Summary of the year or Round Robin

This is my attempt to give an impression of the past year, it therefore does not handle the news of the last week in particular, so apologies for those faithful followers of Chattering for whom much of this can be repetition. I am going to work this through on themes rather than give a month by month account.

Firstly therefore let me turn to my PhD. I am now in the final part of the process prior to submission and that is actually writing it up. This is not the same as being a student in “writing up” state, I need to get a pretty good first draft done by the end of June 2012 if I am to be allowed to be in that state from September 2012, the formal “writing up” state is for people close on submission, I am therefore still a fully enrolled student. However it does means I am no longer doing active field work and and am spending a lot of time either with pen and paper, computer or checking books. It also means I have stopped going over to Herringthorpe URC on a regular basis. It was quite a strange feeling to be leaving doing placements after four years. Herringthorpe was a good congregation, different from St Andrews Chesterfield. Some of the differences were just down to dynamics of size, Herringthorpe is almost twice the size of St Andrews Chesterfield and things that functioned at St Andrews failed at Herringthorpe. Not much with respect to the thesis, but there were times when I realised many people at Herringthorpe behaved as if it was the size of St Andrews, for instance you were expected to know who the treasurer was by just mentioning his name. Fine at St Andrews where you did not need even that often as the treasurer was the one with the cheque book, but at Herringthorpe more difficult particularly as they did not fill any sort of treasurer type roles during morning worship. Another thing which became clear is that the two strands “Presbyterian” and “Congregational” related differently to their traditions. Presbyterians were always conscious of being Presbyterian and doing things in that way. Congregationalists never named the tradition, it was always this is “how we do it”. They never felt any need to identify it as “Congregational” or “Independent” or “Reformed”. I suspect to many English Presbyterians this looked like a lack of tradition when in actual fact it is the mark of a dominant tradition. Anyway  with now writing up I have started a blog which keeps notes of my progress. If you want to know how I am doing please make a note of it. Finally as you will see there, the Society for the Study of Theology held a postgraduate meeting in Edinburgh a few weeks back and I presented a paper at that. I am not planning on writing up the paper for publication at present but might well do so once my thesis is done as it is practically publication ready.

Work wise, the year has been more of the same. That does not mean no change, it does mean that for the most part the style has not changed. Perhaps the biggest change is that I more and more being consulted and then cited as a resource during research bids. This means that I am in the process from the start. Some of this is actually down to the fact that I can talk a number of research dialects and therefore am a pretty good translator of ideas between different departments who are doing research. I think I am involved in two to three active bids. It will be interesting to see what comes out. I am also moving some of my teaching into videos just to cope with demand. I am not able (and never have been) to meet the demand for this particular course. My real reason for not trying this earlier is that I do not see it as a particularly good course, very old fashioned talking head. Anyway my hand has been forced and I now need to find the time to actually get it into a video form. I suppose equally remarkable is this year I have not moved offices but am still in the same one as last Christmas, according to estates we should be moving out of there about Easter time. This is a slight delay on the original date for leaving the offices which was sometime in mid 2000.

Health wise my energy levels are improving an enabling me to cope with both the thesis and the increased work load at work. Nothing major just the slow improvement that keeps happening, it is of course far too slow for my liking and I always have a tendency to over stretch myself. I still get migraines but these are less frequent so maybe I am getting better at pacing. Unfortunately the same could not be said for all around. The New Year started with the news on Ship-of-Fools that the person who was the brains behind the bulletin boards (Erin) died very suddenly from flu at the age of thirty-nine. Dad has also lost several  friends, this started with the death quite suddenly of Roger Tomes a long term colleague of his, then in the autumn Doug Thacker died, at a respectable age of 83, but they had known each other since University days and kept in touch and finally Fred Able died. To crown things for him his Aunt died in November. She was in her nineties and family relationships had been distant for a while but she was also the last of that generation to die.

Other family news seems to fairly mundane. Mum and Dad tick along, alternately wondering at how well they manage and at other times getting on each others nerves. Mum is doing particularly physically and Dad is doing very well mentally, but the reverse could not be said. However one compensates for the other, and they seem to keep going. They had a holiday at the Christian hotel in Grange over Sands which seemed to go well despite the weather. The advantage of doing it this was was the chance to have company in an evening. Cathy and family seem to doing fine. Adrian, Cathy’s husband, was made redundant just before Christmas and after three or four months of looking and not finding anything he particularly wanted he decided to go solo. He is picking up a decent amount of work, partly because his former firm is passing work in his direction, but he is also making contacts elsewhere. Sam is doing well at school, still very good on the violin and at swimming with an interest in astrophysics. Hannah seems to be doing well, is much better at settling to read than Sam ever was and is enjoying dancing as well as swimming although in that she will never make Sam’s class.

I spent New Year up with my God family and again went up for almost a fortnight at the end of September beginning of October. My God-daughters are doing well though both have changed schools. Jenny because she was going up to high school and therefore travels now to Stranraer everyday and Cait because she became quite unhappy at the local school. The timing of the autumn rather than spring one, was partly due to Morag’s study pattern and partly because the Wigtown Festival was on at that time. However it worked really well for me as it allowed me to have a break between placement and writing up. In some ways it was a quieter holiday than previous ones, despite there being a lot on at Wigtown, I was not in the mood for setting out at the start of day and coming in late to attend things I was only vaguely interested in. Two of the days I just spent looking after Dora their dog, combing her hair and taking her for long walks along the beach during which she chased any seagulls that decided to take off into the air. While they were sat on the shore she really was not that interested. I will hopefully be up with them again for New Year.

So now all that remains I think is to wish you all that your lives may be touched by the joy that comes at Christmas and that during the coming year you might have the energy to meet the challenges and enjoy your achievements.