I have never found them and I normally manage to find a networked computer when I want it. I also know there are other rooms at the ERI building for me to use when I am on campus but it is quite a walk and I have never been there.

By the time I saw my supervisor on the afternoon my brain had got working and decided that I may as well give a go at getting a paper ready, there was the think piece on hymns and theology or I could do something on the congregation’s engagement with theology. In the end I think I managed to have together a rough outline in my head of a possible paper that draws on both to make the argument that actually a lot of the congregations theological experience is channelled through worship and therefore when theology comes up in a congregation within the URC it is often related to worship.  In doing this I think I am able from my placements that the congregations relative silence around theology does not include debate about worship and that the demotic code that is used as a method of negotiating theological ideas without entering into debate draws highly upon the congregations worshipping experience. The paper is more complicated than that but that does as a fair summary.

Then on Wednesday it was back to work and I saw Margo and Toni. Toni is working on a content analysis of men’s magazines and it is slowly, slowly coming together. It relies on me being half a step ahead of them. So far I have managed it. On the afternoon I spent some time looking at NVivo on the managed service. Unfortunately it failed at the first hurdle, being able to get a NVivo data set that had been created elsewhere into the database. Oops. Anyway as when I went to the help files they clearly thought you should be able to, I suspect it would be easy to fix although there may need to be some trickery done.

Thursday was another work day, tackling a couple of consultations and other queries as well. Bob the information officer for the department is wanting to write something about what I do so I got a phone call for him and I also needed to tidy up for the week as I was due to go to an ASSESS conference the next day. I am getting more and more ambivalent about ASSESS, it is fairly useful as it gives me some insight into what IBM SPSS are planning but that information has got less and less over the years. When it was at St Williams college in York it was quite an event to go to despite the cold, but the Alcuin Centre in my experience is as cold and not as atmospheric. On the evening I sent off an email booking on the SST conference and packed my bag for the next day.

However middle of Thursday I night I woke and realised I am shivering although I am not cold. I mean shivering as well not shaking, I actually have a mild shake most of the time and when stressed it can become clearly visible, however I have never known my teeth chatter during it.. This was teeth chattering shivering. From past experience this normally means I have been running on slightly raised stress level for too long. The only thing I really know that helps it is slowing down and taking things easy. Ok so the logical thing was not to go to ASSESS. Not really a great loss from my perspective but still not something I liked doing. I needed to spend the day quietly. Well maybe it was fortuitous as there was a crisis over heating at the Breakfast and I got a phone call at 7:30 a.m. from Sarah saying could I come and look. So I did and then came back home, ate something and contacted work to say I would not be in before going back to bed and sleeping to around 1:30 p.m. by which time the shivers had finally departed. So I got up and eventually persuaded myself to do some reading. Oh I also managed to fill in the form for SST and find a B&B in central Edinburgh that had decent reports and was not too expensive.

Saturday I decided also should be a largely in day, I had a Tescos order coming and I needed it for writing up the words I had written in the week; it is on my blog  if you want to know how that went. Anyway the actual difficult task is the entry into the computer. I am often reading ahead rephrasing, checking references and so on while I type it in. It may have taken me only 2.5 hours to write initially but the putting it into the computer can well take over eight and I type faster than I write. Anyway I am 10% of the way through now and also about a week ahead of where I want to be word wise, so I am using next weeks writing time to draft the paper for the conference.

Today I spent most of the time writing an abstract for the conference paper. It is only 250 words long but it took me several hours to write. The problem is that normally I have had more time to think myself clear. There are a couple of things I would like to sort out and I was having to decide which to include in the paper and which to leave to later. I was worried that I would write seriously over the limit but as it was I was so cautious I had difficulty in writing 200 words (the limit was 250). It will be interesting to see if I can produce a 20 minute paper. I am still trying to think of which technology to actually type it in (Word or Powerpoint). I suspect I will go with Word but start thinking of doing the slides right from the start.

Chatter after an autumnal week

Its funny how having a single item on some-days can make the day seem overloaded, this is the way I felt around having an appointment for S. S is an overseas student who is researching the economic effects of AIDS in I thin Sub-Saharan Africa. A good enough research topic and one which would be interesting to here the results from. The problem is that I don’t believe a single one of his results due to the input of data being so poor. I have not seen him for a couple of years and I learnt he was relying on my keeping a good copy of the data (I had done so but more because I am pretty methodical over keeping data) rather than because I felt I ought). Anyway it was writers group on the evening and I was just hoping my selection would work for the reading. I got there and realised my either/or option had been interpreted as two separate poems so had to do a quick shuffle of papers. Secondly one of the poems I was reading for the first time (although I had sent it around the group the previous week) and I really wanted the groups feedback on that. They liked the selection so I decided to stick with it. Anyone got any idea how you select work for a reading because after five attempts I still don’t know.

I have it agreed that before a supervision I can have one work at home day to spend on my thesis (I think it might technically once a month but as I don’t always take one supervision I am not too fussed on that. This time I found that the only date I could take it was Tuesday, so I did and because my piece was already written for the supervision and with the proof readers and I was feeling the need for reading, I sat down and spent most of the day reading. I finished one book on the theory of what Religion is called Crossings and Dwellings by Thomas A Tweed. This is not because I need to define religion but because his understanding of religion picks up very much the ways I want to talk about congregational life. The theorists who share your metaphors are often worth reading to see what others have done with them. Then got onto Ravished by Beauty by Belden C. Lane  which is an attempt to try and iterate a Reformed ecological spirituality. No my thesis is not interested in ecology but I am interested in the way he has built a spirituality as I have to do that.The reason Jonathon Edwards was not picked up is the book has gone into hiding and I hope it surfaces soon. Actually reading days are also good mental health days and I have felt a lot livelier in work since.

Wednesday I had a course on teaching statistics. Not that I am planning on teaching statistics but I do need to keep contact with the statistics teachers in the university to do my job and this course which was part course, part social was a time to do that. One of the problems with my job is that the department has some measure of responsibility towards providing the statistical software that is widely taught, but nobody tells me what they are teaching so I normally find that we have a package on site only when people want it on the network and there is some difficulty so the people call me in to liase. I was at that from about 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. or later. Partly because there is a definite need to tackle a masters course that is causing problems and there were at least three different perspectives all agreeing that this needed tackling.

Thursday I went on another training course, this time actually for personal development as it was about influencing people. Useful if only because I am beginning to understand what I might need to do to be more effective in that side of my job that requires me to develop things. I am really good at one to one support on research issues but I also need to find ways to create cooperation so that more effective ways of providing support are forth coming. On the afternoon I spent dealing with a number of queries from Human Nutrition. One member of staff is failing to communicate with me there so I am finding she expects things and I have not done them because she has not asked. I therefore have a bit of a panic on this coming Monday, suvivable but I am sure I will find the time to do it.

Friday was my day off, first priority was to get the words written up for thesis, another 2226 words typed and you can hear more about how it is going on my thesis blog . Actually I find it interesting the way blogs attract interest. The blog this goes on is open and generally chatty with a lot of posts on it. However I have a third blog where I post occasional musings. This has a far lower postage rate, but has a much higher hit rate, and has been very high the last week or so with over 300 hits and I can’t find the link to it. I must admit the post linked to I linked to on Ship of Fools actually both the highest hitters have been posts I posted to say something at more length than I felt comfortable doing on a Bulletin Board so linked to from the ship.On the evening my writers group held its annual reading. This was held at Bank Street Arts Centre which is a bit out of the way behind the Cathedral.  It is a strange mix of buildings and feels a bit like a set of houses around an enclosed courtyard but none of the buildings that would have been the houses feel particularly substantial. The floors are on all sorts of levels and on an evening to get to the room where we hold the reading you need to go in one entrance, down a flight of steps to the courtyard and up another flight of step to the second entrance. All the steps are in the courtyard. They also have a cafe/bar which serves alcohol, coffee, cake and such on am most odd basis. The room we were using at the time had an exhibition of entry to Sheffield International Arts book Prize. These were actually quite intriguing and if people go during the day you can just walk in off the street and see it and other exhibitions.

Saturday my parents came over, I decided that I needed to know what they wanted to do and they said that was to buy wool for mum to knit a jumper for dad and would therefore like to go to John Lewis’. So I thought fine a single leisurely trip down town, especially once they decided they would like to eat out. Getting to John Lewis’ was easy, and fortunately there were only a limited number of patterns for men’s jumpers. So it only took half an hour to find a pattern. Then we had to find a wool, it had to be double knitting and dad wanted green and brown fleck. The only problem was that the only such wool was over £5.00 for 50g, yes it was very nice but that meant the jumper would cost seventy pounds. Mum baulked at that and suggested that we bought a jumper instead. This I saw was a non-starter with Dad for whom Mum knitting the jumper was at least half the point of getting the wool (knitting helps keep Mum’s brain and hands busy). So we put the wool down then went downstairs to buy socks for Dad, he wanted longer than average socks, eventually we found some black ones that would do. Having done this we went to find some lunch, ended up in Yates Pub opposite, very high marks for having food Dad was happy to eat (salmon and salad), very low marks for the amount of noise but with the volume such that you could not keep going over and over the knitting problem. At the end of the meal I spelt out the problem to them and we agreed we would go back and get Dad a green flecked wool instead of green and brown (I had spotted one earlier).  The other options was to try another wool shop or to buy Dad a jumper. So then back and re-found the pattern, got a ball of wool and handed it to the assistant (I was a bit deliberate over who I took their purchases too as I knew one lady really did know what she was doing). However disaster struck there were only thirteen balls and the pattern called for fourteen. However this assistant is canny and she checked the length of the wool, the length on the recommended wool was 120m per 50g, the length on the wool we chose was 150m per 50 g so we only needed 12! Phew. After that my shopping took very little time at all.

Today I was at service at St Andrew’s. Kirsty Thorpe  was preaching. She was peaching on it being 400 years to the day of the publishing of KJV. This certainly pleased Elizabeth Draper who told me at least twice how much she had enjoyed it. There must have been around thirty in the congregation although I suspect that numbers were reduced somewhat as one of Margaret Falls holidays was going away that afternoon and not all members are as committed as Jean and James who were at worship in the morning althoughgoing away on the afternoon. There were about thirty in the congregation. I feel a bit as if I am being pulled in all directions, the sound desk would like me back on the rota, the choir would like me to join and I also am aware that I fulfil a valuable role just by being a member of the congregation and listening to one or two people. The mix in worship was less widely spread than at Harvest although there was still a couple of faces I did not recognise. I am still too recently back to know whether they are new faces or faces that have come in the last four years.

After lunch I went to a healing service at Endcliffe Methodist Church. This service had been prompted by the slow recovery of Matthew (Jo and Ted’s foster son) whose heart stopped suddenly at the end of August just after they had got back from holiday. Medics have no idea what caused it to stop and it took them a while to get it going again and so there is brain damage. Matthew has also had a number of chest infections that have impeded his recovery. The service while acknowledging the prompt was not solely for Matthew and there were around thirty to forty people there. I ended up talking afterwards with one of the members there I knew through work and learnt that they are now a small congregation so I suspect there were quite a few people like myself who had come to pray for Matthew, Ted and Jo.  The service was quietly organised with lots of time for personal quiet prayer although I still had capacity (hunger?) for more. Once I have actually got myself to stop and be still I often don’t want to leave it. Songs were modern charismatic, which is what I expected and I suspect that there are still issues over the expression of anger but there were no big promises and just lots of time to pray, there was not even a laying on of hands although you could come up for prayer at the end. I walked back with Jo and Ted as they live on one of the possible routes home. While still on Endcliffe church steps we were accosted by a very drunk young man who just wanted to tell us he was a Christian and did so repeatedly although he seemed to think it left him free to denigrate others who were rude about him. Later on we were accosted by one of Matthew’s former school mates (junior school) who wanted to know how he was and had been praying for him (Roman Catholic).