On Palm Sunday with cherry blossom on the trees

As it is a fortnight and I don’t suppose that you really want to spend the next couple of hours reading minutiae of my doings (acceptable in small quantities but not in large doses), this blog will take the form of lowlights and highlights.

The fortnight started slow, as I had been struggling with a migraine over the weekend. The ones prior to this I had managed to take a short nap and then get on, this time it was belligerent and my attempts to shake it off did not work. The result when I do this is that I get well enough to be active, I am active and pretty promptly the migraine returns, I call it cycling and the only way I know to get rid of it is to stop and have a day inside where I deliberately do very little. The problem is detecting when a migraine is this sort rather than the sort a quick nap will cure. The trigger for it was the relief at having a major research bid in by the deadline (well actually it happened on the following tuesday). If the bid is successful it will mean a lot more hard work but very interesting work as I seem to be a doing major translation work between different people in the group who submitted.

Then there was March’s supervision. I seem to be fairly fortunate with the weather for my supervisions and this time was no exception with a lovely sunny day. There was the cube for Bromford Dreams . Chris Shannahan is a research fellow and Methodist minister who did his doctorate under my supervisor. He would describe him self as a contextual/liberation theologian and has been studying the way that faith connects with those way beyond the boundaries of the church. Intriguingly earlier in doing this project Martin suggested he did Martin’s Ethnography course and that was the year I gave a talk on my experiences of ethnography. I have attended one of his Urban faith forums at Birmingham and we also ended up doing the study day on writing up together. If people are interested in Chris’ work he writes a blog called “Faith in an Urban World”. There is also a Facebook group for the Bromford Dreams. He is at present looking for funding to take it further.

Sometimes I wonder how I should describe my thesis in technical terms. The small area of study is find, it is Congregational Studies, but where does that fit in the wider view of things. I am in a student in a theology department and my degree is officially a doctorate in theology. My supervisor is in that department, I had to find a degree the department offered and as there was no precise fit I opted for the most general one. If I am theologian I fall very definitely into the practical/contextual sub group. However there are alternatives that I often seem to work as well with. I spend quite a bit of time dealing with liturgy, how it is understood and such. Others of more theologically evangelical views, looking at topics allied to mine would call themselves missiologist.Then there is the actual research tradition I am working in. That seems to be a lot more orientated towards sociology particularly sociology of religion and the actual methodology is straight ethnography (it is about the only thing where I am completely within a discipline and itself is part of the reason why this is such a wide ranging study) so I can also own the label social anthropologist which is technically my supervisors core discipline. This goes without adding that the other contributors such as psychology of groups and social geography. Any label seems to miss a whole lot of the complexity of what I am studying.

Saturday Mom and Dad came over. I decided that it was time we did something different than shopped at Waitrose and then wander into town on the afternoon to see to their other shopping needs. They use Sheffield rather than Manchester for quite a while. I think partly because it is smaller but also because I know my way around and can guide them. So we went out to Old Moor RSPB site by Rotherham. It was a foggy day when my parents came over and Dad was worrying that we would not see anything as the fog thickened as we went out there. I thought that if we got there, then we could at least have a meal at the cafe and a slow walk along the paths which are smooth and flat with the odd bird flitting by. However the sun came out as we arrived and we had a glorious day. We had lunch at the cafe, I thought mum had given her order so ordered it, but when she saw what I decided to go for she decided to go for that instead. So confusion reigned for while, but I just took the steak and mushroom pie that Mum had requested which was very good. We then wandered down one of the tracks. Did some looking at sparrow farm hoping to see yellowhammers but no luck. We did see sparrows, blackbird, a chaffinch and I think some bluetits. Then in the first hide we sat down. At first dad was thinking that there was nothing of interest there but as we settled we saw a little egret, some grey lag geese, goldeneye and gadwall. There were cormorants and coots having a tiff right in front of us at the next. Then we headed back to the centre for a coffee and cake before driving home. The day worked superbly, it had just enough activity for my parents to enjoy it. I also looked at binoculars and was surprised how much difference different pairs made. I am thinking of upgrading but probably won’t until September time just before I go up to Mull of Galloway after all I do most of my bird watching there.

Work wise I have two analyses finished off, just the checking of the papers to do. This leaves me a pretty clear desk at present, although I need to spend some time brushing up on Confirmatory Factor Analysis, a technique that I think is only available in AMOS and which I will need to build the models for if this user is going to do it. It is a sad story, the doctoral student got an statistician to do the analysis and they did a decent analysis, but unlike me who knows a wide variety of subjects they had no idea that some subjects ask additional questions. This person is right in the middle of one of those and needs to do it. However the statistician never sent them the data set. I just hope that they have they are good statisticians who never throw out data (you never know when you will be asked to reanalyse it) and therefore she can get hold of it, otherwise she will need to enter several questionnaires again.

I also need to get my head down with some NVivo course development. The document is basically written and I am going through and making adjustments to it so as to get towards a final version. I should start videoing after Easter (ugh!)

With being ill I missed writers group two weeks ago but made it this last week. We are now off until 16th April and then have another ten week term. I actually enjoyed this last term very much and it has given me more confidence to write poetry from other points of view than my own and/or the all seeing narrator. Doing a couple of fantasy pieces, one as Jack Frost and one about an apprentice was great fun. The poem from a close point of view I found much harder. The final piece of term was to write a monologue with internal thoughts and I have ideas for that, or something I want to explore where the monologue would be a good way to do it. Writers group is also thinking about doing some sort of web publishing.

Today being palm sunday I went to church. Sarah had asked me on Friday if I would be there and I said I would. She also asked me to be on standby in case a reader dropped out as she had a drama for the service. I hope she puts it up on the web as it was very good, if she does it will appear Worship section of St Andrew's website but Holy week and ministers putting up stuff on the web are not a good mix. There was also an URChin service beforehand and there must have been about a five or six families there. Anyway I ended up taking a part at very short notice. In fact neither Sarah or I knew I was taking it was time to read and the person expected did not come up. So very, very short notice indeed and I was working from Sarah’s script which was not the best. The other thing was it was Mary Stark’s ninetieth birthday yesterday and she was in church today. Christina had arranged for their to be birthday cake and bucks fizz after the service. There really seems to have developed a trend of having celebrations after church when members reach a significant milestone. Dr Sloane made ninety earlier in the month but had been ill at the time so there was no church celebration. The other noticeable change is people tend to sit down for coffee, I am not finding this easy to adapt to, I have spent probably thirty years drinking coffee after church standings and I really feel uncomfortable sitting down.