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).
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