Time I think I wrote another chatterings.

Leaf in the Gardens at Dunham Massey,
shades of autumn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brief description of busy weeks

Right lets me see about news. Work has been busy, there are both a number of PhD students who are coming fairly regularly to see me for advice plus the department wants some specific statistics for the end of August. I have had to cut back the specific statistics as the link with the database has been lost and we could only handle data for the last year. I finally got the full data sets a week ago on Thursday now all I have to do is to make sense of them. With one of them the first act must be to reduce radically the amount of data stored to that which I am interested in. I wonder if I had better do a Grep Search before reading it into any other package. Grep is a powerful searching tool which is available free and I think only myself and one other member of the department use it.

The weekend before last I went to my parents. The Saturday we spent at Dunham Massey. The idea was to go around the garden and take pictures. This was so I could get more used to my new camera and Dad would actually take some pictures on his while I was around. You can see the half way decent ones I got. The day was warm and we did not get rained on, the cafe was not crowded and we were not caught up in a massive traffic jam, oh and the parking wasn't bad either. So the day scored a complete zero out of all Dad's worries.

The next day we went to Parrswood for morning worship. The numbers were down and they had no organist that Sunday. Not that this phased the congregation who went back to the old cantor led singing quite easily even for hymns where they weren't familiar with the words. Colin acted as cantor, I think on the grounds that somebody had to and given that the choice of elders seemed to be him, Roger Smith (great in the rythmn section but perhaps not so good at the tune) or Ruth, made sort of sense. The preacher was a student studying at the college from overseas. His sermon was different to what we had expected. What was going to happen was that my parents were going to go home then Ruth and I would walk up to the Heatons then Dad might come and pick us up by car. Well we hung around talking so long that mum found the kitchen and the washing up was done by the time they were ready to leave. We then had Sunday lunch and talked until late afternoon, before running Ruth home. I got the train back.

The week feels pretty mundane, I think I had an elders meeting on the thursday that went on and on for hours, just a lot of getting through the business, nothing very exciting, the elders approved a budget, recommended the accounts and agreed aims for the church to go in the annual report. I also went to the Dicksons on Friday for a meal and a talk. They were asking me whether I preferred a 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. start, I said after two years of getting over to Rotherham for a 10:30 start both times are going to give me a lie in!

The weekend was writing. The process of writing is interesting, unfortunately I had a thick day on Saturday when my brain refused to string two sentences together for most of the day. I nursed it along but the rate of work done meant that I did not get to Chesterfield on Sunday. Pity.

Last week again was pretty normal although they have just built a new common room and kitchen at work in the building I am in. This means the old one will become a meetings room. The new one is down stairs, so I bought myself a cup with a lid on it so I can take my coffee upstairs. Actually at the moment they seem to be making a small meetings area just outside my office. There is at present a watercooler, a round table and a chair, all it needs is a few more chairs.

On wednesday I had a migraine. The first one for four weeks, now if the next one could be in six weeks time I will be very pleased. Otherwise just standard work at the office.

Yesterday I went to Leeds for a shipmeet I had organised. The organisation worked by people suggesting places and me looking for a consensus so we ended up at Tropical World which is a set of buildings that try to recreate various tropical zones and have the animals, birds, fish and insects that live there. It is just beside Roundhay Park. Needless to say having planned a day that was ideal for a wet British summer Saturday we had brilliant sun all day! About eleven of us all told turn up, people coming from Hull and Durham as well as Sheffield and York. A group of us met at York Station and then got the taxi out to Tropical World, where we met up with the others. A different selection got the Taxi back to Leeds station at the end. I took my small camera so you can see the pictures.