It has been a busy week but I am getting used to busy and I think managing to pace myself better than previous years. Some of this is to do with the fact that I actually have more stamina. I therefore don’t have to drive myself with adrenaline so much to achieve the tasks I need to achieve. That makes a huge difference at work as I am able to carry a heavier work load than I have carried for years.
My writers group had two meetings this last week again. The one on Monday I got the whole group laughing with the poem I brought. I am not sure that it would be funny to those outside the group as it was based on our own behaviour around the start of term although fictionalised. The second one I actually took a re-write of the poem I took last week which was aimed to now have a clear point to it, as what had previous been a purely descriptive poem was changed to say something more without being didactic.
Tuesday I was supposed to go to the party to mark the end of the Bible Study year only for once my subconcious decided quite definitely against it. I not only forgot to book the car but I managed to think I could set off at 6:45pm for a 7:00 pm party. That is not start the car at 6:45 but leave the flat at 6:45p.m which means at least another five minutes walk. As I would have had three really heavy days I was not altogether sorry.
Friday I did breakfasts again. This week I think we served 44 people. At one stage one of the guys, I think Alan called me “Sarah” I replied I wasn’t. Given that if it was Alan he had been calling me “Jean Jeanie” the week before I was not being too sympathetic. He then called me “Mary” which meant I think that he was just muddling me up with other people who regularly helped. That’s okay, I am still learning their names and its not helped by have several Daves, Johns and at least two Philips/, the distinctive ones such as Uri and Stephan tend to stick. Oh and one who came this week was a David Hill so I am hoping that the Rev David Hill does not decide to see what happens one week when he is here, it could lead to confusion.
Friday evening I went to see Calendar Girls which was what I hoped it would be. That is a good human story told with a lot of laughter. To my delight the vicar’s daughter at one time said “I’m a vicars daughter, a single mum and a church organist!” There is just something so true to life about that statement and it is not necessarily based on the real ladies of the WI who made the calendar, for starters there were eleven on them and only six in the show yet the story is believable.
So Saturday was the day I was going to really write the essay, well I got some of the writing done, indeed more than I expected, but felt slightly off colour all day. Fortunately for some reason my brain had been particularly clear on Friday and I had a rough plan of what I was to write. It is so much easier if you have an idea of where you are going. As I was writing about church meeting I thought I better get the relevant pages from the manual. It was quite interesting to read what is actually there and analyse them. There is a clear split of duties between the Church meeting and the Elders meeting. Church meeting has responsibility for mission and for the practical matters of running a church, finance, buildings and so on. Elders on the other hand has pastoral care and worship as its two prime areas of responsibility. What appears to have happened is the Deacon tasks from the Presbyterian Church have been assigned to church meeting while the elders meeting was brought in intact. Of course I have never come across a church that keeps to this boundaries.
Today awoke with the remains of a migraine at least I judge it as such as I did not want to keep my eyes open. So I slept in to 10:00 a.m. then got up and sat down and wrote. I finished about six O’clock but am aware that as it stands it is very much a collection of ideas around church meeting.
So tomorrow I am redrafting and also meeting Sarah for coffee. Not teaching this week, nor do I have Bible study but there are still plenty of people wanting to see me. Friday will be interesting as someone wants to seem me in work just after Broomhall Breakfast.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Busy working week followed by a quieter weekend
This week has been busy and yet cope-able with. The main reason is that masters students are panicking over their projects. Unfortunately they tend to have the idea that I should drop everything and tend to them. I am however booked up for the whole of next week already and half of the week after. It is easing then as I am no longer teaching.but I have now set my email so that people emailing me get warned that I am busy. There is a marked difference between this and dealing with a masters student who already has a PhD. She asks for bookings weeks in advance and takes responsibility not only for being their herself but checking with her tutor. On the other had we hope she gets a paper in a good medical journal as a result of her work.
Monday was normal writers group, while Wednesday was the start of extra sessions. The only problem with extra sessions was that we had got it on a week where there was a great demand for tables. Not only were we wanting them but the Oratorio choir, a display in the church and Network. Next week neither Network nor the Oratorio Chorus are meeting! A week later start would have been so much easier. but that is life. The writers group did not realise that there were two groups on and not one.
Tuesday I had the second part of an interview that had been cut short last week. There was no way I was going to get away from work early and as the person I was interviewing was also going to Bible study there was a pretty fixed time. It was one of the few days I could not see how I was going to get an evening meal. So I treated myself to a brownie from PJ Taste which are really scrumptious. However once I was there his wife sussed I had not eaten and made me a sandwich and a piece of cake along with a coffee which I ate while interviewing. I have hopefully set up another interview the weekend after next and that really does put me on the home straight.
Wednesday was a meeting and teaching day in work. It looks like I will be down to Birmingham twice in August, once for supervision and once for work. This is about running servers for arts or social science research teams, who tend to use different operating systems to the hard science and engineering folk. It is a new area, but I suspect that unless we are prepared to provide a service that works for them we are going to struggle even more. These people use computers because they ease the work, they really do not want to struggle with the tricks that make things happen and idiosyncratic solutions will abound.
Thursday was quieter. Did I say this was going to be a quieter week, well it was than last week. I just was advising from 1pm to 5pm fortunately with someone I know really well. The result was at 3:30pm we both decided we needed a break, so went and got a coffee at PJ Taste as the Union would have been shut. This meant a change in venue.
This week there were only thirty eight to the Breakfast. I know that is only just under forty but it felt a lot easier than the last couple of weeks. This may be due to the fact that everyone hit the deck running,. Mary was there before 7:30 (Sarah and I at 7:30 and Roy and Beryl the cooks shortly afterwards). Mary had put on the ovens and the water and I knew I needed to look after the hall, checking things were done. Fortunately only Pat and Josh turned up very early and they are both workers, so less confusion over who was doing what. By the times the others had come in, things were largely sorted so the lounging around did not get in the way of doing the work. Josh is an absolute star, he comes early and helps set up, during breakfast he makes sure the tables are clean, have sugar and condiments, there is cutlery in the box and milk out. He will hand out Geo Bars if asked and basically keeps the hall running apart from serving and taking orders. However by the time I had shopped at Waitrose I was ready for bed again and slept for a couple of hours. Spent the rest of the day pottering.
Saturday was a quiet day, shopped, did some thesis reading and also sorted some of my back up of my thesis.
Today I went to Herringthorpe for morning worship. It was another believers baptism, this time of a lad about Sam’s age who is from a strongly URC background. The baptism seemed to be at a half way point between the full on evening service of some weeks ago and the normal morning baptisms. The service was an all age worship but none of the uniformed organisations were there. The music included a lot of the more modern hymns. This included Amazing Grace in the Chris Tomlin version ( listen to the whole to it as the first two verses sound very similar to the traditional).
Monday was normal writers group, while Wednesday was the start of extra sessions. The only problem with extra sessions was that we had got it on a week where there was a great demand for tables. Not only were we wanting them but the Oratorio choir, a display in the church and Network. Next week neither Network nor the Oratorio Chorus are meeting! A week later start would have been so much easier. but that is life. The writers group did not realise that there were two groups on and not one.
Tuesday I had the second part of an interview that had been cut short last week. There was no way I was going to get away from work early and as the person I was interviewing was also going to Bible study there was a pretty fixed time. It was one of the few days I could not see how I was going to get an evening meal. So I treated myself to a brownie from PJ Taste which are really scrumptious. However once I was there his wife sussed I had not eaten and made me a sandwich and a piece of cake along with a coffee which I ate while interviewing. I have hopefully set up another interview the weekend after next and that really does put me on the home straight.
Wednesday was a meeting and teaching day in work. It looks like I will be down to Birmingham twice in August, once for supervision and once for work. This is about running servers for arts or social science research teams, who tend to use different operating systems to the hard science and engineering folk. It is a new area, but I suspect that unless we are prepared to provide a service that works for them we are going to struggle even more. These people use computers because they ease the work, they really do not want to struggle with the tricks that make things happen and idiosyncratic solutions will abound.
Thursday was quieter. Did I say this was going to be a quieter week, well it was than last week. I just was advising from 1pm to 5pm fortunately with someone I know really well. The result was at 3:30pm we both decided we needed a break, so went and got a coffee at PJ Taste as the Union would have been shut. This meant a change in venue.
This week there were only thirty eight to the Breakfast. I know that is only just under forty but it felt a lot easier than the last couple of weeks. This may be due to the fact that everyone hit the deck running,. Mary was there before 7:30 (Sarah and I at 7:30 and Roy and Beryl the cooks shortly afterwards). Mary had put on the ovens and the water and I knew I needed to look after the hall, checking things were done. Fortunately only Pat and Josh turned up very early and they are both workers, so less confusion over who was doing what. By the times the others had come in, things were largely sorted so the lounging around did not get in the way of doing the work. Josh is an absolute star, he comes early and helps set up, during breakfast he makes sure the tables are clean, have sugar and condiments, there is cutlery in the box and milk out. He will hand out Geo Bars if asked and basically keeps the hall running apart from serving and taking orders. However by the time I had shopped at Waitrose I was ready for bed again and slept for a couple of hours. Spent the rest of the day pottering.
Saturday was a quiet day, shopped, did some thesis reading and also sorted some of my back up of my thesis.
Today I went to Herringthorpe for morning worship. It was another believers baptism, this time of a lad about Sam’s age who is from a strongly URC background. The baptism seemed to be at a half way point between the full on evening service of some weeks ago and the normal morning baptisms. The service was an all age worship but none of the uniformed organisations were there. The music included a lot of the more modern hymns. This included Amazing Grace in the Chris Tomlin version ( listen to the whole to it as the first two verses sound very similar to the traditional).
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Teaching, an interview and a study day makes for a busy week
Right the past week has been busy. Monday was fairly normal Monday, indeed I had a bit more spare time to myself because the morning meeting I was expecting took only 15 minutes when I was expecting it to take an hour. Perhaps just as well as I had managed not to print out some output for people when they were with me the previous thursday and it was needed for a talk this thursday day so that gave me time to redo the analysis, print the output and send it over to them.. The afternoon was spent preparing to teach the course I was giving the following day.
Tuesday started with a team management meeting. I have the great management role of managing exactly one person, myself. This of course is anomalous but I actually find that work seems to quite value someone who is out of the power structures. When a debate is getting heated I can often reflect on what is being said and thus provide a different perspective. However this is the last meeting of the management of our team in this form, this is due to the team being expanded. On the afternoon I was giving a course on SPSS. I had one guy who had signed up hoping to learn about Excel. I am not sure where he got that idea from, the course is titled “Entering data into SPSS” and I teach exactly what it says. Over the years we have put a lot of effort into communicating this to people who come on the course. I stayed in on the evening.
Wednesday I took the day off work. This was to allow me to conduct an interview in the morning, to write it up and get to Birmingham in the afternoon. The only thing was that I got the time wrong in the morning and set off too late. What is more annoying is that the earlier time would have suited me better with the journey down to Birmingham. The result of which is that I will finish the interview next Tuesday. I seem to have a very considerate supervisor. I planned to get down to Birmingham for 7pm at Woodbrooke Hall, but knowing this was around supper time I bought food at Marks and Spencers but did not eat it, expecting to eat it either in my room or outside in their extensive gardens. Instead I found that my supervisor had booked me in for supper. So rather shell shocked I found myself in the dinning room of the hall amongst mainly Quakers who were there for a meeting on Peacekeeping.
Actually there are some things worth saying. I was the only person staying overnight from my supervisory group. I would guess most non-Quakers who stay there would be in groups. As I was one on my own, I was more mixed in with the other people around. Somebody asked actually on the Thursday morning whether I had found it strange. I replied no, I had found it right. I had been shown into a room with a bed and a desk and thought “this is my kind of place”. She commented that others might find that weird. The other was my supervisor asking whether I had been well looked after, I said “of course, this place is Quaker and I have always found them a hospitable people”. I have told my Dad that if he needs a place to stay in Birmingham it is a good place to stay.
The study day itself was interesting. I was surprised how close two of us were in what we were tackling. In a sense it works because both of us are approaching it from different angles and it is only a small part of either of our theses and we are coming from different directions. He is also two years behind me so I get to publish first if I stay the pace. The other guy had just finished spending time in Bromford which when he talked about it reminded me somewhat of Blackbird Leys but more cut off and isolated. He was asking questions about his responsibility to the very marginalised youth he had worked with and what was he to do.
Friday I was at Breakfast again, this time we had forty two but there were already over a dozen diners in the hall when I turned up. Next week I need to be more wide-awake when I get there, as it is clear that I need to supervise them putting out tables so that all the tables have chairs and also so the sign goes out. Oh well. The day in work was relatively quiet which it needed to be.
Saturday was quiet, the big news was that during the week I got back my backup drive (actually they have sent me a 2TB in replacement for a 1TB which I think means that there may be problem with the 1TB disks. I also am trying out Carbonite and if I like it will use it as a remote back up for my thesis machine. I am fortunate and have never lost something hugely important on a computer, but there is always the first time and I don’t want that first time to be my thesis. I will consider whether I do it on my laptop as well when I know how it is working. Other than that I did a shop and some reading.
Today I went to morning worship, at 10:15 the car park there was full to overflowing. The church was very full, with two baptismal parties as well as the normal congregation. They also had three people brought into membership and a meal afterwards for people who were relatively new to the church. I was reading the lesson Romans 8:1-17, I had prepared it from my copy of the Good News Bible. Unfortunately my copy is first edition and the ones in the church are second edition and so use inclusive language.
This week is still pretty busy although quieter than last. I am finishing an interview on Tuesday, teaching a course on Wednesday and my writers group has some extra sessions starting on Wednesday as well. Next Sunday Herringthorpe is holding its church picnic.
Tuesday started with a team management meeting. I have the great management role of managing exactly one person, myself. This of course is anomalous but I actually find that work seems to quite value someone who is out of the power structures. When a debate is getting heated I can often reflect on what is being said and thus provide a different perspective. However this is the last meeting of the management of our team in this form, this is due to the team being expanded. On the afternoon I was giving a course on SPSS. I had one guy who had signed up hoping to learn about Excel. I am not sure where he got that idea from, the course is titled “Entering data into SPSS” and I teach exactly what it says. Over the years we have put a lot of effort into communicating this to people who come on the course. I stayed in on the evening.
Wednesday I took the day off work. This was to allow me to conduct an interview in the morning, to write it up and get to Birmingham in the afternoon. The only thing was that I got the time wrong in the morning and set off too late. What is more annoying is that the earlier time would have suited me better with the journey down to Birmingham. The result of which is that I will finish the interview next Tuesday. I seem to have a very considerate supervisor. I planned to get down to Birmingham for 7pm at Woodbrooke Hall, but knowing this was around supper time I bought food at Marks and Spencers but did not eat it, expecting to eat it either in my room or outside in their extensive gardens. Instead I found that my supervisor had booked me in for supper. So rather shell shocked I found myself in the dinning room of the hall amongst mainly Quakers who were there for a meeting on Peacekeeping.
Actually there are some things worth saying. I was the only person staying overnight from my supervisory group. I would guess most non-Quakers who stay there would be in groups. As I was one on my own, I was more mixed in with the other people around. Somebody asked actually on the Thursday morning whether I had found it strange. I replied no, I had found it right. I had been shown into a room with a bed and a desk and thought “this is my kind of place”. She commented that others might find that weird. The other was my supervisor asking whether I had been well looked after, I said “of course, this place is Quaker and I have always found them a hospitable people”. I have told my Dad that if he needs a place to stay in Birmingham it is a good place to stay.
The study day itself was interesting. I was surprised how close two of us were in what we were tackling. In a sense it works because both of us are approaching it from different angles and it is only a small part of either of our theses and we are coming from different directions. He is also two years behind me so I get to publish first if I stay the pace. The other guy had just finished spending time in Bromford which when he talked about it reminded me somewhat of Blackbird Leys but more cut off and isolated. He was asking questions about his responsibility to the very marginalised youth he had worked with and what was he to do.
Friday I was at Breakfast again, this time we had forty two but there were already over a dozen diners in the hall when I turned up. Next week I need to be more wide-awake when I get there, as it is clear that I need to supervise them putting out tables so that all the tables have chairs and also so the sign goes out. Oh well. The day in work was relatively quiet which it needed to be.
Saturday was quiet, the big news was that during the week I got back my backup drive (actually they have sent me a 2TB in replacement for a 1TB which I think means that there may be problem with the 1TB disks. I also am trying out Carbonite and if I like it will use it as a remote back up for my thesis machine. I am fortunate and have never lost something hugely important on a computer, but there is always the first time and I don’t want that first time to be my thesis. I will consider whether I do it on my laptop as well when I know how it is working. Other than that I did a shop and some reading.
Today I went to morning worship, at 10:15 the car park there was full to overflowing. The church was very full, with two baptismal parties as well as the normal congregation. They also had three people brought into membership and a meal afterwards for people who were relatively new to the church. I was reading the lesson Romans 8:1-17, I had prepared it from my copy of the Good News Bible. Unfortunately my copy is first edition and the ones in the church are second edition and so use inclusive language.
This week is still pretty busy although quieter than last. I am finishing an interview on Tuesday, teaching a course on Wednesday and my writers group has some extra sessions starting on Wednesday as well. Next Sunday Herringthorpe is holding its church picnic.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
They call this quiet!
Right I think this will have to be a highlights writing again as life has been busy and I don’t think you want to read a book about what has been going on. Early part of the week before last was a mix between busy and down with a migraine catching me out on the Tuesday and have SRDS which is the annual personal performance review on the Wednesday.
Then on the Thursday it was off to Birmingham for a supervision. It was useful in a number of ways. Firstly even though I have not finished my placement I am now writing for my thesis. The writing before has been exploratory on the whole and I have tended to have based it around essay/article approach. This gives a very intense and immediate focus to what I write, however when I write for my thesis, the pieces are less focused. I am often putting a marker to say here is something that either needs to go elsewhere or will be written about elsewhere. I suspect if I get to writing a Reformed piety it will be rather different to other people’s yet people will recognise it as delineating the area. The reason being is that most people seem to describe as elements that must be there for it to be Reformed, I tend rather to see it as a sets of tensions and forces that have to be negotiated. The form is rarely totally dominated by a single group of thought and different strands include different elements. What makes them Reformed is that the negotiation takes place.
Friday was the breakfast and there were forty six meals served. I was whacked by the end of it but also was officially in work. At one stage Sarah and I had to set up another table so people coming in had somewhere to sit. It seems as if it is more popular in the summer when it is pleasant to get up and go outside but we are not sure. There also has been some grumbling about the Archer project.
Saturday Mum and Dad came over. Shopping list was as follows:
Decaf coffee, fruit, veg, soya dream all from Waitrose
Shoes, black flat with a high buckle strap for Mum
Mobile phone for Dad as his old one was switching on but not maintaining a connection. As you'd guess we spent quite a while going around the shops. Fortunately everything we wanted seemed to come fairly readily to had. O2 does a really cheap phone that has fairly clear buttons which Dad was happy with, Jones had a sale on where a pair of Ecco shoes in just the design mum wanted in her size were available. This was good as the combination is not usually very common in summer. We then made the mistake of going to Marks and Spencers for a drink. I forgot that the cafe is now on the second floor. This is not a good combination with my parents as there is no down escalator from the second to the first floor so with Dad finding going down steps more difficult these days I have to persuade him to use the lift.
Sunday was a very busy thesis day. Not only was their worship on the morning followed by church meeting but there was also Baptisms at 6pm followed by socialising. The people getting baptised were all church youth, who had been brought up in the faith. As part of the service they had the poem GodGazer which the two girls had found very meaningful. I found it difficult to connect with and I am wondering why. It is a polemical poem, my work is mainly descriptive and I felt at times that the polemic was allowed to break the poetic voice too readily or used as a “get out of jail free” card when he really should have worked harder at what his was doing. I don’t object to breaking the voice particularly the rhythm but you need to be doing it for a purpose and less is more. That said, I would also say two of the readers were under rehearsed and that that made it harder to appreciate. A performance by the author is also on the web Oddly enough though not directly inspired by this I think the next poem I take to writers group will be more polemical. There is stuff boiling around as well. Anyway the church was packed, about 50% from Herringthorpe and 50% friends and relatives, some coming quite a distance. The moderator Kevin Watson preached and there was a band, partly from musicians in the church and partly from friends who had come in. There were traditional hymns at the start and the finish but officially set to new tunes. Amazing grace at the start was at least in part, one of the verses was used as a chorus and was definitely sung to a new tune however I am not sure of the rest of the verses. The other one was Lord of all Hopefulness, which as far as I can tell was same tune but different accompaniment! However at long last I have seen evidence that my suspicion that there is new music I don’t know is correct. All the songs chosen by the young people to be sung after their baptism were new to me. At about 8:00 pm when the church was emptying I went home, the congregation went around to one of the parents/grandparents home and carried on partying until the wee hours of the morning. Facebook can be quite useful for fieldwork sometimes.
Officially this has been a quiet week. It certainly does not feel like it. During it I have been tackling a dataset for a student doing her masters in Human Nutrition. The problem was the sheer quantity of data and getting it into a form where she could hope to write a paper from it. The problem is that the data is electronically recorded and therefore it is easy to collect but the tendency is too collect too much.
I have also come across something odd. I sometimes been finding that I wanted a chocolate at the end of lunch and it was chocolate and not generally something sweet. I decided to try and see if coffee would do instead. I made filter coffee and see if that did. It did. So I presumed caffeine fix, until I read the packet and found I was using decaffeinated! So that rules that one out.
I am taking this weekend quiet. Friday was my study day and I started putting together the introductory paper for the study day next week as well as serve breakfasts (forty four this week). Yesterday I did some shopping. I bought a long armed stapler as I need it for putting the booklets together. I did a Wordle of my thesis but not exactly. I also bought a cardigan and a pair of pyjamas. All my current summer ones are comfy but old variety and I spending the night in Woodbrooke Hall before the study day. Today I have been in, largely due to the Race for Life being on in Sheffield city centre. What I have learnt is that going to my placement church on such days is a nightmare of logistics, it might well be quicker by train and bus.
Then on the Thursday it was off to Birmingham for a supervision. It was useful in a number of ways. Firstly even though I have not finished my placement I am now writing for my thesis. The writing before has been exploratory on the whole and I have tended to have based it around essay/article approach. This gives a very intense and immediate focus to what I write, however when I write for my thesis, the pieces are less focused. I am often putting a marker to say here is something that either needs to go elsewhere or will be written about elsewhere. I suspect if I get to writing a Reformed piety it will be rather different to other people’s yet people will recognise it as delineating the area. The reason being is that most people seem to describe as elements that must be there for it to be Reformed, I tend rather to see it as a sets of tensions and forces that have to be negotiated. The form is rarely totally dominated by a single group of thought and different strands include different elements. What makes them Reformed is that the negotiation takes place.
Friday was the breakfast and there were forty six meals served. I was whacked by the end of it but also was officially in work. At one stage Sarah and I had to set up another table so people coming in had somewhere to sit. It seems as if it is more popular in the summer when it is pleasant to get up and go outside but we are not sure. There also has been some grumbling about the Archer project.
Saturday Mum and Dad came over. Shopping list was as follows:
Decaf coffee, fruit, veg, soya dream all from Waitrose
Shoes, black flat with a high buckle strap for Mum
Mobile phone for Dad as his old one was switching on but not maintaining a connection. As you'd guess we spent quite a while going around the shops. Fortunately everything we wanted seemed to come fairly readily to had. O2 does a really cheap phone that has fairly clear buttons which Dad was happy with, Jones had a sale on where a pair of Ecco shoes in just the design mum wanted in her size were available. This was good as the combination is not usually very common in summer. We then made the mistake of going to Marks and Spencers for a drink. I forgot that the cafe is now on the second floor. This is not a good combination with my parents as there is no down escalator from the second to the first floor so with Dad finding going down steps more difficult these days I have to persuade him to use the lift.
Sunday was a very busy thesis day. Not only was their worship on the morning followed by church meeting but there was also Baptisms at 6pm followed by socialising. The people getting baptised were all church youth, who had been brought up in the faith. As part of the service they had the poem GodGazer which the two girls had found very meaningful. I found it difficult to connect with and I am wondering why. It is a polemical poem, my work is mainly descriptive and I felt at times that the polemic was allowed to break the poetic voice too readily or used as a “get out of jail free” card when he really should have worked harder at what his was doing. I don’t object to breaking the voice particularly the rhythm but you need to be doing it for a purpose and less is more. That said, I would also say two of the readers were under rehearsed and that that made it harder to appreciate. A performance by the author is also on the web Oddly enough though not directly inspired by this I think the next poem I take to writers group will be more polemical. There is stuff boiling around as well. Anyway the church was packed, about 50% from Herringthorpe and 50% friends and relatives, some coming quite a distance. The moderator Kevin Watson preached and there was a band, partly from musicians in the church and partly from friends who had come in. There were traditional hymns at the start and the finish but officially set to new tunes. Amazing grace at the start was at least in part, one of the verses was used as a chorus and was definitely sung to a new tune however I am not sure of the rest of the verses. The other one was Lord of all Hopefulness, which as far as I can tell was same tune but different accompaniment! However at long last I have seen evidence that my suspicion that there is new music I don’t know is correct. All the songs chosen by the young people to be sung after their baptism were new to me. At about 8:00 pm when the church was emptying I went home, the congregation went around to one of the parents/grandparents home and carried on partying until the wee hours of the morning. Facebook can be quite useful for fieldwork sometimes.
Officially this has been a quiet week. It certainly does not feel like it. During it I have been tackling a dataset for a student doing her masters in Human Nutrition. The problem was the sheer quantity of data and getting it into a form where she could hope to write a paper from it. The problem is that the data is electronically recorded and therefore it is easy to collect but the tendency is too collect too much.
I have also come across something odd. I sometimes been finding that I wanted a chocolate at the end of lunch and it was chocolate and not generally something sweet. I decided to try and see if coffee would do instead. I made filter coffee and see if that did. It did. So I presumed caffeine fix, until I read the packet and found I was using decaffeinated! So that rules that one out.
I am taking this weekend quiet. Friday was my study day and I started putting together the introductory paper for the study day next week as well as serve breakfasts (forty four this week). Yesterday I did some shopping. I bought a long armed stapler as I need it for putting the booklets together. I did a Wordle of my thesis but not exactly. I also bought a cardigan and a pair of pyjamas. All my current summer ones are comfy but old variety and I spending the night in Woodbrooke Hall before the study day. Today I have been in, largely due to the Race for Life being on in Sheffield city centre. What I have learnt is that going to my placement church on such days is a nightmare of logistics, it might well be quicker by train and bus.
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