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.
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