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.