Now the cherry tree has lost its final leaves

I noticed this week that the last leaves have fallen from the cherry tree and today even the sun had a chill to it.

This week has been slightly less hectic although I was writing the paper. Monday I spent some time being interviewed by a colleague at work because he discovered that he did not quite know what I did. I decided to describe myself as a research whisperer. That is not that I am the researcher, but often when a researcher gets into difficulties, particularly with the analysis stage, I am able to provide them with the know-how to get them over them. Actually I do everything from help prepare research bids to reviewing comments by reviewers and deciding on best method of approach. However the skills I am employed for is the ones that involve using analysis software.

Meanwhile Dad was over in Sheffield with Mum for Doug Thackers funeral. I describe Doug as Dad’s best friend, he was one of the few people Dad made the effort to keep in contact with over the years. This is not me being rude about Uncle Jack, Dad’s relationship to Uncle Jack is far closer to that of brothers than best buddies including the ability to wind each other up totally!  Nor is this a reflection on how Doug held Dad, although I  know Doug appreciated the fact that Dad when he was there listened as Doug could talk. The funeral was very clearly designed by Doug and Leslie Green (another old friend of Doug’s). Though Doug’s Christian life was mentioned there was no mention of either family or of Doug’s achievements and I think Dad felt that it was a good funeral.

On the evening was writers group, it was good to be meeting again and to be concentrating on writing. Unfortunately there were only six of us there and I had brought the shortest poem I had. This meant they had fifteen per word to analyse it! I think I will take a longer piece this week.They keep teasing me about putting together a collection, I think largely because my poems are often on the short side. The big problem with this is I don’t know how to select those which are good and those that aren’t.

Tuesday was fairly quiet, well I had a review of a bid to the Nuffield foundation prepared by one of the brightest students in last years human nutrition programme. The aim is to get enough money so she can be employed to do the work. She is bright, hard working and a very good researcher so I hope it comes off. The project is also interesting as she is looking  at choice in school dinners. After all there is no point in the world in providing kids with superb meals if they are going to choose pizza instead and in Secondary School they can often do just that.

Wednesday should have been busy, spent the morning editing and paper, then prayer meeting at St Andrews and then I was back to meet someone who is the most incompetent researcher I have ever come across. Well he had a cold so did not make it. I think I was grateful. So I spent the afternoon going through a paper looking for places where it related to policy, this was not difficult, it was all there and required minimal editing to bring out the nuances that were hidden in the text. Sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes to create new enthusiasm for a piece of research.

Thursday was training on the morning. I am afraid that I suspect the solution to my tendency to prefer to do things that seem safe in my office rather than go out and get things done with other people is to rather get out and do it. I am competent and able to do it, I know that because when I do, I tend to succeed at what I do, but for some reason that never builds into wanting to do it more. Actually it sounds as if I better get on with working through Ask for it. Their other book “Why Women don’t Ask” started a noticeable change in attitude and I suspect this will help further. The afternoon was spent devising coding schemes or at least helping somebody to. This is one of the few times I have been through the whole process.

Friday, I was woken by time of the month cramps so rather than go to Broomhall Breakfast I took pain killers and got a hot water bottle and went back to bed. Fortunately by 11:30 a.m. I was up and ready to type up the paper I had written in the morning slots. I was being very strict with myself over word limit and it is about 1850 words long, I now have to consider if I put in the bit I dropped from the beginning which is about the standing of theologians within the Reformed tradition (ambivalent at best). It strengthens the conclusion but is a bit tangential to the rest of the paper.

On the evening I went around to the Dickson’s for dinner. James is a bit the worst for wear having had another arm injury and has not been great the last few weeks. Jean says he has not been doing much but I know from her response he is still doing things she wishes he wouldn’t. They seem to be enjoying Rosie and the boys living in Sheffield and were pleased with the milk and gluten free biscuits because Alex had told Jean off for not having biscuits for him during the week!

Saturday saw a quick trip into town and then me trying to spend the rest of the day reading, unfortunately I was just out of sorts, I presume due to time of the month. Anyway I managed to settled down to read. Oh I spent more time on Belden C. Lane’s book “Ravished by Beauty” . It is a very useful book to think with. I am not sure that it informs me as much as other books on spirituality but it is very interesting what he does. Firstly he does not treat the Reformed tradition spirituality as above reproach, he takes seriously the times it has gone wrong and done harm (he is looking a ecological spirituality). He however is very good on the positives and is making an interesting case for the centrality of desire for God within the Reformed tradition and that without it or with it wrongly directed the Reformed tradition becomes a dead weight. He also highlights the tension between the immanence of God and the transcendence and that if we get them out of balance we get into trouble. In this bringing of the emotions into the central area of what has often been seen as an over intellectualised set of rules he is challenging.

Today I went to worship, it was Shirley Knibbs preaching and I am sure Dad would have approved, even might have been tempted to mutter a quiet amen under his breath in the hope that nobody heard him. However she caused consternation by choosing an Old Testament reading from the Wisdom of Solomon.  Ian Cooke spotted it first and came across to see David Hill about not being able to find the reading in the Bible. So they set about trying to find a Bible in the church with an apocrypha in it. They failed so I went home and got one, just in case Shirley did not decide to read it herself (she did). Eventually it turned out there was one in the Bible that is normally placed on the lecturn, which is a large print one I bought for evening service years ago but is the one large Bible that is in a modern translation in the church. She talked in the introduction about having oil for our lamps and brought an oil lamp to show us. She said if she had been organised she would have had the oil and would have lit it. I immediately thought “not in St Andrews, not unless you told the elders first, or you will have at least one elder leaving church to get a bucket of water”.