Maybe Summer has finally come

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After a busy Easter

No writers group this week, I am going to have to write a paper for them on epublishing, I am not sure that they are aware of the options and how to go about them. The problem is that I suspect many of them think that web-publishing, epublishing and publishing on demand are one and the same thing. What I think they actually want is website that show cases their writing and allows the group to interact. It could either be joint blog or a fairly simple content management system which allows interaction. The thing is that setting up such a website is beyond me at present with a thesis to write. Anyway part of the problem of running a website is that it needs to be publicised so others would need to be willing to do this.

The week was busy in work. with working on a paper and also preparing on-line course material well editing it at least. Plus I took Thursday off as I was aware that Holy week services, and other Easter commitments were going to dig deep into my time.

Wednesday I awoke to find it snowing. It was just settling so before I went into work I nabbed some pictures of cherry blossom and snow. Unfortunately only one of the really came out, I will attach it to the blog posting of this when I get home. The weather cleared by lunch time although still miserable and wet. Given the warmth of last week it was a real change around.

Thursday evening St Andrews had a short Maundy Thursday Service, this takes place before the choir rehearsal. This year it was a drama from Iona Community “Eh .. Jesus?” “Yes Peter” set in the last supper and based around the last supper. At the end I realised that the next people in were the Broomhall Breakfast and started moving the chairs and tables; as it became clear that there was a purpose to what I was doing, first Sarah and then others joined in. That resulted in the room being set up by ten minutes the tables were in the right place. If the disciples were as efficient maybe they did the washing up before going to the mount of Olves. It looks as if James and Jean did the setting up, I was on standby for helping.

Friday was the Breakfast, I had been booked by Sarah weeks ago. Although like many ministers she seems to think that there is more time between events than there actually is. St Andrew’s tends to turn up early and this week the Breakfast decided they wanted to sit and talk. Last week at Breakfast Phil (who I call silver due to the amount of jewelery he often wears and to distinguish him from Phil with the ponytail) had been in hospital for several weeks, we need to think about ways of getting news through because we would like to take some sort of care for those who come and who is ill.

We then set up for the Friday meditation service that Sarah. Sarah also wanted to look for a diary date during the time but we had only vaguely got the projection stuff up, when people started arriving. For a first Sarah even had the hymn words on the projector, but most of it was pictures and words to think about. The whole service was about broken covenants. I struggle with the theme as the covenants are normally on God’s initiative and it seems always as if he dictates terms. Is this really what we mean by covenant. It was hard hitting as we faced human failure. Anyway I setup the projector and the sound system and as I did so realised that what we really needed was to be able to get the projector away from the computer so that the computer could be placed where Sarah felt happy with it. Rather than try anything fancy it occurred to me a single long cable would do as well. I might need to configure the electrical extension leads differently as well but it was all doable fairly easily. Anyway I have ordered the cable and we shall see.

Friday evening I went around to a friend/colleague called Margo for a meal. We have a close research relationship which has developed over the last eighteen or nineteen years since I came to Sheffield. Times have not always been easy, nothing to do with our relationship just various life events but the last year or so she and I have worked very closely indeed. At Christmas time she held a very enjoyable party to which I was invited and on Friday I was invited around for a meal. She is also has a student project looking at how people at breakfast manage their eating and she went to check out what URC stood for. Well her background is Presbyterian Church of Ireland although she has not been to church for decades. So an interesting conversation ensued around St Andrews.

Saturday I ended up with the end of a mild migraine. So I shopped and then realising that I was not getting better went back to bed for a couple of hours but that cleared it, completely and utterly. This was just as well because as well as two case studies for my thesis to finish typing up I was also meeting James down at St Andrew’s to set up communion. I have agreed to be second table elder this year with a view to being first next year. I also understood I was have a varied first table elder as James’ had not had a deputy this last year but people had taken turns. I should have been suspicious when James started being very thorough about making sure I knew how things were done. However with three to four elders checking on me the first Sunday I was on pulpit duty I just thought it was a resurgence of that gene. Anyway we got it basically setup, with Jean checking up on us at times.

Anyway it was communion today, things went well on the whole although perhaps going straight from congregational member to table elder (rather than a serving elder) was a bit of a leap. There have been changes while I was away and the service is a lot less fussy than it used to be, but still not the simplest of URC services. I reverted to the old form and put a tray of glasses close by the minister. It also made sense when James gave me the communion case. It was not until Sheila, and said she was table elder two to my table one, I queried this as I want a slightly longer apprenticeship and she agreed that she would at least do the chasing of elders for serving communion (we need six, four main ones, one for the choir and one for special diets although we do not at present do gluten free so it is only the non-alcoholic wine).

It was therefore about 1:00 p.m. when I got home, then it was pack and get out to come to my parents. Dad has forgotten that I have travelled across most Easters and decided that I was going to struggle to get a train. I had to keep reassuring him. When I said I had seen the rising sun he said “from the train?”. I am not sure where else I was likely to say that from! Maybe next year I had better hire a car so as to stop him worrying.

Preparing for Supervision during Holy week

I thought I would start this weeks blog off with something different so here is a picture. These are primroses that are at present in flower in Gell Street Park just close to my flat the picture was taken this morning on the way to church.

Monday seems a long way a way. The day was unremarkable, although I saw my boss at 11:30 which would have been the first time in about six weeks, other than passing in corridors or on the road, these two are infrequent as she works in a different building to me. We quite often buy each other coffee at these meetings, she started it. Oh the really good news is that actually I am now off being watched for the number of days off sick. I spent the evening with my writers group in The Frog and Parrot. The last time we were quite a crowd and it worked well despite the music. This time however when the music was turned up with their being fewer of us, it drowned the conversation somewhat. Neither myself or Neil the leader particularly like talking against background noise. However they did put on hits from the 1970s so at least quite a few in our group recognised the music.

Tuesday I was off work and writing, I managed to finish the essay about lunch time, but I agree as Ruth commented that it is a heavy essay. I suspect any of the three or so ideas in there could have done with a full essay on their own. It is part of thinking myself clear about the Reformed tradition and is basically my defence for putting up what I know to be a limited and personal account of that tradition. Basically I suspect that to do an authoritative account is such a major piece of work that it is beyond the scope of any doctoral student and probably would need to be a collaboration between a wide number of scholars from a variety of subjects and with differing perspectives. So not even one persons magnus opus. This is particularly true when you move outside the debates of theology.

Wednesday I was busy sorting out the exercise dataset. The previous set of results had given back an answer that was the wrong way around. As this particular result was maverick, it took me some time to track down what was going on. The answer seemed to be that it was not directly about quantity but when the carbohydrate was eaten on the day of the race.

Thursday was last day in work. Spent the morning discussing the data with the guy in charge of the exercise then finished the book; Resonate by Nancy Duarte . It is very good, it talks about giving presentations and before anyone thinks of it as about slides, one of her examples used is a sermon by a Presbyterian Minister John Ortberg. So forget slides, this is about communicating a message and putting in appropriate emotional content. I am going to try and apply some of it when I give my talk at Herringthorpe.

On the evening I went out to Maundy Thursday service at Herringthorpe. It was a communion service but the Methodist Minister decided to lead the first part with a presentation on the Jewish Seder. Not an actual seder but to present elements of the seder. What really surprised me was that Pauline had never been to such a service before. He also wanted to know who was the youngest. There was another woman there who has been coming to the church for about six months. Now I knew without a doubt that she was a good deal younger than me, but even Pauline would not accept that. So we had to go into declaring ages. I am thirteen years her elder. I am wondering how much this age thing has played into their perspective of me. As I was at in my mid thirties a lot of what they suggesting would have been a lot more appropriate, although i also acknowledge that the person I was in my thirties was even more highly strung than I am at present, but in my mid forties I am far more settled and formed in my own mind.

Friday was busy. Broomhall Breakfast had been rather struggling staff wise the previous week due to the Archer project closing on Friday, as it was closed again this week, I volunteered to be a general extra person around the place. I turned up just before 8:00 a.m. to find no Ollie and no Sarah (buses were running a Sunday service hence her late arrival). There were plenty of kitchen staff, five I counted including Mary. However I could not see any of them doing in front of counter jobs, so I took and served over thirty breakfasts between 8:00 am and 10:00 am. Then helped set up for the Good Friday service. Photocopying extra service sheets and setting up the projector. I stayed for the service as did about three other people from the Breakfast (not including Sarah and Sam who had to). This was rather than heading across to Herringthorpe to help hand out hot cross buns with serviettes and cards which explain about Easter. I went to bed and slept for an hour or so, then got up and got the papers ready to send to my supervisor.

Yesterday was quieter. I shopped in the morning and then tried to copy CDs of interviews I have done so I could send them to people. However the drive was faulty and when I went out there was a black cloud and thunder rolling around. So I went in, switched off my computers and got my coat. Then went into town to get a drive. On the way back it came down pretty heavily. At one stage I took shelter under some bushes hoping it would go over. This was a mistake as it then took to hailing and the stones were the size of sugar cubes and stung when they hit me. I don’t think I have any bruises but I have not checked.

Today I went to the morning service at Herringthorpe. Pauline has developed a tradition of throwing what I suspect was originally cream eggs but this year was just bars in chocolate, into the congregation. However she wanted to make sure the children had them first so they had to come out and collect theirs although she gave Henry (96) one as well. It is funny as it loosens the congregation up a lot and generally gives a good shuffle space. I think that the blessing of water the Orthodox way may have a similar effect if they are liberal with the sprinkling of water. I guess it is something like when a congregation laughs wholeheartedly.

On the way back I unfortunately hit the curb at quite a pace and ended up with a flat tyre. I pulled in at a bus layby not thinking to pull in on the side road to check. I then went to ring the car company on my mobile only for that to be dead, I think my mp3 player also discharged at that point, which all seems somewhat odd. So I had no choice but to go looking for a phone. Unfortunately there was no a public phone at the shops just up the road, but I saw a man clipping his hedge. He lent me his mobile and then when it was clear that the company was going to take a while to get someone out, he offered to change the tyre and I accepted. Unfortunately I was unable to ring back to tell them from his phone. However at that point my brain had calmed down enough to realise that it might be a connection that was causing my phone to blank. I took out the battery and jiggled around the sim and memory card and then put back in the battern and suddenly it was working again.

Time fuddled foxes, busy Holy week and a quieter Easter

Happy Easter to you all, and may in some small way in the coming weeks the experience of the resurrection become real to you.

I forgot to tell you last week of the resident who got a shock due to the clocks going forward. At about quarter to ten last Sunday a fox decided it would take its normal route to a safe eating place around the old Jessop's hospital, presuming that as previous Sundays at this time nobody would be around. It came around the front of the hire car I was using only to be faced with me less than two feet away trying to get in. It stopped in amazement for a few seconds before heading across the University car park opposite and under the fence to where the new practice rooms for the Music Department are.

The week has been busy but the rhythm has been different. Monday I had to be in for 9:00 as we had a Customers Services section away day. The department is split into three sections: technical services, business services and customer services. The lines of course blur in all sorts of ways but that is how the boss decided to structure it. The away day was, as those reading last week will have noted, called at short notice. There were deliberate absentee-ism from people who loathe these events. Then there was a personality test based on shapes, the actual work was produced by Susan Dellinger and I am surprised how good it was, given that all we had to do was pick a shape. The questionnaire on the website gives me a different answer but then it picks up the other part of my brain by using words. Intriguing I suspected that one guy and I would end up with opposite personalities, we often are on opposite sides with things. That was exactly what happened and not just that, whereas I did it before the guy was finished, he took a long time over it.

Then Monday to Friday at 7:00 pm there has been a service for the Herringthorpe congregation. Pauline held a half hour meditation service on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday was a Maundy Thursday service at Broom Methodists, and they came to the Good Friday service held at Herringthorpe. The services led by Pauline were fine, small attendance between 12 and 20 for the meditations and upto about fifty for the Good Friday service. She had bothered to prepare something and involved people in readings. The one at Broom was not. There were comments at the start by Herringthorpe people on the lack of turn out, which was blamed on the weather. However if the present minister has produced such poor quality services in past years I wonder if that has driven people away. Right my problems include that he decided to use hand washing, which might just be something ship of Fools has sensitised me to, but I also have chapped knuckles at present and do not want my hands washed more often than is necessary. Secondly he adapted the Methodist Maundy Thursday service which is both a foot washing and an eucharistic service. Now if he had done this properly I would have no objections but if you are not doing eucharist on Maundy Thursday it behoves you to remove the Eucharistic language in the service even if that does mean altering the prayers. Then he asked us to leave in silence the chapel and to wait until in the entrance hall to exchange greetings and hugs. I'm sorry, you have guest at this worship, the effect of that is to make them leave quickly so as not to observe the displays of affections of the hosts. Given than he also relied totally on himself to lead and did all the readings (Herringthorpe could easily have provided a reader from those that were there even at short notice). It felt ill prepared.

As a result of having these in the evening, I took the mornings off for the rest of the week. This gave me time to write up the evening services, and I did not have to spend the whole of Good Friday trying to recall what had happened the previous week. Instead I ended up having a fairly quiet day. The morning was spent largely doing nothing, well I slept to 11:00 a.m. so there was not much of the morning left once I had done this but the afternoon I managed to get to Waitrose. Indeed every morning has had its task as well as writing up: tuesday-meet Cliff to sort the sound system hum, Wednesday - go to Tescos as I was getting very short on a couple of things, Thursday - go to Carsons to get some scanning done (only the machine was broke so I could not) but I met Justyna there and learnt that she had got her PhD and been commended for the statistics.

Saturday was a day off, out of the business of life. I spent most of the time writing up a piece on Kirkmadrine for the Galloway Pilgrimage website Morag and I are slowly developing. A very small part of the site may go on line in may. If and this is the big if we can get the first set of webpages together. The next task is to try and get a walk written up as a walk. It can only be an example as really the only walk we have done so far is part of a much longer circular walk. We have the notes of the walk it is just that we have not done the entirety. There is at least another pilgrim site to add for that walk as well. I also put on a chicken, and catalan sausage casserole into the slow cooker. Unfortunately the temperature gauge has broken and I was not thinking too much so I left it on high while I went into town. It was not burnt but too much of the liquid had evaporated. I made the mistake of adding more stock instead of water and so the dish is slightly too salty for my liking.

Today I was back at Herringthorp for their Easter service. Pauline described the communion elements as pure symbols, I had to point out to her afterwards that there was no such thing as a "pure symbol" for a symbol to be a symbol it has to reference something else (normally bigger), to illustrate this I used the toilet symbols of man and woman, and pointed out they were only symbols, but very few men would walk through a door with the woman sign on it.  The other way around is not as taboo, women are allowed in to clean and do other tasks! The only pure symbols there are, are those that have lost their association some of which are religious. I came home from there, ate lunch and slept for at least an hour and a half. Since then been pootering, writing this and chatting with my parents on the phone.

Mainly Easter Weekend

Last week was pretty okay as a Holy week. I got to the Maundy Thursday evening service. I am deciding that David Legge is a straight Zwinglian. Possibly even on factual side of that. It shows itself in the form of the communion services which is not always the case with those of Zwinglian persuasion. Interesting question: is the congregation Zwinglian in their eucharistic theology. There are signs that that might be the case although that is not what I would expect with an ex-Presbyterian (I am more used to them tending towards Lutheranism).

Oh I have also found the "quick" method to get my writing juices flowing at least slowly. The answer seems to be to hand write my ideas for the first day. I will write very little but by the second day my word speed is about up to passable on the computer. Don't know why it works but it beats trying to write on a computer for two days before the ideas start coming. I know I should try and write 500 words a day even if it is sociological nonsense but I never do. I always write up until my deadline and then break, read, observe and interview, realise it is almost the deadline time again and start the intense writing. Mind you by the end of this academic year I will have written 90,000 words approximately with another 60,000 to be written before I start "writing" up.

Sunday was hectic. With being on placement with a congregation I really should be at their worship on Easter Sunday. This is after all the high day in the Churches calendar and there is no sign at my placement congregation that it thinks we should not keep the basic Christian calendar despite being ex-Presbyterian. Query: Both the ex-Presbyterians I have known have communion on Easter Sunday, however I have known Congregational churches choose to have a celebration service instead, which would be a method of lowering the fuss on that day. Why are ex-Presbyterians into communion on Easter Sunday. I would say amongst ex-Congregational churches of my experience it was more common to have communion on Maundy Thursday than Easter Sunday. The Chaplaincy at St Andrews did not have communion at its main service on Easter Sunday the one year I was up for Easter. So where does the tradition come from?

Anyway I got home after the service, having left slightly earlier than I usually do but people were leaving pretty quickly, dropped the car off at the parking space about 1:00 p.m. having come back via the Ecclesall Road due to road works on my usual stretch and the fast route likely to be blocked with traffic, was tempted to go via Nether Padley (about the same distance but on slower roads). Went to the toilet, grabbed a glass of water and emergency food supply and changed my shoes before setting off to the station. Fortunately when I got to the station Marks and Spencers was open so I got a sandwich and a packet of crisps. I then went to the till but with normal Sheffield politeness the man sent me to get a drink as the food cost £2:38 without the drink or £2:00 with the drink. I picked up my pre-booked ticket and caught the train half an hour earlier (around 14:10) than I planned so had to phone my parents to say this. I also learnt there was no 13:40 train. I had booked the later train as just too many things could have gone wrong, a service over run, getting lost on the way home as I was on an unfamilliar routte, having to fill the car with petrol and so on. They conveyed it onto my sister. For those catching trains to and from Sheffield, from the Manchester end catch the one about twenty minutes past the hour at Manchester (25 minutes at Stockport) and from Sheffield the 10 minutes past the hour train. The reason being these are run by transpeninne who genuinely seem to want to make a go of the route. The trains are normally three carriages or more long, so not as crowded as the other ones, run on time, more of them and actually give the cheaper advance tickets. What is there not to like.

I therefore got to Stockport at around 3:00 p.m. and Mum and Dad had just pulled up at the Station, I simply dumped my bag in the back and we set off for my sisters for Dad's 80th Birthday celebrations. The meal was great. Unlike Christmas when there is always enought to feed most of the neighbour hood as well as ourselves this time things worked out almost exactly right. It was helped by the fact that Cathy knew which of the two desserts most people were going to choose. I got Sam and Hannah Easter presents. The irony being that the biggest hit was the t-shirt I got for £4 from a closing down sale (albeit one that has been going on for at least three years, somehow I don't quite believe it).

The last couple of days I have been spending with my parents. At least the time I have been awake I have been spending with my parents but I seemed to want to go to sleep at the drop of the hat. Dad got 14 birthday cards and a basket of house plants from the church for his birthday. The house plants have been passed onto my Mum who will no doubt tend them when she has the time. Still I'd like to find someone who could do some redesigning of the garden. The idea of my Mum balancing on narrow beds in order to tend the top of their garden is not good even if she is the most agile eighty year old I know, often beating me at getting down to something on the floor.

Oh anyone want to read about Chaos then James Gleick's book "Chaos: Making a New Science" ) is an easy read. Its left me itching to get at the mathematics of it to see if I can actually get my head around it. Hope you have a good Easter week