After a couple of quieter weeks

Birthday Flowers from my sister

News wise it feels quieter. I am now registered for next year but am not able to pay my fees. I suspect that the entry for next year has been done wrongly, but as it is such a close run thing on whether I would or would not have to make fees, we will probably in the end ignore it. I was having to pay a years fees and then get two thirds of my fees back because I would progress to writing up. The tradition chapter is signed off so I am now onto the one on belonging. Unfortunately I am realising there will be a lot of rewriting of the tradition chapter and I am also just beginning to put together the opening section on belonging. It is taking longer than I would like (I’d have liked it written by today but I need to do some more reading before I can write the last bit). Perhaps of more interest is that I am writing articles for St Andrew’s magazine “The Messenger” and also posting them on a blog called Reformed Practical Piety . The first one is up and the second will come out at the start of October. I pre-write them, send them to James and then set the publishing date once we have a proofed version. These are not pieces from my thesis but bits I have written specially for the magazine on one strand of my thesis.

The other thing is I have sent the drafts of the data chapters to my two congregations. Helen, who is church secretary at St Andrew’s Chesterfield got back to me to ask me to print extra copies. Commenting on what she has read she says I found out things that she never knew about St Andrew’s, which an interesting comment. It makes me wonder if I have got things right or whether there was a culture where if you do not actively seek information you do not get it. If so why? I will have to wait until the final feedback I think to sort that out. From Herringthorpe I have heard absolutely nothing. I know the copy of the chapters arrived and only that because I sent them special delivery. Different congregations, different ways of behaving. I also have heard nothing from David the minister at the time at St Andrew’s admittedly I sent him them by email, maybe I should check if his email is current.

Work wise it has been quieter. However I am now moving teams to one which is more big computer orientated. I call it supporting “toys for the boys” research, as it is all about working on big computers that have software most people who use computers do not care to use. It does fancy things but you have to be able to program it in detail. I tend to point out that the entire support for the other 80% of the researchers who use computers is me. Anyway it is just a different team structure and a slight change in some of the things I was involved in at work. I cannot help improve communications in my previous team if I am in a different one. I think there is more going on but I am not sure and I may have to be deliberate about what I will and will not do.

For my Birthday I took James and Jean out for an Indian at Tamarind which is part of the former Glossop Road Baths complex. It used to be called “Saffron Club” and boasted a Indian Curry Lovers listing, but I never got to it when it was that. The meal was superb, we asked for mild to medium dishes and there was just so much flavour in them that was not hidden by strong chilli. They brought us poppadoms and chutney dishes. I tried one of them and Jean asked me if it was hot, I said not really but it was sour. She tried it and her face said it was not as she expected but admitted that I was right it was sour. Actually it with the mango chutney on a bit of poppadom was delicious. The main courses were superb and the rice cooked superbly. Unfortunately they only had the English desserts available and they were all full of cream while the ice-cream was fancy. I also tried Cobra beer and it works fairly well with an Indian meal.

Amigurumi I have made this summer

Over the summer I have been making a couple more amigurumi for people at my writers group. I charge people £5 which is donated to writers group and then they pay me something towards the wool (usually another £5 much to my embarrassment as that is more than the wool costs) the latest couple are in the other photo attached. The lamb has a hat because I put the eyes into the wrong side of the head, so rather than let my slightly untidy decreasing show (it never is as tidy as the increasing, although in fairness I doubt you could have told that) I put a beret on I must stress that these are ornaments not toys, when I make toys they are substantially different.

Around the time of year of my annual review

I don’t think this will be long. The week has been pretty mundane with slightly more excitement over the weekend. Church meeting went without a hitch, but the comment of the life review people that they felt they had to reassess their opinions every time after coming to St Andrew’s threw Ian slightly. St Andrew’s is St Andrew’s and on Sundays, particular Theo’s baptism they are putting on a performance. They can do, in some-ways it is their default setting but the idea that you are gaining insight into how the church is by attending that Sunday is daft, unless you already know them. The impression is of a highly functional church which is largely content with where it is, maybe too many grey haired members but otherwise not doing too badly. Its true up to a point. They would have gone onto Annual Church meeting and St Andrew’s still functions on “how quick can we get to lunch” mode at such events. Then elders where I suspect they saw some real discussion and finally a church meeting where what must have appeared out of the blue the congregation were reorganising the whole committee structure. Of course it was not out of the blue, it had been around committees and actually there had been a working party busy with it while they were around, but because it was behind the scenes work, nobody was talking about it. They technically do not need to attend more but have indicated at least one Sunday of normal worship (they have not done a communion yet) and we did suggest that they came to the Breakfast which will make them reconsider again. Oh well we are now officially moving from a many committee structure to Elders and Management both reporting to church meeting with a sort of exec to coordinate what comes to Church Meeting. Also some scope on management to co-opt people who are not members of the church for a year. We will see what will happen.

Work has been busy but I was able to work around the mild migraine that came on Tuesday afternoon (helped by the fact I was officially working at home because I had something I rather do at home which had to be done for work). Well lets be honest it was my annual review preparation or SRDS. Its a fairly tedious task where I have to work through the year and decide what I want to achieve next year. Actually the second part is still to do but I will try to make some notes before I see Cliff to look at the sound system tomorrow. Otherwise it has been work as usual.

Friday I went to the Dickson’s for evening meal. We had a pleasant evening an article had been going between me and James and he was being a good editor only he put back things I had removed as corrections before.  Anyway I think I am beginning to get the stage where it is ready to go out, and I have started drafting the next one, we shall see. The next thing to consider is where to go after that. Choice between the Bible and the nature of God, don’t worry I am only trying to get across the uncomfortable otherness of God, not actually try and say “God is like” because “God is like...” always seems to end up in absurdities.

Yesterday went for a meal with Margo, she had a french exchange pupil staying with her and it was the case that my rudimentary French and sometimes she wanted really complex sentences translating like  how do you say “I was telling the dog that as she (dog) already had you stroking her she did not need anyone else to stroke her as well.” Its not the vocabulary particularly I was struggling with but stroke/pet/fondle were not in my vocabulary but the complexity of the sentence structure.  It however is an enjoyable evening. Today has been keeping quiet and catching up with my thesis.

On a Spring Sunday with mixed weather

Monday was writers and I took the poem I had taken two weeks ago because I had done quite a bit of work on it. This time they felt that it was getting closer to finished and I don’t think I will need to take it back again. I am not sure whether I will manage to get something written up this week, but we shall see. While on writing I have found out there are books about writing writing faction so I have ordered one and I will see if it will provide me with any further good advice for writing my thesis.

However with the business of the week meant that Thursday which I had officially as a day working at home I awoke with a migraine, well I knew I was going down with one on Wednesday evening when I started craving ginger and feeling very very tired. I assumed that like the one or two immediately prior migraines that if I slept for an extra hour or so I would be fine, and as I was working at home this was workable around. However it was a full scale one, the morning was a washout though I did get up about 11:00 and the afternoon only really started working about 4:00 p.m. so I ended up just doing the stuff I had to do for work. The migraine had an after effect so I felt off colour both on Friday and Saturday morning but after naps on both days recovered enough to cope. On Friday I suppose I should admit to also having the unorthodox lunch of chocolate brownie, pineapple and ginger beer. These are actually the things I crave when I am semi-migrainey. The ginger beer makes sense but the rest does not although I have long known if I am to function with a migraine strong coffee, pain killers and ginger beer make a pretty good combination. I will only do that however if essential as it will delay rather than cure a migraine.

Also on Thursday my freezer decided it was time I defrosted it. It is a hard working machine and has been working now for around thirty years. My grandparents bought it back before I went to University to store bread in, in case they could not get to the shops one week. My sister inherited and then I did. The ice was such that the door was not closing properly. However having defrosted completely, it looks as if everything is back to working properly.

Friday morning Cliff came to the breakfast and then we installed metal boxes for the sound system. The Oratorio Chorus had managed to break a second plastic one, so we are seeing if the metal ones will last longer. The question is whether they will break the box or manage to work the screws out of the dais with the weight they put on the boxes. James had managed to send me the proof reading of the chapter on location, so I edited that up during the day. That evening I had a good night out at the Dickson’s, I can’t remember anything in particular coming up but it was a pleasant evening.

Saturday was spent on doing bits a pieces for thesis, sending off papers for supervision, starting the next chapter, and trying to plot it out. I am making slow progress with it. I think I have sorted out what the theory is, I am going to have to revise some of it but it is revise not think through for the first time. I also have found a way of keeping my self aware of who is in each scene. I need to rewrite the current scene to put someone in who is missing.

Today went to church this morning. Sarah was on form, the only snag was that Junior Church over estimated the time it would take for Sarah to get to the distribution of daffodils so it had us waiting while Elizabeth went to fetch them. There seems to be regularly about two to three primary school and younger children in junior church, I do not think it is always the same children.

On a winters evening

I got to Edinburgh on time and headed Northwards along the Dundass Road, towards the B&B. It is not far, it was cold and the lights in Central Edinburgh  were bright. These days like many city centres they have fairgrounds running in the centre of town. Princess Street was shut due to work on the trams but this just meant the fair had spilt out onto the road. The B&B was comfy, I had opted for a room without a bathroom but was slightly put out to discover that the bathroom was on another floor. The room however met my standards of comfortable. That is they had a table/desk in the room. So many rooms have nowhere you can really write a letter or read in comfort.


On the evening I met friends off Ship of Fools.We met up at Ma Bells, as I was walking up there I noticed that there seemed to be snow on the ground. This was confirmed by ship of fools friends I met at The Bow Bar  which was a small bar serving a huge range of whisky, although most of the time we drank ginger beer. We then went on to look for food, unfortunately at this point we got fooled by a restaurant that still had out its early evening menu and when we got in the price were about double what we were expecting. So we ordered starters and sides and I really don’t know how I could have eaten more than what I got.Talk was varied, including one or two St Andrews University acquaintances and how they were doing, talk of J.K Rowlings prior to Harry Potter, that Anglican hegemony on Ship of Fools and so on. One of the people there was something like a Doctor of Epidemiology only because she could not be a Doctor of what she wanted to be, Doctor of Pain, her speciality is pain management. Of the five of us three were involved in the conference the next day. Another was a househusband waiting to be a full time carer, his wife’s career in Mechanical Engineering had took off in a way that his in English literature/philosophy hadn’t.


My father was right in part about New College being cold. That was the heat was very unevenly spread. On the Tuesday I thought the whole college was cold but from Wednesday lunch time on I ended up in too warm rooms. The previous evening it had been mentioned that it was part of J.K Rowlings inspiration for Hogwarts. Having been inside it I could say that it was not just the impressive front. It does have a splendid dining area and ancient halls as well, but the big thing was just how complex the internal layout was. It was clearly a building that had been built and rebuilt over the years. Some of the seminar rooms had windows for the lower half of the room! Flights of stairs seemed to go off at random and I am not at all sure how New College would have got on with standard University room numbering. For those unused to it the numbering usually consists of two numbers, the first being the floor and the second the room with either 0 or G being used for ground. So my office at work is something like 2.17 (second floor, room 17) and my supervisors at Birmingham is something like 8.21, eighth floor, room 21.

Well there were enough URCs to have URC seminar as that is what seemed to be where I did my paper. I suspect that ironically, my cafe paper, which is on ethnography of worship would have had a higher attendance. I also suspect that being put in a seminar labelled Reformed theology put people off. I later sat through a paper of Schleiermacher and his eucharistic theology. The thing is that I was reminded just how easy it is for me to inhabit his thinking without having done major reading, I know the corrolaries and the ramification before the speaker stated them. It is something I nearly always can do when dealing with Reformed thinkers but not when dealing with theologians in other traditions. That does not mean I have to agree with the Reformed thinkers, it just means I know where they are coming from. I have written a more indepth blog about my assessment of the conference on my thesis blog


Travelling back was interesting. I got down to pick up my case from left luggage (the choice of hiking it up the hill to New College and then through the stair filled corridors, or paying £7 for left luggage at Waverley, meant leaving it at Waverley won) just in time to get the last direct train to Sheffield (it leaves just after 6pm). Unfortunately the weather had caused a train ahead of it from Glasgow to fail and it was running about an hour late. The thing is when a train is that late it tends to get later and later, so instead of getting in around 9 p.m., it was after 11 p.m. Fortunately I had booked the next day off work as recovery time. However I did get a really good taxi driver who not only knew where my flat was (a rarity) but got my bag out of the cab.


Thursday and I was back into work, actually not much happening but I managed to get up a short video on how to produce evidence for working, but by the evening my head was aching and I decided that there was possibly a migraine on the way and I better go home and see if an early night would fix it. Unfortunately the next day the dregs stayed with me.  The only thing I actually did was to put a plastic layer over a window that does not shut properly, as this is right by my thesis computer I wanted to stop the draft that came in through the crack and made that place uncomfortable. 

However I managed to go to the Dicksons for evening meal. It was a good time although I was not really hungry. The previous weekend they had been celebrating their golden wedding. This included a couple of meals out and cake and champagne at the church. Unfortunately I then went and forgot to take my medicine so yesterday although I managed to write and get to the station to try and sort tickets I was sort of off colour, and today I have felt fragile but made it to church. The congregation is interesting, there is probably a better spread of ages than when I joined almost twenty years ago, but that is largely due to the loss of people at the older end. The recruitment at the younger end remains much the same. The problem is that it is not high enough to sustain the congregation. However the way I was feeling I just drank coffee and then came home to sleep for a couple of hours and am now feeling much better.

Out of placement

Thesis Fractal Triskele, a photo by jengie@btinternet.com on Flickr.

For those who are interested in the mandala I was talking about last week, I now have an outline which you can see with this post , I am hoping to fill it with little balls of tissue paper representing every fifty words written, the balls will need to be quite small to cope with the complexity of the design. If I also manage to put up photos every week then it gives people an idea of how I am doing. That is the plan anyway. How I deal with the final editing and those sort of things is anyone’s guess. Actually the big first hurdle is to start to have an outline of my first chapter so that I can really begin writing. I also need to have a todo list so I get through all the stages.

For those interested in my placement church it looks as is St Andrews Chesterfield have someone preaching with a view at the end of next month. No idea who and am not going to make inquiries, I am just praying that they make the right decision about whether to issue a call or not.

Otherwise this week has been one of slowing down from the quite frenetic pace of previous weeks. Monday was the last day at the frantic pace although next Tuesday looks as if it will have it as well. So it has been slowing. There has also been a lot of last things. Tuesday we finished off drafting a paper for a masters thesis. To get a masters project from the level of a masters project and actually get it to submission level for a paper is a lot of hard work. It involves the supervisor in a lot more hands on approach and I have been involved with two this summer and probably have another one or two to do.

On Tuesday evening I went to church meeting at Herringthorpe. It was held in the church (some evening church meetings have been held in the Clynes Hall. They have just finished renovating the Clynes Hall so I was half expecting it to be there, but with the starting time it was felt that it would be better in the church itself. I had on the Monday sent through to Pauline and Tom the report to elders. Well I was not expecting anything to be mentioned about it at church meeting. After all normal policy would be for elders to digest then bring anything they thought essential to church meeting. Well Pauline mentioned that I had done it, mentioned that it was thirteen pages long (approximately 7.500 words), said it was well written (so obviously I was not going over Pauline’s head anyway) and offered any member that wanted it access to a copy. She had printed five copies out and was willing to email copies as well, the elders were instructed not to take a copy as they would get one automatically. All five copies went and there was a fair demand to have copies by email as well.

Wednesday I actually had nothing on, so I spent it trying to find all the bits and pieces I had dropped while I was frantically busy. Thursday was my birthday, it was noticeable that this year I got more good wishes via Facebook than I did birthday cards. The day was quiet and normal although a couple of books I ordered from Amazon had come. This ups the number of academic books on Reformed Spirituality from three to four and the other which appears to be an emerging church book both seems to be tackling the issue I am tackling with in a broader setting and is from a Reformed perspective. They should both be interesting. Anyone wanting details please just email me.

Friday I did my last session on the Breakfast as server. It has seen them over the summer but they really need to now move towards a more secure volunteer staffing than I can provide long term and when I am back from holiday I need to be writing and the breakfast made a pace for fridays that was distinctly different and not really compatible with writing although it did tend to clear my Saturdays nicely.

On the evening we went to Orient Express on West Street. It is very Chinese, even the bill comes in Chinese so I hope I paid the right amount (it was less than I expected and we weren’t intentionally stinting ourselves although they could not cope with giving us two scoops of the same flavoured sorbet so we ended up with two desserts instead of three, but I did take the highest price I could see on the slip). The food was pleasant and well cooked and the majority of diners were of oriental extraction. The only snag was that the sound seemed to echo around the building.

Saturday I spent largely doing bits and pieces and today was my last trip out to Herringthorpe. So I am now officially out of placement. It feels strange at present and a definite sign of moving on. They gave me three cards, what is funny is that a couple of families have managed to sign the cards two or three times! I suspect there is going to be some come back from the report and such but I will have to wait for that.

Busy at work, while keeping other things going

So what has been happening this last fortnight, well the first week was largely taken up with the extra classes for writers group (that and getting ready for supervision with a busy week in work). The thing being that I really needed two poems per week for three weeks. This is way above my normal turnover which is less than a poem a week with me using the holidays to get ahead so I don’t have to produce one every week. However with this being end of year, I had used up all my reserves during the year and had none to fall back on. So I needed to sit down and produce something, it took a while and at least one of the pieces I took one week and rewrote for the following week, but that was a major re-write and the tutor even commented on it. There are others who imagine that my short pieces are the easiest pieces to do, but in someways they take the most time as my imagination has to be clear to do them.

Work wise I am very busy, I suspect that I could easily fill a full working week if I wanted to but the only way to keep it sane is to try and limit it. Next week is already full with a little space the week after. I suspect things will ease at the end of August but I do not hold much hope before then.

Over the weekend I had the last of my general interviews for Herringthorpe and I am finding it harder and harder to stick to the interview schedule. The thing is the conversation around the interview is often far more relevant than the interview itself. I want the time to talk and the time to listen but the questions are really vehicles for enabling that and the tape recorder seems in many ways a positive hindrance. People don’t mind telling me things but put them on tape and they are not nearly as sure. Odd that as the point of having it on tape is so I don’t misrepresent them and the only people who may need to listen to the tapes are me and them. I have no plans for anyone else to listen. Anyway the couple are former missionaries of Pakistan and have done some work with Christian Asylum seekers in this country.

Last week with writers finished was slightly less frantic, but I had a supervision in Birmingham. My supervisor has sent me information on a study day in the autumn on liturgy and mission, from the same group that I went to the conference with last year. They must think they have not exhausted the topic. I will go to listen but at this stage in my thesis, I am not going to present a paper. I am too busy with writing up to my thesis to go through the process of preparing a paper. I appreciate the way my supervisor pushes me to actually think through what I am trying to say and find what is actually at the core of my thought. I was struggling with what was so special about church meeting. I have sat through enough to know that on the surface they appear meetings just like any other meeting but there was something about them that was drawing my interest and I had to work out what it was. It is a process not unlike that of poetry of going over and over the details until you find the key, the clue that attracts my attention, when I have that then I can build the argument around it just as when I know what I am saying in a poem I can build the description around that.The key gives the form to the whole thing.

Friday was busy, there were once again over forty for breakfast, I suspect that Olly who came to cook had not really been aware of the increase in number (it changes the organisation of cooking somewhat if you know that there are going to be over thirty for breakfast all wanting bacon). We discovered one of the guys was celiac when he brought special bread in. This is not a problem as once we know we can check provide the bread and make sure he does not get flour.Then came home and slept before going into work. If I am up about six to get to the Breakfast my body quite likes to sleep once it is over. At work I had managed to double book. I suspect because of diary changes and the prior problems with my diary, but fortunately had kept the last slot of the week free so that I could sort things for the following week. So I apologised and saw the person then. Then after work it was a trip down to Waitrose to get Minicol cream cheese for my parents, only there wasn’t any, but there was Minicol hard cheese and Benecol soft cheese that also was low in cholesterol. However Waitrose knew I was coming shopping for my parents as it did not have any decaffeinated coffee beans on the shelf. Then change around and catch the bus to the Dicksons, only I only had a £20 note and I realised I needed to buy a bus ticket, so I popped into one of the convenience stores and spotted they had Baklava  that was similar to what I had been given some weeks earlier so I bought a packet and then remembering Mum was back on strict orders from the diabetic nurse I gave it to the Dicksons.

Saturday I went over to my parents. Apart from only starting slowly the trip over went smoothly though I was tired when I got there. Dad was also tired having had a somewhat disturbed night so both he and me went for a sleep on the afternoon. Then around 4pm he suggested a walk and I managed to persuade them to go to Reddish Vale, I drove as Dad was worried over finding parking places although he had to direct me. The first car park was full but the overflow had several spaces in it. I am encouraging them to try and go there about once a week for their afternoon walk as it is only a couple of miles away and really quite a pleasant place to walk. They have a small cafe open between 1pm and 4pm as well as what looks like a better quality one at the nearby farm. However there isn’t easy parking there and it is a bit of a walk from the country park. I think the highlight was that there was a greylag goose but Mum was quite thrilled with the banks of Jumping Jack Balsaam or Himalaya Balsaam which were flourishing in huge quantities along the river Tame at the time fo year.

Today has been spent with rather quietly with my parents. They decided they were staying home in the morning and only going to church in the evening. At around 12:30 Dad decided to show me a A6380 as it came into land at Manchester. Never mind that I had actually seen it the day before when I came into Stockport. Anyway they dropped me off so I caught the 4:54 p.m. train back to Sheffield.

Heading off wildly in many directions

I think I am going to have to write a highlights, but despite things being busy, (when aren’t they) I am not sure how many highlights I actually have.

Right on Friday 10th I went as I normally do to the Broomhall Breakfast. It seemed very light staffed, Mary was cooking, Jean was behind the hatch and Sarah was taking orders. Fortunately at that stage it also was fairly few clients. So I had my breakfast and then realised that Sarah might like hers so offered to take over orders. When I did that, Mary decided that, as it was quiet, she might as well have her breakfast, only for over ten people to walk through the door. This resulted in Jean cooking a couple of eggs just so the backlog did not get too bad. I have since volunteered to be around on a Friday until September time, so I now have to be up and ready to go by 7:30 a.m. in the morning on a Friday.

That evening I went out for a meal with James and Jean Dickson. Rather than cooking this time they decided to take me to the Bistrot Pierre on Ecclesall Road. The reason for doing so is that it does a gluten free menu and as their grandson is both a celiac and milk intolerant, they wanted to try it out before they took him. Their grandchildren are moving to Sheffield in a few weeks time. It was airy with glass all the way around, a good number of dinners and the food was good. They do a set of light main courses which were about the right amount for us to eat and they also do 500ml (2/3 of the normal bottle size) of wine which is very nice if only two are drinking , James was driving so didn’t. We came back to my place to have coffee and I found the bag of decaffeinated beans I had bought so we were fine.

That weekend I was writing, well I was analysing hymns. It is interesting, I think if I am right the hypothesis that the reason hymns are sung often is because they are “our hymns” does not seem to hold. Congregation’s do not sing hymns for the same reason football supporters chant at crowds, at least they don’t during normal worship. I suspect the hymns were being used for two different purposes in the two congregations. However what I am not yet clear on is what the hymnody of the tradition looks like. Do I go through Rejoice and Sing and pick out those with a definite “Reformed” background? Do I analyse “When I survey”, “We limit not the truth of God” “The Lord’s my Shepherd” and “Ye gates lift up ye heads” and use them as examples? If so what in the Churches of Christ one? Do I not bother but look to themes that come out of the tradition generally.

Tuesday saw me giving an NVivo course. This was full subscribed and well attended. I however am getting fed up with it being a talking head during it. I give a lot of information out but I am pretty sure most of it washes over people. They seemed appreciative but still I wonder. I was able to show someone at the end a quick way to get on with her coding but so hard to deal with a widely disparate group.

Thursday my new computer was set up and working in work. I actually found that having a faster machine makes a huge difference, it works at the problems I set it about the sort of speed my brain works at the commentary. So I don’t go off and think about something else while the computer is working and then have to pick up the pieces again. This means I work through things more efficiently. I got two large data sets ready for analysis by someone else during the week.

Friday I did the breakfast then did an interview for my PhD. It went well and I think I have only another three to do. This should be interesting as things are definitely now getting to the writing up stage.

I took twenty-four hours largely out from doing stuff from Saturday afternoon when I sent off my supervision papers and this afternoon when I went to evening service at Herringthorpe. A friend from my writers group had leant me “Into Great Silence” (that review is in depth good and worth reading to the end) It says there it last 2.5 hours in fact it is slightly longer than that. It is slow, slow enough for me to watch it and even in my own home I was drawn into it. It is beautifully shot and the repetition becomes slightly mesmerising. I thought that at the start the monks would blend into each other but they don’t. No two of them sit at prayer the same, their hands and heads are held differently. However when you see the older ones there is a real sense of laughter just trapped behind the eyes while the younger ones look more stern. It was three hours well spent and if I have the chance to watch it in a cinema I will take it.

The week leading to presentation at Herringthorpe

This week has been dominated by the fact that I was giving an initial report to church meeting at Herringthorpe today. In some senses even when I write now of other things that was still going on in the background.

Monday my writers group started again. This is good news as in some ways this has become one of my safety valves, a place where I go not to talk about thesis but to discuss other things and for which I have to be creative in a different way. Actually the big discipline that comes with this is that I have to actually stop and look at something rather than presume I know what I see. They also are a group with which it is pleasant to hang out with. It has become another non-negotiable of my life. In work I repeated an analysis I had done about three times already, finally sorting out what I wanted to do. The funny thing was that the results came out for what the original topic of interest was.

Tuesday was a fairly busy day in work. We had a team meeting with the head of department at ten O’clock where she talked about Lean process management. It is something that vaguely interests me. It Looks at redesigning processes so as to make them more efficient by removing stuff that does not provide value to the customer. What is important is to realise that backup/fallback procedures do provide value.

Wednesday I decided to work at home as I desperately needed to get the report into slides. I had actually finished preparing the handout first as I found working in Publisher easier for ordering ideas than working in Powerpoint. Actually the putting together of the slides was relatively easy. You just had to design the slide to portray the idea. I kept the slides visual and short.
Thursday in the morning I spent time dealing with a bright student who really needed to be told to do a qualitative approach at least to start with. Once they have the coding sorted then hopefully we can export to SPSS. Then on the afternoon did a run through of my presentation with my boss in work so I know that I had made it understandable to people with no background in the social sciences. I deliberately tried not to do anything that evening

Friday was my day off. In the morning I had coffee with Sarah, I had a strange feeling that neither of us really wanted to get up from it and do other things. For Sarah it was probably a good chance to sit down after the business of Broomhall Breakfast, with me it was partly coming back to thesis although I was actually noting what hymns the churches had used while I was there. From fairly early on while I was at Herringthorpe I have kept a note of the hymns that were actually used as there was a dispute over their use. St Andrews Chesterfield printed theirs on their weekly newsletter. So I have this information for both churches. It was a matter of abstracting it and then categorising it. I had to develop a coding categorisation, because of the congregations I have used a four part code characterisation. I picked any material pre 1840 as traditional; this is set as the start of Queen Victoria’s reign. Then for material between 1840 and 1960 I called it hymnody, this was to reflect the high number of hymns written between those times and in use. Later material was not classed on a time basis rather I distinguished what I call Modern Liturgical including many modern hymns but it is broader than that, which is material written for use in formal worship since 1960 and Charismatic which is material coming out of writers identified with the charismatic renewal. If I was studying this in-depth I would want to subdivide all four categories. For instance I have metrical psalms put in with translations of ancient hymns with the hymns of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. In the next I have Revivalist hymns aside high Anglican ones and so on.

On the evening I made a big mess. I managed to book a Tesco’s delivery for just the time I was at the Dicksons. Not just that but I also managed to get into my head the wrong time so it was only when it did not arrive by seven that I checked the times. In the end Tesco’s very kindly agreed to redeliver today and James came to pick me up. Very thankful for people’s considerateness over what was completely my mess up! The evening was enjoyable as ever.

Saturday was just more work on the hymns followed by setting up the sound system at St Andrews so that a guitar could be played through it, I hoped it worked ok as though the technical solution was in place, it also required the operator to balance the levels of the voices and the guitar! Something no operator had done previously. On the morning a quick run to the shops. The rest of the day was thesis both working on the hymns and today’s presentation. Unfortunately by this point I realised that nerves were taking over and needed some controlling

Today presentation day! Actually things went pretty smoothly only I had put too much in. I turned up at the church only to find that it was parade and the car park was full. God must have heard my heart cry because a car promptly pulled out of a parking space! Not usual ten minutes before worship in the church carpark! I got asked on entry to the church whether I was rehearsing my presentation, no I replied thanking God for providing a parking space. The idea of having to move the car in the time between worship and church meeting just felt too much! I got through three quarters maybe more of the presentation. The moderator commented that on there being not enough time to do this sort of presentation in church meetings. I don’t think people understood that I was hanging around to calm down afterwards, I have been so intently involved in doing this presentation and so focused on presenting it well, that I was quite sure that I would technically not be in a good state to be driving on the roads immediately afterwards. Anyway came in had a bacon sandwich and a glass of wine and went to bed for an hour and a half.

Busy time, with many different paces

Right the week after I wrote was quite exhausting, not only was I only semi-fit, no cold symptoms but I tired easily, but there was a Data Curation Roadshow I was attending for two days with work. Having two full days when I was dealing with people (largely strangers) continually for four to five hours was exhausting. The topic was interesting and I am fully aware of the gap between what does happen and what ideally should happen. At the moment if you are fortunate then if you want the data behind a paper, the researcher has it on a disk which they can unearth. If you are unlucky then they have long ago chucked out the scrap of paper which the original data was on after all they had gained the publication. This is true except for a few high profile disciplines and some very large studies where the data is fully documented and stored on secure maintained fileservers.  What we need to do is move to a method of automatic archiving of data with regular reviews but that will cost a huge amount and nobody has yet found a funding model by which it raises money. Also once the research is complete a researcher often looses interest in the data set, also many researchers don’t feel they have data, they just have video recording and pictures and such.

In the middle of attending this course I also had an interview for my PhD. It was with a couple about my age and their son aged about my nephews age. This is the second time a child of that age has been interviewed but both times parents were present. Often when I am dealing with people who are younger members they are less what my supervisor calls insiders than older members, now this couple were as much insiders as me. The boy Luke lasted all of twenty minutes and then went back to playing with his Xbox. At the end of the time they asked whether I had anything to input about the mission of the church. This was because they had an elders retreat day this weekend that was looking at the mission of the congregation particularly with respect to the children’s work. The problem is not shortage of children, they have around 100 children on the books at present, but shortage of leaders. Well I stalled, not because I had nothing but I have a huge amount and it is still at a fairly unprocessed state. Anyway of the following two nights I wrote up both the interview and but a short paper together and emailed it to both them and the minister. It was pretty much thrown together, however it had the core of what I wanted to say to the church. I suspected that the minister would want to get back, but although I made it clear I was ready to talk, she didn’t.  We will see how it develops.

Over the weekend I was writing, it was interesting to do, the time I had and the word space meant that I could not do justice to my sources. The piece therefore I feel is sketchy, I have more to do and this is only my first real attempt to write something about Reformed tradition as central to my PhD rather than as something that runs alongside it. It is surprisingly different how I can think when addressing this issue. It is as if the sociologist becomes dominant rather than the person who does organisational studies, I suspect that actually by looking at it, I distance myself from some of the Reformed character in me, who actually feels rather at home in organisational studies, this is the stuff we handle rather well. Sometimes I suspect we are too good at organisation and could do with a bit more chaos. I also conducted a second interview on the Sunday this time with someone who was very new to church (yes all church) having only been attending Herringthorpe for three years and before that churches were places for hatching, matching and dispatching but she had married into a Christian family and when her husband had wanted to return to church she had ended up going with him to Herringthorpe. I am however rather relieved to find Philip Benedict has written “Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social history of Calvinism”  which covers upto about 1700, it means a different perspective at least on the early stuff and the last section is titled “New Calvinist Men and Women” and I suspect it will be useful.

This week was quieter in work which in someways was good. I managed to get the papers off to my supervisor although I am now seeing him on Wednesday next week instead of Thursday. I suspect that he did not realise Thursday was St Patricks day as his excuse is that he had to be in Liverpool on it. That would fit with his current research topic, he did Chinese New Year in London last year, I did a quick google for a related paper but can’t find any. It may be a totally different situation. I also found the week slightly confusing as I took Tuesday as my day off to finish my essay as I had so much on, on Monday.

On Friday evening I went to James and Jean Dickson for the evening. They seem to be keeping up pretty well given that James is 80. I had spotted that the building that has my office in has a map of the area before St Andrews was built with lots and lots of wells marked, as these wells do not seem to be attached to particular property I suspect they mark the site of springs coming to the surface. I mentioned this to James and he wants to take a photograph of this map. We shall see if this is possible on Tuesday.

This weekend I have been over to my parents, on Saturday we had lunch with Ruth she seemed to be in good form. She cooked a meal that suited us all very well  including fruit salad. Although some restraint was practised over the delicious first course none was practised with the fruit salad. The only snag was my parents had decided that as I was over it was chance to eat lots of nice food, so they had salmon for supper as well. I spent quite a bit of time making sure Dad’s computer was virus free, except I suspect it was never infected but his mechanices account had been compromised and someone was spoofing emails using my fathers email  address which they had got from his account. Today I ended up entertaining my parents by reading postings Crappy Choruses and Horrible Hymns thread on Ship of Fools which had them giggling. Some of the pieces really demonstrate what can go wrong while composing pleasant dittys to the Lord. I went back

Settling into the New Year in Sheffield

Last week was odd. I had basically thought I could do practical things far faster than I could in reality. So when Monday dawned I realised that I had a full morning of activity to get through and nothing was written on a major piece of work for my thesis. So at that stage booked the Tuesday off as holiday.

The piece of work got done by the Tuesday evening and was sent off to the proof readers. I then spent Friday working at home and going through the proof read pieces. It worked ok I think. It is one of the few pieces I know that will not be in any form in my thesis. Basically because I had to outline the argument in my thesis given the work I had already done. I will be interested to see if this counts as an argument rather than a series of ideas strung together.

Wednesday and Thursday were quiet in work. I was half expecting students to be back, or there to be a lot of conferences. Nothing in fact happened. I managed to deal with most of the queries that had arrived by email while I was off and I think dealt with one major one and started processing another. I found myself passing on what I would consider pretty basic stuff to an expert user. I wonder how he missed learning about those things. Some I think is that my brain just always worked that way and no I don’t trust myself to hand code things when a machine can do it for me.

Friday was actually fairly good but the effect of the unwinding of having submitted such a big piece was for me to throw a migraine. or I think I did, I was not fully functional on the Saturday although I was not curled up in bed. I also managed to spend a couple of hours in a book shop without finding much I wanted to buy. I somehow managed to take all my medication in the morning, which was not too bright a thing to do as some of it I am supposed to take before bed.There were plenty of books there so it was not lack of choice.

I went to bed early on Saturday and thought I had got over the mess only for a migraine to strike full blast Monday morning. However that does seem to have finally cleared whatever was causing it in my system and the rest of the week has been far better paced.

Tuesday I went down for a supervision to Birmingham, things worked smoothly until it was time to see my supervisor. Then there was some negotiation going on in Department and they wanted him down immediately for twenty minutes. These things happen about every nine months or so however it cut short the meeting by about twenty minutes which is better than some of these situations have been. However the supervisor thought what I wrote had the embryos of an actual thesis. Also checking for something else I came across the following quote “Culture - not vision or strategy - is the most powerful factor in any organisation”. This is from the book Cracking your Church’s Culture Code by Samuel Chand. It is American and it does presume culture is something the boss determines which does not fit with my understanding at all. However I suspect it would do no harm for a church secretary or minister to read it. For instance he points out that turf issues aren’t really about the tasks people fight over but that they are about personal pride and perceived powers.

Wednesday I had a long meeting on Wednesday morning and actually spent most of the afternoon going through the accumulated emails. The difference being from last week is that I was actually feeling as if I was getting on top of it. I also emailed the person in work in charge of running courses possible dates I could teach on. I am beginning to realise that at least as far as research training she is not a proactive about setting up courses. I am going to have to think about how I tackle this but it explains a lot. I can tackle this, this time, last time I was simply too depressed to do so, so courses did not happen.

Thursday another normal day in work. Saw a PhD student who is working on attitude to nature reserves in I suspect Malaysia. She always brings me treats, often milk chocolate that I give away or fruit. This time she brought home made sweets. It is so long since I have experienced my automatic gag in response to texture I was beginning to think that with cutting out milk it had got rid of it as I have eaten things where I would have expected the gag to play. However these although they look milk free hit it exactly.

Friday had a bit of a frustrating morning, a person with whom I have a long history of cooperation has a student doing a PhD. Now this should not be a problem but the student is falling into that grey category between where people make the grade and people don’t. The problem does not seem to be understanding or comprehension. If PhD were gained by written papers we expect she would pass but it isn’t and she seems to lack the spark that takes people beyond the taught course level. In the evening I went to have a meal with James and Jean Dickson. It was an enjoyable evening. The main course was ham with Inverness Sauce which was sharp and fruity jelly so worked well with ham.

Saturday was better this week. I went into town, I decided on a whim to buy myself a couple of extra thermal baselayers from Blacks as the Peter Storm ones they sell are so comfy. I managed to pick up one large and one extra small. The one thing I am not is extra small (although I quite probably would get away with medium. So there was a second visit down town to sort that. I also picked up my prescription from Boots. I had the review with the pharmacist and as it was a locum covering Saturday I had to explain that the fact it said my GP had not reviewed my prescription was due to my GP not ticking the box not due to the lack of review as there had been a major reduction in September in what I was prescribed. Stuart came around in the evening and he needs to do a tour for his NVQ and he can’t do a schedule one so would I mind coming up and he would show me around. I said yes but not until the week after this, but also suggested that he widened it to other people at church, not everybody but a small group.

Today I went to Herringthorpe and they had a church meeting. They seem to be slowly getting their head around the issues to do with finance and as a result there was more light in this church meeting. What I suspect they are really struggling with is not finance at all but the fact that the methods that kept a congregation of less than one hundred don’t work very well for congregations that are larger. For instance they need to be deliberate about things rather than leaving them to the natural flow of friendship. People will not know who every one is within a couple of months of joining the church. So how do people find who to talk to. For instance today Vicki (spelling is correct) was asking for people to help with next Sunday’s Homeless Cafe, but if I was new I would not know who Vicki was .

A busy fortnight ends in Migraine

As it is two weeks I am afraid it is going to be highlights. On the Tuesday two weeks ago I gave the second of three courses. So there is just one more course to give this session with maybe on NVivo course if there is demand as NVivo has been extremely popular. The puzzling thing is that like the previous course where you could just attend by being present at the first session only, there are now three sessions. So people need not sign up for all three. Indeed they could release spaces between courses. All three courses are fully subscribed but people are showing the same attendance pattern as before. That is selfish as I know some people want to attend the later ones who do not need to attend the early ones.

On Friday night the Younger Womens Group attended a St George's night meal at the Carlton Park Hotel which was pleasant enough. The menu was interesting, nobody thought it was typically English but some of that was the way they named the dishes. For instance they had Pork Hock Terrine which may well have been fairly British, basically Ham in Jelly, which of course does not sound quite as nice. The desserts really were not English, well the nearest you got was I think Manchester Pie and Apple crumble but the others were things like chocolate cake. There was not one steamed suet pudding amongst them, nor any milk puddings such as rice, sago or tapioca. I fully acknowledge that I would not have eaten the later but I equally would not have eaten Manchester Pie.

Saturday it was over to Manchester to visit my parents who had invited Ruth around for the day, I think on the pretence of gardening but really because they decided it was time Ruth and I got together again. We did manage to get some gardening done, but as my parents had not planned any it was limited to tidying up jobs. This reminded me of what I intended to get mum for a birthday present, so a folding stool is now ordered so that it can be stored down in the utility space for Mum when she wants to climb up during gardening. It is light and pretty strong. Hopefully this will help prevent her having mishaps like last years.

Sunday morning I had planned to do bits of thesis work I had not got around to, like writing up the meal on Friday night. Due to the meal I had not come over until Saturday morning and Mum was feeling that time was short. So she decided on Sunday morning that even though I was going to be busy that she would stay at home just to be near me rather than going to church. Unfortunately she did not confirm this with Dad who was not happy at the prospect of going to church on his own, so Mum had to do a quick change around and get ready for church.

Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. It actually went fairly well but Birmingham New Street was on emergency power source after flooding which meant that though there were lights, none of the retail units whether food or newsagents were open nor were the escalators working (and I presume lifts). Intriguingly unlike when escalators are swtiched off or broken when you can still walk up them. For those interested the station right next door to Birmingham New Street, Curzon Street is still standing and the platforms are still there as I see them every time I go to Birmingham. My suspicion that this rather than Birmingham New Street is actually what is going to be the new High Speed Rail link seems to be confirmed on Wikipedia. The weather was good and I managed to get the Rymans shop which gave me opportunity to stock up packs for Jenny and Cait. The supervision with my supervisor went well, although I need to review the amount of stuff I am transcribing as I simply won't get it done in the time.

Wednesday I went out with the NAG (I think Neighbourhood Assessment Group) from Herringthorpe to Intake Doncaster. It was interesting. The thing was that the situation developed because a church was generous even though it was nearly out. Generosity is something Herringthorpe needs to learn at the moment the cost cutting I think is actually having the knock on effect of reducing peoples giving. The thing is that they see things run on lets get by with the cheapest we can. Somehow always looking for a bargain is not a good sentiment to get people to give nor to  particularly encourage people to join the congregation. However the person at Intake underlined the fact that just being generous and involved in the community is not enough, in his words, it persuades people you have not got two heads but it does not bring them into church. I am getting more and more convinced that we need to look on joining a congregation as a journey to be undertaken and not as a matter of an instant decision. The good news is you don't have to approach everyone you know with "Have you considered the claims of Jesus Christ" or you are not playing your part. The bad news is that it needs more people, you cannot rely on the big evangelist to do it all, it is upto people to form relationships and to welcome a lot more people than will every join your congregation.

Thursday finally submitted my essay to Renewing Reformed Theology which is a sociological one. I know I am proficient in doing theology at least contextually but it seems to me at present more important to grasp how people do do theology, than to spell out what that theology ought to be. So late Thursday I submitted it.  I suspect that they are expecting theological papers and to have one that clearly isn't but addresses the issue might be something of a surprise. However I can say with all honesty that my paper is answering the question.

Friday I had supper at the Dicksons. It is good to get to spend time talking with them.

Saturday I think I over did things. I put on a a pot of dhal in the morning, hung , not sure what now. Went into town where I shopped for a lot of bits and pieces. I started by walking down to Argos, but it was a Continental Market day. I must say I think the stalls are getting less continental and more arts and crafts plus normal market stalls. However with them Fargate was packed. I am tempted to say recession, what recession after seeing that. It was a constant crowd all the way down. I then bought a pair of walking shoes to replace the brown ones I started wearing when a volunteer on Iona. It is at least my second attempt to buy a pair of shoes to replace them. I bought a previous pair which proceeded to disintegrate at a faster rate than the brown shoes so I went back to them. So I now have a pair of walking shoes, fairly light which I hope I can be happy in wearing every day. Then to Boots and Marks. On a whim bought a pair of trousers and a top for smart as I wanted something cooler to wear to church. Then in the evening started writing up an account of the visit to Intake but got distracted into buying a computer. Well one somewhere between a netbook and a superlight notebook. I probably could have got a netbook for half the price but then I would not have been so confident in its quality. I also managed to order it at a good price from Debenhams rather than just any internet shop. This was prompted by an incident which meant I had no phone or internet connection at home for a few hours. I would not have known about it except that I went home for lunch and tried to login. I just became aware about how I felt disconnected when that happened. Silly really but so much of what I do is spent on line.

Today I went to Herringthorpe, we sang "Shine Jesus Shine", I have two queries, will we sing it again before I leave (no hymns repeated when I have been there since about Christmas and I have been recording) and secondly I realised it does stir strong emotions, people either seem to love or hate it. Individuals could give their own personal reason but I am wondering what the more general one is, and why this particular chorus. However I was aware at the end I had a migraine, mainly due to the headache, but also due to the fractured sense of reality. If you have seen early cartoons then they sometimes look fractured, jerky motion to them, well with a migraine my experience of reality seems to have a similar quality.

Webinars and Alcholic Ginger Beer

This has been a full week, or at least it feels like that at this point.

Monday was supervision, which feels a long time ago now. My supervisor had warned me he might be late, so when I wandered up five minutes early expecting to make myself comfortable in front of his office, I was rather surprised to see him walking down the corridor. Admittedly in the opposite direction, but that is also the way to the local departmental office and his secretaries office. However by that stage it was also obvious that a mild migraine was happening. Although there was a headache,the main effect was that my thought was disjointed. I think I got the main points but am not sure I got the nuances. Fortunately the other symptom was my eyes feeling as if I had been looking at a computer screen too long, which as all the students in Birmingham were desperately trying to finish work before the Easter break, I did not stand a chance of doing. I was also supposed to go to writers group but given the migraine and such I just did not want to press myself and went for an early night instead.

Tuesday I was in work if a slight bit post migraine but otherwise a fairly good day, same Wednesday, Thursday and Friday work wise. I have spent most of the week revising course notes for SPSS as we are splitting the course in two. I also sent a note out  to see if there was anyone else interested in Prayer Group along with who to contact. We are down to four members and with the turn out is quite haphazard. Some of that is because of my migraines but it is not only that. Oh my middle boss, has decided to get all his team together next Monday morning. He has made two mistakes which have not chuffed people. Firstly he did this a short notice, I presume because he had not finalised things but that is also problematic as at least two of the sub teams have to organise cover and they normally cover for each other. Lets call them team A and Team B. If team A are needed in a meeting then people in team B cover and visa versa. Secondly timing, I object because it is Holy Week and he as a good Catholic should know better than to schedule major meetings in Holy Week. Others are of the view that a two and a half hour meeting would have made things much more workable than a three hour one.

Friday evening I went around to the Dicksons for a meal. They were good company and the meal was delicious. Them having me around for a meal is a real sanity stop in my life, even as this time, we do not have much to talk about other than small talk about church business.

Saturday I was involved in the URC Webinars about identity, it was an interesting experience. All the training sessions had been during the working week and as I was in work and my computer at work has no microphone attached and I was not going to organise to take one in, I could not do any of the trainings. Were they expecting everyone to either be ministers or retired. So it was very much a suck it and see situation. Actually I would not have got to a training anyway as my email asking for an invite went to a spam folder so I did not get an invite until Friday. I looked at the list and by chance chose the one with least attenders, I think twelve in total apart from staff. The two morning seminars had about thirty in each, I was the noon and the afternoon one was supposed to have around thirty as well. The technology worked okay even on my relatively old pc (it is coming up for five years old) although I did find that I undid the link to the earphone and relied on my computers speakers for comfort. Not something I could have done for comfort. The major problem was that we could hear all the background noise from the interviewing session including the typing on the keypad. They ran a survey and  asked us to talk about it. Quite often the feedback was criticism of the design of the survey. Probably the survey would have worked better if there had been a preliminary attempt, that was unless this was a preliminary attempt. I also think they would have got better more indepth responses if they had run some questions in front of us before hand so we knew the themes of the discussion.

They said the last one was a reporting back session so I signed up for that as well but it was far more  a discussion generally on the theme of "God is still speaking". I am quite sure that the key to success of that is whether it is sold as heading in an attractive direction. If it is sold as the latest management idea for growing our churches it will be seen to be just another layer of paperwork.  Major challenges are to get a sign up rate so that local URC is likely to be signed up and to get a training rate so that everyone, not just those who come to trainings is in on the act.  To do that it is not persuading the people doing the webinars it is going further. I think people need to think a lot more about what we mean by welcoming. Seriously we have welcoming sussed. If people walk through the doors the reports are that they are welcomed. The problems are prior to that, which is giving people the confidence to walk through the doors and after that, which is supporting people over the first two years with a congregation. It is very easy for a person to be welcomed the first week but ignored the third week they attend. Shall we say the problems are inviting and integrating.

Another problem is that we talked about URC as a diverse denomination, we are as a rule theologically diverse but culturally similar. There is not the same range of worship there is in the Church of England in the URC, we draw our membership from a specific cultural groups, largely middle class, often very wordy, in fact you could almost say we have a bit of a love affair with words. We are good administrators. In England we attract people of Scottish or Irish descent, this is true in former Congregationalist Churches. In fact English non-conformist culture shows strong Scottish cultural norms. It is often easier to make sense of  the over arching culture if you take a Scottish rather than an English perspective. We like to be close to the bible.

Oh having finished that I was on an adrenaline high. Decided that maybe not working on anything was a good idea so got a bottle of Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer and having tried it, I am still unsure whether to class it as a ginger beer with alcohol added or what I suspect is more likely a fairly flavourless lager with lots of ginger added. It is clear golden in colour, has a head, maybe too much of a head, there is a mild taste I associate with hops but it predominantly tastes of ginger although not as sweet as most ginger beers. Acceptable but nothing to rave about.  Now I am debating on whether to have a go at making ginger schnapps.

Today I went to Herringthorpe, Pauline was at a family wedding so they had a speaker from Wycliffe Bible Translators, actually one of their workers in Bangladesh who works with the literacy teams there. This meant that the already overloaded sunday technically was more overloaded. The result was that Palm Sunday and Good Friday got little mention. The church does have mid week services this week but I will be surprised if lots of people attend. They also are at liturgical odd times. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have short meditations and Friday EVENING is the major mid week service. There seems to be an ecumenical event on Thursday evening but that is at Broom Methodist. They did give out palm crosses but that and a couple of hymns were all the references to this weeks liturgical events.

Writing and Presenting an NVivo Course

This week has been a story of preparation of a course. Friday I had to give a course on NVivo. The thing being that I was getting more and more dischuffed with the course we already had which was anyway for an earlier version of the software. The earlier version  I had adopted a document from another university and then written the course around it. This time I was writing the document myself from scratch. I had to decide what went into it. I had to plan the presentation. I scrapped the exercises.

Well I had three days to write it, then one to give it. Actually that is not quite fair. I had the document half written last week, but it had taken me four days to get half way through and I had three days to write the rest. Its manageable but only just. On top of this last Sunday evening I discovered that my lounge heater had given up the ghost. It had done this sometime previously but I had put it down to the plug not being properly in and given it a good thump. This time I decided to investigate and the first thing I discovered was the plug was not properly in because it was a timer device and at a point when the plug was half in that had melted and stuck the plug half in. I could not get the plug in or out. I went to change the plug but the heater did not spring miraculously into life when I did so. Now I am not a hundred percent sure this was due to the heater being faulty. It could be any of the three following. Firstly me not quite establishing contact when rewiring the plug. Secondly a faulty plug got off a hair drier that has not been used for ages. Thirdly a faulty 13 amp fuse as it was got from a 2 plug adapter my grandfather made over twenty years ago. My grandfather made it so the adapter is perfectly safe, please don't worry about that. My grandfather was both very safety concious and a precision engineer. This is more than I can say for the factory that put the plug onto the hair-drier. I am going to buy myself a couple of new plugs and some new 13 amp fuses and try again some day, but in the mean time I ordered a new heater for the lounge. I went to Argos.

Monday I went to writers group, it went well again, with not a lot of corrections, the writing was also going smoothly. Tuesday was another story. My brain decided to throw a migraine about mid day. I presume from running on nerves, I took pain killers and continued on writing as it needed to be finished by that evening as someone else had to format the document. I got it done, went to Herringthorpe for Bible study, its amazing what paracetamol and caffeine can do. I got through feeling okay although more irritable than usual now I look back on it and not as quick at responding to situations. Got home safely although my brain was fantasising nightmares on the way home. I knew it was my brain and just ignored it. I do not mean hallucinations but seriously daft ideas seemed to occur to it, the sort that a tenth of a seconds thought show as being obviously stupid and dangerous.

I awoke the next morning to feeling sick and nauseous.  Fortunately it was my day off, unfortunately it was the day the heater was supposed to arrive and I also wanted to get up to date with my diary. Argos turned up with the heater just after 9:00 a.m. and I spent most of the rest of the day in bed and went to bed early, but despite that was still feeling groggy the day after. However it had cleared enough about 12:30 a.m. for me to feel that it was worth getting up. So I got up and made myself the best clearer of migraines I know which is scrambled eggs on toast followed by coffee. The net result was that I was firing on all cylinders despite the fact that I sort of knew the migraine wasn't quite gone.

The course went well on Friday, although some of them found it too intense. They wanted to have their hands held while they did exercises. The problem being that the exercises that they were likely to do would not be particularly illuminating. This course actually worked really well for the two people who had spent some time with NVivo already and bought their own laptops. They were able to make connections between the course material and the things that they wanted to do. This was for them a big break through, because they were getting the how to, for questions they asked. One of the questions both of them had was about rearranging nodes. So I will write that bit to the end of the document.

On the evening I went to see Jean and James Dickson. They are as busy as ever and this week have had a host of early morning meetings with James getting the scaffolding in to change the light bulbs at the church. Also he had been PAT testing the electrical equipment in the church. There is some problem with the sound equipment so Cliff will have to come down and have a look at it. They have lots of holidays planned for this coming year, to such an extent that it was difficult to find dates for me to have supper with them.

Yesterday I was supposed to go to York for a Ship of Fools meet. However, despite having organised it, my migraine returned, and I felt safer in bed in the morning. In the afternoon I got up and did some web design for the website Morag and I are working on. My big problem at the moment is my printer is refusing to scan and the one at work will scan but will not then send it to my email account, or would not when I last tried it. I will try again as it kept saying server down and that just might be the case. The webdesign is very absorbing. I did two three hour sessions on it without realising how the time was passing. It is like a jigsaw puzzle, you get one bit right then you turn to the next bit and see if that is getting right. However I have realised that what I am really doing is designing the look of a content management system. So I am now looking at Joomla to see if I can adapt the website to work with that content management system. If I can it will ease things for both Morag and myself. No real hurry, as I need a photo I can only get in May when I go up.

Supervision and a busy Friday

Lets see what has been going on. I made writing group this Monday and enjoyed it. They decided that they would meet at one of the individuals homes rather than at St Andrews for the workshop on Saturday so I had the task of unsetting the heating.

I must admit Tuesday and Wednesday are rather blank. The only thing of note was Stuart came around on Wednesday for a shower. The boiler failed at his bed sit just right in the coldest spell of the winter. His Landlady who is another member of St Andrews was away in Northern Ireland at the time looking after her father. So he did not feel able to get a plumber in to fix it. It was a fortnight before she was back and she could call a plumber. There has since been a temporary repair but he has been using my blower heater and coming around for showers. I think it largely reflects Stuarts lack of get up and go, as I pretty sure in the circumstances he could have called a plumber out to fix the boiler and then charged the amount to his Landlady as essential work. Anyway he was around for a shower, he wanted to come this Monday but as I am at writers group its a no can do situation.

Thursday I was down to Birmingham. A day with nothing untoward happening. So I started off wrongly by leaving my diary in work, so had to go round via work however I caught the tram down instead of walking. Got to the station and there were NO queues to collect tickets!!!! I just walked up to the machine to collect mine and got it. Oh the coffee shop had no soya milk so it was a black decaff Americano instead and there was someone sitting in my seat, she tried to say it was the window seat but it wasn't that on the overhead and I had requested an aisle seat. Got the next train out to the University, and went to Ryman's to buy a sketch book, a clipboard (for Saturday) and a pencil case then went onto the Arts building and found somewhere to eat lunch. Maybe I should have fought my way through to a computer (role on Easter when there are few undergrads about) but reading through my papers for a supervision and having lunch seemed better. Then up to supervision. I must think the most intensely I ever do during that half hour. I certainly come out of a supervision in something of a daze. I happened to leave the building at the same time as another mature postgrad. We compared notes on scarcity of literature. His PhD is on mining in Staffordshire and he could find one e-journal. I was busy envying him. We don't have a paper journal let alone an e-journal yet. Admittedly as the area is cross disciplinary I have a massive collection of books to at least look at. The journey back was smooth. I think I got the 4:00 p.m. train rather than the 4:30 p.m. The train was a swish new one. The colour was distinctly different, there were less table seats and the reservations were all by card as they had not got the system working. The taxi driver running me home was superb, got me to the top of Gell St in the rush hour in less than ten minutes. We they had to wait, because cars were insisting on going through a junction they weren't supposed to and so our route was blocked. It totally was not his fault, a bit more consideration by others would have done wonders for the situation.

Friday was busy too. On the morning I got up for breakfast. Then Sarah and I turned up for Greek, unfortunately Ted was on his way to Folkestone to see his mother so we had to cancel Greek, I went into work stopping off at a PJ Taste, a sandwich shop I like, only to be asked if I knew of anyone who had a parking space they could use Monday to Friday. Well mine is normally free during that time and they offered me £50 per month. Not really sure on the going rate and I cannot guarantee that space will be free but if they become the established users of that space then I am pretty sure they won't have problems. Then into work, nothing remarkable happened, but ended up poping home at lunch time only to find the gas board had stopped my direct debit. Supposedly at my request but I am pretty sure I did not request it. So got on the phone to them to get it re-instated. If there is more hassle from this I will be cross. Then up to the Dickson's on the evening. The highlight of the meal was the pineapple they had got from Waitrose that was Costa Rican in origin. It really was nice and got me to over eat.

Saturday was a migraine day. I guess I over did things on Friday which was a pity as I intended going to my writings groups workshop of plotting. Today I went over to Chesterfield, had a pleasant service. I really enjoyed it. I got two interviews arranged one for this Tuesday and one for next Tuesday. Lets see how things work through.

This week is fairly quiet, Monday I have writers group, then Wednesday I may go to the bible reading when St Andrews Sheffield take part in Yorkshire Synods attempt to read through the bible. Then next weekend I am visiting my parents. So there may not be a letter next week.

Chattering (24 Jun 07)

Tuesday 19th June

Well it is Tuesday and I have started this letter. Yesterday was a busy but good day not least as my neck has just reminded me I learnt how to avoid neck ache. When it comes sore it is just a sign that I need to sit straighter in my seat. Simple really only that you need to have built up the muscles in your lower torso so you can remain erect. Its funny once you learn a trick like that it is easy to do but until you do it remains so very very difficult. Other things include getting Cliff into inspect the electrics in the cellar apart from the heating stuff. I wanted to be sure that anything apart from the heating stuff was safe. I was pretty sure the lights were as they looked as if they ran along the ceiling but if there was anything else down there I could not be certain. As things was there was only an electric fan heater, which I think Barry must have put down there to stop people using. Either that or the Dickson's had it down there to help dry the place out. Then I managed to transcribe three sections of the interviews. If I manage that again and on do some serious work on it I will be getting ahead. Unfortunately Stuart rang me just as I settled to sleep.


Today after getting into work pretty well on time, I did some work on SPSS 16. No do not go and look in the shops for it, its a beta and I only have the copy until August when I need to send it back to the US. Whoever has been distributing beta's is onto a hiding for nothing. They can only really be used by people who are not worried by oddities. SPSS opened and it looked so like the old Unix version which was very clunky that I was quite worried. However although it runs noticeably slower that SPSS 15 the clunkiness isn't too bad.


Then on this afternoon to a meeting of the local community, well at least part of it. I am going to have to see if I can get hold of other bits as some sectors that are normally well represented weren't there. The West One development for instance, Gell Street and the Glossop Road Baths. However there were also local people who do not usually come. The Somali community seems to be reluctant to come unless there are interpreters. The problem is persuading them that there will be interpreters. I have been to meetings where there have been interpreters and no Somali's. I wonder what we need to do to do that.

Sunday 24th June

Heck, I have not written anything since Tuesday and my brain has gone completely blank on the rest of the week. Wednesday was a fairly normal day I think. Saw Theodora for what was a fairly straightforward session as sessions go. Then came home and I think did some transcription. Maybe around 6 minutes. By the way Lynne some years ago you gave me a wheat filled bag that you heat in the microwave for two minutes and it becomes nice and warm. It is the most useful thing. I have used it for multiple aches and pains over the years, the latest being that I put my shoulders when I am doing transcription and it stops them becoming quite so tight.

Thursday was also a very very normal day. I cannot think of anything special happening unless you call the mundane like talking to my parents and such. Wrote some wording for the Website but there is still a lot to do. Finally the person at Insight got in touch and I was able to say that I did not have the ability to do give the go ahead she wanted.

Friday was my day off, so went to Breakfast at Hanover. Then I came back and sorted things out at home, before going to St. Andrews to help set up the boards. James and Jean were back, James had been waiting for the boiler men to come, who had come early and condemned the electrics due to flood damage. That means no heat in the Church, Elders Vestry and Ministers Vestry for several months as we need to sort out both the boilers and the causes of the flooding. Evidence seems to be stepping up for a blocked outlet but where? The water having been stationary since Saturday suddenly dropped on Thursday night! Where did it go? Anyway James, Ted, Sarah and myself got the display boards up in record time. Jean Dickson returned from shopping expecting to have to help and found we had finished. Then Ted Sarah and I retired to my place to do some Greek. Took us around an hour to do four verses but we are getting there. Sarah is now talking of getting us to do Hebrew in a couple of years time. I want to leave it until then. Then went into tow to shop, and not think. I came back and did more transcription.

Transcribing an interview is very slow process. I work at about 1:10 on the interview:transcription time ratio. I am not really sure I ought not to be keeping a diary on transcription decisions. I am well aware I am sometimes consistent and sometimes I am not. One thing I have learnt is that emotion can get in the way of transcription.

Saturday was the day of the Mind, Body and Soul exhibition at St. Andrews. There were certainly lots of things on display and this time we did actually have several exhibitors who were not church members. Sarah certainly seems to be a lot better at getting us to go beyond our immediate community. There were fantastic painting in the hall and we had two gentlemen from the Muslim Welfare house doing scripts. Drinks and cakes were supplied by church ladies, Sarah having been let down at the last minute. Perhaps the hit this time was not Alan Sandland with his violins, impressive as that still is, but Elizabeth Cousley with her hats. She seems to have been going to Leeds to learn millinery and her hats were worthy of being worn to Ascot. Mrs Fotheringham was amongst the painters who displayed work. There also were a couple of taster sessions at the church, I went to the one by the local writers group which was probably 50% the normal group and 50% people trying it like me. This also included two Muslim women. There was a singing group held as well and a beading activity for children. Then there was stuff going on at the Broomhall Centre as well.

Today the activity of the last two days caught up with me and though I did make it to church I spent most of the afternoon in bed with a migraine. That meant that I did not help with the clearing away of the exhibition but then with a migraine I would have been a hindrance rather than a help.

Coming week

Well I am down to see Stephen Pattison on Wednesday, then have a reminder driving lesson on Thursday. I think I should be ok. Its a reminder less as I have my driving license but it is about ten years since I last drove and I will need something to get my confidence back up.