Chattering on a foggy November day

Thought I’d start with a bit of poetry well not mine and I did not have a camera at the ready to capture the texture of this morning so from John Clare:

"So dull and dark are the November days.

The lazy mist high up the evening curled,

And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;

The place we occupy seems all the world."

-   John Clare, November

It gives a feel for what the feel and texture of the weather is like here at present.

Well Monday was the sort of work day where I could do with a bit better pacing. I had two heavy (i.e. energy consuming) meetings on the morning. The second of which was a meeting with the Doctoral Training Centre which delivers research training for Social Science doctoral students and early researchers about creating a core of material that people can use to become more proficient at using NVivo. The result is that I am going to try and record my course onto Echo 360 and try putting it up on the web so people can use it when they want. I don’t think this is particular special as NVivo already has a lot of tutorials up on line and that will be part of going further. In the evening went to writers group and took a poem about the safe from Hanover which was left discarded in the builders rubble. Don’t think it worked as well as last weeks but I am glad to have written it.

Actually Tuesday and Wednesday were relatively quiet days in work, time to catch up, review some of the training I have been too and sort out where to head next. I am hopefully going to get to look after a group of webpages, I just suspect I need to find out who is the departmental webmaster. Also spent some time on a project on nutritional information in Men’s Health Magazines. It is certainly shall we say interesting, although the last few weeks have been spent trying to weed out the useless categories (e.g. anyone know what cabbaggin is? No nor do we but we guess it comes from cabbage).

Thursday was busier, editing a paper in the morning and also spending the afternoon reviewing work. My boss is going to have to learn that it is no longer possible for her to assume that when she has a spare hour she can just book it with me. I have significant amount of time booked every week up to Christmas. Partly that is with teaching which starts the week after next .
Friday I managed Broomhall Breakfast, and stayed on after to help put away as Sarah had gone early and there weren’t many of the men hanging around. then went into town to do a weekends shop and finally sat down to write. I got a fair bit written but am conscious that I need to go back over part of what I have written to finesse it. It is writing about writing always somewhat tricky. Anyway I have just done a final go over it and sent it to my proof readers (thanks Ruth and James) . I was using pomodoro technique  it does seem to work quite well for these writings up. I ended up with over 3,000 words this week, hmm. I think word count wise I will be able to take Christmas and New Year off, well maybe writing after New Year.

Yesterday I sat down and finally got all the interviews I had done at Herringthorpe and not sent copies out of, ready to send out. That was twelve different envelopes with CDs, forms and a covering letter plus a reply envelope. I had the bad habit of interviewing people for an hour and twenty five minutes and CDs only took an hour and twenty minutes so I was often having to split the interviews. I thought I was going to run out of CDs so ended up with a quick journey down town to buy CDs and labels for the envelopes. However the envelopes are filled and now just need posting (next Friday?)

I should have been at the study day for the Society for Liturgical studies but they were so badly organised that by the time I knew I was going other things had cropped up. The big problem with a study dayl in London is you have to book early to find reasonable priced accommodation nearby and I did not fancy an early train in and a late train out, especially as I had given my word to be a church meeting today (to deal with the technical equipment). However one of the organisers wanted to ask me about a paper I had written. Well one of his questions was fine, had I selected the church I wrote it about (yes and no) but the second was about my analysis method and that is part of the creativity in my thesis I had to give quite a thought out reply and also felt I needed to copy my supervisor in on it.

Today I went to St Andrews for worship this morning. It was Music Sunday and included one of the Middleton boys playing a piece called siesta on his guitar as well as the choir performing a couple of pieces. Stuart was reading a passage so I knew he was not working today. Church meeting was discussing Zero Intolerance/Radical Welcome . I am aware of many misgivings about the campaign, I also happen to think it is a good thing, not because of the stuff it does but because it says “We do evangelism”. I have a theory that as evangelism has had low profile on many of the denominational central bodies (it was seen as the duty of the local church and therefore not their business) it has been seen as not important by the local church, now with the centre clearly putting effort into it, local churches are perhaps going to raise it on their own agenda whether or not they participate in the actual campaign. Almost certainly I suspect in twenty years time we will look back at it as a crass first attempt, but hopefully we will have developed skills to actually make this sort of evangelism work for us. However I suspect most people are for it, in the same way most people are for motherhood and apple pie. However the “welcome” here intended is far more than a friendly handshake at the church door. It is in the end a commitment by the congregation to be open to change that is required if new people want to join. I am not saying new people should not change, but I am saying the change is not just one way. We, those already there, have to be prepared to change as well. That is deeper, much more difficult and I am afraid I suspect many in the church aren’t ready for it.

Lets be clear it is easy to tackle the headline issues that are open to discrimination, such as race or sexuality; you can talk about those and get an understanding by the congregation but difficulties such as coping with boisterous children in worship amongst a group of senior citizens, honouring different peoples cultural norms and creating an environment that supports those with chaotic life style whether due to working patterns, drug abuse or poverty is often more difficult and more challenging. The big problem for being welcoming may not be the settled gay couple with two jobs who enjoy classical music, but the young married couple with four kids who have a can of beer in the pushchair, go out for a quick fag during the sermon and use expletives in conversation or the older man with a drink problem who wets himself during a service (neither of these are not hypothetical, I have seen them in church and I have seen congregations struggle). The prejudices do not necessarily fall where we think they do.

Anyway during setting up the audio visual Sarah brought a long extension cable on a wind up reel but it was not winding. Fortunately I realised this before it was put in use. Mum and Dad’s church had a heater fuse because they used a cable while still wound. So we used others and I brought it home and unwound it and rewound it. As it now easily unwinds and winds again I think I will take it back to the church. Stuart came around later on, mainly I suspect because he rang the Dicksons and they were slightly abrupt with him and he wondered why. The answer was simply because he rang them immediately on them getting in from church meeting and it really was an inconvenient time. He really must learn not to take things so personally.