Right it will be highlights this time rather than a day by day account. Work was still busy and students were still panicking but really other than that there is no big news from most of it although for the first time ever on Monday I had to shut up the building, which required me ringing security for them to lock it as I do not know the code.
Tuesday I went to Bradford to the National Media Museum with Cathy,Sam and Hannah. The trains worked really well, I have a double train from Sheffield, while Cathy, Sam and Hannah have a single one from Rochdale. Cathy had used Red Spotted Hanky and got the fares for the three of them for about £15.00, As my fare from Sheffield cost about that much as well, I reckon she did pretty well. However not all routes are as good, there is no saving for me going to University of Birmingham, I have just checked. The centre is an easy fifteen minute walk from the Interchange Station. We got in and had a coffee, while we made plans. Cathy found a trail with questions for children, but we also decided to see Hubble 3D which tells of a mission by the space shuttle crew to repair and improved the Hubble Telescope. Sam was worried about this as it was an afternoon showing but when we pointed out that they would still have about an hour and a half to go before they needed to catch the planned train he was quite happy. Hannah was carrying a pack to see how well she did, if she managed it the prize was being able to take more toys on holiday. We went around the galleries in the morning, spent quite a bit of time looking for a story board for Bob the Builder. We overlooked it because it was not in colour, even though there was a video of the episode right next door to it. Then we went to have lunch in the picnic room. I had packed a picnic sticking pretty close to Hannah’s suggestions. Hannah had a good go on cheese sticks and Sam ate nine mini Pepperami. No I was not counting, there were ten in the packet, Hannah ate two thirds of one and Cathy the rest, but I took none home. Actually most of the food went. Hannah took one sandwich to eat on the way home and I took home a yoghurt and a couple of peaches. Sam was amazed when he said he would have a nectarine if we had a knife, and I said “who says I have not got a knife” and proceeded to get out my tool kit and take out the pen knife. I am not sure what he thought I carried in my handbag, but a tool kit wasn’t it.
Hubble 3D worked really well. Sam is saying at present he wants to be an astrophysicist (before I forget Cathy it might be worth telling Sam that Astronauts tend to be really fit Astrophysicists, admittedly we have just come to the end of a generation of space mission and we don’t know what is next but I will be very surprised if there isn’t something).. Therefore Sam thoroughly enjoyed the film including the pictures of stars as well as the story about the space walk. Hannah was wowwed by the experience of Imax but after half an hour she was bored with the film (I suspect she would have been bored by any film, Hannah is a busy person and likes to do several things at once). I was impressed with the pictures, unfortunately the sound was slightly out of sync and it was like having someone continually whispering behind me. Afterwards we came down and had another drink, after Hannah and Sam had finished theirs (far quicker than Cath or I) I gave them their packs for home which included £5 to spend in the gift shop. They raced off with it, which gave Cath and I ten minutes to talk, as Cathy could watch them from where we were seated. Cathy had asked whether I had heard of the postcard app on my phone. I said that I thought I had it there, so we looked and not only did I have it, but I also had a free postcard from them, so Sam and Hannah posed, while I took a photo and then Sam typed in the text on the back, and we sent it to Mum and Dad. Time was getting on so we headed to the station. We got the trains safely back, for the first time ever I managed to get by chance the cross country train from Leeds to Sheffield so got in earlier than expected.
Wednesday was an away day, it was partly a get to know the team session and partly a chance for the people in charge to pick peoples brains. Two things surprised me. First on our table I was second longest serving member (alright so the other person had been with the department for over a decade longer than me and the next nearest person was only a year or two behind but still). The second was how surprised people were that I did not have a TV. I suspect when you own a TV you think everyone does, but when you don’t you pick up people who like you don’t. I would be suspicious that there is at least one other person without a TV in the team (which is large) if not more.
However the real fun and games started on Wednesday evening. Mary (who helps at breakfast) had tried to take the food for Friday around to the church when she had been bitten by something and seems to have had quite a severe reaction to it. Anyway she was having difficulty standing and did not make it to the church but went home. Also David Price who was supposed to be helping found he needed to do something else on Friday morning. So it looked like Broomhall Breakfast was going to be Roy and Fleur and me. As I have very few breakfast associated numbers. I think Jean Dicksons mobile phone number was the best I had, I was not being very useful. All I really could do was say to God “you sort it”.
I got a second call from Mary on Thursday as David although not able to come on Friday had offered to take the shopping around to the church for her but she was not getting a response when she rang his number. She wanted to know if I had a more up to date number. I said no but suggested that she rang St Marks. Why I had not thought of that before I do not know. Anyway she must have got in contact with David because he did the bulk of taking things around to the church and there were only a couple of things she had forgotten.
Anyway Friday came and Stuart who cooks often came as did Ollie so although perhaps lower staffed than we would have liked, were very efficiently staffed. Not only that but one of our regulars who help set up the chairs brought a bunch of flowers so at the end I sent the flowers round with Ollie to Mary. We served fifty all told although the list only has forty eight, Stuart and Roy had breakfasts but are not listed. We ran out of almost everything, though I went down to Spar to buy enough to keep us going to the end. Roy and Beryl decided to ask me .
Today I went to morning worship at Herringthorpe and conducted the interview with the current church secretary, it was perhaps the shortest interview I have done but it certainly was not uninformative. I am still trying to think through what was going on though I have written up a report. On the surface it looks like someone who is busy fitting me into a tight schedule but there is something deeper going on, in many ways I felt as if I was working through a minefield and as much for my own sake as for his I needed to keep pretty strictly to the path. He displayed a much deeper emotional attachment to the congregation than any I have seen, and I have seen some strong ones.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
A day late, last week was so busy!
Actually at least Sunday was, I got this written late last night but have not had chance to post it until now.
I am trying to think back to Monday and it seems a long way away now and having checked my diary nothing too eventful happened which is probably as well. Tuesday I had a day and a half of life, the first part of the morning was spent preparing a bid to the Leverhulme Foundation for a major research project involving human nutrition and computer science, trying to use computer models of language to understand what messages are going out about nutrition over the web. Then onto a talk with someone from the URC who wanted to consult me about a survey. Then Stuart came round of the evening, the first time since I stopped him coming around for a chat on a Friday night. He had managed to break the shower in his house, while drunk and wondered if he could have a shower.
My body had had enough excitement for the time being and decided a migraine was the only way to stop me from having more. Fortunately for once it decided to be unambiguous and I had classic migraine symptoms right from the start.This time I actually understood I had a classical migraine headache, other times I have only realised that that is what is going on when I find myself totally unable to think straight enough to get up.
Thursday was a quieter day with just spending the afternoon sorting out a paper. In the morning I discovered Mendeley which I think is really something. It gives me about ninety percent of what I have been looking for in citation software. That is it allows me to handle pdf copies of papers, make notes on them electronically and cite them. It also imported my Endnote citation database. Now all it really needs is a proper classification tool that allows me to make notes on a paper and then classify it to a category, so that then I can look at the category, see the where the notes link to and build the argument from that. I have been playing with it and so far am impressed. I am wondering about the social networking side of it, it might be useful for one other of my supervisors students especially if it would allow us to share useful papers to both of us.
Friday was the breakfast and we had forty-eight to dine. Ollie who often helps out was down again and he said that the University rag had been asking him if he knew of anyone requiring funding. So I suggested he might put in a bid for the food for several weeks. By talking to Mary and such we came up with a suggesting that perhaps £600 would pay for three months food. In some ways we would like to reach out further to the University. But the couple who were cooking caught onto this conversation and suggested that they also brought the breakfast in front of St Mark’s PCC as a possible local charity for the church to support. I then went on and shopped at Waitrose having not got on Wednesday. On the evening Stuart came around for another shower and to borrow the keys for church so he could do the photocopying for the next two weeks. The really good news was that his Doctor had told him that he needed to stop drinking and he seemed if anything relieved about this. Also Judith had volunteered to do the photocopying for him and he had instead said no and was going to do it himself. As he did not come around yesterday evening for help I suspect he has got his head around it.
Yesterday I kept quiet, I went to town and got a few things, then came back and did some work on the report to Herringthorpe. This is the indepth report to elders. I am not sure how much to put in on my thoughts and am still working my way through that.
Today had morning worship at Herringthorpe, then came home, ate lunch and went back to help set out chairs for an Ecumenical Songs of Praise. One of the surprises at the Songs of Praise was that Karen who was chaplaincy assistance a good while back is now the local vicar. So had a chat with her. Then came home.
I am trying to think back to Monday and it seems a long way away now and having checked my diary nothing too eventful happened which is probably as well. Tuesday I had a day and a half of life, the first part of the morning was spent preparing a bid to the Leverhulme Foundation for a major research project involving human nutrition and computer science, trying to use computer models of language to understand what messages are going out about nutrition over the web. Then onto a talk with someone from the URC who wanted to consult me about a survey. Then Stuart came round of the evening, the first time since I stopped him coming around for a chat on a Friday night. He had managed to break the shower in his house, while drunk and wondered if he could have a shower.
My body had had enough excitement for the time being and decided a migraine was the only way to stop me from having more. Fortunately for once it decided to be unambiguous and I had classic migraine symptoms right from the start.This time I actually understood I had a classical migraine headache, other times I have only realised that that is what is going on when I find myself totally unable to think straight enough to get up.
Thursday was a quieter day with just spending the afternoon sorting out a paper. In the morning I discovered Mendeley which I think is really something. It gives me about ninety percent of what I have been looking for in citation software. That is it allows me to handle pdf copies of papers, make notes on them electronically and cite them. It also imported my Endnote citation database. Now all it really needs is a proper classification tool that allows me to make notes on a paper and then classify it to a category, so that then I can look at the category, see the where the notes link to and build the argument from that. I have been playing with it and so far am impressed. I am wondering about the social networking side of it, it might be useful for one other of my supervisors students especially if it would allow us to share useful papers to both of us.
Friday was the breakfast and we had forty-eight to dine. Ollie who often helps out was down again and he said that the University rag had been asking him if he knew of anyone requiring funding. So I suggested he might put in a bid for the food for several weeks. By talking to Mary and such we came up with a suggesting that perhaps £600 would pay for three months food. In some ways we would like to reach out further to the University. But the couple who were cooking caught onto this conversation and suggested that they also brought the breakfast in front of St Mark’s PCC as a possible local charity for the church to support. I then went on and shopped at Waitrose having not got on Wednesday. On the evening Stuart came around for another shower and to borrow the keys for church so he could do the photocopying for the next two weeks. The really good news was that his Doctor had told him that he needed to stop drinking and he seemed if anything relieved about this. Also Judith had volunteered to do the photocopying for him and he had instead said no and was going to do it himself. As he did not come around yesterday evening for help I suspect he has got his head around it.
Yesterday I kept quiet, I went to town and got a few things, then came back and did some work on the report to Herringthorpe. This is the indepth report to elders. I am not sure how much to put in on my thoughts and am still working my way through that.
Today had morning worship at Herringthorpe, then came home, ate lunch and went back to help set out chairs for an Ecumenical Songs of Praise. One of the surprises at the Songs of Praise was that Karen who was chaplaincy assistance a good while back is now the local vicar. So had a chat with her. Then came home.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Trip to Birmingham for HPC workshop in the midst of a busy week
Work has been busy and still next week is fully booked already. People are beginning to ask who else to see. I suspect I am going to start a blog on resources for researchers on USpace and see if I find any followers. Maybe I need to think wider than just me and see if the there is some way of doing this cooperatively either with others in the department or even wider. The fact is that most of the useful stuff I have come across has been by a process of trial and error or by odd links. Take the Thesis Whisperer for starters a good blog on the basics of writing a thesis and often where I learn of good process books. Then there was the fact I chanced on a Vitae blog “Whats up doc?” and the guy was worrying over his literature review. Now I know I am not doing a literature review, For a complex thesis like mine, separating the literature out from the rest of the writing seems to add a level of confusion. However he mentioned that the literature review was the introduction. Well ligth bulb moment, I knew that I needed to write and introduction but the clarity of thinking of it as connected with a literature review gives a clarity to the introduction that I had not had before. It still won’t be a literature review but it will probably set the scene in a variety of ways for what comes next.
On Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for the High Powered Computer session on running Window HPC. What we were looking for was a way to run Windows based products in a High powered computing setup. Unfortunately this does not do it. That is not to say it is useless, if as I suspect will be the case, that licensing can be sorted, then I could well see this allowing engineering and such to teach parrellel computing at a lower cost than at present. We would have a small server on site, which is actually all that is needed for over 90% of the time but when a class is in progress we might have the ability to up this quite quickly by connecting in machines over the net to something that is ten times that size. It needs high powered network infrastructure, and licensing by the hour (some companies will be in for a shock when that happens). The other thing I learnt was that there was a communication problem, when I say non-standard user for research machines, I mean people who are from the Arts or the softer end of the social sciences, when Birmingham says that they mean engineers and biologists. The problem is that for us the engineers and such are the chief users of our present Linux based HPC, I can not see any reason to introduce a Windows version for them. It is not widening our customer base. Another thing was the gender balance. The room had about forty people in it, of which two were female; this is the softer end of HPC and people wonder why I refer to it as “toys for the boys”.
For those who want to know, I saw no trouble at all on Tuesday night in Birmingham. The nearest I got to trouble was probably while changing train at New Street, but the trouble was not even that side of the city centre and I did not leave the station. Once off at Selly Oak I really was heading into deepest darkest areas of Quakerdom, not only staying in Woodbrooke Hall but also past at least one Quaker meeting house and en route to Bournville. Now as far as I know it is over two hundred years since the last time Quakers triggered a riot and they never went in for looting, so I was not really worried. For added measures there was the Christian Education offices is just up the road. I was greeted by the Quaker in residence with “You look as if you have come to stay”, I presume referring to the rucksack on my back. Normally I carry a small rucksack and a travel bag but had badly ricked my neck carrying the travel bag the previous weekend so had to find some way that suited me without carrying anything across my body. The simplest way was to take a weekend rucksack and a small light bag for day luggage.
The one effect of the riots was to make people reluctant to go drinking in places near New Street Station, not a problem for me as I needed to catch a 5:00 p.m. train from New Street and by 4:15p.m. I was tired and ready to head home. However the result of this was to find out that in the summer the University of Birmingham campus is dry until 5:15 pm! Well you can go to Spar, buy some drinks and sit on the concourse and drink them (brown paper bags are optional), but there is nowhere that serves a drink. I think its non-conformist roots were showing! With Sheffield there are so many non-university owned pubs on campus, there is no way this could happen.
Friday was Broomhall Breakfast and we had forty nine for breakfast. Actually most of the time we were coping fairly well as we had a good number of workers. Towards the end things got a bit interesting, a local lass who has come quite often in the past and has a sort of pastoral relationship with Sarah came in obviously nervous. So when Sarah came to take over my duties so I could eat my breakfast I pointed her in this girls direction instead. Then one of the breakfasters who had been in hospital with heart problems, came up and said the he was having a heart attack. I told him to sit down and called Jean Dickson out of the kitchen. I was suspicious that this was either him wanting attention, or that he was having some slight angina but was nervous and with that had jumped to the wrong conclusion. I just felt it needed sussing. So suddenly we were two workers down and Mary was having her breakfast when Stuart ran into difficulties copying the service sheet. The rest of Friday I just slept.
Saturday however I woke with a good amount of energy. I went shopping and was functioning pretty well although I forgot what I went to Boots for then walked back out of town. On getting in I happened to glance out of the window on the hall way outside my flat and spot two collard doves nesting on one of the tv aerials (see top of blog) so I went back and took some photos. I think this is the same pair as I saw a couple of weeks ago sitting on top on a lamp post on the close. I also uploaded other photos I have taken over the last few months so feel free to browse on Flickr if you want to. The rest of the day I did normal Saturday things, some supervision admin and so forth.
Today I was at Herringthorpe again and set up my last but one interview for a fortnights times. Otherwise it has been a normal Sunday.
On Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for the High Powered Computer session on running Window HPC. What we were looking for was a way to run Windows based products in a High powered computing setup. Unfortunately this does not do it. That is not to say it is useless, if as I suspect will be the case, that licensing can be sorted, then I could well see this allowing engineering and such to teach parrellel computing at a lower cost than at present. We would have a small server on site, which is actually all that is needed for over 90% of the time but when a class is in progress we might have the ability to up this quite quickly by connecting in machines over the net to something that is ten times that size. It needs high powered network infrastructure, and licensing by the hour (some companies will be in for a shock when that happens). The other thing I learnt was that there was a communication problem, when I say non-standard user for research machines, I mean people who are from the Arts or the softer end of the social sciences, when Birmingham says that they mean engineers and biologists. The problem is that for us the engineers and such are the chief users of our present Linux based HPC, I can not see any reason to introduce a Windows version for them. It is not widening our customer base. Another thing was the gender balance. The room had about forty people in it, of which two were female; this is the softer end of HPC and people wonder why I refer to it as “toys for the boys”.
For those who want to know, I saw no trouble at all on Tuesday night in Birmingham. The nearest I got to trouble was probably while changing train at New Street, but the trouble was not even that side of the city centre and I did not leave the station. Once off at Selly Oak I really was heading into deepest darkest areas of Quakerdom, not only staying in Woodbrooke Hall but also past at least one Quaker meeting house and en route to Bournville. Now as far as I know it is over two hundred years since the last time Quakers triggered a riot and they never went in for looting, so I was not really worried. For added measures there was the Christian Education offices is just up the road. I was greeted by the Quaker in residence with “You look as if you have come to stay”, I presume referring to the rucksack on my back. Normally I carry a small rucksack and a travel bag but had badly ricked my neck carrying the travel bag the previous weekend so had to find some way that suited me without carrying anything across my body. The simplest way was to take a weekend rucksack and a small light bag for day luggage.
The one effect of the riots was to make people reluctant to go drinking in places near New Street Station, not a problem for me as I needed to catch a 5:00 p.m. train from New Street and by 4:15p.m. I was tired and ready to head home. However the result of this was to find out that in the summer the University of Birmingham campus is dry until 5:15 pm! Well you can go to Spar, buy some drinks and sit on the concourse and drink them (brown paper bags are optional), but there is nowhere that serves a drink. I think its non-conformist roots were showing! With Sheffield there are so many non-university owned pubs on campus, there is no way this could happen.
Friday was Broomhall Breakfast and we had forty nine for breakfast. Actually most of the time we were coping fairly well as we had a good number of workers. Towards the end things got a bit interesting, a local lass who has come quite often in the past and has a sort of pastoral relationship with Sarah came in obviously nervous. So when Sarah came to take over my duties so I could eat my breakfast I pointed her in this girls direction instead. Then one of the breakfasters who had been in hospital with heart problems, came up and said the he was having a heart attack. I told him to sit down and called Jean Dickson out of the kitchen. I was suspicious that this was either him wanting attention, or that he was having some slight angina but was nervous and with that had jumped to the wrong conclusion. I just felt it needed sussing. So suddenly we were two workers down and Mary was having her breakfast when Stuart ran into difficulties copying the service sheet. The rest of Friday I just slept.
Saturday however I woke with a good amount of energy. I went shopping and was functioning pretty well although I forgot what I went to Boots for then walked back out of town. On getting in I happened to glance out of the window on the hall way outside my flat and spot two collard doves nesting on one of the tv aerials (see top of blog) so I went back and took some photos. I think this is the same pair as I saw a couple of weeks ago sitting on top on a lamp post on the close. I also uploaded other photos I have taken over the last few months so feel free to browse on Flickr if you want to. The rest of the day I did normal Saturday things, some supervision admin and so forth.
Today I was at Herringthorpe again and set up my last but one interview for a fortnights times. Otherwise it has been a normal Sunday.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Busy at work, while keeping other things going
So what has been happening this last fortnight, well the first week was largely taken up with the extra classes for writers group (that and getting ready for supervision with a busy week in work). The thing being that I really needed two poems per week for three weeks. This is way above my normal turnover which is less than a poem a week with me using the holidays to get ahead so I don’t have to produce one every week. However with this being end of year, I had used up all my reserves during the year and had none to fall back on. So I needed to sit down and produce something, it took a while and at least one of the pieces I took one week and rewrote for the following week, but that was a major re-write and the tutor even commented on it. There are others who imagine that my short pieces are the easiest pieces to do, but in someways they take the most time as my imagination has to be clear to do them.
Work wise I am very busy, I suspect that I could easily fill a full working week if I wanted to but the only way to keep it sane is to try and limit it. Next week is already full with a little space the week after. I suspect things will ease at the end of August but I do not hold much hope before then.
Over the weekend I had the last of my general interviews for Herringthorpe and I am finding it harder and harder to stick to the interview schedule. The thing is the conversation around the interview is often far more relevant than the interview itself. I want the time to talk and the time to listen but the questions are really vehicles for enabling that and the tape recorder seems in many ways a positive hindrance. People don’t mind telling me things but put them on tape and they are not nearly as sure. Odd that as the point of having it on tape is so I don’t misrepresent them and the only people who may need to listen to the tapes are me and them. I have no plans for anyone else to listen. Anyway the couple are former missionaries of Pakistan and have done some work with Christian Asylum seekers in this country.
Last week with writers finished was slightly less frantic, but I had a supervision in Birmingham. My supervisor has sent me information on a study day in the autumn on liturgy and mission, from the same group that I went to the conference with last year. They must think they have not exhausted the topic. I will go to listen but at this stage in my thesis, I am not going to present a paper. I am too busy with writing up to my thesis to go through the process of preparing a paper. I appreciate the way my supervisor pushes me to actually think through what I am trying to say and find what is actually at the core of my thought. I was struggling with what was so special about church meeting. I have sat through enough to know that on the surface they appear meetings just like any other meeting but there was something about them that was drawing my interest and I had to work out what it was. It is a process not unlike that of poetry of going over and over the details until you find the key, the clue that attracts my attention, when I have that then I can build the argument around it just as when I know what I am saying in a poem I can build the description around that.The key gives the form to the whole thing.
Friday was busy, there were once again over forty for breakfast, I suspect that Olly who came to cook had not really been aware of the increase in number (it changes the organisation of cooking somewhat if you know that there are going to be over thirty for breakfast all wanting bacon). We discovered one of the guys was celiac when he brought special bread in. This is not a problem as once we know we can check provide the bread and make sure he does not get flour.Then came home and slept before going into work. If I am up about six to get to the Breakfast my body quite likes to sleep once it is over. At work I had managed to double book. I suspect because of diary changes and the prior problems with my diary, but fortunately had kept the last slot of the week free so that I could sort things for the following week. So I apologised and saw the person then. Then after work it was a trip down to Waitrose to get Minicol cream cheese for my parents, only there wasn’t any, but there was Minicol hard cheese and Benecol soft cheese that also was low in cholesterol. However Waitrose knew I was coming shopping for my parents as it did not have any decaffeinated coffee beans on the shelf. Then change around and catch the bus to the Dicksons, only I only had a £20 note and I realised I needed to buy a bus ticket, so I popped into one of the convenience stores and spotted they had Baklava that was similar to what I had been given some weeks earlier so I bought a packet and then remembering Mum was back on strict orders from the diabetic nurse I gave it to the Dicksons.
Saturday I went over to my parents. Apart from only starting slowly the trip over went smoothly though I was tired when I got there. Dad was also tired having had a somewhat disturbed night so both he and me went for a sleep on the afternoon. Then around 4pm he suggested a walk and I managed to persuade them to go to Reddish Vale, I drove as Dad was worried over finding parking places although he had to direct me. The first car park was full but the overflow had several spaces in it. I am encouraging them to try and go there about once a week for their afternoon walk as it is only a couple of miles away and really quite a pleasant place to walk. They have a small cafe open between 1pm and 4pm as well as what looks like a better quality one at the nearby farm. However there isn’t easy parking there and it is a bit of a walk from the country park. I think the highlight was that there was a greylag goose but Mum was quite thrilled with the banks of Jumping Jack Balsaam or Himalaya Balsaam which were flourishing in huge quantities along the river Tame at the time fo year.
Today has been spent with rather quietly with my parents. They decided they were staying home in the morning and only going to church in the evening. At around 12:30 Dad decided to show me a A6380 as it came into land at Manchester. Never mind that I had actually seen it the day before when I came into Stockport. Anyway they dropped me off so I caught the 4:54 p.m. train back to Sheffield.
Work wise I am very busy, I suspect that I could easily fill a full working week if I wanted to but the only way to keep it sane is to try and limit it. Next week is already full with a little space the week after. I suspect things will ease at the end of August but I do not hold much hope before then.
Over the weekend I had the last of my general interviews for Herringthorpe and I am finding it harder and harder to stick to the interview schedule. The thing is the conversation around the interview is often far more relevant than the interview itself. I want the time to talk and the time to listen but the questions are really vehicles for enabling that and the tape recorder seems in many ways a positive hindrance. People don’t mind telling me things but put them on tape and they are not nearly as sure. Odd that as the point of having it on tape is so I don’t misrepresent them and the only people who may need to listen to the tapes are me and them. I have no plans for anyone else to listen. Anyway the couple are former missionaries of Pakistan and have done some work with Christian Asylum seekers in this country.
Last week with writers finished was slightly less frantic, but I had a supervision in Birmingham. My supervisor has sent me information on a study day in the autumn on liturgy and mission, from the same group that I went to the conference with last year. They must think they have not exhausted the topic. I will go to listen but at this stage in my thesis, I am not going to present a paper. I am too busy with writing up to my thesis to go through the process of preparing a paper. I appreciate the way my supervisor pushes me to actually think through what I am trying to say and find what is actually at the core of my thought. I was struggling with what was so special about church meeting. I have sat through enough to know that on the surface they appear meetings just like any other meeting but there was something about them that was drawing my interest and I had to work out what it was. It is a process not unlike that of poetry of going over and over the details until you find the key, the clue that attracts my attention, when I have that then I can build the argument around it just as when I know what I am saying in a poem I can build the description around that.The key gives the form to the whole thing.
Friday was busy, there were once again over forty for breakfast, I suspect that Olly who came to cook had not really been aware of the increase in number (it changes the organisation of cooking somewhat if you know that there are going to be over thirty for breakfast all wanting bacon). We discovered one of the guys was celiac when he brought special bread in. This is not a problem as once we know we can check provide the bread and make sure he does not get flour.Then came home and slept before going into work. If I am up about six to get to the Breakfast my body quite likes to sleep once it is over. At work I had managed to double book. I suspect because of diary changes and the prior problems with my diary, but fortunately had kept the last slot of the week free so that I could sort things for the following week. So I apologised and saw the person then. Then after work it was a trip down to Waitrose to get Minicol cream cheese for my parents, only there wasn’t any, but there was Minicol hard cheese and Benecol soft cheese that also was low in cholesterol. However Waitrose knew I was coming shopping for my parents as it did not have any decaffeinated coffee beans on the shelf. Then change around and catch the bus to the Dicksons, only I only had a £20 note and I realised I needed to buy a bus ticket, so I popped into one of the convenience stores and spotted they had Baklava that was similar to what I had been given some weeks earlier so I bought a packet and then remembering Mum was back on strict orders from the diabetic nurse I gave it to the Dicksons.
Saturday I went over to my parents. Apart from only starting slowly the trip over went smoothly though I was tired when I got there. Dad was also tired having had a somewhat disturbed night so both he and me went for a sleep on the afternoon. Then around 4pm he suggested a walk and I managed to persuade them to go to Reddish Vale, I drove as Dad was worried over finding parking places although he had to direct me. The first car park was full but the overflow had several spaces in it. I am encouraging them to try and go there about once a week for their afternoon walk as it is only a couple of miles away and really quite a pleasant place to walk. They have a small cafe open between 1pm and 4pm as well as what looks like a better quality one at the nearby farm. However there isn’t easy parking there and it is a bit of a walk from the country park. I think the highlight was that there was a greylag goose but Mum was quite thrilled with the banks of Jumping Jack Balsaam or Himalaya Balsaam which were flourishing in huge quantities along the river Tame at the time fo year.
Today has been spent with rather quietly with my parents. They decided they were staying home in the morning and only going to church in the evening. At around 12:30 Dad decided to show me a A6380 as it came into land at Manchester. Never mind that I had actually seen it the day before when I came into Stockport. Anyway they dropped me off so I caught the 4:54 p.m. train back to Sheffield.
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