Christmas Roundup of the Year

The year has been dominated with writing up my thesis. I got into the pattern of most days writing by hand for about half an hour before I went into work. This produced the momentum to keep going as I formally typed them in each weekend. The result is that at present I have 90,000 words for a 80,000 max thesis, and two short chapters (introduction and conclusion) not even written. It is alright. I knew that there was going to have to be major edits but I needed to write to actually get some idea what was in my brain. I am hopefully drafting the introduction over the rest of the holiday season (i.e. read through what I have written, write the reason for doing the thesis and then the route that is taken). The conclusion will have to wait until I have worked through the chapters again and got them largely into their final form. The intriguing thing is that writing has been the way that I have done most of the analysis for this thesis. Another reason for the overflow was that halfway through the year the expected number of substantive chapters doubled from three to six (introduction, methodology and conclusion takes the total to nine). Unfortunately I had already written 45,000 words in the three substantive that were written and 20,000 in methodology. So an over flow was inevitable. That said it is to be hoped that I manage to finish the revision around Easter time.

The reason for that being is that I have said from Easter time I am willing to go back onto the eldership of St Andrews URC Sheffield. I have tried to keep my commitment to the congregation limited at least timewise this last year, so as to make space for writing up. I do need to be in worship at least two Sundays a month now, one as I am working the sound system and the second as I do door duty. I am also one of the table elders and will take over as senior table elder come easter, which means I really have to be making elders meeting, as I will need to chase elders for communion duties. On top of this Sarah our minister has announced that she is leaving after Easter. The way things are run in Yorkshire at present, there will not be a direct replacement for Sarah, and we will be a largely self running congregation. Actually something which due to the long vacancies in the past the congregation is facing with a fair amount of equanimity. The other thing is when I look I around I realise that there are probably as many adults under fifty attending the congregation as there has ever been in the time I have been there. This feels strange, because while the congregation is going to grow smaller, I am not sure that I can assume that the demise is as guaranteed as the older generation have always said it was.

Work wise I have moved offices (twice) and moved teams once but am officially doing the same job. That said the workload has increased out all recognition to what it was eighteen months to two year ago. I am jolly appreciative that Maths and Statistical Help (MASH) has largely taken over the handling of queries from Undergraduates and taught Postgraduates. I still seem quite a few research postgraduates, quite often these days with them seeing MASH as well, they tend to use MASH for the basic stuff and me for the depth. I am also helping MASH tutors develop their skills in helping students and it looks as if there may be more teaching. I am still working on NVivo tutorial for online. It is taking longer for me to do than I thought, basically because it takes longer to video than I expected. I can spend five hours easily on a five minute video, a lot of the time I spend psyching myself up to do it.

Writers group is still going along, it provides a place where I am off duty and among friends. I have found with writing my thesis that I have tended to write poetry. The idea that I could cope with the complexities of writing anything much longer while trying to keep hold of all the wild horses in my thesis, just seems to me impossible. A poem, often so short that it is often compared to a haiku (it isn’t, normally too many syllables, and not the right twist at the end). However I am able to concentrate on getting the words right for just that short piece of writing. My writers group have published another collection which we launched at our annual reading as part of Off the Shelf. This is the fourth or fifth collection and the third I have contributed to. Rather  more scary was the realisation that some in the group looked up to me as a writer. I still see myself as very much a beginner, the main difference is that I am better able to tell when others are writing well and when they are not. I find the act of self criticism very difficult indeed and it often surprises me what others think of as good.

Holiday wise I spent the normal extended week at Drummore, this year again in the autumn. The weather was typical British Autumn weather and it was a matter of making the best of the weather when it was dry. That said there is now a path all the way from Stranraer to the Mull of Galloway mostly along the coast. The advantage of this from the holiday point of view is that it has opened up the track towards the Mull. Jenny and Cait are both capable of walking to the Mull lighthouse but Cait finds walking back a bit too far. Dora the dog is quite happy to go walking, will cross styles and such if and only if I have gone over first. I suspect Morag going over might also get her over but Morag was finding her hearing aids difficult and spent quite a bit of time without them in.

My sister came over with my niece and nephew during the summer holidays for the day. We are still able to pull some wool over their eyes. They were willing to believe that we walked all the way across town to have coffee at the Costas in Waterstones just because we enjoyed their coffee. Needless to say the reason was their was a Waterstones and I was pretty sure that with a book token each, that Cathy and I would have time to chat while they decided how to spend them. I also went over to them and did geocaching. Cathy is very good at finding caches if she is looking in the right place but a modern GPS really does make a difference and the sort on smart phones beat the older specific technical GPS unless you are outside the range of a signal. Sam is doing well in school with all teachers happy to have him studying their subject for GCSE, his main challenge is whether he should do Music or Domestic Science. Hannah is doing well, having recently done exam for her dance classes. She is also learning the violin like Sam but where as Sam seemed to have the knack of making his early squawking sound musical, according to Cathy Hannah is not doing as well.

My parents are getting older.  My assessment is that as a couple they manage fine as each compensates for the others difficulties. Each however would struggle very much if doing it alone. The problems arise when each tries to take over the others strengths then problems arise. Today when they were out delivering Christmas Cards around the neighbourhood, Dad decided that he would do the physical delivering rather than just making sure they went in the right address. The result was that he tripped at the first house. Nothing hurt except his pride but Mum would have done it with ease.

Next year the BIG CHALLENGE is to submit and finish my thesis. The aim is to submit around Easter time but I acknowledge that is optimistic and will take a lot of hard work even if everything goes smoothly. When that is over I am going to need to do a lot of assessing where to go next. I can’t even claim that the thesis answers the questions that drove me to study originally. It has put me in a different place from which to try and move towards a solution/answer and I am also going to have to assess whether from the new position an answer looks possible.

Chatterings after messing up at communion

I am trying to remember back to the week before last, not that much exciting has happened but there are a number of plates spinning in the air that need my attention to keep them spinning and so I need to stay largely in the present.

There was a Starter Pack make up the week before last. This had not happened for a while due to the wholesaler we were using stopping delivery to groups like us. I am not sure whether this was stopping delivering for everyone or just for occasional users. Judith ended up going into Wilkinsons for things and spotted that there was a major overlap between their stock and our requirements list. However they would not deliver, but the manager changed and suddenly not only would they deliver but would not charge for delivering. We also ended up with the extra stuff being supplied being left for the next makeup. I think that at one stage when it looked as if we were short of one or two items, Jean D went to the cupboard and pulled out extras must have surprised them, but these were the left over bits from others. If they are going to deliver as they did this time, we need to talk to them in future about the order in which they deliver because they used a managers 4X4 and had to do several runs. If they are doing that, they need to split the packing so we can pack whole packs at this end.

Over the weekend I went down with a cold. Not sure where from, though someone  must have brought it into the computer centre as when I got into work again on Tuesday both the receptionists in the building were off sick with a cold. It just happened that I had a four day weekend due to my department wanting me on Friday this week. However I remained well enough to write although not well enough to cope with going out and by staying in a dealing with it I find the cold symptoms remain mild and clear more easily. Admittedly I treat with echinacea, tree tea oil and eucalyptus with drinks of whisky, lime and honey to put me to sleep.

On that Tuesday and the following one I was giving a course on SPSS again, well different ones each day. There clearly is a demand, but  the training room closed last Friday and the new one will not be available to sometime in January. We are not sure when in January but I suspect early rather than late January as the pressure for courses is mounting. I am realising that there is quite a lot of learnt helplessness in the department and I find it frustrating that quite a lot of the time I do not know who to talk to. When I deal with the people who think like me, things happen and happen very very quickly but most of the time it is like being in a fog in a maze with a number of rooms I need to get to and quite often when I get to the right room the person feels so disempowered that what they do is pass the job onto someone else. A very different department to the small one I joined almost twenty years ago. Most of the time this does not matter as I am a one person team, but that also means people do not really heed me when I speak from knowledge that I am employed to have. I am supposed to know for the packages I support, how they are used in the University. Most of them are research packages and that is easy to deal with. One is purely taught and people understand  that but two are part research and part taught. One of them is moving from pure research to research and teaching. When I said this was a taught package, the department seemed to think that I was pretending perhaps to promote it. When I actually said to a department this will not be available on managed machines because we cannot get it to work and the department got in touch with work, suddenly things were different.

The weekend was not just cold but also thesis writing, I needed to get papers to my supervisor for a supervision tomorrow. I had around 3,500 words still to write and had been making slow progress. I am pretty sure that a lot of that was nerves as the section I was writing was pulling the whole thesis together and drawing in a lot of the tangents that I had let run. The thing was that my way of doing that was to apparently take another tangent and then use it to draw in the whole thing. Actually by the time I finished it on the Sunday the writing had been exhilarating. I had a feeling somewhat like that you have when you come off a big dipper ride at a funfair. This despite the cold. Of course I find out on Monday whether I have actually done it! However I am hopeful. Unfortunately my hands started becoming sore again (I suspect a repetitive strain but not a standard one)  so it is back to the mouse pads but this time I am more familiar with them and therefore I am happier using them. The pain has largely cleared during the week.<

Thursday my parents rang as they usually do. However the phone played up as they were dialling although they got through. The phone seemed to get confused over extensions. The next day Dad was having to use an extension to get out but I managed to get that sorted but as soon as he started trying to connect the other lounge phone it cut out. The thing was he could not get control back to his handset and therefore he could not put the phone down. I could not phone in and as I could imagine Dad getting worked up I did not know what to do and was due in work. In the end contacted Age UK and they carried on checking until the line was clear. They also rang BT to check the line. It eventually sorted itself but if it had not they would have gone around. However Dad had a migraine on the afternoon. He is now using his central phone and going to extensions so as to not set that off again but I will have to try and get it sorted.

Friday evening I had a meal with the Dicksons and as it was St Andrew’s day we had Haggis for dinner with neeps and tatties. Yes it was good, Jean is a good cook and I would not expect anything else from her. Talking of haggis the Haggis Hunt is on again. The Haggis population in Scotland seems to be having a resurgence and this year all but one of the cameras (the exception being Oxford St) are in Scotland. Well there seem to be plenty of haggis around at present, normally are around the start of the season. However the main advantage is that you get to watch webcams situated in places such as Loch Ness and Inverurie. I leave you to find out where the other seven are situated but there isn’t one from the Mull of Galloway. In the run up they did have one at St Andrew’s so that might appear again later on in the season. Haggis’ have strange powers, given their size on the photographs it is amazing how rarely they are seen in life, but watch out for their ability to turn night into day as well!

Today was communion at St Andrew’s, well we did it. It started off not great when I left my keys in my flat door and exited the block of flats without them. The entrance to the block of flats locks automatically after you so when I was halfway up the drive I realised I did not have them. Came back but there was no sign that any of my neightbours were awake so I went on to church. Actually the setting up was straight forward and we for the first time managed to do it without staining the tables. Everything went well until we were halfway through serving the bread and I suddenly noticed we did not have the children back in. Too late then to do anything about it! However it upset me and I automatically reverted to Congregational praxis, NOT GOOD. I kept forgetting to serve the elders and Sarah got caught up in this too! Elizabeth kept saying “elders” during the wine stage and Sarah and I initially thought she meant to use the chalice not to serve the elders. Mea Culpa. I just got the giggles. We were very short on numbers as well, due to people away and sickness. I wonder if we are not soon going to have to stop processing in with the elements as it is becoming more and more difficult to find elders who do.When I got home I pressed the Tradesman’s entrance as I believe that rings all bells when it does not open and it buzzed so I realised it was open.