From a Snowy Sheffield

This week has been cold. That may have been a good thing as it has encouraged me to spend time indoors doing research type things. The temptation to go out for extra shopping or such just did not exist. That said I still made writers on Monday. The room was struggling to get to 18°C during writers group. This is NOT due to the thermostat but to the power of the radiator and the outside walls. I suspect it would do better if there was someone in the church or there was someone other than Jugglers in the hall. The jugglers require minimal heat and often will even then leave outside doors open. The poem I took this week was well accepted, I even got thanked for bringing it. I wonder if I should put it on my good list. The one for this coming week is just fun, I took the class exercise and wrote a piece that is quite a bit outside my normal style. I was surprised at how easy it was once I got the voice. Maybe I should try for the rest of term writing pieces in other voices.

Tuesday my body through a wobbler in the morning. I will probably register it as a migraine which is close enough. Basically not wanting to cope with things like light and sound or any other stimulus. All I need is time keeping quiet and my body will normalise and I can cope. I come out of such episodes far quicker than a migraine although they can cause quandaries for those watching. I thought I was going to have the afternoon to prepare for the course I was doing the next day and also to pick up other things only to find I was suddenly in demand at all directions at once. This included a useful contact and also another research proposal. On the evening Mum and Dad rang to say Aunty Jean (or Granny Jean for Sam and Hannah)  is coming over this summer during July

Wednesday I had a session working through a paper in the morning and then went onto teach the final course of this set. I had a turn out of 125% i.e. four said they were coming and five turned up. I told the group that they were responsible for their learning and that if they wanted something repeated, or me to go slower or such, just to ask. It proved one of the most engaged and demanding groups I have had for a long time. I finished at 4:30 but had to turn them out at 5:00 p.m. (I am pretty sure the Hicks building starts closing then). I suspect given the opportunity they would have happily stayed until 6:00 p.m.

Thursday I was in to present a review of an analysis and then to recreate a data set into Nvivo 8 which we already had in NVivo 9 and see what it brought up. This was because the people who were supposed to do it were finding that NVivo 9 was not stable on their machine. This is typical of the medical school which has a lot of under spec machines around and is not helped by QSR saying NVivo runs on machines where it clearly does not with any reliability. Anyway I hope the girls have been able to do the little bit that I left them to do.

Friday I went to breakfast, first time in a few weeks for various reasons. The numbers were down we suspect due to the cold. If you are somewhere warm, coming out even for a fried breakfast is not necessarily going to be your top priority in temperatures like those on Friday. There was a girl from Ghana asking whether England ever got warm. It is such a difficult question to answer. Yes it does but it might well not be the sort of warm you are expecting, really does not cut much ice. Anyway afterwards I went down town to basically food shop. I must admit I have a weakness at present and that is for cheap scarves that a market vendor has started selling outside Boots. Two of the stalls are staffed by girls of oriental extraction who seem to have very limited English. Anyway they sell large very fine (as in thin) scarves and always seem to have a different selection. As they are relatively cheap I normally end up buying one or two. Part of this is that after years of earache I like having a warm neck (hence to polo-neck jumpers) but the other thing is that the scarves soften what can be a rather harsh look. So at present I am playing with using them. The only problem is wine and chocolate are not the in colours at present. The rest of the day was spent on bits and pieces including doing some writing up for thesis.

Saturday was a thesis day, the morning was spent finishing the writing up from the week. There were bits of analysis to do and other things to track down. I am beginning to wonder if former Presbyterian churches are more dispersed than former Congregational ones or whether that is just a mark of how they relate to the area around the church. They feel more disconnected so they must be more dispersed. There is no evidence of an actual difference in the distance members travel to either of my placement churches. The thing was I think that St Andrews Chesterfield would be surprised at how far people were travelling to come to Herringthorpe. Feeling as if the congregation belongs to a locality does not mean that the majority of the congregation live within a mile of the church. Actually though I removed them from the analysis, some people were travelling from Retford to Herringthorpe! On the afternoon I started to put together my dataset. This thing is both boring and addictive. I thought I would stop at seven in the evening so as to do chores only to find I had continued doing it to eight! The snow started coming down early evening and continued well into the night. It was funny as it was fine snow and a lot of the time it did not look like it was snowing but it the snow on the ground kept getting deeper and deeper.

This morning I was watching to see if church was on, well waiting to see a car in the carpark. People were estimating about 6 inches for this area of Sheffield. The communion service was done on reduced numbers but the Dickson’s did two runs to get people to church bringing David, Derek, Sarah, Aileen and John as well as being duty elders. The service went well. Fortunately the Cookes offered to take Sarah and David home which meant only a single trip home. Maybe the church should buy them a four wheel drive minibus. However Mary came to St Andrews as she could walk to us but was not sure whether she could get up the hill to St Marks. the snow has been slowly thawing and is due to continue doing so until tomorrow night (see XCWeather although I have also checked the Met Office and the BBC weather forecast)