Catching up while not attending Tramlines*

This is a catch up and I well aware it is at least six weeks since I wrote. I have had a bad attack of real life and my online activity has therefore been curtailed. Thus I have a couple of big stories.

At the time of last supervision about a month ago, I sat down and realised that I had just not made the progress I needed to on my PhD during the last month. There had been a lot of events at Church that had pulled me in and when I was involved had turned out to be bigger than I expected. Events such as a wedding at the Church and the anniversary service. Often what I had hoped would be a short involvement turned into a full day one. There were several things going on, I was getting over tired with trying to keep my thesis going, work and with church involvement. There also seemed to be a rule that the more I did the more people found for me to do. I was obviously not keeping boundaries well. So last supervision I decided I had to take a sabbactical from church. This was partly aided by the fact that I had a submission date of the end of October so it was time limited.

Still I did not manage to stand back as quick as I think people thought I should. A fortnight after this there was a communion. There are nine serving elders at St Andrews, of them for that communion there were only three available. All the rest had legitimate reasons for being absent including operations, big academic conferences and family weddings. Normally within a URC this would not be a problem but at St Andrews the ritual requires at least six elders at present. That meant that I was recruiting non-serving elders. There are difficulties with this, non-serving by virtue of being non-serving are not as familiar with the ritual as serving and also tend to be older. The result was that I made a decision that on this occasion we would drop the processing of the elements in. I did debate quite late on if the two table elders might process just the chalice and the bread roll but by that point it was really too late to change. It worked but it required input from me.

Having got that over with on the 7th July I was looking forward to the next weekend being a quiet one when I could get on with my thesis.

On the 9th July I went home with a migraine from work. Unusually for me coming on during a consultation. Maybe something to do with the heat as it was a very hot day. Anyway slept until my sister rang to say that Dad had collapsed and been taken into hospital in Macclesfield. Cathy was at my parents waiting for Mum to come. I said I could not make it that evening but that I would try and get over by the day as soon as possible. The rest of the evening was a mix between trying to organise things and going around to visit my friend Margo. I rang my sister to let her know to get me on my mobile but she did not answer. She rang back later to say she had had to pick Mum up from hospital in Macclesfield.

Around 11:00 a.m. the next morning I managed to get over as I needed to do some phoning to cancel things. It turned out that Cathy had had barely three hours sleep as Mum had become disorientated and could not work out why Dad was not there.

We got some lunch and then went to Macclesfield hospital. At the time the doctors there thought that dad had an artery that was colluding and that if he went for an angiogram at Stoke (they did send people to Manchester hospitals but it would mean waiting for a space while at Stoke they would do it immediately). So with that in mind I took over the care of Mum and Cathy went up to her family. For those who do not know Mum has early onset dementia and can get quite confused, however having seen Dad again and with the idea that he might be out by the weekend she seemed to calm down somewhat.

The next day was busy just with ordinary things for Mum. Her minister came around, we went out for a walk had lunch and then Mum’s hairdresser came around to cut her hair. I then ran her a bath. Then a phone call came from Dad. It was unclear and all I really gathered was that something had happened when he had gone into Stoke. So I rang Cathy and asked her to find out what was going on. About two hours later Cathy rang back. It had taken her that much time to track down where Dad was in the Health Service and what was going on. The story was when they did the angiogram they found that far from it being a single artery that it was multiple arteries and his heart valve was in poor shape as well.  The doctors advice was that he should have open heart surgery as soon as possible and that they were not happy with him going home. Therefore he was now in Stoke waiting surgery.

Dad refused to give permission to have further surgery until he had talked with the family. Stoke is not the easiest place to get to from Stockport. In the end we managed to organise for Mum, Cathy and I to go down on Saturday. Adrian, Cathy’s husband came up with the brilliant idea of going by train. The big problem with a car is that Mum tends to dose in them and really can be quite cross when she wakes because she does not remember why she is travelling. With the train Cathy and I were able to interact with her the whole time which meant that she did not go through the crisis of sleeping and forgetting. However during the afternoon it became quite clear that I was stressed out having got about six hours sleep the last two nights as mum woke several times during the night and always needed reassurance. 

With Dad needing an operation and needing time to recuperate we needed to rethink. The eventual decision was to put Mum in a home for respite care. The minimum time this would be for was four weeks. It would have to be a home near my sister so she could keep an eye on Mum. Until we could set that up I would take care of Mum. Mum broke down and wept when we left the ward but by the time in the train could not remember than she had been to see Dad.

On the Monday Cathy went to look around several homes. On the tuesday I had a doctors appointment myself which I did not want to postpone. So my sister came over, collected Mum and took her to see the home she felt was best while I went over. It gave me a break. I did not drive particularly fast but just having time in the four walls of my flat was good. I saw the doctor and did some sorting out. By Tuesday we had seen the home but Mum desperately wanted to see Dad and could not remember the visit on Saturday so I took her on Wednesday.

Thursday we moved Mum to the home near Cathy. It was hard and made more difficult that I could not focus. We had not yet heard the date of Dad’s operation although they had said end of that week, start of next. We left mum in tears but we both knew that unless we went the tears would not stop. It was hard.

I stayed with Cathy a while not wanting to drive far after the emotion of that event. Sitting in the garden talking with Sam and Hannah was a complete antidote to the intensity of sitting my mother. Mum is perfectly capable if only she remembers what she is doing. Just as I was leaving Cathy got a phone call from Dad to say his heart surgery would be the next day. Cathy rang the home to tell them

Cathy got rung at six to ask whether Dad had died by the home. They had found Mum at 5:00 a.m. sat in her chair cuddling a teddy and weeping her eyes out because she was convinced that Dad had died. Otherwise Friday was a waiting day. Dad only went down for his operation about 4:00 pm and we only knew he had survived after 7:00 pm.

The rest of the weekend has been spent quietly in my flat trying to get the introduction to my thesis almost finalised. Dad seems to be progressing much as the doctors expect, he was slightly confused tonight. Mum is packing and unpacking at the home. As long as that keeps her busy and she is not getting too distressed I am not too worried. We left the suitcase visible so she would know that stay was not permanent. There is some difficulty over contacting her as the mobile phone that she uses keeps loosing the signal.

*Tramlines is a music festival that happens most years in Sheffield; until this year it has been free and largely still is but some events are now charged for. As far as I am concerned it is mainly an inconvenience with music audible when I want to go to sleep and town difficult to get around.

On Palm Sunday with cherry blossom on the trees

As it is a fortnight and I don’t suppose that you really want to spend the next couple of hours reading minutiae of my doings (acceptable in small quantities but not in large doses), this blog will take the form of lowlights and highlights.

The fortnight started slow, as I had been struggling with a migraine over the weekend. The ones prior to this I had managed to take a short nap and then get on, this time it was belligerent and my attempts to shake it off did not work. The result when I do this is that I get well enough to be active, I am active and pretty promptly the migraine returns, I call it cycling and the only way I know to get rid of it is to stop and have a day inside where I deliberately do very little. The problem is detecting when a migraine is this sort rather than the sort a quick nap will cure. The trigger for it was the relief at having a major research bid in by the deadline (well actually it happened on the following tuesday). If the bid is successful it will mean a lot more hard work but very interesting work as I seem to be a doing major translation work between different people in the group who submitted.

Then there was March’s supervision. I seem to be fairly fortunate with the weather for my supervisions and this time was no exception with a lovely sunny day. There was the cube for Bromford Dreams . Chris Shannahan is a research fellow and Methodist minister who did his doctorate under my supervisor. He would describe him self as a contextual/liberation theologian and has been studying the way that faith connects with those way beyond the boundaries of the church. Intriguingly earlier in doing this project Martin suggested he did Martin’s Ethnography course and that was the year I gave a talk on my experiences of ethnography. I have attended one of his Urban faith forums at Birmingham and we also ended up doing the study day on writing up together. If people are interested in Chris’ work he writes a blog called “Faith in an Urban World”. There is also a Facebook group for the Bromford Dreams. He is at present looking for funding to take it further.

Sometimes I wonder how I should describe my thesis in technical terms. The small area of study is find, it is Congregational Studies, but where does that fit in the wider view of things. I am in a student in a theology department and my degree is officially a doctorate in theology. My supervisor is in that department, I had to find a degree the department offered and as there was no precise fit I opted for the most general one. If I am theologian I fall very definitely into the practical/contextual sub group. However there are alternatives that I often seem to work as well with. I spend quite a bit of time dealing with liturgy, how it is understood and such. Others of more theologically evangelical views, looking at topics allied to mine would call themselves missiologist.Then there is the actual research tradition I am working in. That seems to be a lot more orientated towards sociology particularly sociology of religion and the actual methodology is straight ethnography (it is about the only thing where I am completely within a discipline and itself is part of the reason why this is such a wide ranging study) so I can also own the label social anthropologist which is technically my supervisors core discipline. This goes without adding that the other contributors such as psychology of groups and social geography. Any label seems to miss a whole lot of the complexity of what I am studying.

Saturday Mom and Dad came over. I decided that it was time we did something different than shopped at Waitrose and then wander into town on the afternoon to see to their other shopping needs. They use Sheffield rather than Manchester for quite a while. I think partly because it is smaller but also because I know my way around and can guide them. So we went out to Old Moor RSPB site by Rotherham. It was a foggy day when my parents came over and Dad was worrying that we would not see anything as the fog thickened as we went out there. I thought that if we got there, then we could at least have a meal at the cafe and a slow walk along the paths which are smooth and flat with the odd bird flitting by. However the sun came out as we arrived and we had a glorious day. We had lunch at the cafe, I thought mum had given her order so ordered it, but when she saw what I decided to go for she decided to go for that instead. So confusion reigned for while, but I just took the steak and mushroom pie that Mum had requested which was very good. We then wandered down one of the tracks. Did some looking at sparrow farm hoping to see yellowhammers but no luck. We did see sparrows, blackbird, a chaffinch and I think some bluetits. Then in the first hide we sat down. At first dad was thinking that there was nothing of interest there but as we settled we saw a little egret, some grey lag geese, goldeneye and gadwall. There were cormorants and coots having a tiff right in front of us at the next. Then we headed back to the centre for a coffee and cake before driving home. The day worked superbly, it had just enough activity for my parents to enjoy it. I also looked at binoculars and was surprised how much difference different pairs made. I am thinking of upgrading but probably won’t until September time just before I go up to Mull of Galloway after all I do most of my bird watching there.

Work wise I have two analyses finished off, just the checking of the papers to do. This leaves me a pretty clear desk at present, although I need to spend some time brushing up on Confirmatory Factor Analysis, a technique that I think is only available in AMOS and which I will need to build the models for if this user is going to do it. It is a sad story, the doctoral student got an statistician to do the analysis and they did a decent analysis, but unlike me who knows a wide variety of subjects they had no idea that some subjects ask additional questions. This person is right in the middle of one of those and needs to do it. However the statistician never sent them the data set. I just hope that they have they are good statisticians who never throw out data (you never know when you will be asked to reanalyse it) and therefore she can get hold of it, otherwise she will need to enter several questionnaires again.

I also need to get my head down with some NVivo course development. The document is basically written and I am going through and making adjustments to it so as to get towards a final version. I should start videoing after Easter (ugh!)

With being ill I missed writers group two weeks ago but made it this last week. We are now off until 16th April and then have another ten week term. I actually enjoyed this last term very much and it has given me more confidence to write poetry from other points of view than my own and/or the all seeing narrator. Doing a couple of fantasy pieces, one as Jack Frost and one about an apprentice was great fun. The poem from a close point of view I found much harder. The final piece of term was to write a monologue with internal thoughts and I have ideas for that, or something I want to explore where the monologue would be a good way to do it. Writers group is also thinking about doing some sort of web publishing.

Today being palm sunday I went to church. Sarah had asked me on Friday if I would be there and I said I would. She also asked me to be on standby in case a reader dropped out as she had a drama for the service. I hope she puts it up on the web as it was very good, if she does it will appear Worship section of St Andrew's website but Holy week and ministers putting up stuff on the web are not a good mix. There was also an URChin service beforehand and there must have been about a five or six families there. Anyway I ended up taking a part at very short notice. In fact neither Sarah or I knew I was taking it was time to read and the person expected did not come up. So very, very short notice indeed and I was working from Sarah’s script which was not the best. The other thing was it was Mary Stark’s ninetieth birthday yesterday and she was in church today. Christina had arranged for their to be birthday cake and bucks fizz after the service. There really seems to have developed a trend of having celebrations after church when members reach a significant milestone. Dr Sloane made ninety earlier in the month but had been ill at the time so there was no church celebration. The other noticeable change is people tend to sit down for coffee, I am not finding this easy to adapt to, I have spent probably thirty years drinking coffee after church standings and I really feel uncomfortable sitting down.