Review of the year at Christmas

Thanks for those who have been in touch and apologies that the majority of my contact is limited. Hopefully by this time normal service will resume.

When I first set down to write this review,  I had the usual feeling that there is nothing to write but there is plenty to write, but having sat down I realise that this has been a year of happening and it does not look like it will settle down for a while yet. So what was supposed to be the year that things quietened down with me finishing my thesis ended up quite eventful.

My thesis is not finished yet but at last is gelling. I hoped to get it done by Easter but with the best of my pushing I just did not manage it. I wonder now if there was more I could have done but that is wondering. I think I had underestimated the intensity of the final stages of writing. As a result it took over my brain between Easter and early summer as I tried to get it to gel and worked on the suggested changes by my supervisor. I could make the changes, and they did improve it but it did not set. I even got during August to putting it into final form, but I was not happy and indicated so to my supervisor when I sent the copy for him to read through. He agreed, suggested a major redraft and I am working through but it is at last coming together. The point which was probably most indicative was when at last supervision he asked me something and in a sentence I summarised the whole thesis. The change was to move the metaphor far earlier in the thesis and this just allows so much more use to made of it. It really is the core strand around which I build the thesis. I have just added the second important strand and now will need to pull the other strands into their respective places so the argument becomes a rope rather than tangled net.

The reason for aiming for Easter for finish was in part that Sarah Hall the minister at St Andrews was leaving there. She had had perhaps the most successful ministry of any recent minister at St  Andrews and is much missed. The congregation is missing her even more as the situation in Sheffield is in flux, and there is no plan over the long term provision of ministry for the whole city. Some of this is that locally people were waiting on synod which had the power to decide funding. However, synod felt that it was its duty to respond to local desires. In other words each was waiting for the other. As the ideas are very different and not looking towards the old system of pastoral negotiation where a combination of size and mission governed the amount of ministerial oversight you could expect, there are problems. Unfortunately much as I would have liked to be involved with finding my thesis more demanding than I allowed for at exactly the time the congregation was hoping for me to get more involved and ever so often I took on what was supposed to be a small job and then found it had a hidden demand that took three or four times the energy. By the end of June it was obvious that I was not coping and with other commitment the only way to manage church was to take a complete sabbatical.

Then early in July my mother and father went to meet up with friends at Tittesworth Reservoir which is fairly near Macclesfield. It was a warm day and dad had been off colour during the morning but on the afternoon collapsed and an ambulance was called. My mother is getting increasing forgetful with dementia and is no longer allowed to drive. So my sister got a panic phone call and had to go down to Macclesfield to collect Mum. She slept here the first night while I organised myself to get over and take up the care of Mum the next day. We went down that afternoon to visit Dad at Macclesfield and agreed he should go for angiogram at the North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke on Trent. Unfortunately it was found that dad had more wrong with his heart than they thought at Macclesfield and they kept him in at Stoke. This was bad news as with Mum’s dementia it was difficult to get her there. Initially we thought of car but it would mean that both Cathy and I would have to go on every journey, one to drive and one to keep Mum stimulated so she did not switch down, as if she would do that she would forget what the point of the journey was. Adrian, Cathy’s husband suggested train instead. This meant that one of us could take her as we could give her our whole attention on the train. It was still a full day for every single visit. With Dad likely to be in hospital for longer we had to decide on longer term care for Mum. In the end we ended putting her for respite care in a home near my sister. My Dad joined her when he first came out of hospital. They were not happy there and got home as soon as they could and function much as they did before although we are trying to get them to keep a slightly higher level of care than they have.

Work wise I am still in the same job as I have been for over twenty years. It has changed many times. I work far more as research support for various groups. At the present these seem largely to be in Human Nutrition, Linguistics, Landscape and Medical Education. You will notice that I manage to cover three faculties in that. One irony is if you had asked twenty five years ago my parents which daughter would do research into human nutrition, they would have replied without hesitation my sister. Quite a lot of the stuff I am presently involved in falls broadly under the heading of food security. This looks both at the stuff around food poverty here but also at long term sustainability. With linguistics I partly support the users of statistics and I also deal with users who are using NVivo software. NVivo support is much like SPSS support was twenty years ago. Maybe in ten years time people will be using quite happily on their own but at present there is a lot of hand holding and people think of me as more skilled than I actually am.

I finally got a holiday in November. This was booked in the summer when I thought I would submit at the end of October. However with needing to redraft it was clear I would not. Also I had booked a cottage close to where my God family were living. Unfortunately their whole household disintegrated in September so none of them are now living near there. Even with this I decided that I needed a holiday and went. It was superb. I spent a lot of time exploring some of the more lonely birding sites in the area that are good in the autumn and then coming home to a real fire. Of course I had to set the fire up in the morning but I found that doing that gave me something to look forward to each evening.

Cathy, Adrian and their children still seem to be doing fine. Adrian is happy enough provided that he has enough work coming in. He does not like being idle. Sam is in his first year of GCSE and had great difficulty in choosing which subjects to stop as all his teacher thought he would do well at their subject. Hannah is doing well, enjoying dancing and is getting into the top years and starting to think of high school. Cathy was absolute brick during Dad’s illness. She took over all the organising of financial matters which left me able to spend time with Mum without having to worry over finding somewhere to look after her.

Writers group is doing well. We have done a couple of readings this year, one as part of the Broomhill Festival. The person who booked us was surprised at how professional a group we were. Not only was a programme developed but we also had everyone on strict time limits and finished on time. Then there was our annual reading for the Off the Shelf which is getting more and more professional. This year I organised a sound system. I could have connected up some metal boxes and it would have worked as well. That is not to say it did not work, it did but at a psychological level as people largely did read close enough for the microphone to pick them up and people were not confident moving the mic so it was close to

Since the holiday  it has been back to the usual routine and getting the thesis sorted. I have at present three chapter in supervisor draft, I hope to get another two before the end of the Christmas break and maybe start on a third. I am spending Christmas with my parents and we will be going up to Cathy’s for Christmas day.

A long with submitting my thesis next year will also be my parents golden wedding if they both survive. Not quite sure how we will celebrate has still to be suggested.

Reporting on the last couple of months

Dear All

I am final writing another chattering. I am afraid until my thesis is finished they will be intermittent as it will depend on me having some time to spare to write a letter. As you might have gathered, if you follow my thesis blog, I ended with more editing on my thesis than I expected. The thing being that a major restructuring was required. This was not the dire news it could have been, I already had the feeling that the thesis though written just did not cling together. So the whole of October was spent firstly regrouping and reorganising my thesis, then starting to edit the chapters again. I have redrafted two chapters and am on the way with a third. There really is more on my thesis blog.

Otherwise work has been busy. I found myself carrying more and more tasks in work. I have been trying to keep on top on NVivo training that the University of Sheffield asks. I am afraid that I am not finding enough time to do this as I would like. I am not sure I will ever be able to meet the demand and I seem to become an expert by virtue of nobody else being willing to tackle it. I seriously question whether this is the right way to tackle it.

I am also keeping up with the work from Human Nutrition, this year we are hoping to do some research on Food Banks particularly with respect to the fact that the increase has been exponential in the last year. It is to try and discover how food bank provision is seen by the people who use them. The work I have been involved has shown that homeless people have aspirations to a better diet but the need to get the calories in trumps that. However there is also a culture around food and that can lead to provision being, “unhealthy”, in that the easy improvements would be unpopular with users.

There is also work around sustainability. I am also developing a close cooperation with the department of Linguistics, this is slow but sure. Perhaps one of the more unusual applications of statistics although I know there has been people applying these techniques to the authorship of Paul forever! However the number of statisticians that have actually been involved is low and there is a tendency to use sophisticated techniques when people have not understood simpler ones. There is now a seminar running and a group of about four researchers I see regularly. The final group is a number of researchers from Landscape and Architecture.

Many of them are doing quite complex work and often around the same themes. I have had to refer one of the Architecture students to landscape as what she was doing was very similar to Landscape work in approach although in a different area. Her own department tackled similar issues but took a different approach.

At the end of October my writers group had its annual reading as part of Off the Shelf .It was a good evening and the reviews we got from it were good. I think the fact that we had a reading in the summer helped as we were all up to performing. For some reasons, the fact that I supplied a portable sound system meant that people projected their voice better. The sound system was there but many did not use it. I also think we set the standard higher each year. This showed with the amount of effort we put into choosing the pieces to read. We used to accept what people brought but now Neil (our tutor) starts it with giving instructions on what makes a good piece to read and more attention in the rehearsal is given to the suitability of pieces.

On the Sunday before I got away on holiday my loo valve decided to leak water into the cistern. This meant I had to get a plumber out. In the end I found a firm called Aquagas who came out. They not only stopped the leaking that evening, over the next couple of days the plumber came out several times to get the loo working properly. Due to a lot of misadventures he ended up replacing the innards twice (everything decided to go) and in the end given the time and energy he spent on it, the charge was very reasonable. He kept going until he got it right.

The holiday was supposed to be the one for after submission. In some ways there was a real temptation to not go on holiday as I needed to write; however it was increasingly obvious that I was very tired and that I struggling to keep going. In other words even though I had not submitted I needed a break.I went up to stay in a cottage owned by the person who I have B&B with when I was visiting my God-family. My God-family is no longer there and anyway it was obvious from New Year I would near more space to myself. The cottage I booked was the Auld Smiddy. It is a really well equipped cottage. There was a slight problem with the central heating, nothing that I could not handle. The owner went away at the weekend, and I worked out even if it went completely there was no problem. There was an electric shower, kettle, modern wood fire, two electric heater and a paraffin heater. So without it I would be warm and able to wash. The kitchen was better  equipped than my own at home. There was a sun porch that looked over the fields past another cottage and over the sea to the Isle of Mann. During the week apart from crows and blackbirds that were there every day, I saw in the field: a fox, several rabbits, roe deer, sparrow hawks and a flock of redwings.

Port Patrick

Further a field there was pretty good birding, saw barnacle geese, a red kite, an egret, mergansers, pochards and kestrels. These are just the ones I could recall. I actually found that one of the reasons I liked birding was that I liked the reason to be out in the spaces that it took me to which were wilder than you would think of if you were just touring the area. The places I found were Crook of Baldoon , Wigtown Bird Hides which are down by the Harbour in Wigtown and look out over Wigtown Bay Reserve and finally North of Stranraer I found Wig Bay (that is the best link I can find ) which is World War II causeway that runs by the edge of the bay and gives views of the birds feeding at the sea edge. The wider view is not spectacular as it looks over to Stranraer and Cairnryan. Coffee is available at Soleburn Garden Centre . I also walked for a bit along the cliffs at Port Patrick but there were mainly gulls to see and I am no good at identifying gulls.

I found having a real fire was good. It was not just that it made the cottage lovely and warm but that as I reset it every morning I always knew that I had that to come back to in an evening and look forward to.  I am not sure whether I would feel the same if I had one at home but on holiday with long dark evening it made something to look forward to. I therefore did a lot of reading, not for thesis but books that had been on my to read list for far too long. Only one finished but I did start a second and found one left by another visitor called Skyward by Mary Alice Munroe. It is light, it is fairly predictable but it was enough to get me hooked into the story so that I went and bought it on Kindle when I got home so I could finish it. Unfortunately the storyline I was really interested in was not well concluded but there was still plenty to entertain.

I came back this last week and have been picking up the pieces of normal life in Sheffield. So far I seem to have more energy

In the lull before the final push to submission

I am getting this written before I put my head down next week for the final submission of my thesis. For the most part I have not been working on it although today I started to read through and I really should have done a full read through before my supervision on Wednesday so I need to get a move on. It has been odd not having it to work on whenever I had the energy but quite a bit of time has been filled with social commitment of one sort or another.

The Monday after my last blog my writers group got together for one of our socials. We have maybe three or four a year at odd spacings. Usually two of them are like this one, just a pub night together outside term time.  We have one after reading as part of Off the Shelf which is again at the Bank Street Arts  on Friday 25th October. I hope that thesis does not take over too much before I get there. The group is now up and functioning for this term. We are full with members who came last term and have not had the usual drop out. One of our members had found an anthology produced by the group before any of the current members joined. It showed us that the WEA used to sponsor books and secondly that a friend I thought had been in the group actually had.

The week after that I went over to join in a family celebration for Cathy and Adrian’s eighteenth wedding anniversary.  It was held at a Chinese Restaurant and we ordered a banquet for most of us but individual dishes for my nephew and niece. This was partly to make sure they ate something but it was also to supply them their favourites. Sam’s was a noodle dish while Hannah wanted the deep fried chicken dumplings. Try finding the second on a menu of a normal Chinese restaurant but Cathy had a brainwave and ordered her sweet and sour chicken with the sauce separate. I think I might try Sam and the local noodle bar when they are next over. My Uncle insisted on paying although I had arranged with Adrian that I and he would pay 50%. We thought this would balance things.

On the following Tuesday  I went back over to spend the day with my Aunt and Uncle and my parents. We went to Styal Mill which is what the picture is of. We got a ploughman’s meal from the restaurant and then went to book tickets for the Apprentice house as I felt that a trip around the mill would be too much for Mum and Dad. Dad still tires easily. He managed to walk down the hill to the mill but after lunch was quite prepared to sit while the rest of us walked around. Mum at one stage was asking where Dad was, I think actually meaning to ask where Uncle Charles was, but not quite getting there even after being told Dad was sitting next to her, when she started asking where Harry was.

This weekend I went to York for a meet with a number of posters on Ship of Fools. One of the long serving host was over from Canada. We went to the Ask restaurant for dinner including this little fellow who is sat by a glass on the table. In York, the Ask restaurant is in the Assembly rooms. This is a huge hall building with really impressive decoration. The sort of place where you get asked whether the marble is real or painted. Quite a few of us also made it to evensong at York Minster before the meal. It was a good evening although the echo-ey nature of the hall (possibly a good thing when they were Assembly room) meant that the conversation across the table was limited.  There was a minute of confusion when we realised that the person booking the table was not there and we did not know what name the table was booked under. Somehow “ship of fools” did not seem likely, none of us could remember the person who booked actual name (as opposed to their shipname). When we looked at the list it was obvious which, but we then turned to ask a couple behind us if they had that name! They answered “Yes” and looked relieved which must have confused the restaurant staff even more. It was saved in the name of the host who had come from Canada, and none of us had met him in real life previously.

Work is very busy at present with more than enough to keep me going. Indeed I may be taking a thesis day on Wednesday to see my supervisor but I will also be doing work for work on Friday which is normally my day off.

I seem to at present have a fascination with the way the Autumn is coming this year. This is a picture I took tonight on my way to Evensong. As far as I could tell all the trees in the right hand side of the picture were the same species and are planted along the road. The trees on the left are actual the end of a separate group that is planted along a path. Yet one of the trees has turned a brilliant orange while the rest seem to be staying green. I did not notice the dark leaves on the left which may be a similar phenomena.

Time I think I wrote another chatterings.

Leaf in the Gardens at Dunham Massey,
shades of autumn

Well Dad survived surgery, and he went to join Mum at Shawside at the very start of August, Basically so that he had time to recover somewhat before they went home. Dad lost track of time somewhat so we had to keep reminding how long he had been in Shawside. After barely a week, he was sure he had been there a fortnight. Anyway just before my sisters birthday and at barely a fortnight they came to their own home. 

We put in someone to come in every day, partly to clean, to be around while Mum bathed twice a week and to also give them some social interaction each day. We also organised for them to order meals from Wiltshire Farm, for them to give an order to Help the Aged for Sainsburys  (you phone it through rather than do it over the internet) and also for an alarm to be installed. Mum and Dad have very assiduously since been finding reasons to get rid of the help. I think, the daily person in might have continued longer, if she had not surprised Mum and Dad one Sunday before they were up. It left Mum feeling very uncomfortable. The installation of the alarm was not done well. They succeeded in almost cutting through the phone line. Ruth, thankfully went around and sorted so the phones were work. Dad eventually got his computer man out to fix the computer. They are now back in full communication.

However,once Mum was is Shawside I did find time to get on with my thesis. So when at the end of July I saw my supervisor he felt I could still submit by the end of October. However to do that I needed to get a decent/proof copy of my thesis to him by 16th September. For me getting from Second Draft to Proof draft was very intense. On one level all the corrections suggested by my proof readers needed to be dealt with. On the other there was still quite a bit of sorting out what was being said and getting it clear in my hear. I needed for instance to draft an abstract. The thesis has a limit of 80,000 words, the abstract is 200. Condensing the central ideas into 200 words was challenging to say the least. I could have done it in 500 with ease. Then there were details to check such as the Bibliography. I spent two whole days just working through nearly every single reference and checking that I had the right information in the Bibliographic database and then making sure I had that information in the Bibliography. Finding out that I could not easily include originally published  information and so had to produce the Bibliography and then manually add all that information was a pain. However not half as much a pain as would have been doing the Bibliography from scratch by hand. It went on for twenty pages when I had finished. That is not all the books I read towards this thesis, just all the books I referenced. Were I to try and include all I read then it would be twice that length. There is a couple of books that I may need to include, but the vast majority of the rest were interesting excursions that helped my exploration, but not necessary to the argument.

Anyway despite printers malfunctioning and post offices being closed I got it posted on Thursday morning by special delivery. It has at least been signed for, and I hope that it gets to my supervisor by tomorrow.There is a slight snag in that I sent it to his official address at Birmingham and not to the building where his research office is. I never know quite how to deal with University post. Sometimes is all seems to go through a central office, at other times individual buildings get deliveries. So I am hoping it has got there. 

When I had got it off in the post I took sparkling wine and snacks into work that afternoon. It seemed the right thing to do. When I formally submit I will be in Birmingham, I will be in Birmingham for my viva and I expect that when I finally send in bound copies I will also be in Birmingham. So this was probably the one time people in work would be around to celebrate. I now see my supervisor on 2nd October and then it is my head down for submission. I just hope that neither he, nor my final proof reader finds major problems with the thesis. I am aware of a lot of niggles that need sorting and suspect that there is some expansion of the conclusion, but I hope that on the whole everything is good enough for a doctorate.

This last weekend I have been over to my parents. I was officially bringing the car back plus it was my Birthday. Yesterday worked well, I arrived just before lunch time having done a shop at Waitrose so as to bring something over for today. The journey over was pretty smooth although the traffic delay at Hollingworth was bad, not the worst I seen it, I can remember delays right through Glossop but still pretty bad. However though busy the M60 was pretty straight forward. We almost turned around and went out so got to Dunham Massey for lunch at the restaurant. They are building a new visitors centre there which looks interesting. I suspect we would still go out to it. Afterwards,we went for a walk around the gardens. Well a bench crawl around the gardens. In fairness to my parents they had been on a walk to the local shops that morning.

Today Mum and Dad were tired. Although Mum cooked a roast chicken for lunch and we ate it, Dad went up to bed shortly afterwards as he was that tired. Mum was also showing signs of tiredness and when I got in this evening and run back Dad and Mum had gone back to bed.

Catching up while not attending Tramlines*

This is a catch up and I well aware it is at least six weeks since I wrote. I have had a bad attack of real life and my online activity has therefore been curtailed. Thus I have a couple of big stories.

At the time of last supervision about a month ago, I sat down and realised that I had just not made the progress I needed to on my PhD during the last month. There had been a lot of events at Church that had pulled me in and when I was involved had turned out to be bigger than I expected. Events such as a wedding at the Church and the anniversary service. Often what I had hoped would be a short involvement turned into a full day one. There were several things going on, I was getting over tired with trying to keep my thesis going, work and with church involvement. There also seemed to be a rule that the more I did the more people found for me to do. I was obviously not keeping boundaries well. So last supervision I decided I had to take a sabbactical from church. This was partly aided by the fact that I had a submission date of the end of October so it was time limited.

Still I did not manage to stand back as quick as I think people thought I should. A fortnight after this there was a communion. There are nine serving elders at St Andrews, of them for that communion there were only three available. All the rest had legitimate reasons for being absent including operations, big academic conferences and family weddings. Normally within a URC this would not be a problem but at St Andrews the ritual requires at least six elders at present. That meant that I was recruiting non-serving elders. There are difficulties with this, non-serving by virtue of being non-serving are not as familiar with the ritual as serving and also tend to be older. The result was that I made a decision that on this occasion we would drop the processing of the elements in. I did debate quite late on if the two table elders might process just the chalice and the bread roll but by that point it was really too late to change. It worked but it required input from me.

Having got that over with on the 7th July I was looking forward to the next weekend being a quiet one when I could get on with my thesis.

On the 9th July I went home with a migraine from work. Unusually for me coming on during a consultation. Maybe something to do with the heat as it was a very hot day. Anyway slept until my sister rang to say that Dad had collapsed and been taken into hospital in Macclesfield. Cathy was at my parents waiting for Mum to come. I said I could not make it that evening but that I would try and get over by the day as soon as possible. The rest of the evening was a mix between trying to organise things and going around to visit my friend Margo. I rang my sister to let her know to get me on my mobile but she did not answer. She rang back later to say she had had to pick Mum up from hospital in Macclesfield.

Around 11:00 a.m. the next morning I managed to get over as I needed to do some phoning to cancel things. It turned out that Cathy had had barely three hours sleep as Mum had become disorientated and could not work out why Dad was not there.

We got some lunch and then went to Macclesfield hospital. At the time the doctors there thought that dad had an artery that was colluding and that if he went for an angiogram at Stoke (they did send people to Manchester hospitals but it would mean waiting for a space while at Stoke they would do it immediately). So with that in mind I took over the care of Mum and Cathy went up to her family. For those who do not know Mum has early onset dementia and can get quite confused, however having seen Dad again and with the idea that he might be out by the weekend she seemed to calm down somewhat.

The next day was busy just with ordinary things for Mum. Her minister came around, we went out for a walk had lunch and then Mum’s hairdresser came around to cut her hair. I then ran her a bath. Then a phone call came from Dad. It was unclear and all I really gathered was that something had happened when he had gone into Stoke. So I rang Cathy and asked her to find out what was going on. About two hours later Cathy rang back. It had taken her that much time to track down where Dad was in the Health Service and what was going on. The story was when they did the angiogram they found that far from it being a single artery that it was multiple arteries and his heart valve was in poor shape as well.  The doctors advice was that he should have open heart surgery as soon as possible and that they were not happy with him going home. Therefore he was now in Stoke waiting surgery.

Dad refused to give permission to have further surgery until he had talked with the family. Stoke is not the easiest place to get to from Stockport. In the end we managed to organise for Mum, Cathy and I to go down on Saturday. Adrian, Cathy’s husband came up with the brilliant idea of going by train. The big problem with a car is that Mum tends to dose in them and really can be quite cross when she wakes because she does not remember why she is travelling. With the train Cathy and I were able to interact with her the whole time which meant that she did not go through the crisis of sleeping and forgetting. However during the afternoon it became quite clear that I was stressed out having got about six hours sleep the last two nights as mum woke several times during the night and always needed reassurance. 

With Dad needing an operation and needing time to recuperate we needed to rethink. The eventual decision was to put Mum in a home for respite care. The minimum time this would be for was four weeks. It would have to be a home near my sister so she could keep an eye on Mum. Until we could set that up I would take care of Mum. Mum broke down and wept when we left the ward but by the time in the train could not remember than she had been to see Dad.

On the Monday Cathy went to look around several homes. On the tuesday I had a doctors appointment myself which I did not want to postpone. So my sister came over, collected Mum and took her to see the home she felt was best while I went over. It gave me a break. I did not drive particularly fast but just having time in the four walls of my flat was good. I saw the doctor and did some sorting out. By Tuesday we had seen the home but Mum desperately wanted to see Dad and could not remember the visit on Saturday so I took her on Wednesday.

Thursday we moved Mum to the home near Cathy. It was hard and made more difficult that I could not focus. We had not yet heard the date of Dad’s operation although they had said end of that week, start of next. We left mum in tears but we both knew that unless we went the tears would not stop. It was hard.

I stayed with Cathy a while not wanting to drive far after the emotion of that event. Sitting in the garden talking with Sam and Hannah was a complete antidote to the intensity of sitting my mother. Mum is perfectly capable if only she remembers what she is doing. Just as I was leaving Cathy got a phone call from Dad to say his heart surgery would be the next day. Cathy rang the home to tell them

Cathy got rung at six to ask whether Dad had died by the home. They had found Mum at 5:00 a.m. sat in her chair cuddling a teddy and weeping her eyes out because she was convinced that Dad had died. Otherwise Friday was a waiting day. Dad only went down for his operation about 4:00 pm and we only knew he had survived after 7:00 pm.

The rest of the weekend has been spent quietly in my flat trying to get the introduction to my thesis almost finalised. Dad seems to be progressing much as the doctors expect, he was slightly confused tonight. Mum is packing and unpacking at the home. As long as that keeps her busy and she is not getting too distressed I am not too worried. We left the suitcase visible so she would know that stay was not permanent. There is some difficulty over contacting her as the mobile phone that she uses keeps loosing the signal.

*Tramlines is a music festival that happens most years in Sheffield; until this year it has been free and largely still is but some events are now charged for. As far as I am concerned it is mainly an inconvenience with music audible when I want to go to sleep and town difficult to get around.

On Trinity Sunday 2013

Work wise I have been busy, there has been teaching statistics to Linguistics and slowly dealing with them. It has been time consuming on the whole and taken up more than I expected particularly as I had to learn R. Now R is not easy to learn, rather in its raw form it is a bit like finding your way around an unknown city where you have to ask strangers directions and there is no map. The problem is that you often do not know what is the next piece of information you need. Most software on the other hand has both your very detailed instructions and also menus that work some thing like a satnav and yes you can end up arriving in totally the wrong place if you just use them. Yes I can make it dance when I want to, but how much do I want to? Well maybe my need for a decent graphics package will encourage me to see if I can at least learn enough of it to draw good graphs! It has some quite sophisticated graphics tools. There is also a new system for booking courses that some groups are using. They want me to look at it but make the date for a Friday which is my day off. Then I have been busy with Human Nutrition, one paper has just been published but had a very efficient main researcher, one paper about to be submitted, in the end we called off trying to analyse the data in different ways and finally there is one paper where I and the other data analyst do not agree on figures. I am also trying to negotiate the setting up of extra NVivo courses.

I am also slowly being inducted into the chaplaincy. I have so far got through synod, had the talk with this years coordinating chaplain (Peter Cullen), got an SRB check form filled in and also had a request for my username so they could give me access to the shared drive. The chaplaincy is a lot bigger than it was when I was last in this role, oh and it is weird because I am both the newcomer and also experienced hand. Setting up for communion a couple of weeks ago I recognised the cloth they were using and I made a comment about being able to change how it was gathered as they were struggling to get it onto the communion table. Then promptly started untying the knot. The comment came back “Do you know this piece of cloth?” It is just like the question of how the pebbles came from St Columba’s Bay Iona, well I picked them up put them in a rucksack, then gave them to my parents to bring back. The thing that really gave me deja vu was the first communion back in the Octagon Centre. I struggled to get in due to building works but when I did, there in front of Meetings Room 1 was Cat the Methodist Chaplain and a whole lot of students, standing around just as the chaplains used to before Thursday’s communion. No communion is not back in Meetings Room 1 but for a while I really just accepted it was. Unfortunately I am not getting to the away day as it clashes with my next supervision.

Church wise I think things are settling down at church, I am trying to find out where I fit as I am finding it is not to the place I left. This is not due to a shortage of suggestions. I think at times they would like me to do far more that I am capable of. Some of the things are simple, the choir tried to recruit me, but I knew a prior commitment to the sound desk ruled that out and I get slightly worried about a choir that wants to recruit me. The other thing is in some ways Sarah prepared St Andrew’s too well for being without a minister. I am having to run a mild campaign to persuade them that being without your own minister does not mean being without any ministerial coverage and that there are ways that we may have a share of a minister. The problem is that as they do not believe they will get anything out of any discussions they are at present quite wary of discussions. They also are finding that Bob Heathcote’s approach which is to listen first and then propose difficult to understand. They want something that they can deal with and conceptually I think the idea of a collaboration has not been thought through. They want a detail so they can see how it might work. I struggle with this having been in various styles of groups of churches until I came to St Andrew’s. I suppose if you have only experienced one minister to a church model then anything else feels like a foreign country. There are plans for the anniversary service on 23rd June and there is a Mission and Care group in July. This month with the third Sunday being Pentecost and therefore a joint CTBB service I decided I would work that Sunday and go this Sunday. However next month is going to be tricky indeed with me really needing to be there for all Sundays plus some time on one Saturday.

Writers group has been going again which is good, it has become a place where I feel I am among friends and I concentrate on other things than thesis. At present we are partially preparing for the Broomhill Festival Reading where some of us including myself are performing. I am beginning to realise that I am getting to be write more competently, especially when people comment on how good the material is that I plan to read. Choosing it was difficult as I was holding back some of the material I have written for the reading in the autumn. At first people were hesitant to join in so we asked another group called the Tuesday Poets if they would join us. Now there are plenty of volunteers but the Tuesday Poets have given us male voices and as all the writers in the group at present are women this was something we lacked.

Finally thesis for those who do not read my thesis blog. Well I have now submitted possible second drafts for all my substantive thesis chapters to my supervisor. One of them needs quite a bit of work but I am actually quite pleased with the other five. I am hoping that I can get the work done tomorrow. There is then just my introduction, methodology and conclusion to get to the same state. The introduction I think is fairly close to there, the methodology needs cutting by 50% and I have not written a word of my conclusion. The game plan is to do this over the next month or so. Then it is proofing in earnest. less Jean

Maybe Summer has finally come

Let me start with church, last one was written just afters Sarah’s leaving service, there was six inches of snow on the ground and yet maybe 200 people turned up to bid her farewell. Now I let the cat out of the bag, that was not her last service. Her actual last service was a week later and was Easter Communion. I was table elder 1, which means I was in Anglican speak master of ceremonies. That is I have to make sure we have everything we need and that everyone knows what they are doing and is happy doing it. Saturday set up was very quick indeed particularly as we were in, in the morning and the polishers were not in until the afternoon. That however did mean that we needed to be early to setup on the Sunday.  For some reason wine decided it was not going to behave. The open bottle of non-alcoholic was off, I then managed to pour an extra tray of it (had to be chucked) and finally the chalice got over filled, and a wine glass got dropped. I was just glad we were as low a tradition as we were. Having to wash the large linen table cloth in cold water and then dispose of water reverentially is beyond the lengths that I am ready to go to. There was of course the formal farewells to Sarah after communion with things being presented.  One incident to recall, St Andrews had decided to give Sarah a bread knife as a reminder of her time in Sheffield. However Sheila who was doing the presentation was not prepared to give it to Sarah unless Sarah gave her something in return so that the knife would not cut through the relationship. Only thing is that Sarah like most ministers in clerical gear did not have anything on her. so I ended up lending her 10p! I then had to send the 10p up to the collection as Sheila started wondering what to do with it!

The Sunday after was quieter, it was low Sunday and Sarah had left the previous week. There was still a good turnout and I was able to get a decent number of people for a greetings video to be sent to Southampton for Sarah’s induction. It was as if only once she had gone that people were ready to do that. There being only one week between that meant I suspect a number of people who would have liked to did not get to make a recording because they were away that week. Organising it was very simple really, there were obvious opening and closing shots and then I tried to arrange things so that things were well mixed up between, so mix of greeting lengths, persons and styles. I also only had to edit one video more than cutting off my prompt at the start, and that was for a double reasons: it was too long and it was too personal. Anyway thanks to NCH Videopad  I was able to combine them that afternoon and send them off to various people I knew were involved in the arranging of the induction.

The following Sunday was the date Sarah was inducted to her new charge at Southampton. It was also the first thesis weekend I got in five weeks so I missed out both on going to Southampton and on the video locally. However as the Video link was to the Jesus Centre just across the road from my flat when I looked out at 3:30 pm the carpark opposite was full! Today I heard that they had around twenty to see. The link was not as good as it could have been.

Today it was quiet, with a small congregation. We will see what the weeks ahead bring. At present our Management Team have lots of enthusiasm, in some ways I am happy for them to have their head as long as they do not expect me at present to do anything really substantial. We will see what the weeks ahead bring.

The next thing I will turn to is work. This has been busy, even more so than usual as I  have been teaching a course on Statistics. I do not usually even claim to teach statistics.I advise but I leave the teaching to others. It also involves me in learning a new statistics package. Now that is something I do do, but this time the package is R. I know on the surface I should get on with it. I do like programmy packages and there is part of me that still hankers for the interface of GLIM. Heck I was so fluent in Glim that I basically did monte-carlo tests in it at one stage. That is so far out on the left hand side that most people just would not think to do it. Then give me Genstat and I will manage to get it to dance actually I can get SPSS to but that is due to familiarity. R as I said should suit me. However the more I investigate the more cautious I am coming. The pressures on Open Source packages have sometimes led to them implementing non- open source options.  Anyway the first session I was just not communicating and was trying to think why. The second session I got a lot further with.

I am also starting to work out how I will work with the chaplaincy at the University. There is a difference between before Sarah and now both in the structure of the chaplaincy and also in how I am appointed. I am not keeping a seat warm for someone else this time. There is no sign that there will be someone else, so it is in part up to me to try and sort out how things happen. Otherwise I have at least one paper where I need to sit down and sort out what happened. Hopefully I will get chance to do that in the second half of this week after I have done the third session of the teaching.

Then there is thesis. I am working at the rate I expected but there is more redrafting than ideally I would like. My supervisor was slightly surprised with the time I quoted between going from draft unproof-read to full proofread  draft but then I gave him what I was basing my estimate on. He then realised that simply because I am so much more used to getting my pieces proof-read thank you James and Ruth, that I may actually have a time advantage. This reminds me that at some stage I have got to look up the details of how the files need presenting for submission. I have quite deliberately also not done much styling within Word, as I know that when I come to do the final submission I will need to style according to the way the University of Birmingham wants it. Now this is where my computer literacy comes in. I am used to applying styles to the whole document and therefore I tend to first write the document and only bother about layout at the end. Anyway I now have a possible names for my examiners. I think I am going to see if I can celebrate my Birthday by submitting on it.

After Sarah's Leaving Do

First of all I went to a conference on “Opening the Gates to Heaven” which was held in Northampton at a Youth Conference centre on a business park. Northampton is an odd place to get to by train. My checking of tickets suggested that it would cost me over £120 to pay for a six hour journey. They insisted on either sending me by a whole host of local services or going into Birmingham and out. I do realise now that it might have been possible to book advance fare to London and then get another train out. However given that it is 3 hour drive at my speed (I know other people could have done it in just over two) and that car hire was around £40 there really was no competition even with petrol on top (another £30) the hire was quicker and cheaper. There should be a map of Britain where the towns are spaced according to the rail fares charged between them. It would be very interesting to see. The actual conference was a fairly URC affair. It was organised by an interested group based at one church in London with some support from the Faith and Order group. It was open to all, although I think I was the only person who was not either formally trained or in training to be a leader of worship (thus a mix of ministers and authorised lay preachers).

The conference had two main speaker and about five people giving short talks. Actually Yorkshire was one of the better represented Synods but we did seem to be mainly lay preachers. Really as most of our lay preachers are elders we should change the name.  The problem I have is that worship leaders seem to be worrying about what they are saying, and not by what people are hearing. The fact is that what worship leaders “say” and what people “hear” are not identical because while a worship leader may be clear in their own minds of their intentions, the hearer starts out with a different set of experiences which means they may understand what you are saying in a different way. There is a cartoon I recall of a short cleric who had gone into the a high pulpit with a sermon on a long piece of paper. All the congregation could see therefore was the top of his head and the scroll of his notes flopping down the outside of the pulpit. His opening words were “Today I would like to talk to you about communication...”. If you add to that the Reformed bias that says “Get your theology right and your worship will follow”, then I am not sure you will go anywhere. The trouble is my thesis is persuading me there is quite a bit of truth in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi"or that as we pray, so we believe and so live (which is a rough translation). However if that is the case then you need to find how people experience prayer.

Thesis is on the whole going well although maybe not as quick as I would like. I have two chapters in second draft and therefore they have gone to my proof readers. I have another chapter which I hope is in second draft after my supervisor asked me to revise it and another that I have just started redrafting but I think I know where I am going with it. The big problem is getting the time slots required to do redrafting. I need at least a day to get any work done and better still if I can get most of two or three consecutive days to work on it. Whereas when I was doing first draft I could spend short spell because I was writing small pieces. Second draft is far more about rearranging the pieces so as to create something that is more structured and makes an interesting argument rather than pure description. I write detailed description first and while I am doing so the theory is forming in my mind, so I then need to go back and do some pretty major restructuring. Once accepted into second draft however there is little point in major restructuring. I have to do some on one of the chapters but the other I would prefer to leave alone.

At work I seem to have taken on quite a bit of teaching. I have done two sessions on NVivo for Linguists. These are mainly masters and I suspect doctoral students who are doing their research training year.  I am having problems in keeping up with the training needs of the University on this topic. Then I am also teaching with MASH  a course for Linguistics (yes same department but a different area) on using statistics. The basic idea is to give them enough skills to not feel daunted by the statistics in papers. Linguistics as a subject is rather peopled by individuals who were glad to get rid of maths at GCSE. The fact that they find themselves now in a subject that is increasingly using statistics and complex statistics at that is frightening for them. The big thing from my perspective is that I am having to learn R as that is what most linguists use. This is not the easiest of statistical packages to use. However unlike medics the Linguists seem to think that using a package that is capable is more essential than having one that is easy.

The weekend before last I went over to see my parents. This was simply an over one evening and back the next but if I did not do that I realised I would not be getting until I submitted my thesis. Therefore it was a matter of taking the time out. Hopefully my parents will be over next month. We went for a walk in Lyme Park, hoping to see hares but the weather was so bitterly cold that after all of a hundred yards we returned to the car and went in search of a cafe for a warm drink. Dad is beginning to work through the stuff that needs doing as if anything happened to him, then Mum would struggle by herself. Together however they work very much as a team, with Dad remembering what needs doing and quite often Mum doing it. However Dad has never been the most proactive at contacting people and sometimes being almost as slow as reluctant as his father who would rather do things for himself than ask help off anyone. Needless to say my father and grandfather would do their best to help anyone who came to them if they could.

Last weekend it was the annual church meeting. In that I am due to finish my thesis in less than six months, I felt that it was probably the right time for me to stand again as an active elder. I have also agreed to be table elder 1 and that is difficult if you are not an active elder. As you do an apprenticeship as table elder 2 for the year before being table elder 1, this was agreed over a year ago. However I did have to specify that I needed re-election. I was last elected I think in 2000 (it may have been 1999). It must have been a late Easter that year as I was ordained on Easter day. David Hill asked afterwards if I had ever been non-serving. He had presumed that I needed to resign, but as I had served for over six years (on a five year term of office) I did not really see how I could resign. Sarah asked me whether I would leave for the vote and I said “Yes, I’d prefer to” which must of surprised her but being out of the room while the whole thing was going on seemed much preferable to being in even though I was pretty confident that there would not be any problems. Needless to say I was voted on.

Writers group is going well at present, indeed we have twelve members and next term we are probably going to be playing hot chairs to get a seat as there are at least thirteen people who want to come. Actually I suspect we could run with fourteen and with people who are willing to miss a turn or who do not turn up we would manage just fine. From my poetry perspective, I need to find a way to tell which of my poems are good and which are not up to scratch. I can tell when a poem is unfinished but the qualities that differentiate a good from an adequate poem feel totally beyond me. I am realising however that I am developing a second style of poem, my usual poem tries to capture one moment, one incident succinctly. There is thus a sparseness about them. I have written some which are just four lines long. The fresh style is a narrative, that is there is more story to it and the feeling as if something happens or we move somewhere. They are thus longer pieces. I suspect it was the development of these that made one of the group comment on the lyricism of my recent work in the autumn. The other thing is my poems have been darker and bleaker this term. It is as if  that with Margaret (another member who is very good a writing Gothic pieces) being off, I have felt the space to explore some of the darker atmosphere.

Slowly slowly the wheels are turning to having me back on the Chaplaincy at the University as a religious advisor. The biggest problem I am having as always with this role is getting synod to think actually what it is doing. Synod has now appointed me and written to me to say so and to the chaplaincy. That is good but as far as I can tell they have appointed me to act as contact person without working out how I am to keep them in the loop or they me in the loop. I might be happier with the situation if district had not been so ready to treat me as irrelevant last time.

Finally I come to today. I have not talked about the weather but we have had our share of cold and snow. In particular we had snow on Friday and Saturday here. On Friday it fell in the morning but had largely melted by the evening but at night it started snowing again. That snow continued for the better part of the day and though cleared in late afternoon it was well below freezing so not melting. The result was even down here we had two to four inches of snow. Jean and James were reporting 6 feet in their back garden. The result was that yesterday they were making the decision on whether to continue with today’s service and celebration. Actually I think the service would have happened regardless but maybe not the celebration. The numbers that turned up were good. I think in the region of a hundred, especially if you include the clerics who turned up after the service. To my knowledge there were three or maybe four and yes they were all clerics. The result was that the hall was packed for the meal. People seemed to be making a real effort to come including at least one couple from Chesterfield. James ended up doing a lot of running around due to the snow. Jean was at one time worried because he had dropped her then gone out to collect Derek and Sarah. It became apparent only when he got back that he had also realised that John might need a lift and David did not feel that he could cross the carpark to his flat. The snow may have been a bit of a blessing as the hall was full, as was the garden room and we were close on filling the committee room. Any more and we really should have been taking the meal through to the church. Sarah used her ability in writing to give more of the story of  Sarai a women around the time of Jesus who connects with him at various times in his life.On the whole it worked as well as any Palm/Passion service does. A bit of a pity the time in the church while the meal was prepared was taken up with an organ recital. Douglas was good but I suspect quite a few people would have appreciated the extra time to talk to Sarah and with other people.

Suddenly a Sunny Spring Day

I think it is three weeks since I wrote and I may get around to writing again in a fortnight or I might not. That is I might have a Sunday free from thesis. I get these occasionally when I feel I am reasonably where I want to be and I will be at St Andrew’s on the morning. If that is the case then it would be late before I got around to thesis and sometimes having a day clear of both work and thesis is a good idea. The weather has until mid week been really cold but at present we are basking in sunny spring temperatures (don't get excited it is not double figures yet and the gritters were still gritting on Friday night).

Well the last three weeks have been busy although it is busy in much the usual way. I have been writing my thesis and got another chapter into second draft. I have also done minor alterations to the chapter I have already got to second draft and am in the process of getting on with a third.I saw my supervisor a couple of weeks ago. We talked a lot around the middle chapter and the difficulties of writing it. One of the problems is that I need to write about something that in the end is not resolvable into a neat formula. Many have tried it and failed. Even now having sent it to my supervisor I can think of at least two things I really should put in. The next chapter should be more straightforward. It was the one chapter that my supervisor really felt was working when I got it into first draft. I have read through it and I think I need to work on the theory bit at the start. So this week, I need to read through again, think about clarifying that and then think  what I need to include on the second part of the chapter. When I have done this I need to get on with flows which will be harder to knock into shape. I think it may need to go to more what my supervisor calls “poetic”.

Work has been busy largely with bits a pieces that need doing. I have learnt that my assessment for Chartership isn’t now until 2014, this really does not matter to me much, it is not going to be exactly hard to get it renewed if I have my doctorate and I also continue at the rate I am doing with development. I must admit my preferred method is self development rather than going on courses or to conferences. The best sort is what I call client led development which is when I have to sort out a tricky problem for a group of researchers and therefore I sit down and learn the statistics to do that. This is very different from keeping up with what is sexy in statistics. That said I am helping prepare a course for linguist on statistics. It will be interesting to see how this goes. I think personally we are sticking too closely to texts that have been found wanting but we still need to get over that hurdle. It starts next week but the person who was going to teach the first block (I will teach about 50% basically the second and fourth block although I am no expert on either) is now off until her child is born having been admitted to hospital with bleeding. There is another tutor who can take over the actual teaching but she is in the final stages of submission for her thesis. Although the tutor who was going to teach this is doing the slides at home, I am having to do more reviewing and I am also having to learn R to make sure I can cope with queries.
It was communion a couple of weeks ago and Jean D was Table Elder number 1  It went well despite the fact that both table elders were at the start double booked (I was also duty elder and Jean was on creche). Jean thought Marion Howdle was duty elder because that was what the sheet said and then Anne Cathels took that role on. There were no children so no creche. We now have to have a special diets elder for both bread and wine as there is someone who requires gluten free bread. The next communion is Easter Sunday when I am table elder one and it is Sarah’s last Sunday at St Andrew’s. I suspect that I will need to draft a set of ritual notes for communion at St Andrews simply because it is different from what most of the other churches do around here and though David Stec will take some of the communion services he will not take all and even he does not know the backstage stuff (e.g. just before the duty elder goes in with the Bible the minister reminds the elders to observe radio silence i.e. “We are going live folks so shut up”).

I think St Andrews is beginning to catch on that there is quite a long list of things I would like to be at but it is just not going to happen while I have the thesis to write. For instance I am not making Friday Breakfasts, some of this has been just simple coincidences, it started when I was very low one week and just did not feel up to going, then migraine, time of the month, excessive tiredness, colds, tummy bugs, Christmas, departmental meeting etc seemed to occur. However I also know that if I do not go it gives me a full day to work on thesis at the weekend rather than two half days. It is just not working out. If as I am planning at the moment I get my thesis in by the summer then I will be able to help out over the summer. Other things this week included the MAC group, lent groups which are happening and the fact that Yorkshire synod has a study day for elders which sounds interesting are all on the “I would like to but thesis”. This is also meaning that at present I am not going to Sarah’s induction in Southampton. It would mean a whole weekend away from thesis. Actually it would be alright if I had major reading to do as the train journey there and back would give me plenty of opportunity for that but I will almost certainly be at the finer editing stages and I need to be at my own computer for that.

After the snow leaves I finally get around to writing

I know. It is last week in January and I have not written since before Christmas. I have just had a bad attack of life. To be more accurate I am having a bad attack of life. At the bottom of this is the realisation that I need to finish my thesis sooner rather than later and therefore I need to pull out the stops to get that done.

Christmas and New Year were quiet and followed the pattern of previous years with me spending time with my parents over Christmas with my parents and then going up to Drummore to my God family for New Year. Oddly this year I was quite nervous over driving up. Highlight of the Christmas presents this year was a scarf that came with the Dickson’s present. They usually give me a very generous book token which was still there but there was a scarf as well in the colours I enjoy which was just great to receive. Previous years I had gone through ice and snow and not thought too much of it, but this year with only rather a lot of miserable rain to contend with made me a lot nervous. Needless to say the travel was more straightforward than usual and I did not even manage to get lost on the Manchester ring road, something that I seem to do every other time I travel.

In early December I finally got to the official writing up stage of my thesis. It is an intriguing state to be in because it means two completely different signals. On the one hand the University of Birmingham stops charging me tuition fees, on the other hand my supervisor now becomes a lot more hands on than he has done before. The plan over Christmas was to write the theory bit for my worship chapter, then take a break and then review the work that needs doing. I came back to the January supervision having done that and with a timetable that means that I should submit around June time if I stick to it but it is heavy. I am also submitting around two chapters a month, well rewritten chapters and not waiting until the supervision to do so. For people’s information a chapter is around 10,000 words and the redrafting is major as this is when the theory tends to take hold. My immediate boss at work has asked if I want extra days for working on my thesis and I would like to take him up on this but it is not the panacea that it appears. I have work I need to get through at work and am struggling to do that in the four days I work at present.

I am also aware that my parents who are doing remarkably well for 84 are becoming more fragile each in their own way. The big worry at present is that it appears that mums diabetes is not well under control and as badly controlled diabetes can exacerbate dementia that may well be causing her to deteriorate quicker than she has been. It might of course also be the winter and mums tendency for her mood to deteriorate when it is dark, wet, cold and generally miserable.

Maybe some of stuff is that I have not been as stable healthwise over the break, I seemed to have had rather a lot of small minor migraines plus a cold just at the start of the Christmas hols. Then this last week when the snow came I managed to have a tummy bug and just recovered from that when I went down with a cold. My normal trick of staying in, tea tree, eucalyptus and jasmine essential oils, echinacea, vitamin C and sleeping a lot did see it but it took a couple of days despite catching it early. The result however was I ended up with a week off work. I had what looked like a tummy bug and realised it might be stress so booked the Monday off as holiday, the Friday was my day off and after Monday I was down with a cold until Thursday. Needless to say I now need a return to work interview.

Also in work I am helping to put together a course for linguists on statistics. I need to do some work with that and I also need to get on with recording the NVivo videos. This on top of the advising I do which fortunately so far this term has been fairly quiet.

Today was the first time I made it back to St Andrew’s since Christmas. Today was not just Homelessness Sunday but also the first church meeting at which the management group was reporting. The group is getting through a phenomenal amount of stuff. It also was the report of the church life review group. Actually I think it was one of the best attended church meetings I have ever seen and it looks as if some of the newer members are starting to attend as well. This is heartening. However I am worried that the groups idea that we should develop cell groups is none starter. Do not get me wrong, I am all for small groups and particularly ones that help people develop their faith. I am all in favour of Bible study but I wonder if there is any possibility of running such a group especially when outreach is part of its remit. I am wondering and may put forward come September time that we explore especially for those who are newer members something like Emmaus. That is a chance to share faith stories in the light of the big topics of the faith. Plans are also starting to be formed for when Sarah leaves. Unfortunately it looks as if she will leave just as I come back onto the eldership.

Writers group has restarted , we have had a bit of a struggle to get numbers up to the level that is required by the WEA but we have now. I am considering seeing if I can write a series of poems based around a library. I have a couple in draft already but I think both need more time. It is a bit of escapism as rather than working from life I am using memories of twenty years ago. Mind you I have a poem that started this morning and may need writing soon and it is totally off topic.

As I said at the start I have a severe attack of life, and I cannot see it getting better quickly, so while I still intend to write these missives, they will be more infrequent over the next few months. Hopefully by the summer I will be into submission and will have more time.