I am going to need a long memory to remember back to the Easter bank holiday, I expect because it was fairly quiet.. Work was quiet with a lot of people taking advantage of the two double bank holiday weekends but I still ended up with plenty of work to do.
So will you excuse me while I move quickly onto that Thursday which was a supervision date in Birmingham. The supervision was as early as I can really make in that it was at 12:30 and the first train I can travel on gets me in at 11:30. Yes it is only a fifteen minute walk from the University station but I don’t like to arrive anywhere with less than an hour before an appointment if I am travelling by train. The campus was being host to a large number of school students who were taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to eat their packed lunches outside. My supervisor had two more theses bound upon his desk. He is supposed to be rationalising the number of students he supervises as the central system noticed suddenly he had far more than they expected staff to. This might not totally be his fault, he had when I started inherited rather a lot of students from a former colleague who had left to work elsewhere. He also has a fair number of students who have been in the system for rather a long time. Then the two students graduating may well only reduce his numbers by one as one of them was seriously thinking of returning for a doctorate.Anyway the result of having a fairly early supervision meant that I spent a fair time checking papers and still managed to get the 4pm train from Birmingham New Street and therefore bought myself a meal from Marks and Spencer and walked home.
On the Friday my parents came over. We did not do anything spectacular. My hairdresser was open so I had my hair cut and there was a street party on the road outside the shop. Not really your traditional sort of neighbours all joining in, rather a group of market stall holders got together to put up some tables and people could buy food off the food stalls and eat it at the tables, I think there probably was a TV screen up somewhere and there were other stalls selling stuff. Maybe even a small stage. However the hairdresser informed me that there was a flower market on in town so when I had collected my parents from the coffee shop in West One and then wandered down. The market was a general one although there was a large area selling plants. Anyway Mum bought a decent macaroon and a not so good chocolate brownie.
Saturday was a quiet day. That is my decision was to basically havea normal Saturday and to try and start putting together the presentation for Herringthorpe. Now there was an alternative. I could have decided to go the Herringthorpe Royal Wedding party, but that just seemed like too much for me. I believe it was a really splendid affair and the photos which I saw on the following tuesday seemed to indicate many people enjoyed themselves.
Sunday last week was very hectic. There was church in the morning which had quietened down somewhat from the pre-Easter frantic activity, but still a good turn out. Then I nipped home to get lactase tablets as I had forgotten to bring them, what I did not realise was I also needed to change. Then it was off to have lunch with a family. This family has been missionaries in Pakistan and are still in contact with the Christian community out there.After talking with them it was clear that the problem is not so much the blasphemy law but a societal behaviour that makes people over zealous for the honour of Islam and where the slightest suggestion that you may have done something dishonouring will lead to mob violence. This plays into the hands of the unscruplous, who can make allegations without really having to face consequences if the are wrong. Afterwards dinner which was delicious, we went for a walk around Uley Reservoir which is pleasant place for a walk. There was a cott with chicks just by the nest. Some of the chicks were in the water and some were on the nest. The coot seemed to be adding extra material to the nest, I wonder if this was to accommodate her growing family. There was also thousand of tadpoles at the side. As we past the boating house the girls heard wind chimes. This reminded me that Stuart had told me the previous evening that he had been out to visit a friends grave there in a woodland cemetery.
After that I went home changed and then back out as evening service had been cancelled so one of the normal attenders was having a social at her house. The main topic of conversation when I arrived was the Royal wedding, both the actual event and the party the day before. The hosts son and a friend who is the son of head of the local Christian Homelessness Project were playing in the back garden. They had “put up” a tent intending to sleep in it and got bedding down from the sons bedroom. However I would not have put much money on the tent staying up and the father of the visiting lad had said he would not spend the night outside.
At this point I felt that was enough socialising for me plus presentation was calling but the next day a group was also going out to Rufford Country Park. So Monday was spent in largely being fairly quiet indeed I had over done it and as much of the presentation as I would have liked did not get done.
Tuesday I was in work and had a very bitty day. nothing major, meeting in the morning, a missed appointment in the afternoon and four papers fighting for attention including one on which I am sole author. My liturgy paper should be in Anaphora I am glad to have done it. Then there was house group on the eveing. One of the leaders defined being spiritual as being Christian, that is not how the word is used in wider society!
Wednesday brain through a wobbler and I had a migraine which was most uncomfortable. I am used to the sort that lands me in bed and asleep pretty quickly but this timeit just made everything uncomfortable.
Thursday I got through a major analysis but I still have to write it up so will have a go next week. Then I will have to see if the student can make any sense of it. Otherwise an uneventful day with nothing much to report.
Friday I think I broke the back of the handout for the presentation. That might sound odd, but I had to find something to put my thoughts in order. Too many ideas not enough narrative. I have lots of ideas of ways to put across themes, it is just putting them into a form where I can present. I actually am finding publisher more useful for doing that than anything else. Part of the problem with Powerpoint is some of the visuals are not computer based and are better presented by other means but powerpoint does work for things that are computer based.
Saturday was quiet and fairly productive. It almost fell into a routine with two hourly slots. Cooking 9-11, shop 11am-1pm sleep 1pm to 3pm PhD work 3pm -5pm and so on. It was quite funny how the pattern appeared out of nowhere.
Sunday is today and I spent this morning watching the Sheffield Half Marathon. I’d checked the route yesterday and it was situated in such a way that I had two choices, set out half an hour at least early and see if I could find a way around it through Sheffield back streets (it ran from Don Valley Stadium to at least Hunters Bar on the Ecclesall Road through the centre of Sheffield. It was like having a major line drawn between me and Rotherham. It also closed the route north to the M1. Well as Jon the youth and children’s worker at Herringthorpe was running I thought I would go and watch it instead. It really is quite impressive to watch with the hordes of runners taking over an hour to pass once they had got to Devonshire Green.
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