This week has been dominated by the fact that I was giving an initial report to church meeting at Herringthorpe today. In some senses even when I write now of other things that was still going on in the background.
Monday my writers group started again. This is good news as in some ways this has become one of my safety valves, a place where I go not to talk about thesis but to discuss other things and for which I have to be creative in a different way. Actually the big discipline that comes with this is that I have to actually stop and look at something rather than presume I know what I see. They also are a group with which it is pleasant to hang out with. It has become another non-negotiable of my life. In work I repeated an analysis I had done about three times already, finally sorting out what I wanted to do. The funny thing was that the results came out for what the original topic of interest was.
Tuesday was a fairly busy day in work. We had a team meeting with the head of department at ten O’clock where she talked about Lean process management. It is something that vaguely interests me. It Looks at redesigning processes so as to make them more efficient by removing stuff that does not provide value to the customer. What is important is to realise that backup/fallback procedures do provide value.
Wednesday I decided to work at home as I desperately needed to get the report into slides. I had actually finished preparing the handout first as I found working in Publisher easier for ordering ideas than working in Powerpoint. Actually the putting together of the slides was relatively easy. You just had to design the slide to portray the idea. I kept the slides visual and short.
Thursday in the morning I spent time dealing with a bright student who really needed to be told to do a qualitative approach at least to start with. Once they have the coding sorted then hopefully we can export to SPSS. Then on the afternoon did a run through of my presentation with my boss in work so I know that I had made it understandable to people with no background in the social sciences. I deliberately tried not to do anything that evening
Friday was my day off. In the morning I had coffee with Sarah, I had a strange feeling that neither of us really wanted to get up from it and do other things. For Sarah it was probably a good chance to sit down after the business of Broomhall Breakfast, with me it was partly coming back to thesis although I was actually noting what hymns the churches had used while I was there. From fairly early on while I was at Herringthorpe I have kept a note of the hymns that were actually used as there was a dispute over their use. St Andrews Chesterfield printed theirs on their weekly newsletter. So I have this information for both churches. It was a matter of abstracting it and then categorising it. I had to develop a coding categorisation, because of the congregations I have used a four part code characterisation. I picked any material pre 1840 as traditional; this is set as the start of Queen Victoria’s reign. Then for material between 1840 and 1960 I called it hymnody, this was to reflect the high number of hymns written between those times and in use. Later material was not classed on a time basis rather I distinguished what I call Modern Liturgical including many modern hymns but it is broader than that, which is material written for use in formal worship since 1960 and Charismatic which is material coming out of writers identified with the charismatic renewal. If I was studying this in-depth I would want to subdivide all four categories. For instance I have metrical psalms put in with translations of ancient hymns with the hymns of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. In the next I have Revivalist hymns aside high Anglican ones and so on.
On the evening I made a big mess. I managed to book a Tesco’s delivery for just the time I was at the Dicksons. Not just that but I also managed to get into my head the wrong time so it was only when it did not arrive by seven that I checked the times. In the end Tesco’s very kindly agreed to redeliver today and James came to pick me up. Very thankful for people’s considerateness over what was completely my mess up! The evening was enjoyable as ever.
Saturday was just more work on the hymns followed by setting up the sound system at St Andrews so that a guitar could be played through it, I hoped it worked ok as though the technical solution was in place, it also required the operator to balance the levels of the voices and the guitar! Something no operator had done previously. On the morning a quick run to the shops. The rest of the day was thesis both working on the hymns and today’s presentation. Unfortunately by this point I realised that nerves were taking over and needed some controlling
Today presentation day! Actually things went pretty smoothly only I had put too much in. I turned up at the church only to find that it was parade and the car park was full. God must have heard my heart cry because a car promptly pulled out of a parking space! Not usual ten minutes before worship in the church carpark! I got asked on entry to the church whether I was rehearsing my presentation, no I replied thanking God for providing a parking space. The idea of having to move the car in the time between worship and church meeting just felt too much! I got through three quarters maybe more of the presentation. The moderator commented that on there being not enough time to do this sort of presentation in church meetings. I don’t think people understood that I was hanging around to calm down afterwards, I have been so intently involved in doing this presentation and so focused on presenting it well, that I was quite sure that I would technically not be in a good state to be driving on the roads immediately afterwards. Anyway came in had a bacon sandwich and a glass of wine and went to bed for an hour and a half.
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