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.