An Adminny sort of week

Last Sunday while recovering from the migraine, I had a sudden yen to make bread. I think the desire was to do the kneading rather than actually for the smell. As I am aware I occasionally get this sort of yet  of desire to make bread I tend to have a couple of ready mixed ingredients in.  I am beginning to think that the reason my loaves never rise as much as I desire is that with hand kneading I tend to keep the dough just too dry. Anyway I enjoyed the loaf that I made and I still have a couple of packets more to use when I want to, although I must admit the fact that they are Tescos Wholemeal  rather than something more interesting does mean I am less likely to get the yen. A few years back when I had either more energy or time I used to make a fresh loaf each Sunday, and then it was worth having the dry ingredients but these days I rarely have that sort of opportunity.

Monday it was into work as usual, on the morning saw Margo with the brighter of her two student who knows what he is doing. It is just so completely different dealing with a student who is basically competent to one who is struggling. I outline roughly what he needed to do, he does it and then produces a good summary for us to review. The other student despite far more intensive support and an easier project is still struggling. I am not sure this happens but I normally know whether a person is struggling or really capable by the end of a first session. Some totally capable people are full of self doubts and just need to see me so I can say “yes you are doing fine”.

Also this last week I found the formula for Fiellers method for calculating the confidence interval of a proportion when the terms are individually normally distributed and the coefficient of variance of the denominator tends to infinity (basically an infinitesimal probability that it could be X). The data is not normally distributed but most of the studies assumed it was. I also hope I have a book with the formulae for the moment expansion method. The conclusion I am coming to is that Fieller’s method is actually better.

Wednesday I took as holiday, going to see Fleur about something that was bothering me. One of the interesting things is the assumption that because I get involved I am losing my critical distance. The fact is that although I am willing to work and chat and spend time there, I do always see this as a placement church. They have no pastoral responsibility for me, I will not vote during church meeting and I will never have myself included as a member. I am not without pastoral care, I made darn sure of that, according to what the need is I will either go to my counsellor, my minister, my elder, Fleur who is a long term confidant or my support group. It is not the placement churches role to help me sort myself out. Actually one of my reasons for having a counsellor is somewhere that I can unpack what I am feeling about the church and what I think the church is feeling about me. Sometimes I have to work harder at unpacking what other people are thinking because my past experience gets projected into the present. Fleur seemed to be in good sorts and sent me back with a German magazine for my father and was getting ready to do simultaneous translation for a group talking about spirituality of refugees and immigration in Europe I think.

Thursday I was in work but my concentration was shot, I eventually came home at 4:30 pm because I could not cope with pretending to stare at the computer screen for much longer and went to bed and slept for a couple of hours. During that time it tippled with rain. So often the inability to concentrate seems to happen in the build up to a rain storm!

Friday was a day I did a lot of admin for PhD including signing up for next year. It said that if I was eligible for 50% off I would get a tick box but no tick box appeared. As I have received it in previous years I decided to query this, especially as the description had not changed. I suspect that it quite possible that they had forgotten that my course is technically hefce covered. There is just almost nobody from the funding councils doing it. At least that is what I am hoping. Hopefully I will find out Monday.

Saturday I was out of sorts again, although I managed to buy some clothes for next week as I decided I wanted to be comfortable and fairly smart at the conferences and the clothes I had were either comfortable or smart. If I am happy with these for next week I will try buying a couple more silky stripped shirts and try wearing that during warmer weather into the office in an attempt to smarten up slightly. Work is always a problem as I have to be able to adapt pretty quickly to different situations. I need to satisfy both comfort and smartness, plus I carry a lot in my pockets. I am fortunately not a regular attender at meetings. Winter is mainly sorted with a turtle neck and trousers although I know I should wear something smarter than sweatshirts but they are warm and comfy (actually I have toning fleeces that I wear a lot). Summer however with wanting long sleeve tops, I find that most of the t-shirts have really deep neck lines which I am not really comfortable with in work. Hence my trying out of blouses. I just hope these don’t need ironing and tumble drying them will do.

So to today, and a normal day really. Got to Herringthorpe, congregation was missing mostly the families there being only about two there. There were two older lads but I had no idea where their parents were. The Sunday school was therefor sized at 6. Three of whom were cousins. Normally there are over twenty children that go out although even they are worrying over the Sunday School as they had not got any younger children coming through. I suspect it will need something stronger than a recruitment drive. Actually one of the interesting things about Herringthorpe is that the congregation is prepared to talk of things as a marketing campaign.

Supervision in wintry weather

Lets see what has happened this week. Monday was a quiet day with no writers group in the evening so I went down to Waitrose instead and did some shopping which meant I could last until Thursday without problems. This was necessary as I had bible study on Tuesday and a supervision on Wednesday.

Tuesday, night was bible study night at Herringthorpe. The congregation obviously was running a Holiday Bible Club, I think Champions Challenge so still using Scripture Union rather than writing their own. The major difference I spotted was that the songs seem to have gone over to having a professionally recorded CD to sing to. This means the music style has changed more towards pop music (multiple instruments, performance bits) rather than the older ones that drew more on folk style (simple catchy tune and lots of actions). However I am fast concluding that congregations often don't realise when they have something special happening. In this case the Holiday Bible Club seems to be attracting local Muslim children. This to something labelled "Holiday Bible Club" organised by a Church and held in a Church building. The main church building being where most of the stuff happens. The most useful course I did for watching Alpha or other HTB videos is the course on visual culture, it gives  a whole way of looking at them that makes one wonder about the intention. Is using one of their videos trying to get the same effect as the old six feet in the air pulpit, i.e. putting Nicky above contradiction. The meal had a smaller attendance than usual but there were a larger than usual number who came to the Bible study. This may partly have been due to the holiday Bible Club, some people were both workers and attended Bible Study, but it may also have something to do with the minister being away.

Wednesday was a trip down to Birmingham for supervision. It was one of the occasions when my supervisor asked to meet at Selly Oak. This as a rule does not seem to bode too well. The last time he did this he changed it back to Edgebaston without telling me! This time he was half an hour late. The secretary came up to say he'd be about ten minutes late when he was already twenty minutes late. I think I got the message right when I said that he would be there in ten minutes. He was. An emergency had happened and as head of college (read Dean of Faculty for more normal terminolgy) he had been the one where the buck stopped. The snag this time was he was giving a paper at a seminar at the end of supervising me. So there was no ability to shift times later. The one thing that did come out is I am once again persuaded I am going to have to use heavily fictionalised accounts of some events, simply now because of some of the character of St Andrews. That means extra work, as normally anonymising is just done by broader brush strokes but I am going to have to actually write fictional accounts of events because the people themselves are so much part of that congregations character. However the upside of it was I got to the seminar. This was Birmingham Urban Theology Forum, yes that is the right web page, Chris just needs to update it more regularly. The talk was about crossing boundaries of faith with the opening talk from the Nishkam Centre and then talk from someone from Finland about Religious Diversity in Finland. The important things that struck me was first of all once again Martin's insistence that you needed to listen and what people were saying in a situation might be very different to what the dominant discourse was. In this case that people had a religious community to which they belonged and only belonged and by talking with the leaders of that community you could gage what the local people wanted. Community was any way something that white English people did not have. The other thing were two things mentioned for interaction between communities. The first was the fact that any faith group wishing to engage with dialogue with another faith groups requires  the group first to earn the respect of the other faith group, secondly that all people require for interaction to happen that they are allowed to maintain their dignity. This however meant I was back late from Birmingham, catching the 6:00 p.m. train rather than the 5:00 p.m. train, which meant that I was tired and hungry when I got in.

Thursday I had a migraine. Not a bad one, just a routine one and given all I had done the day before not too unexpected I think it was a fortnight between it and the last migraine maybe just over and it cleared nicely

Friday was a feel good day, I got to Friday Breakfast, went into work, some trousers I had ordered came and I actually got on with something. I also got my hair cut about three weeks after it should have been. I also sorted out something for someone doing their PhD. It meant a re analysis but it also makes her talking about the end results easier. I really should have spotted it when she first came to me, but until I saw the pictures I did not "get" that her design was a level more complex than I thought. I also managed to sort out how to test php on my home computer without having to upload everything to a website. Morag this means that we can use basic html and such for longer, the cludge I have used is pretty simple at present but it means every time we write a new page I don't have to edit every single page! I want to see if I can do something slightly more complex with PHP so we don't have to enter each page title twice.

Saturday was during daylight surprisingly good. I did some transcription, alright not much but some, I wrote up last weeks bible study and I found a place that will scan documents for me to flash drive, as both my printer and works printer are refusing to do so.  I got my medicine and realised I do not need to phone for it anymore, they automatically will get me an update for me in two months time.  I also made dhal, this time cutting back on the water drastically, only one cup and a tin of tomatoes. That was plenty. Then I went and fell in my study/backroom. Yes I know I should be tidier. Unfortunately I caught my right knee on the edge of the foot of my desk. I doubt it did any more than bruising and the minor swelling associated with a nasty bruise but because of the way the joint works, walking was difficult yesterday and this morning, as the injured part was compressed if I put my leg straight and it did not like that. Oh I changed the other pages around so they now all work with php.

Today I should have gone to Herringthorpe, but when I woke to three to four inches of snow and it still snowing that just did not feel possible. At least two reasons, the walk up there was going to be uncomfortable at least even without snow due to the fall the day before and doing it through snow felt one too much. Secondly the roads weren't clear, even traffic on Hanover way was going slowly as I think it probably had not been gritted yet. I was also tired, whether this was just the cold coming through or what I don't know but I do know I felt happier in bed. I got up around lunch time, have since made bread (Hovis Granary this time) which I am enjoying this evening. I will eat it up during the week. I am almost certain that one of the reasons my bread does not seem to rise as much as I would like is that it is too dry but any more moist and it gets very sticky to handle which does not help kneading.

On cold flats and Bread making

Right lets see what is happening this week. Well I went to writers group this week, wrote a poem called Ice Ages, the group felt that the it was worth sending into the Sheffield Telegraph. I sent it, not sure whether it got in, I must try and see if I can get hold of a copy before tomorrow evening. I suspect not or rather I suspect if it had been someone might have told me.

Tuesday I can not remember much from except I know I was busy writing in work and was feeling whacked by the time I got in so did not go to the Bible Study at Herringthorpe but instead tried to write up the notes from the Sunday, without much success, but I at least got something down. I find with note writing that I actually need to leave it at least a short while after I get in otherwise my brain is caught up too much in retaining everything not just the central bits I noticed. This is exceptional for ethnographers who normally want to make notes as soon as possible, but my brain takes a time to make a coherency over the situation.

Wednesday, I took the morning off sick, my initial diagnosis of myself was Appelkoossiekte or Apricot sickness, which is caused by eating too many apricots. There have been suggestions of other causes, but the fact is if you eat rather a large amount of Apricots (in this case it was me counting dried and fresh as separate things and overdoing it on at least one alone) they become a too effective laxative. I have had it at least twice in the past and normally manage to restrict myself. Most people don't eat apricots the way I will do if I am not watching myself. Like most folk illnesses it covered a lot, but in most cases it actually only is a few hours of discomfort and I think diagnosing anything else is a bit much. However I realised later that I was probably partially wrong and that time of the month was partly to blame for the discomfort. However by mid day it had cleared enough so  I was in work and getting on with course notes I am writing.

Thursday I saw someone in the morning to help with their research project. If I had known in advance what they were asking I could have just referred them to course notes we have on the web. There really was nothing difficult about it. Her major concern was whether it was valid to do it with seventeen people. Yes you can do it with seventeen people but you will only detect big differences.  I also put her largely to doing non-parametric as with the quick look I saw I was ready to bet that quite a bit of her data was log-normal and not straight normal (it was counted data and timed data (which is technically exponentially  distributed not even log normal but close enough to have similar characteristics). Had an easy night when I got home.

Friday was my day off, I slept most of the morning as time of the month was making me tired. However I managed to transcribe about fifteen minutes of tape, the first transcription I have done since Christmas and not only that I managed to do another bit on Saturday (all right only five minutes of tape but still some). Then I also caught up with the writing up of my diary, so not too bad a day research wise. On the evening went to a ladies night at Herringthorpe. Allison had organised it, or more accurately had thought of the idea and got what she thought was needed together. It was supposed to be a Christmas Present swap night. Simple idea you bring one or more unwanted christmas present and swap it for something better.  Having thought about it, I conclude that the easiest way to do this is to buy raffle tickets. For every item a person puts on the table a raffle ticket is issued, then when they find something they want they hand in the raffle ticket. If people want more they either make a donation for extra raffle tickets. The problem is what about the stuff nobody wants, well the solution here was that went to a local charity shop, in this case YMCA. Donations could go to the shop as well or put to other uses. However Allison had not worked out how to do this, so things got a bit chaotic. I also would suggest that people were limited to the upper amount they can bring (say three items) as we had some bring about a hundred and that made it far more like a bric-a-brac stall.

Saturday again started with a late start, got up and had scrambled eggs on toast. This now seems a reliable way for me to be fairly okay on the afternoon however lousy I was beforehand. I got into town and managed to get changed a pair of thermal undertrousers. I also got myself two new plain top sheets. First time I have bought top sheets, partly as I did not use them for quite a while just a duvet but I find it easier to wash and change a flat sheet than I do a duvet. Partly because I inherited sheets I think from my grandmother. The one on last week was ripping. I do still have some good ones, but mum had sown that one so it became a sort of fitted top sheet and she had got the size right. I had done others but not done it as well, so I wanted to use that as a template for sowing the new sheets. So I had to get them before I chucked it out. I felt as I had worn the previous sheets out that spending money on more expensive new ones was not a waste. The bad news was yesterday I checked my fire in the lounge because it was not working and it was cold. On further investigation I found that the seven day timer plug had actually melted and the plug was firmly stuck half in.  I  changed the plug on the fire but it did not start working. I don't know whether that was because I had not quite got the wiring in right (the problem is that I am not 100% certain a connection was made in all case or that the fuse was good in the plug I used as both the plug and the fuse were recycled from old equipment.

Today I went to Herringthorpe. I found coffee time less noisy this time, maybe because it was not a parade come party service. Came back, had cheese and fruit for lunch as easy, then went and slept for an hour or so. After that I got up and made bread. Something about making bread seems to fit with Sunday Afternoons. I discovered over new Year I was actually missing it. I don't think I could go back to making my own bread all the time but I have bought those already measured packets and will make it up when I feel like it.