Holiday and associated business

Sorry not to have written for three weeks, the explanation is holiday.

So what have I been upto. Monday 19th saw me at a supervision in Birmingham. On the whole this was straightforward, but at this distance feels slightly disjointed. I suspect in part having just come out of placement, going immediately on holiday and therefore not yet being in the process of writing up.. Tuesday was a busy work day and I therefore did not really start thinking about travelling until Wednesday although the car had been booked months in advance and the B&B.

As my parents were on holiday in the Lake District at Grange Over Sands in the Christian Hotel there, I stayed at New Ing Lodge in Shap. If anyone is looking for a relative small but pleasant hostel style accommodation plus some private rooms I can recommend it. I do not think any of the rooms are en-suite. They do do evening meals and also packed lunches. No TV as far as I could see but there is a guest lounge. I stopped at Thor

Then on the next day and into Scotland, I stopped in Caerlaverock WWT site  hoping to see some Barnacle Geese, they had started to arrive, but only 400 to date and I did not even see one of those. Unless like me you travel to the Rhins  from England I suspect few people have any idea of vast tracts of land there are around the Solway Firth. The geese could have been anywhere in a stretch of land probably about twenty miles broad and 100 miles long. Indeed I knew there was a good chance if I had been bothered that I could have seen those birds on the sands outside Wigtown. The site has developed since I was last there with now a proper cafe (when staffed)  rather than a help yourself and honesty box. However the hides are just the same it is a pleasant place for a stroll even if the best photo I got was of berries.

Then onto Newton Stewart where Morag had arranged to meet me the night before. She was finishing work relatively early and there is a decent Christian coffee shop, well the coffee and the cake is good, although the Christian books and tat leaves something to be desired. Yes I did browse because Morag was towards the end of her estimated time of arrival and found absolutely nothing amongst it that brought up any more than mild interest..Then she went onto meet up with girls who had swimming lessons and I went onto Diane’s to unload. At 7:30 p.m. she was busy telling the girls she might have been mistaken and it was only tomorrow that I was coming up! Needless to say I turned up about 8:00 p.m as planned.

The visit was deliberately times to coincide with the Wigtown Book Festival  but it also coincided with an Open Door Day in the area and the last service of the summer in Kirk Covenant. For those who know Kirk Covenant (I forget which saint it is actually dedicated to. Not St Medan, that goes to the new church in the centre of Drummore (this is the former Free Church of Scotland building which Kirk Covenant is the old Parish Church).. What I also spotted on the Saturday was Logan Gardens was participating in the Open Day so Morag and I after taking Cait to Kirk Covenant went on with her to Logan Garden.  At which point Morag found that as long as she just went in for coffee she could get in free any time in September and October. Jenny and Tony were across in Withorn for an archeology day with the Whithorn Trust.

The rest of the week was a mix between days spent over at Wigtown or Newton Stewart taking part in the Wigtown book festival and dog days. Do days are the sunny sort of days when I borrow Dora, such days normally started with a grooming session, getting rid of matted hair and then long walks on the beach. I realised after the first of these that I really needed a portable dog drinking bowl and a flask of water, plus a book as we preferred to stay on the beach even when not walking than sitting in the house. Dora loves chasing birds but as she is a bearded collie whose hair rather gets in the way of sight she does not chase them until they are airborne so I suspect there is little chance of her ever catching one. The biggest problem is therefore that she will go out amongst the rocks after them, loose line of sight and get into difficulties in the water without you realising it. I am not sure she knows enough to realise that jumping off a set of rocks in hot pursuit of birds might does not mean the water is shallow and I rather not find out the hard way.

On the Friday, family politics were getting to me and I decided I needed a break. So I decided to go on an explore. I took the car and went for a drive around the North Rhins. So I drove to Stranraer and then headed west from the main route South. There is no route directly North unless you take the ferry and the one east goes off the Rhins. From there on I had no plan, not timetable and no aim except to find what I would find.  Some of the decision was taken for me by a combine harvester that was, I presume, being moved between farms (anyway it was moving quite a distance along the road. At a traffic junction it headed toward Lewalt and as I was behind it I headed towards Kirkcolm, from there it was just following the road.  I did get to the Corsewall Lighthouse and then came back to Portpatrick. By then it had taken to raining although there were still families with small children on the beach at high tide. I did wonder at it, although you could get icecream, the amusement arcade was shut and the public toilets were all locked. Then of course it probably would not be British seaside summer if it wasn’t like that.

Saturday resulted in me taking the girls to Logan Gardens just to get them out of the house and therefore out of Tony’s and Morag’s feet. It really was not the day for going around the gardens as the weather was a fine drizzle but at least there were ice-creams and coffee in the cafe. Sunday we were over at Wigtown. I took Jenny to look for a geocache while Cait was in a session. We are still geocaching virgins having yet to find a single cache after looking for three of them! We are close but we just never seem able to find the box. Oh well we have three locally we know the vicinity of and at least another two that should be easy reach.

Monday Morag had the day off and once she had done a couple of jobs in Stranraer we met at Logan Garden cafe and drank coffee and talked and talked and talked. It is really funny but there are just things we don’t talk about in front of most of the family (Cait is the exception we seem to suspect that she will understand or be so caught up in her own imaginative life she won’t notice) . I suspect it is the suspicion that both of us have that there is more to life than meets the eye and that other ways of looking at it are valuable.

Tuesday and Wednesday were days for travelling back. I stayed over at my parents and therefore was back by 11:30 p.m. and had returned the car by 1:00 p.m.. Petrol prices can vary widely at Tebay Total station Southbound it was 147p a litre, on the A57 between Mottram and Glossop (I think near Gamesly) it was just over 130p (apparently the Oldham garage my Dad uses is also about that)! Stockport was134p and Sheffield 136p which is close to what it was in Newton Stewart which was cheaper than Dumfries. So please don’t ask me what determines price.

For those who like photos there is a selection of them from the holiday  . I think I took most of them but Jenny and Cait contributed some.

Thursday and Friday saw me back in work and I am aware I really need to do some thinking of the direction my job is going in. There is something that needs tackling and I really should but if I do it will mean I need to do things I am not good at. It also means getting a number of departments to admit that they are in a mess and need help! The difference I see when I have somebody who knows what is required and I work with them is huge! Masters projects can produce academic publications but the standards are a lot higher than people think. So many masters projects are not even at the level they should be for masters projects simply because the students are not given the support they need to reach that level.

Saturday I started planning the detail of writing my thesis. I am used to doing it for science based projects but having to do it for a qualitative one was interesting. Firstly I knew the standard approach was not appropriate but what was. It took a couple of books and a lot of thinking. and I think I have a route map through. Maybe I need to split it into two chapters but at present I will treat it as one. I am basically splitting each chapter into 2000 word essays that I plan to write in a week. We will see if this will work. I have also set up a blog to record my progress  I hope to update weekly, it will help me to keep this up if people check it and comment on it, it gives me a feeling of people supporting me.

Today I went to St Andrews, it was harvest, there seemed to have been a URChins (a toddler aimed worship activity) beforehand which fed in, there was also some Back to Church Sunday activity so not your normal Sunday. Then is there ever a normal Sunday? The core group of the congregation that was there twenty years ago was smaller and older but there was at the same time so many bits around them. URChins had around eight boys up to about eight years of age there, including the Middleton boys, both of the Wheats and Margaret Falls grandson and also a couple of lads from a family I did not recognise. There were several older people there who I did not recognise including Donald Letham’s daughter and somebody who definitely are coming to sing with the choir. Also two guys from the Broomhall Breakfast came I think for a first time and another guy I think came in off the streets and literally slept from 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. when we had to wake him as we were clearing up after harvest lunch.  It felt different, on the one hand there appears to be a greater number of people who are at least semi-attached, on the other hand the central core seems still pretty much still self contained.

Supervision, Interview, Holiday and Baptism

For those of you who are not on my support group list, I have had another supervision. It went well. There is a paper there but it needs more work on my PhD thesis before it will really come together. Bits are beginning to fit together but the analysis always comes later after the description. I am doing a lot of thinking at present about the relationship of right believing, right relating and right behaving. They are of course always held in tension within faith but I am thinking that the centroid of the the triangle has actually moved.

Right the busy Sunday, or how the Sheffield Marathon stopped me getting to Church. The plan for Sunday 26th April was that I would go to church at St Andrew's Chesterfield and then onto Helen and Patrick's for lunch and would then interview them. So I booked my car well in advance. I should have been slightly cautious as it went missing on the Thursday prior to that. I knew the marathon was on, the car I booked was not on the route but I knew I'd have to go through Ecclesall to get to Chesterfield. So I was early. There was no car there. Rang Whizzgo and got them to rebook it. Fine I would still get to church on time.

Only I asked for a car on the marathon route, and arrived just after marathon runners started running by, they could not let me have the car to 1:00 p.m. which was too late. So I rebooked. I was going by memory and asked for Brown Street instead of Charles Street. This resulted in me having to walk down to by the station (the spaces are just outside The Showroom, Sheffield's independent cinema). Again it was on the route but I think either the runners were past that or not expected until late morning. So I got the car out but now had to get out of Sheffield City Centre. It was an interesting experience. I actually wonder how much the shops lost that day as the city centre custom was decidedly down even when I got back. It was now about 10:50 and I could not see anyway I could get to St Andrew's Chesterfield for 11:00 a.m.. So I decided to miss the service and turn up afterwards, pretty sure that Helen and Patrick would be there.

As I got into Chesterfield I suddenly realised I had not put the spare batteries in for my recorder. So I went and stopped at the Little Chef to see if they had any. They didn't which meant I had to brave Tescos at the next roundabout. There was no a question about whether Tescos had batteries but there was a huge one over whether I could find them in a store that stocked so many things. I went through the electrical goods there but there were none that weren't packaged with something else so went into the food stuff part and eventually found them about half way along the aisle by the cash tills. Well that is half of the food store that I did not have to go through I suppose. I then drove onto Chesterfield and waited for the service to end. Then onto Helen and Patricks for lunch, we went in my car, as I don't pay for petrol only for the time I have the car. Helen does not believe in running two cars if only one can do the journey. Patrick had to go to the bank to withdraw money so they could pay the builder before they went on holiday. The interview went smoothly, I then drove Helen back to Chesterfield for the two counties service. I did not go to the service simply as I had so much writing up to do after the interview.

Had a migraine on Monday, obviously overdoing it well that and the shopping on Saturday.

Tuesday was in work and running around like a mad thing. This always happens before I go on holiday.

Wednesday it was up to Drummore. The journey to Newcastle went fine, Cross Country were splendid. Scot rail however were into money saving and after two coaches had broken down in two different trains they had combined the good coaches together to form a train. The only thing was there was no toilet on either of the coaches. Not bad if you are travelling for half an hour or so but on a four hour journey it is not good. What is more they did not announce long stops (one in Carlisle and one in Dumfries) so if you were in the know you could have got off the train and gone to the loo but not if you weren't. Needless to say I was popping by the time we arrived in Stranraer. Morag and the girls turned up to get me off the train.

Rather than giving a day by day description I will describe some highlights of the holiday.

Lets be clear the B&B I stayed in is great, it is run by Diane Gilmore and on a clear day you have views of five kingdoms: Scotland, England, Mann, Ireland and heaven, from your bedroom window. Diane is very good host and will cater for most guests peculiar behaviour, if she copes with mine she will cope with anybodies. She also does Reiki. If you want to find out more Diane has a website where you can read more . Despite what Diane saying it is coastal it is about a mile from the nearest beach about as far as you can be from the sea on the Mull of Galloway. Morag was laughing at the insurance guy who had asked her if she was inland from Stranraer. I guess the correct answer was something about being on a different part of the coast near there. Morag is all of 100m from the beach.

I bought an SLR camera. This was a surprise to me but I was getting near a crisis point and not being able to find my own camera before I went precipitated it. I have found it since, bottom of the rucksack I take to Birmingham for Supervisions which I had checked before I went. I do quite a lot of photography while I am there and some of it is used for publicity purposes by Tony and Morag. The results of the photography on both mine and dad's camera can be see at Flickr.

I became a friend of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. That is not as odd as it sounds. The place Morag likes going for coffee is Logan Botanic Gardens which is just the other side of the penisula. Faced with going for coffee on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday as definate on my first visit I thought that paying the £20 to become a Friend might well end up saving me money as entry was £4 a time. In actual fact we only went four times: Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Thursday. Friday we stopped at Sandhead after shopping in Stranraer, Monday we took the girls somewhere, Tuesday we went to Mull for coffee and Wednesday I took Morag out for lunch at Port Logan. The gardens are spectacular at this time of year with many varieties of Rhododendrons in flower. The gigantic rhubarb is not very spectacular yet but we did see pheasant chicks. I got out my paints and painted a postcard for my parents which I promptly lost (now found and I will try and post it on Monday). You will see lots of flower photos.

We built a labyrinth. Oh nothing permanent just pebbles on a beach. The design was mine but the girls and Morag did much of the laying of the pebbles while I collected them and carried them from higher up the beach. We actually made two but the first one was just a trial to see if it would work. I need to spend some more time working on designs the twists were pretty simple on that one and they need not have been and no it was neither the Chartres nor the Classical labyrinth though obviously related to the classical labyrinth. I find it intriguing that those two labyrinths are the only two produced when I know that the classical is only one of a family and that there is a whole other family that is not represented. I would call those cyclic labyrinths. I have not worked out which family the Chartres fits into or whether it represents yet another labyrinth family. Then I have not worked out the way to draw it without tracing it from a copy. There do seem to be similar ones that are no identical.

Perhaps the most holiday of days was Saturday afternoon (the morning I spent at Logan Garden with the girls) which we (Morag, the girls and I) went to Wigtown and viewed the osprey on its nest. There is a live video link from the nest in the town centre so we could watch what was going on without disturbing the birds. It was fairly uninteresting, an osprey sitting on a nest was all I saw. We then had coffee at the Reading Lasses where the girls devoured two large pieces of chocolate cake. Morag and I made do with coffee and carrot cake (well actually Morag had the carrot cake as she had not eaten anything since breakfast and it was now about 3pm, the girls had had plenty). Then we went onto St Ninian's cave which entailed a walk of about a mile there and a mile back. Cait was ahead of us all the way there but was tired on the way back and walked stooped holding my hand although she did not hang on my arm. Then it was off to the Steam Packet Inn at the Isle of Whithorn which was fully booked but quite happy to give us supper in the bar. Then home with an attempt to stop at Kirkmaiden. We had gone past it by about a mile by the time we stopped to check the map and with two tired girls going back was not really possible. On the way back a deer jumped out in front of the car. Fortunately allowing Morag time to brake otherwise we would have come home with a huge quantity of venison.

Wednesday was Morag's birthday. I took her out for a meal at Campbell's Restaurant at Port Patrick where they set us in front of a window. It was not the same standard of view as at the B&B but it was a good enough view and to Morag's surprise I was quietly entranced by the small going-on that I could see from the window: gulls, tourists and clouds. We then went back to Drummore and up to her Aunty Yvonne's for tea having collected Jenny on the way back. Cait was already there making pancakes for the party.

Thursday we took the girls to Portpatrick to buy icecream. Lets me be honest good quality icecream is readily available in the area courtesy of Cream of Galloway but I had promised the girls superduper icecreams after their spotting efforts in the car on Saturday. To get something a bit different like a flake in their icecream we had to take them to Portpatrick. This also meant that we found that the fish and chip van at Portpatrick now does lovely chips (to keep the girls from being too hungry as tea was going to be late we shared a portion between us).

One day someone from the church called around to deliver Morag's copy of Life and Work. She also seemed to be on a recruitment campaign for the church telling me how much they liked having new members. The word desperate comes to mind when you start trying to recruit holiday makers to your congregation.

The journey back was not good. The tractors finally caught up with me (when I am driving the area I rarely come across tractors although others seem to encounter them frequently) but they had to resort to hitting a railbridge outside Stranraer to do so. This delayed the train I was on by about two hours. I fortunately had bought a saver ticket and so I could travel on any train and not two apex which might be cheaper. However they then went and cancelled the train at Dumfries. This caused major hassle as I have a heavy case and that meant instead of one change I had at least three having to catch a local train to Carlisle and then at least two trains on from there. I weighed up the options at Carlisle, realised that by the time I got to Newcastle I would be facing rush hour traffic without a booked seat plus possibly having to change at Doncaster or York. For a while I was optimistic of changing at Stockport at there was a train to Birmingham but it was going through Warrington and not Manchester. So I finally settled on getting a train to Leeds (Carlisle-Settle route) and catching a train home from Leeds. The result was that I was not home until about 8pm at night.

Today I went to St Andrews Sheffield as it was Zachary Wheat's baptism and I am still officially Elizabeth's elder. I have kept telling them that for both our sakes they should change that. As it was I arrived there and found myself busy, the sound system is playing up and then as Ian Cooke was away I was asked to sign the baptismal certificate as Elizabeth's elder. The baptismal party was huge, easily numbering the same number as the congregation and there were to my eyes clearly people who would have been invited who did not make it. The elders were encouraging the party to sit fairly far forward but Helen and Patrick (Elizabeth's Aunt and Uncle) plus family were having none of it and sat firmly two thirds of the way back. It was interesting in the fact Elizabeth only made the baptismal promises and Jon made supporting promises. Afterwards there was cake to be served and I ended up handing it out then helping with putting things away once the baptismal party had left. Fleur and Walter were there but with being Zachary's grandparent and Fleur being a former minister I knew there would not be chance to chat as other people would have claims on there attention. They looked as if they were well and we did manage to exchange greetings.