Christmas Roundup of the Year

The year has been dominated with writing up my thesis. I got into the pattern of most days writing by hand for about half an hour before I went into work. This produced the momentum to keep going as I formally typed them in each weekend. The result is that at present I have 90,000 words for a 80,000 max thesis, and two short chapters (introduction and conclusion) not even written. It is alright. I knew that there was going to have to be major edits but I needed to write to actually get some idea what was in my brain. I am hopefully drafting the introduction over the rest of the holiday season (i.e. read through what I have written, write the reason for doing the thesis and then the route that is taken). The conclusion will have to wait until I have worked through the chapters again and got them largely into their final form. The intriguing thing is that writing has been the way that I have done most of the analysis for this thesis. Another reason for the overflow was that halfway through the year the expected number of substantive chapters doubled from three to six (introduction, methodology and conclusion takes the total to nine). Unfortunately I had already written 45,000 words in the three substantive that were written and 20,000 in methodology. So an over flow was inevitable. That said it is to be hoped that I manage to finish the revision around Easter time.

The reason for that being is that I have said from Easter time I am willing to go back onto the eldership of St Andrews URC Sheffield. I have tried to keep my commitment to the congregation limited at least timewise this last year, so as to make space for writing up. I do need to be in worship at least two Sundays a month now, one as I am working the sound system and the second as I do door duty. I am also one of the table elders and will take over as senior table elder come easter, which means I really have to be making elders meeting, as I will need to chase elders for communion duties. On top of this Sarah our minister has announced that she is leaving after Easter. The way things are run in Yorkshire at present, there will not be a direct replacement for Sarah, and we will be a largely self running congregation. Actually something which due to the long vacancies in the past the congregation is facing with a fair amount of equanimity. The other thing is when I look I around I realise that there are probably as many adults under fifty attending the congregation as there has ever been in the time I have been there. This feels strange, because while the congregation is going to grow smaller, I am not sure that I can assume that the demise is as guaranteed as the older generation have always said it was.

Work wise I have moved offices (twice) and moved teams once but am officially doing the same job. That said the workload has increased out all recognition to what it was eighteen months to two year ago. I am jolly appreciative that Maths and Statistical Help (MASH) has largely taken over the handling of queries from Undergraduates and taught Postgraduates. I still seem quite a few research postgraduates, quite often these days with them seeing MASH as well, they tend to use MASH for the basic stuff and me for the depth. I am also helping MASH tutors develop their skills in helping students and it looks as if there may be more teaching. I am still working on NVivo tutorial for online. It is taking longer for me to do than I thought, basically because it takes longer to video than I expected. I can spend five hours easily on a five minute video, a lot of the time I spend psyching myself up to do it.

Writers group is still going along, it provides a place where I am off duty and among friends. I have found with writing my thesis that I have tended to write poetry. The idea that I could cope with the complexities of writing anything much longer while trying to keep hold of all the wild horses in my thesis, just seems to me impossible. A poem, often so short that it is often compared to a haiku (it isn’t, normally too many syllables, and not the right twist at the end). However I am able to concentrate on getting the words right for just that short piece of writing. My writers group have published another collection which we launched at our annual reading as part of Off the Shelf. This is the fourth or fifth collection and the third I have contributed to. Rather  more scary was the realisation that some in the group looked up to me as a writer. I still see myself as very much a beginner, the main difference is that I am better able to tell when others are writing well and when they are not. I find the act of self criticism very difficult indeed and it often surprises me what others think of as good.

Holiday wise I spent the normal extended week at Drummore, this year again in the autumn. The weather was typical British Autumn weather and it was a matter of making the best of the weather when it was dry. That said there is now a path all the way from Stranraer to the Mull of Galloway mostly along the coast. The advantage of this from the holiday point of view is that it has opened up the track towards the Mull. Jenny and Cait are both capable of walking to the Mull lighthouse but Cait finds walking back a bit too far. Dora the dog is quite happy to go walking, will cross styles and such if and only if I have gone over first. I suspect Morag going over might also get her over but Morag was finding her hearing aids difficult and spent quite a bit of time without them in.

My sister came over with my niece and nephew during the summer holidays for the day. We are still able to pull some wool over their eyes. They were willing to believe that we walked all the way across town to have coffee at the Costas in Waterstones just because we enjoyed their coffee. Needless to say the reason was their was a Waterstones and I was pretty sure that with a book token each, that Cathy and I would have time to chat while they decided how to spend them. I also went over to them and did geocaching. Cathy is very good at finding caches if she is looking in the right place but a modern GPS really does make a difference and the sort on smart phones beat the older specific technical GPS unless you are outside the range of a signal. Sam is doing well in school with all teachers happy to have him studying their subject for GCSE, his main challenge is whether he should do Music or Domestic Science. Hannah is doing well, having recently done exam for her dance classes. She is also learning the violin like Sam but where as Sam seemed to have the knack of making his early squawking sound musical, according to Cathy Hannah is not doing as well.

My parents are getting older.  My assessment is that as a couple they manage fine as each compensates for the others difficulties. Each however would struggle very much if doing it alone. The problems arise when each tries to take over the others strengths then problems arise. Today when they were out delivering Christmas Cards around the neighbourhood, Dad decided that he would do the physical delivering rather than just making sure they went in the right address. The result was that he tripped at the first house. Nothing hurt except his pride but Mum would have done it with ease.

Next year the BIG CHALLENGE is to submit and finish my thesis. The aim is to submit around Easter time but I acknowledge that is optimistic and will take a lot of hard work even if everything goes smoothly. When that is over I am going to need to do a lot of assessing where to go next. I can’t even claim that the thesis answers the questions that drove me to study originally. It has put me in a different place from which to try and move towards a solution/answer and I am also going to have to assess whether from the new position an answer looks possible.

Chatterings after messing up at communion

I am trying to remember back to the week before last, not that much exciting has happened but there are a number of plates spinning in the air that need my attention to keep them spinning and so I need to stay largely in the present.

There was a Starter Pack make up the week before last. This had not happened for a while due to the wholesaler we were using stopping delivery to groups like us. I am not sure whether this was stopping delivering for everyone or just for occasional users. Judith ended up going into Wilkinsons for things and spotted that there was a major overlap between their stock and our requirements list. However they would not deliver, but the manager changed and suddenly not only would they deliver but would not charge for delivering. We also ended up with the extra stuff being supplied being left for the next makeup. I think that at one stage when it looked as if we were short of one or two items, Jean D went to the cupboard and pulled out extras must have surprised them, but these were the left over bits from others. If they are going to deliver as they did this time, we need to talk to them in future about the order in which they deliver because they used a managers 4X4 and had to do several runs. If they are doing that, they need to split the packing so we can pack whole packs at this end.

Over the weekend I went down with a cold. Not sure where from, though someone  must have brought it into the computer centre as when I got into work again on Tuesday both the receptionists in the building were off sick with a cold. It just happened that I had a four day weekend due to my department wanting me on Friday this week. However I remained well enough to write although not well enough to cope with going out and by staying in a dealing with it I find the cold symptoms remain mild and clear more easily. Admittedly I treat with echinacea, tree tea oil and eucalyptus with drinks of whisky, lime and honey to put me to sleep.

On that Tuesday and the following one I was giving a course on SPSS again, well different ones each day. There clearly is a demand, but  the training room closed last Friday and the new one will not be available to sometime in January. We are not sure when in January but I suspect early rather than late January as the pressure for courses is mounting. I am realising that there is quite a lot of learnt helplessness in the department and I find it frustrating that quite a lot of the time I do not know who to talk to. When I deal with the people who think like me, things happen and happen very very quickly but most of the time it is like being in a fog in a maze with a number of rooms I need to get to and quite often when I get to the right room the person feels so disempowered that what they do is pass the job onto someone else. A very different department to the small one I joined almost twenty years ago. Most of the time this does not matter as I am a one person team, but that also means people do not really heed me when I speak from knowledge that I am employed to have. I am supposed to know for the packages I support, how they are used in the University. Most of them are research packages and that is easy to deal with. One is purely taught and people understand  that but two are part research and part taught. One of them is moving from pure research to research and teaching. When I said this was a taught package, the department seemed to think that I was pretending perhaps to promote it. When I actually said to a department this will not be available on managed machines because we cannot get it to work and the department got in touch with work, suddenly things were different.

The weekend was not just cold but also thesis writing, I needed to get papers to my supervisor for a supervision tomorrow. I had around 3,500 words still to write and had been making slow progress. I am pretty sure that a lot of that was nerves as the section I was writing was pulling the whole thesis together and drawing in a lot of the tangents that I had let run. The thing was that my way of doing that was to apparently take another tangent and then use it to draw in the whole thing. Actually by the time I finished it on the Sunday the writing had been exhilarating. I had a feeling somewhat like that you have when you come off a big dipper ride at a funfair. This despite the cold. Of course I find out on Monday whether I have actually done it! However I am hopeful. Unfortunately my hands started becoming sore again (I suspect a repetitive strain but not a standard one)  so it is back to the mouse pads but this time I am more familiar with them and therefore I am happier using them. The pain has largely cleared during the week.<

Thursday my parents rang as they usually do. However the phone played up as they were dialling although they got through. The phone seemed to get confused over extensions. The next day Dad was having to use an extension to get out but I managed to get that sorted but as soon as he started trying to connect the other lounge phone it cut out. The thing was he could not get control back to his handset and therefore he could not put the phone down. I could not phone in and as I could imagine Dad getting worked up I did not know what to do and was due in work. In the end contacted Age UK and they carried on checking until the line was clear. They also rang BT to check the line. It eventually sorted itself but if it had not they would have gone around. However Dad had a migraine on the afternoon. He is now using his central phone and going to extensions so as to not set that off again but I will have to try and get it sorted.

Friday evening I had a meal with the Dicksons and as it was St Andrew’s day we had Haggis for dinner with neeps and tatties. Yes it was good, Jean is a good cook and I would not expect anything else from her. Talking of haggis the Haggis Hunt is on again. The Haggis population in Scotland seems to be having a resurgence and this year all but one of the cameras (the exception being Oxford St) are in Scotland. Well there seem to be plenty of haggis around at present, normally are around the start of the season. However the main advantage is that you get to watch webcams situated in places such as Loch Ness and Inverurie. I leave you to find out where the other seven are situated but there isn’t one from the Mull of Galloway. In the run up they did have one at St Andrew’s so that might appear again later on in the season. Haggis’ have strange powers, given their size on the photographs it is amazing how rarely they are seen in life, but watch out for their ability to turn night into day as well!

Today was communion at St Andrew’s, well we did it. It started off not great when I left my keys in my flat door and exited the block of flats without them. The entrance to the block of flats locks automatically after you so when I was halfway up the drive I realised I did not have them. Came back but there was no sign that any of my neightbours were awake so I went on to church. Actually the setting up was straight forward and we for the first time managed to do it without staining the tables. Everything went well until we were halfway through serving the bread and I suddenly noticed we did not have the children back in. Too late then to do anything about it! However it upset me and I automatically reverted to Congregational praxis, NOT GOOD. I kept forgetting to serve the elders and Sarah got caught up in this too! Elizabeth kept saying “elders” during the wine stage and Sarah and I initially thought she meant to use the chalice not to serve the elders. Mea Culpa. I just got the giggles. We were very short on numbers as well, due to people away and sickness. I wonder if we are not soon going to have to stop processing in with the elements as it is becoming more and more difficult to find elders who do.When I got home I pressed the Tradesman’s entrance as I believe that rings all bells when it does not open and it buzzed so I realised it was open.

After Elder's Retreat

Right I am going to have to check my diary to see what I have done. Writers group has started and one of the others commented that I managed to write different poems about autumn, my response was that I have only written two to date, that hardly is an outstanding track record and I actually had more poems about winter. Having checked things over I find that the autumn poems are actually three, one of far lower quality than the other two. I have quite a few winter ones, a few early spring ones but I cannot recall any whose setting is summer. This is self explanatory to a certain extent, writers group tends to meet in Autumn, Winter and Spring and have holidays in Summer. Another writer asked how many poems I had written and excluding the very early ones with writers group where I was all over the place I have in the region of seventy poems.

Work wise i am busy with a variety of things. The building work got on top of me the week before last but a chance conversation with Peter led to me realising that part of the planning was that if it got too much for me I would work at home. So I decided to institute with the result that I worked at home for two and a half days last week. The result was that I was feeling a lot more rested and finding that I was not collapsing into bed every evening if I did not have to be out. Last Friday there was a course on supporting people doing statistics that I went on. It was interestings, not least because Andrew Mead was there, who I rightly guessed to be the son on Roger Mead, one of the Statistics Professors at Reading all those years ago and also an evangelist within the URC. I know he would not like the title evangelist as theologically that was not where he was at but he was active in setting up Trinity Lower Earley although as a lay person you will not read any of that in the official documents.

This week I think I have got myself talked into co-delivering a statistical course for linguists. This is aimed at staff and research students and is an applied course. In that the idea is to get people to The other person leading it will be from MASH. I invited her to sit with me when I started to advise someone. The first person who came (most have been repeats in the mean time) was a student from landscape. It was actually a design of a questionnaire question and so a single consultation but in doing that I was able to put in some useful things. He reported that what people said about me in Landscape was that I change the way they think about their research making it more rigorous.

Last weekend was a writing one, or what time I had when you took out shopping and so on. The result was that I was probably not spending enough time on the background to what I needed to write. I needed to pick up the use of flows within the social sciences. It is quite popular at present and therefore I could argue that I was working with a metaphor that other used and what I wanted to do was to explore it in a different way. This is far easier than it is to argue that a particular metaphor is applicable. Thus it gave me the transition to the interacting with the data from my ethnography and hopefully bring out something new. Actually it nearly always does bring out something new when you are looking at these metaphors. It is as if the metaphor allows you to see things differently from what you did before.

Yesterday I went to St Andrew’s Elders retreat. I will not be back serving until Easter time, when of course Sarah leaves. There are big in progress in South Yorkshire as the big churches start to lose their ministers. The model that is going is far more that of a cell church, with the local congregations being responsible for their meeting for worship week by week and ministers really functioning in an oversight role. There will be only two ministers in Sheffield when Sarah leaves although the hope is to recruit another although that one might well be inducted to the whole of Sheffield which should be interesting as who gets to issue the call.The situation with the chaplaincy is also interesting. I am not sure about what the resolution would be.

I suddenly had a brainwave last night and thought that what I would like is one place I could go to look at a variety of URC blogs. I recalled that something similar was done at work so did a hunt around and eventually came across NetVibes and I created this web page  . It is not complete but I am slowly collecting those I can find. If anyone knows of any others then please let me know. They need to be blogs clearly connected with the URC.

Today I went to church because I was doing the sound. It worked fine for me although I did put Sarah up slightly. The theme was musical as it was close to St Cecilia's day and therefore it was a good time to honour the choir and those who bring their musical talents to the worship of the church. However Sarah picked up a theme around musical harmony being a metaphor for church life that I had used in an article I wrote for the Messenger . Oddly enough Anne Cathel’s picked this up as being well written piece the previous day which was why I had just checked what I had written. Otherwise today has been fairly quiet.

While Fireworks bang on the otherside of the window

At present as there have been all weekend there are the sound of fireworks going off. I am not sure if it is connected but the other day I noticed that a neighbours blue bin had been burnt out. I hope it was a stray firework and not deliberate arson.

I will see what I can do to fill people in on the news. Building works are making things edgy at work, not really people being badly behaved but you sense that people’s wicks are slightly shorter than normal. I am  There is also more noise and I am not quite sure how it has impacted my migraines (I have had slightly more than I was having but it may be due to other changes so I have reversed those that could be causing it that are within my control. I can’t do much about the nights drawing in or the weather being colder.

Other than that work has largely been quiet with especially this last week when it has been school holidays and some of the people I work with are therefore taking holiday so they can spend time with their children or are working at home. That said I have plenty of stuff to catch up on and really do not seem to be keeping ahead on the courses I give. I need to get further than I am. It is not helped by my experience of the rest of the department as a black box. That is I ask a question to the person who I think is the right person, sometimes I get a reply back but more often than not I get silence. This is particularly true when I need people to state categorically that they can’t do something, so I can start to work at ways around.

Last weekend my parents came over for the day on Saturday. Dad was worried about crossing the Pennines beforehand. Well snow and severe frost did not turn up but the A57 was closed due to road repairs. Unfortunately they only told people that in Glossop and then directed them via the A621, which I always think of as the Chesterfield route. I know that Chesterfield is not on it but it is the route I used when I had a service at St Andrew’s Chesterfield and then had to get to my parents. It happened several times while I was placed there. Anyway we went out to Old Moor. I do not think that we saw anything spectacular this time. One or two interesting ducks but the birds my father thought would not have arrived yet had departed the previous day. I was hoping to see fieldfares or redwings as flocks of these had been reported but no real luck. Others while we were in one of the hides did report a peregrin but we did not see it.  Also there was a cold wind which meant that we spent only a limited time at the hides that faced one direction as our hands soon got cold with the chill wind. The meal was still good and it is within the coping of my parents although mum tends to think we are closer to the car than we actually are.

Sunday I did not make church as I needed to catch up with writing on my final substantive chapter of my thesis. However Sarah announced that she had accepted a call to South West Hants Group  and will be inducted after Easter. I was aware she was looking and indeed given that she has been here about eight to nine years was expecting it. That gives St Andrew’s about six months to work out where it wants to head. It is clear that St Andrew’s will not get its own minister but I am not sure what the congregation will decide it wants to do. I doubt it will look at an LEP although I know some who think we should have created one with Broomhill Methodist (now the Beacon Church Broomhill) when that was first formed. It would not have worked then as we were still too large then numbering over a hundred to their around fifty but the decrease over the last ten years has been substantial. The thing that disappoints me is that I cannot see anyway of moving from where we are now to being an attractive church for those Christians who live in the local community although I do see chance that the church might manage to become “trustee” for a community development where a URC congregation may or may not meet. I think we will also experience several deaths over this winter.

This week was half term so no writers group but I did end up going out for a meal with Margo at which we set the world to right, or at least got things in a small part of the University more clear. I am not sure we have everything to rights but at least we did for a while. On the whole a good evening out as was the previous Friday which I spent with James and Jean.

I am beginning to get organised for Christmas and New Year . I am feeling foolish at the moment as I put off booking the car so as to keep separate this bill on credit card from my University one, but the University one did not get through in time. At least I have done quite a bit of other preparation and I better soon book a car. I think I am going to have to be back in Sheffield for the first Sunday of the New Year. The problem is that the following month I am duty elder and communion elder on the same Sunday. This does not work. The person I need to swap duty with, is on the January and so I should really swap with her.

After a week with rather more to cope with than planned

Right this week was more in it than I planned. There was a twofold reason for this. Firstly I had a cold last weekend and though not serious, I need more rest when I am under the weather than when not. Secondly there were builders in work knocking down walls and such. This is my idea of something that is best avoided but as I did not know until Friday I could not plan last week to make other plans.

Monday it was not too bad and I had writers group in the evening. This was a not to be missed evening as it was the rehearsal for our reading on Friday. However we rehearse on Monday and read on Friday, I for the life of me can’t get up the energy to prepare for the rehearsal as I would for the actual reading.They therefore seem to be surprised when I read much better on the night. This is ridiculous, I have been reading in church since I was around ten, I know how well I need to know a reading to read it well, whether it is a Bible reading or a piece of my own work and that really the actual preparation can only be done in the last twenty four hours.

Tuesday was down to Birmingham for a supervision, the weather was wet and blustery when I set out but by the time I had got to University Train Station it had stopped raining. I thought I might try and pay my fees in person, they having managed to at last bill me correctly. I want a bill before I pay (they usually bill wrongly to start with so paying an estimate whether right or wrong isn’t a good idea). I am actually now stopping following the alerts for new papers towards my thesis. Well I have not stopped them but unless something absolutely shouts at me I am ignoring it. That said there was an announcement on a book on Ethnography and Ecclesiology which has both American and British authors. I also need to trace at least one of the book my supervisor recommended which looks at Pentecostalism and Ritual.I have enough tangents to deal with already. What was also interesting was my supervisor and I had a post thesis chat. It is obviously time I started thinking about that. When it got to walking home I found the sun was shining.

Wednesday I had a migraine, actually I could have had it on Tuesday, but as it was supervision decided to cajole my system into working. Strong coffee and ginger seem to pretty well as a keep going if I have to, however when I woke feeling pretty rough on Wednesday I decided it was going to be one of those migraines which I could try working through but until I gave myself time actually have it I was not going to get better. The main problem with this was I needed time to get bright deep yellow paper for printing the programme for the reading on Friday. Two separate people had done the inside and outside of the programme, I just needed to combine it and print. I found a webpage that would combine two different webpages so it was just getting hold of the paper.

Thursday I made it back into work.The morning spent doing an analysis on drinks consumed in school. What seems to be happening is people are thinking that sugary drinks is mainly drinks like lemonade and coke. However there is a lot of sugar in many fruit based drinks which are seen as healthy options. On the afternoon spent quite a bit of my time with a doctoral student who is looking at green roofs and diversity with respect to time. I also printed off the programmes for the Reading the next day as I had taken the decision to work at home on Friday on thesis. I also met Cliff at lunch time to check the sound system situation. He has taken one aerial and two microphones to be fixed. We are therefore a microphone short. His view is that it is wear and tear but I am cautious.

Friday I went to Broomhall Breakfast, as this is a new academic year there are new volunteers and they are settling in. The result was for the first time ever I was mistaken for a normal breakfaster. I think I should have played along for longer but as it turned out, that was not the only mistake the volunteer was making and having a more experienced person to pick up on the other was what was needed.Then onto the doctors for a regular checkup. I got a bit worried when another doctor came out and said to someone else that my doctor could not see them that day did they mind seeing him. The idea of trying to explain why my medication was the way it was, what needed changing and what did not was going to be challenging within the consultation spell. However it must have been a one off as my GP was there and agreed to the changes I wanted. The rest of the day I had set aside for preparing for the reading and also putting together the desk with the idea that Saturday would then be free to study.

The readings went well on the whole. The room was full although it mainly seems to be family of other members of the group with one or two friends. There being about a dozen readers, then it is fairly easy to get forty people to an event. That said I did not manage to bring anyone but we shall see at other events. There were comments about how well my introductions to my poems worked. Again no rocket science, you want some hook for people to grasp where you are coming from and then a lead in. A hook is normally better if it is something personal they can connect with, a busy day, being scared as a child and so on. On the whole a good evening including going to the pub with other members of the group afterwards.

Saturday was a down day, I managed to shop in the morning and then slept but my brain would not settle all afternoon and I had an early night. I really should have just settled to reading, I suspect it was the come down from the previous week. Today I went to church as I was on sound duty and it was Jeremy Clines, the Anglican Chaplain preaching. His voice did not work well with the sound system but what he did was give more time to Bible readings so we got both the parable of the sower and the explanation, the whole of 1 Corinthians 12 and a good section from Job. Intriguingly in the parable of the sower what struck me that the seed was scattered on the bad soil. There was no careful husbanding it. A point that Jeremy then made. I wonder if we as churches have got too careful over where we scatter seed. That is we need to be prepared to sow in bad soil in order to get the harvest from the good soil.

On returning to normal routine

This week has been far more normal I have less to report. I have largely been thinking myself back into the routine of the weeks. There are still things to be sorted but I am getting there. I hoping in work that things are not too noisy this week as builders come in to rework the building I am in and in particular this coming week the offices next to mine. This has been expected but its arrival was sudden. Guesses earlier in the week would have put it much closer to Christmas or even into next year as the pressure had been taken off by the fact we were into a new academic year and most moves of staff in universities happen over the summer.

I am getting fed up with a small number of acts of vandalism that are happening to the sound system. They are small scale, none in themselves that drastic but every time I end up on the sound system another one happens and normally it is clear that they did not happen by accident. The latest was the pulling out of an aerial from one of the microphones. Clips have been taken, pads ripped off earphones. The thing is that we should know who is using the system and the keys are in the vestry so it looks like an insider job. I am going to hope Cliff can fix the latest one.

Otherwise it was back to writers group and feeling as if this half term is very crushed with having missed two weeks. I went this week and read a poem but next week is rehearsal for our reading at Bank Streets Arts which is part of Off the Shelf Festival. We are launching a new collection so if you are interested in the collection please let me know.

Thesis wise I have had a massive writing week with over 5,500 words written. While on holiday I had been analysing the data chapters for times when elements talked about belonging. That means that I must have extracted about 10% of those chapters to put into this chapter. However the preparation paid off and I was easily able to write about this despite having a cold, if I had not had a cold I might just have made church today but cold both slowed me yesterday and also meant I need to spend a second day in today. Admittedly I pulled all the discipline stops, Pomodoro, music in background and the promise of treats if I did over a certain number of words but it got written. I am now officially over 80,000 words and the thesis has to grow before it can shrink.

Back from Holiday

Three weeks to report on.  I have changed teams at work, this is not a big change really (or at least I hope not because I am aware that there might be other agendas afoot that might make me and some other people very uncomfortable). However I have sought assurances that it will let me get on with the work I am doing at present and will not be a diversion into big machine computing. I want to stick to helping individual researchers and small teams who are using their desktop computers as a major tool in their research. That is what I do, that is what I am good at and that is was at least three quarters of the researchers in the university do. It gives me a very different perspective from the big computer guys. Otherwise I have more than enough stuff to keep going on with. A video course to finish preparing, a number of other courses to set up which I will teach, some on going relationships and so forth.

The holiday went fine by my plans. Then my plans were not to do a lot of touring or doing other activities. I took the luxury of having a late start 10:00 a.m. breakfast, then a couple of hours studying (except at the weekend) and then spent the day doing whatever was on the books. Apart from the weekend there were three options:

1. 
   Walk Dora the dog, the longer and more strenuous the walk the better but I really should have checked my walking shoes ability to rub blisters. I did three separate walks with her on her own. The first we walked from Maryport to the headland before Drummore along the beach. I had beach shoes on and though they gave me bad blisters  (barefoot in new shoes is not a good idea) they did allow me to go more where the dog wanted to go. The second was from Maryport to Portlennie along the Mull of Galloway Trail. Dora now knows it is not a good idea to bite electric fences, but otherwise enjoyed it but would not go through kissing gates unless I did as well. At Port Lennie we saw both a rainbow and a passing seal. The final walk was up the hill to Creechan and beyond. This is really not as good as the other two as Dora has to be on the lead a fair bit. So I took her down to the beach for a run but she decided not to come back to me when I called  (chasing seagulls was far more fun) and as a result I marched her up to the house on a lead. There were I think Barnacle Geese amongst the gulls as well.
2. Time out with the girls.  Two of these days, one which we spent in PortPatrick Geocaching and then a meal at a pub, which was enjoyed by the girls and Tony. We stopped being geocache version and found two caches that day, one in PortPatrick and one at Ardwell Dam. The second was the day before I came home and we went to Kirroughtree Forrest (see  ) much to the girls and everyones delight I did not get the pronunciation at all right. I said something like Ker-rough-tree and it is pronounced more like Kir-Rock-tri. Cait was not feeling too good so left her in the car while I and Jenny went for a short walk (it was longer than I intended though we went at a good pace) so I was not surprised Cait thought we had taken too long. Then we went onto Newtown Stewart for an Indian meal. They have an Indian Restaurant there, not sure where in India the cuisine comes from but they really only do chicken dishes although you can get lamb and fish on request. The vegetable dishes are all side dishes.
3. 
   Finally I had two days for myself, the first of these I went exploring the Crook of Baldoon which is a very minor RSPB reserve. The facilities consist of a parking area (which looks like the general area back of a farm buildings and a picnic area. It has a farm causeway that takes you out onto the bay salt marshes but no hides. There are hides attached to Wigtown but you have to go back into the town to get to those. I suspect long term there could be an attempt to develop this to attract in Birdwatching tourism as the hot season starts in November and continues to March or so, with birds wintering on the salt marshes. On the second I went to Logan Gardens for a visit and then onto photograph Killantrigan Lighthouse in the evening light. The land is much wilder around there in the North Rhins than it is around Maryport.

Over the weekend I did things with the girls and the dog. On the Saturday I took Jenny and Cait over to the Machars and we went geocaching. The first one which was down by St Medan’s in the Machars was a geocache remember Gavin Maxwell who grew up around there and called Ring of Bright Water. The problem was that Morag had banned me from taking the girls near cliffs and it seemed to be hidden half way up one according to the SatNav so once we had tried approaching it from two angles with no success we had to rethink.  So we headed for Withorn for lunch at the cafe. Wigtown would have had more to offer but also be crowded with the first days of the Wigtown book festival. The cafe for the Whithorn Trust was empty apart from us but did give us sandwiches and soup.  The second one Kilsture Forrest, which is mainly conifer plantation. We found this one, but then went for a walk, we were relatively map less and I knew that we were on a round path but not whether we were going clockwise or anti-clockwise. We came to three point junction and chose to think we were going anti-clockwise partly because it said back to the car park. this way. This was a mistake, we were going clockwise and the path was leading us to another carpark all together. Anyway I brought home two tired girls who’d enjoyed their day out.

The next day Jenny wanted to walk to Mull of Galloway along the trail. The dog had not really been walked the day before so we needed to take her with us. This meant complications as we had to get the dog over a ladder style and also we could not just walk to the Mull cafe and get a lift back as Mo and Tony were not prepared to have Dora in a car. Well we got as far as East Tarbet. Dora would only tackle the style if I went first but then would make it. Me standing almost on her tail behind did not work even if the girls were over. The big problem was actually the walk was slightly too far for Cait, she’d have made it too the cafe easily but the journey back was longer and on rougher terrain. She did  very well indeed walking back and we got in safely just as it was getting dark and there was a splendid moon over the bay. Jenny being older and actually keen to walk did it easily and made a good pace. If Cait had been slower I might have sent Jenny on ahead to say we were coming.

Drove home via my parents, they thought I was coming back on the Wednesday yet all I can recall and the evidence at their home suggests I had always said Thursday. The only reference I can think of to Wednesday was that I had suggested they could extend their stay in the Brecon Beackons to Tuesday but had to back for Wednesday. That was so that they would visit Cathy and Co. Another change of plan was due to Fleur being robbed while on holiday, she and Walter needed Friday for sorting insurance and other business out, so I drove straight home which meant I could get the car back to the hirers on Friday which eased things on Saturday somewhat and gave me chance to do some editing on my thesis.
  
More photos from my holiday can be found on flickr

Today was communion. I was second table elder with Ian Cooke as first.  There were 46 for communion but we were a bit short of elders. We were fine in the end but there does need to be some sorting doing. I also took the initiative and rearranged the elements on the table for serving. This meant that both for the serving and for the procession out things were right where the elders who were serving came to get them and there was no fussing about. There is time to do this within the current arrangements. Ian seems to enjoy working with me indeed he was offering to be first table elder again for me during my apprenticeship. Anne Cathels is right the role of Communion Sunday duty elder is significantly different from that on any other Sunday, the really crisis will happen in February when I am down both as duty elder and second communion elder a combination that is tricky. The other thing is I think the system at present works with the old style duty elder (whose main job was to make sure the minister was in the right places at the right time). The current one is far more managing the front house welcome. I think some jobs may be better shared by the communion elders.

After a couple of quieter weeks

Birthday Flowers from my sister

News wise it feels quieter. I am now registered for next year but am not able to pay my fees. I suspect that the entry for next year has been done wrongly, but as it is such a close run thing on whether I would or would not have to make fees, we will probably in the end ignore it. I was having to pay a years fees and then get two thirds of my fees back because I would progress to writing up. The tradition chapter is signed off so I am now onto the one on belonging. Unfortunately I am realising there will be a lot of rewriting of the tradition chapter and I am also just beginning to put together the opening section on belonging. It is taking longer than I would like (I’d have liked it written by today but I need to do some more reading before I can write the last bit). Perhaps of more interest is that I am writing articles for St Andrew’s magazine “The Messenger” and also posting them on a blog called Reformed Practical Piety . The first one is up and the second will come out at the start of October. I pre-write them, send them to James and then set the publishing date once we have a proofed version. These are not pieces from my thesis but bits I have written specially for the magazine on one strand of my thesis.

The other thing is I have sent the drafts of the data chapters to my two congregations. Helen, who is church secretary at St Andrew’s Chesterfield got back to me to ask me to print extra copies. Commenting on what she has read she says I found out things that she never knew about St Andrew’s, which an interesting comment. It makes me wonder if I have got things right or whether there was a culture where if you do not actively seek information you do not get it. If so why? I will have to wait until the final feedback I think to sort that out. From Herringthorpe I have heard absolutely nothing. I know the copy of the chapters arrived and only that because I sent them special delivery. Different congregations, different ways of behaving. I also have heard nothing from David the minister at the time at St Andrew’s admittedly I sent him them by email, maybe I should check if his email is current.

Work wise it has been quieter. However I am now moving teams to one which is more big computer orientated. I call it supporting “toys for the boys” research, as it is all about working on big computers that have software most people who use computers do not care to use. It does fancy things but you have to be able to program it in detail. I tend to point out that the entire support for the other 80% of the researchers who use computers is me. Anyway it is just a different team structure and a slight change in some of the things I was involved in at work. I cannot help improve communications in my previous team if I am in a different one. I think there is more going on but I am not sure and I may have to be deliberate about what I will and will not do.

For my Birthday I took James and Jean out for an Indian at Tamarind which is part of the former Glossop Road Baths complex. It used to be called “Saffron Club” and boasted a Indian Curry Lovers listing, but I never got to it when it was that. The meal was superb, we asked for mild to medium dishes and there was just so much flavour in them that was not hidden by strong chilli. They brought us poppadoms and chutney dishes. I tried one of them and Jean asked me if it was hot, I said not really but it was sour. She tried it and her face said it was not as she expected but admitted that I was right it was sour. Actually it with the mango chutney on a bit of poppadom was delicious. The main courses were superb and the rice cooked superbly. Unfortunately they only had the English desserts available and they were all full of cream while the ice-cream was fancy. I also tried Cobra beer and it works fairly well with an Indian meal.

Amigurumi I have made this summer

Over the summer I have been making a couple more amigurumi for people at my writers group. I charge people £5 which is donated to writers group and then they pay me something towards the wool (usually another £5 much to my embarrassment as that is more than the wool costs) the latest couple are in the other photo attached. The lamb has a hat because I put the eyes into the wrong side of the head, so rather than let my slightly untidy decreasing show (it never is as tidy as the increasing, although in fairness I doubt you could have told that) I put a beret on I must stress that these are ornaments not toys, when I make toys they are substantially different.

On a second "easy" Sunday

This week has been busy but not over busy indeed the bank holiday allowed me to get on top of my next chapter which is with my supervisor now. This weekend I simply spent getting the descriptive data chapters ready to send to my placement churches. This was more complicated than I hoped as I first realised at 5:00 pm on Friday that I needed paper and then with trying to print double sided that I also needed a new print cartridge half way through printing on Saturday morning. However it all got done and I managed to get the print copies to the binders in time for them to be bound on Saturday so if I am fairly organised today and tomorrow I can send the copies to the placement churches. This is the last stage of the permissions for my thesis and I am aware that the chapters will look significantly different in the final thing but I am pretty sure that the portrayal of the two churches is not going to change significantly unless they produce something pretty startling. The accounts are all fictionalised, but people in the congregations and around them are going to have a pretty good idea who all the characters are based on. At least they should do. I also have deliberately on occasion put in detail which is aimed to mislead the casual reader.

Work wise this week I was only in two days, well not quite I did see someone on Thursday but that was because the desperately wanted to submit their masters thesis on time and the thesis was one where I was the originator and so I felt responsible for that. Ellie has been coming to the Breakfast Club and looking at the food patterns people who eat there have. I need to sit down and think whether it is worth getting the project again but looking at the people using the Breakfast club who are not homeless and why do they come. Many of these are still vulnerable people and quite often there are housing issues that need to be sorted for them. However if someone wants to do something for free for the Breakfast Club, something that created a visual image that held rapport with the clientele would be good. This would need to be largely visual as a substantial number of them can not write and one of the items would be to use it on a notice board so we could share pictures, achievements and so on with others at the Breakfast

Friday I had an Indian with Margo, it was supposed to be end of term with several students that had done the human nutrition course this year but they came in for a quick drink and then left.So we ended up looking for somewhere to deliver a curry. We eventually settled on Jannath but as I did not have a menu I ended up ordering curry and leaving it for them to choose but they just gave us the dishes in a curry sauce.

Yesterday I actually started getting ready for the trip to Maryport, so far the shopping has mainly been dog walking supplies, on the grounds that that is something I am likely to do on several days. I also finally got around to getting myself walking gaiters which seem sensible gear for walking anywhere where there might be wet vegetation as they basically cover between the boots and the ankle. I have binoculars and I also could do with a couple of trips to photograph lighthouses. Then there are geocaching trips with the girls (plus getting a takeaway) and seeing if I can find anything when my sister is not there. Together with some birdwatching, drinking coffee and writing a thesis I do not think I will have too much time to get bored.

Today I turned down the option of being on the management team at St Andrews, with the amount I need to get through in the next six months taking on anything new is going to be very difficult indeed and something else would have to go. I also do not mind doing practical things, but if it comes to managing and organising other people to do them, then I really have little inclination at all to do it.

While taking a day off from Thesis

I am taking today off thesis but will be back on with it tomorrow as I have a chapter to finish. It should be straightforward but I need to refocus myself and make sure I get to the right point at the end.

I am trying to think back over the last fortnight, which has been heavily dominated by work and thesis, and I really can only think of a couple of other stories with those.

Work wise it is finishing off projects. I have spent quite a bit of time with a PhD student who had done a number of surveys and someone else had done a very interim analysis. I have done about four different analyses for her and I suspect that she will in the end get most from the simple statistics I got to do half way through. A lot of it felt as if she was trying to walk before she could run as she would find a technique in a paper and then want to do that. One I eventually concluded was pointless, the second may produce something vaguely interesting but I am cautious over whether the data is suitable. Well we shall see what happens.

Then there has been work for human nutrition, I am amazed at the way people assume I am an authority because I can do the statistics. I think I have just about got to the last pull on the masters projects there, but next month I am going to be leading a workshop on helping other to analyse ANOVAs. It feels weird to suddenly find out that I am looked upon as this very expert Statistician, as this is basically training people to do the sort of work I have been doing for the last nineteen years. Other than that, I am developing a communications role within my team at work which means that I will be tangential to the power structure but not totally outside it. I suppose that really is where I prefer to be. I am also due to test a range of software next week so it is all go despite the fact I am only in two work for two days.

Thesis wise I have really been getting my head around the tradition, I think I am in the position almost to conclude my chapter on tradition tomorrow and to be able to argue that in some ways it is a self reproducing system of engagement that works on a variety of levels. In writing it has been remarkable easy to argue that what seems to happen in every age is that you get a configuration of similar tension that people work with. As they resolve some of the tensions or a new situation arises that normally involve working with the other tensions in the systems. One such system is that that links meaning and practice. Sometimes practice comes through semi-attached to thought and sometimes meaning seems to disengage from one set of practices but then engage with another (wee cuppies anyone and sharing together anyone). Anyway I have less than 2000 words on this chapter to write and I think I may be able to cover that in the process of writing tomorrow. That unfortunately means my tidy up of the Worship chapter will have to wait to next weekend (well Thursday probably) so as to get the data chapters out to my congregations.

Other bits, Jean and James took me out to Nirmals which is a bit of a Sheffield institution. It is an experience but Mrs Nirmal was certainly less pushy than in the past, only slightly put out when James did not take his mango pip in his hands and suck it. The food was good (the mango was superb), the company excellent but I am afraid I was not up to it and was rather quiet, not really sure why but I was, maybe a bit of migraine in the offing.

I also have bought myself a charcoal grey cardigan. It surprised me somewhat that I should need it as I normally steer away from black but I noticed that I have both two pairs of black jeans and a grey pair. My other cardigans work with them if I am wearing the right blouse but some of my blouses just don’t mix with the cardigans so I decided to get a grey/black one and have it for wearing when I do not want to think.

Today should have been a thesis Sunday but Anne Parker was preaching at St Andrews and wanted to show slides of her trip to Bangladesh in 2011. This meant instead of a sermon we had what was close to a personal testimony, it needs a bit more polish and it will be very good indeed. It also meant that somebody needed to work the technology and that somebody was me. I think if I had been sensible I would have found time this weekend to go to church and set up beforehand, as it was the technology only started talking together during the first hymn. It looked like a loose connection on the projector, I really should do some more researching of that but I had swapped two cables, two computers already and it was not fixed, I was just to give up and suddenly it worked.

Toadstool beads that I made today

Otherwise I have spent today making fly agaric style toadstool beads, I need one for a hedgehog amigurumi I am making. The style of bead is quite specific and I could not find any on the internet even at the website the book said sold them. However the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be relatively easy to make. So I bought some polymer clay and today I had a go at making fifteen. That means I have fourteen spare , but given the amount of time crocheting the spikes requires I am NOT going to make fourteen more hedgehogs. I have ideas for a use and we will have to see. Actually for my first attempt at using polymer clay it seemed quite successful.

I have also been playing around with cover designs for the book writers group is doing. I hope to get another chance to play with that next weekend.

During a very busy time with the thesis

This will have to be short as my parents will phone in a bit and I also need to get the flat into some sort of order so that my cleaner can come tomorrow and sort things. I am afraid things are busy, busy and although I am hoping I can take two unallocated days holiday before the end of August I am not holding my breath.

The four major things are the coming over of Cathy with Hannah and Sam to Sheffield, going to supervision the following wednesday, my parents visiting on the Saturday and finally going geocaching at Shaw with Cathy and Hannah and Sam.

Cathy, Hannah and Sam seem to be pretty good at bringing good weather with them when they come over to Sheffield, as the day was gloriously warm. I remember for my mum’s eightieth birthday we considered sitting out to drink coffee, not bad when you realise my mum’s birthday is in February. Anyway they came earlier than usual and we took them up to Waterstones on the pretence that Cathy and I wanted a coffee and a natter. They are innocent enough to think we would really walk right across town to get a coffee just because we liked the coffee shop.  The fact was that I was giving them book tokens for them to spend while we nattered. It worked and it was amazing how much having spending money and Aunts and mums who were not going to give huge amounts extra concentrated their minds. Then we went to Ponds Forge but it was the National Swimming Championships and they were not allowing people into the leisure pool until 12:30. Anyway Sam wanted a tennis racket from Decathlon and Hannah needed a new swimsuit so we went along there, which was quite a walk, bought the things and got ourselves a drink for a local Sainsbury’s supermarket. Then came back and joined the queue for the leisure pool. Sam was clearly the best swimmer there and I could see some people staring at the way he confidently dived into a wave. Then we went and found a chinese buffet, not the usual one as that has shut but one up by Victoria Hall which did a good line in prawn crackers. Then back to the station where the kids played table tennis before catching the train home

The following week I had a supervision at Birmingham, the day was damp for once.There is more on my thesis blog , but the day was unusually damp. My supervisor suggested restructuring my thesis, as I was struggling with the theory for the chapter on worship and then the argument was going to have to be written in. That means major rewrites on all three data chapters to date. Instead he suggested that I wrote the theory into three separate chapters. Oddly enough the act of doing this which I though was initially going to change the basis of my thesis has re-adjusted it and has made it come more clear. I know what I am arguing in each of the three chapters. I am still slightly concerned about my final one, where I have to step back and take an even bigger view than I have done in my other two theory chapters but which will pull the whole thing into a cohesive whole. There are also bits of the chapters which have been written that I need to pull out and put into the new chapters. My supervisor said it meant I was only halfway through but it felt as if I was only half way through despite my count on my blog saying I was three quarters. I have also put the third chapter into a draft form which means that once it has been proof read these three chapters can go out to the congregations for reading.

Then at the weekend my parents came over, we are making a habit of going out to Old Moor nature reserve when they come as it seems to provide a good entertainments. This time they had a DVD of birds showing on a large screen in the cafe and it succeeded in distracting both me and Dad while we ate our lunch and later had a cup of tea. There were no unusual sightings this time but trundling between hides and then sitting in them seems to suit my parents as a way to spend the afternoon. The fact that there are nice cakes back at the Gannet Cafe for when they are feeling peckish is no bad thing. Dad as usual had been pessimistic about the weather but I said we could at least get lunch at the cafe, in the end he was too warmly dressed for the weather and there was no sign of rain.

Then last Tuesday I hired a car and went over to Cathy’s for the afternoon. The aim was to see if we could get geocaching to work. We tried for a couple of spots very local to them, one in a park that is being refurbished and the other just the other side of the road from it. The answer is that my sister is very good at finding the caches provided she is looking in the right place for the right thing. However my older satnav is not that good for finding them being only accurate to about 50 m, my phone one is a lot more accurate and in both instances the description is that accurate that when it was right we knew the place to within half a meter.  There are some problems in woodland areas but if the detail is accurate enough we can find them eventually. The only problem with my phones satnav was it decided to take me interesting routes through the back streets of Manchester both going and coming back. I should have obeyed my instinct and gone on the M60 when I crossed it going rather than being diverted.

Other than that I have been busy with work and not had the normal space in the day to fit in extra students so I have been diverting them to MASH (Maths and Statistics Help). However that is looking like a cooperation that might well work out so as to make that side of my work more like a team than an individual with me specialising in long term support of researchers and they with taught students and with doctoral students splitting it between us. We will also be working to create resources others can use without seeing us personally and to move towards providing just in time workshops on using statistical research. The other thing is that I am getting more managerial roles, not managing people but the sort of thing that keeps things moving such as making sure people are informed and that environment feels good.

Around the time of year of my annual review

I don’t think this will be long. The week has been pretty mundane with slightly more excitement over the weekend. Church meeting went without a hitch, but the comment of the life review people that they felt they had to reassess their opinions every time after coming to St Andrew’s threw Ian slightly. St Andrew’s is St Andrew’s and on Sundays, particular Theo’s baptism they are putting on a performance. They can do, in some-ways it is their default setting but the idea that you are gaining insight into how the church is by attending that Sunday is daft, unless you already know them. The impression is of a highly functional church which is largely content with where it is, maybe too many grey haired members but otherwise not doing too badly. Its true up to a point. They would have gone onto Annual Church meeting and St Andrew’s still functions on “how quick can we get to lunch” mode at such events. Then elders where I suspect they saw some real discussion and finally a church meeting where what must have appeared out of the blue the congregation were reorganising the whole committee structure. Of course it was not out of the blue, it had been around committees and actually there had been a working party busy with it while they were around, but because it was behind the scenes work, nobody was talking about it. They technically do not need to attend more but have indicated at least one Sunday of normal worship (they have not done a communion yet) and we did suggest that they came to the Breakfast which will make them reconsider again. Oh well we are now officially moving from a many committee structure to Elders and Management both reporting to church meeting with a sort of exec to coordinate what comes to Church Meeting. Also some scope on management to co-opt people who are not members of the church for a year. We will see what will happen.

Work has been busy but I was able to work around the mild migraine that came on Tuesday afternoon (helped by the fact I was officially working at home because I had something I rather do at home which had to be done for work). Well lets be honest it was my annual review preparation or SRDS. Its a fairly tedious task where I have to work through the year and decide what I want to achieve next year. Actually the second part is still to do but I will try to make some notes before I see Cliff to look at the sound system tomorrow. Otherwise it has been work as usual.

Friday I went to the Dickson’s for evening meal. We had a pleasant evening an article had been going between me and James and he was being a good editor only he put back things I had removed as corrections before.  Anyway I think I am beginning to get the stage where it is ready to go out, and I have started drafting the next one, we shall see. The next thing to consider is where to go after that. Choice between the Bible and the nature of God, don’t worry I am only trying to get across the uncomfortable otherness of God, not actually try and say “God is like” because “God is like...” always seems to end up in absurdities.

Yesterday went for a meal with Margo, she had a french exchange pupil staying with her and it was the case that my rudimentary French and sometimes she wanted really complex sentences translating like  how do you say “I was telling the dog that as she (dog) already had you stroking her she did not need anyone else to stroke her as well.” Its not the vocabulary particularly I was struggling with but stroke/pet/fondle were not in my vocabulary but the complexity of the sentence structure.  It however is an enjoyable evening. Today has been keeping quiet and catching up with my thesis.

On a dry day after much rain

Right, the supervision went well although I found it more tiring than usual, the travel just seemed to take it out of me. I was dodging showers rather than walking around in glorious sunshine but that said I hardly got very wet. Graduation seemed to be happening around Birmingham and there were quite a few people wearing gowns and having their picture took. An intriguing episode when I was going through possible papers for the thesis and a couple came in worried that their account had been deleted and therefore they could not access the email with the booking details for their gowns. I knew from experience how slow computing services are to delete such accounts, I can remember the caution that happened the first time we ever deleted any accounts. They had to not have been used for six months, not just the person had left the University. We are quicker these days but there is a generous overlap between finishing your course and your account being deleted. Anyway another chapter of the thesis has been placed as in main draft.

Then on the Thursday evening I went across to my parents hoping on the Friday to go to Martin Mere. It was quite late as I was teaching that afternoon and as it was my last day in work for the week I needed to also do the end of week tasks such as fill in my notes on what I have done that week and also write the work blog. So there were things to be done. Anyway Friday it rained, the sort of rain that you do not want to go out in and though it cleared towards late afternoon Dad was not going to be coaxed out of the dry comfort of his home although I think Mum and I were more up for it. So we spent the day inside, I had taken a bit of thesis work, mainly reading but I spent the day finishing an amigurumi sheep for a friends granddaughter. It is very different making something for a toddler and making something for an ornament. for starters I had to embroider the eyes and I was much more careful about finishing off. I put in the last of the ball of wool just in case the child does manage to pull something off as it is easily fixable with wool. The funny thing was when making it up rather than following the pattern I started thinking about how a sheep really do look and as a result the sheep had a much more life like face than the one in the book.

Saturday was fine and sunny! So we set off to Martin Mere . The journey there was uneventful but took us through Ormskirk as that was how the SatNav worked it out. The centre was by far the largest one I have been to since I went to Slimbridge while at Reading and I never really got to see around Slimbridge. There is a huge children’s playground just by the entry but it was pretty busy when we arrived and even busier when we left. The cafe was pleasant with a view overlooking one of the ponds. There are lots of ponds at Martin Mere. After coffee we went out to the nature reserve side as Dad enjoys watching birds in the wild. We saw a fair few waders and a couple of butterflies. I really do need to improve my recognition of waders. All right I got the Oyster Catchers but saw Ruff ( and did not recognise them plus other waders. I also think we might have taken the wrong set of hides for good views. We then had lunch and went to look around the collection for a bit. We really only saw about a fifth of the collection but we did get to see where the Beavers live and because we timed it for when someone is talking about beavers Mum and Dad got to feel a real beaver skin. However we did not get to see beavers as they are nocturnal and therefore not about when the visitors are there. You can see them on the Beaver Camera . Finally as we walked back we got to see the Asian otters feed. I bought myself a good quality pair of binoculars, something I have been toying with for a while and I am hoping to use them when I am up in Wigtonshire at the end of September/start of October.

We were I think all tired and though the journey back was straightforward and the SatNav decided to guide us through the back lanes of that part of Lancashire including through Parbold which was pleasant but the motorway was a major part of the journey and Mum fell asleep during it and woke feeling that she had been travelling forever when in fact it was only a relatively short spell of time, just over an hour. Motorways are monotonous and we were tired. I went home that evening so as to be able to spend Sunday working on my thesis.

This week has been quieter, with not nearly the same amount of travelling around. I saw Sarah for coffee on Tuesday. It was a useful point to catch up and think about how things are going. I think I have set myself a rather hefty challenge, in that I am going to try and write a set of short articles about Reformed Piety alongside the writing of the major chapter on Reformed Piety for my thesis. There is a tension in the Reformed Tradition between the normal inward looking nature of spirituality and the very worldly-practicality that is valued. We tend to ask what purpose do many of the spiritual practices of other traditions are and be highly sceptical when they seem to be concerned with the individual sanctity of the practitioner. In that sense the Reformed tradition actually agrees with James 2:14-25  although not seeing works as guaranteeing salvation, but rather as the necessary outcome of a lively faith. It should therefore be an interesting exercise.

Work is busy but nothing exciting at present. I am beginning to wonder what will happen at my annual review. It should be an interesting one, not because of the grade I expect but because I want to see what my boss has to say. My illness rate over the last year has been substantially lower than previous years and I have been noticeably more proactive. I suspect that because of when she start supervising me, she thought that my performance which was not bad was perhaps a bit slow for me but largely fine. There is a change and I know it and she will know it. Other than that I think I have drawn the long straw with the Royal Statistical Society chartership renewal, they have chosen to look at just the years 2012-2014 for me. Of course that is the time that will cover me getting my doctorate. I suspect it will be hard to argue that that does not constitute professional development.

This weekend I have spent mainly doing catch up on my thesis due to the fact that last weekend I was doing detailed analysis and did not get much written so not much news there unless you want to check my thesis blog . Today I went to church partly as I was doing the sound system. I seem to have a mild ear infection which made this interesting, as at times I was hearing an echo on the sound coming through the speakers. I checked with Ian Cooke and he did not hear this. The whole system seemed to be very sensitive indeed so I am wondering how much was due to the infection and how much was genuinely there.

After a larger than expected communion

Lets see if I can recall what has been happening. The first thing must be the Reformed Spirituality Conference at Cambridge. The room at Westminster was fine, the gathering select but I expected that when it had both “Spirituality” and “Reformed” on the flyer. You have to be both sympathetic towards spirituality and towards Reformed Christianity to go. That is a small subset of christians who are both interested in the Reformed tradition and in spirituality. There are different ways of constructing the subset and I come with one that I suspect has its roots in Iona that is one that alters the meaning of spirituality to fit in with the meaning Reformed, then look for how that works rather than those who try to create a “Reformed flavoured” spirituality. That said I don’t think I realised how “at home” I am with many of the things other see as distinctive of a spirituality, but that is down to my character, I am an introvert and I have a strong tendency to enjoy regular practices and low stimulus situations. I do not like entire regularity but routine is the basis on which I build the resources to respond to the chaos of life.

The conference was held at the same time as the last couple of the May balls. The result of which was that at about 10:00 a.m. at night for the first two nights magnificent firework displays happened. Fine, if as I was the second night, coming back from the pub, but I had fallen asleep fairly exhausted the night before only to be woken by what sounded like  a symphony orchestra backing a firework display and if I was more of a musician I would be able to tell you what the orchestra were playing. After the second night you could actually see the students returning home as I got up for breakfast.  

Yes that was me going to the pub, it seemed the natural thing to do with this group and normally it isn’t. I almost went the first night but was too tired/withdrawn to cope with it so went to bed. There were three students from Westminster at the conference so we ended up at a rather better class of pub than is usual for escape committees from Westminster. It also happened during a brief interlude in the wet weather so one evening we spent the evening sitting out in the pub garden. There were plenty of other people there but it was nice to be sitting outside for a change this summer.

One slight thing was I was surprised at my irritation at people who keep creating the same two or three labyrinths. The most common one tends to be Classical Labyrinth because there is a set way to draw it. The second type because it is famous is the Chartres, but the Labyrinth society has many more labyrinths,  however even that is limited. There are technically an infinite number of labyrinths based on the Classical pattern that you can draw quite easily, there is a spiral pattern which is also quite easy and actually the simplest of the Chartres style but also infinite, then there is the Chartres style which rely on transit lines and divides, there are again technically an infinity of them. This leaves us with the question why do we just stick to two of them. My response was to draw one that as far as I know has never been drawn before. It belongs to the classical family as they are the simplest to draw when you have only basic tools i.e. a pencil and a piece of paper. Sometimes I am going to have to write up how to create a classical style labyrinth as it comes to me at least with a nice set of images. I do spiral ones but rarely do Chartres style or others as I need a good clear space to do those time wise.

The weather broke on the last day and started raining which made the journey back harder to cope with especially as the last train was packed with commuters all the way. I also think I was pretty exhausted but I had a departmental meeting at work the next day so I basically just headed to bed. That evening was the Broomhill Festival dinner. I was asked I think to make up numbers as several people who were thought to be coming could not make it. I was happy to go, and they coped admirably with the fact that I was lactose intolerant despite the fact they had not been forewarned. I had told Derek who was doing the booking but I do not think he understood what I was saying, Jean Dickson also meant to remind him and I also managed to leave my lactase tablets at home. However I was very tired and I think that largely wiped out Saturday with the result I was having to write on Sunday Afternoon last week despite doing the sound at St Andrews in the morning. Sheila had found that she could not do the table elders bit so James at the last minute had to stand in.

Monday it was back to writers group and taking a piece of writing from the spirituality event. I have a second and I need to sort them both. I can’t recall anything else dramatic happening this week, work was busy and such but nothing major going on.

The weekend has had two themes running through it, thesis writing and communion service. I needed to submit my latest chapter to my supervisor this weekend and I also was table elder 2 at St Andrews.  This means I officially am supporting table elder 1.  I had dinner with the Dicksons on Friday and we arranged to meet at 5 p.m. on Saturday as contact centre was on. I need to get my head around the process of preparing because it and tidying up afterwards takes a considerable amount of work by two people and I am quite sure it should not. I made one simplification today partly because Lesley Green was taking it and that was to move the elders meeting to the committee room rather than going upstairs to the Elders room (Elders do not meet normally in the Elders room these days anyway and more and more elders are finding the stairs tricky, Lesley is older than most of them and I suspect would do also). The only problem was, because it was Lesley, James  did a thorough run through so the choir had difficulty getting hold of their books. Next change is to buy new pins for the table cloth. I know what I want and I know they will be easier to handle. We were worried over the size as Margaret had organised a trip over this weekend and therefore there were likely to be fewer members but we ended up with 43 taking communion which is the usual number.