Reporting on the last couple of months

Dear All

I am final writing another chattering. I am afraid until my thesis is finished they will be intermittent as it will depend on me having some time to spare to write a letter. As you might have gathered, if you follow my thesis blog, I ended with more editing on my thesis than I expected. The thing being that a major restructuring was required. This was not the dire news it could have been, I already had the feeling that the thesis though written just did not cling together. So the whole of October was spent firstly regrouping and reorganising my thesis, then starting to edit the chapters again. I have redrafted two chapters and am on the way with a third. There really is more on my thesis blog.

Otherwise work has been busy. I found myself carrying more and more tasks in work. I have been trying to keep on top on NVivo training that the University of Sheffield asks. I am afraid that I am not finding enough time to do this as I would like. I am not sure I will ever be able to meet the demand and I seem to become an expert by virtue of nobody else being willing to tackle it. I seriously question whether this is the right way to tackle it.

I am also keeping up with the work from Human Nutrition, this year we are hoping to do some research on Food Banks particularly with respect to the fact that the increase has been exponential in the last year. It is to try and discover how food bank provision is seen by the people who use them. The work I have been involved has shown that homeless people have aspirations to a better diet but the need to get the calories in trumps that. However there is also a culture around food and that can lead to provision being, “unhealthy”, in that the easy improvements would be unpopular with users.

There is also work around sustainability. I am also developing a close cooperation with the department of Linguistics, this is slow but sure. Perhaps one of the more unusual applications of statistics although I know there has been people applying these techniques to the authorship of Paul forever! However the number of statisticians that have actually been involved is low and there is a tendency to use sophisticated techniques when people have not understood simpler ones. There is now a seminar running and a group of about four researchers I see regularly. The final group is a number of researchers from Landscape and Architecture.

Many of them are doing quite complex work and often around the same themes. I have had to refer one of the Architecture students to landscape as what she was doing was very similar to Landscape work in approach although in a different area. Her own department tackled similar issues but took a different approach.

At the end of October my writers group had its annual reading as part of Off the Shelf .It was a good evening and the reviews we got from it were good. I think the fact that we had a reading in the summer helped as we were all up to performing. For some reasons, the fact that I supplied a portable sound system meant that people projected their voice better. The sound system was there but many did not use it. I also think we set the standard higher each year. This showed with the amount of effort we put into choosing the pieces to read. We used to accept what people brought but now Neil (our tutor) starts it with giving instructions on what makes a good piece to read and more attention in the rehearsal is given to the suitability of pieces.

On the Sunday before I got away on holiday my loo valve decided to leak water into the cistern. This meant I had to get a plumber out. In the end I found a firm called Aquagas who came out. They not only stopped the leaking that evening, over the next couple of days the plumber came out several times to get the loo working properly. Due to a lot of misadventures he ended up replacing the innards twice (everything decided to go) and in the end given the time and energy he spent on it, the charge was very reasonable. He kept going until he got it right.

The holiday was supposed to be the one for after submission. In some ways there was a real temptation to not go on holiday as I needed to write; however it was increasingly obvious that I was very tired and that I struggling to keep going. In other words even though I had not submitted I needed a break.I went up to stay in a cottage owned by the person who I have B&B with when I was visiting my God-family. My God-family is no longer there and anyway it was obvious from New Year I would near more space to myself. The cottage I booked was the Auld Smiddy. It is a really well equipped cottage. There was a slight problem with the central heating, nothing that I could not handle. The owner went away at the weekend, and I worked out even if it went completely there was no problem. There was an electric shower, kettle, modern wood fire, two electric heater and a paraffin heater. So without it I would be warm and able to wash. The kitchen was better  equipped than my own at home. There was a sun porch that looked over the fields past another cottage and over the sea to the Isle of Mann. During the week apart from crows and blackbirds that were there every day, I saw in the field: a fox, several rabbits, roe deer, sparrow hawks and a flock of redwings.

Port Patrick

Further a field there was pretty good birding, saw barnacle geese, a red kite, an egret, mergansers, pochards and kestrels. These are just the ones I could recall. I actually found that one of the reasons I liked birding was that I liked the reason to be out in the spaces that it took me to which were wilder than you would think of if you were just touring the area. The places I found were Crook of Baldoon , Wigtown Bird Hides which are down by the Harbour in Wigtown and look out over Wigtown Bay Reserve and finally North of Stranraer I found Wig Bay (that is the best link I can find ) which is World War II causeway that runs by the edge of the bay and gives views of the birds feeding at the sea edge. The wider view is not spectacular as it looks over to Stranraer and Cairnryan. Coffee is available at Soleburn Garden Centre . I also walked for a bit along the cliffs at Port Patrick but there were mainly gulls to see and I am no good at identifying gulls.

I found having a real fire was good. It was not just that it made the cottage lovely and warm but that as I reset it every morning I always knew that I had that to come back to in an evening and look forward to.  I am not sure whether I would feel the same if I had one at home but on holiday with long dark evening it made something to look forward to. I therefore did a lot of reading, not for thesis but books that had been on my to read list for far too long. Only one finished but I did start a second and found one left by another visitor called Skyward by Mary Alice Munroe. It is light, it is fairly predictable but it was enough to get me hooked into the story so that I went and bought it on Kindle when I got home so I could finish it. Unfortunately the storyline I was really interested in was not well concluded but there was still plenty to entertain.

I came back this last week and have been picking up the pieces of normal life in Sheffield. So far I seem to have more energy

Chatterings after messing up at communion

I am trying to remember back to the week before last, not that much exciting has happened but there are a number of plates spinning in the air that need my attention to keep them spinning and so I need to stay largely in the present.

There was a Starter Pack make up the week before last. This had not happened for a while due to the wholesaler we were using stopping delivery to groups like us. I am not sure whether this was stopping delivering for everyone or just for occasional users. Judith ended up going into Wilkinsons for things and spotted that there was a major overlap between their stock and our requirements list. However they would not deliver, but the manager changed and suddenly not only would they deliver but would not charge for delivering. We also ended up with the extra stuff being supplied being left for the next makeup. I think that at one stage when it looked as if we were short of one or two items, Jean D went to the cupboard and pulled out extras must have surprised them, but these were the left over bits from others. If they are going to deliver as they did this time, we need to talk to them in future about the order in which they deliver because they used a managers 4X4 and had to do several runs. If they are doing that, they need to split the packing so we can pack whole packs at this end.

Over the weekend I went down with a cold. Not sure where from, though someone  must have brought it into the computer centre as when I got into work again on Tuesday both the receptionists in the building were off sick with a cold. It just happened that I had a four day weekend due to my department wanting me on Friday this week. However I remained well enough to write although not well enough to cope with going out and by staying in a dealing with it I find the cold symptoms remain mild and clear more easily. Admittedly I treat with echinacea, tree tea oil and eucalyptus with drinks of whisky, lime and honey to put me to sleep.

On that Tuesday and the following one I was giving a course on SPSS again, well different ones each day. There clearly is a demand, but  the training room closed last Friday and the new one will not be available to sometime in January. We are not sure when in January but I suspect early rather than late January as the pressure for courses is mounting. I am realising that there is quite a lot of learnt helplessness in the department and I find it frustrating that quite a lot of the time I do not know who to talk to. When I deal with the people who think like me, things happen and happen very very quickly but most of the time it is like being in a fog in a maze with a number of rooms I need to get to and quite often when I get to the right room the person feels so disempowered that what they do is pass the job onto someone else. A very different department to the small one I joined almost twenty years ago. Most of the time this does not matter as I am a one person team, but that also means people do not really heed me when I speak from knowledge that I am employed to have. I am supposed to know for the packages I support, how they are used in the University. Most of them are research packages and that is easy to deal with. One is purely taught and people understand  that but two are part research and part taught. One of them is moving from pure research to research and teaching. When I said this was a taught package, the department seemed to think that I was pretending perhaps to promote it. When I actually said to a department this will not be available on managed machines because we cannot get it to work and the department got in touch with work, suddenly things were different.

The weekend was not just cold but also thesis writing, I needed to get papers to my supervisor for a supervision tomorrow. I had around 3,500 words still to write and had been making slow progress. I am pretty sure that a lot of that was nerves as the section I was writing was pulling the whole thesis together and drawing in a lot of the tangents that I had let run. The thing was that my way of doing that was to apparently take another tangent and then use it to draw in the whole thing. Actually by the time I finished it on the Sunday the writing had been exhilarating. I had a feeling somewhat like that you have when you come off a big dipper ride at a funfair. This despite the cold. Of course I find out on Monday whether I have actually done it! However I am hopeful. Unfortunately my hands started becoming sore again (I suspect a repetitive strain but not a standard one)  so it is back to the mouse pads but this time I am more familiar with them and therefore I am happier using them. The pain has largely cleared during the week.<

Thursday my parents rang as they usually do. However the phone played up as they were dialling although they got through. The phone seemed to get confused over extensions. The next day Dad was having to use an extension to get out but I managed to get that sorted but as soon as he started trying to connect the other lounge phone it cut out. The thing was he could not get control back to his handset and therefore he could not put the phone down. I could not phone in and as I could imagine Dad getting worked up I did not know what to do and was due in work. In the end contacted Age UK and they carried on checking until the line was clear. They also rang BT to check the line. It eventually sorted itself but if it had not they would have gone around. However Dad had a migraine on the afternoon. He is now using his central phone and going to extensions so as to not set that off again but I will have to try and get it sorted.

Friday evening I had a meal with the Dicksons and as it was St Andrew’s day we had Haggis for dinner with neeps and tatties. Yes it was good, Jean is a good cook and I would not expect anything else from her. Talking of haggis the Haggis Hunt is on again. The Haggis population in Scotland seems to be having a resurgence and this year all but one of the cameras (the exception being Oxford St) are in Scotland. Well there seem to be plenty of haggis around at present, normally are around the start of the season. However the main advantage is that you get to watch webcams situated in places such as Loch Ness and Inverurie. I leave you to find out where the other seven are situated but there isn’t one from the Mull of Galloway. In the run up they did have one at St Andrew’s so that might appear again later on in the season. Haggis’ have strange powers, given their size on the photographs it is amazing how rarely they are seen in life, but watch out for their ability to turn night into day as well!

Today was communion at St Andrew’s, well we did it. It started off not great when I left my keys in my flat door and exited the block of flats without them. The entrance to the block of flats locks automatically after you so when I was halfway up the drive I realised I did not have them. Came back but there was no sign that any of my neightbours were awake so I went on to church. Actually the setting up was straight forward and we for the first time managed to do it without staining the tables. Everything went well until we were halfway through serving the bread and I suddenly noticed we did not have the children back in. Too late then to do anything about it! However it upset me and I automatically reverted to Congregational praxis, NOT GOOD. I kept forgetting to serve the elders and Sarah got caught up in this too! Elizabeth kept saying “elders” during the wine stage and Sarah and I initially thought she meant to use the chalice not to serve the elders. Mea Culpa. I just got the giggles. We were very short on numbers as well, due to people away and sickness. I wonder if we are not soon going to have to stop processing in with the elements as it is becoming more and more difficult to find elders who do.When I got home I pressed the Tradesman’s entrance as I believe that rings all bells when it does not open and it buzzed so I realised it was open.

At the end of Low Week

Monday I spent the day with my parents, Dad has a long history of wanting to stay at home on bank holidays. On Saturday his watch stopped working. Throughout Sunday he was regularly asking my mum the time, he was not going to accept either my Mum’s watch which is one on a chain or my gran’s old wrist watch even if it was just to wear around the house. I suggested that we should go into town on Monday to get him one. His first objection was that the shops would not be open. When he got told to stop talking nonsense shops had been open on bank holidays for years, his ruse went to the weather which did not have a good forecast, even though I offered to drive the car down. In the end I spent some of the morning sorting Dad’s computer, not that there was much wrong. One task was to try and get linkedin to work for Dad, in doing so I am realising how big an education task the URC has. There are good Reformed sites out there, take Reformed Worship for starters but just because a body had “Reformed” in its title does not mean that I or my father want to align ourselves with it. The Reformed Theology Institute) is one case where I am wary. The theology there is Reformed but it is largely of the very conservative sort. However a number of URC people seemed to think it was a good idea to sign up to that group on LinkedIn.

Tuesday was a day I missed due to a migraine. My cleaner was due to come when she discovered I had a migraine was happy to come on Thursday instead. It through me slightly in that it largely affect my tummy rather than head but as treating it as a migraine cleared it, I am presuming it was.

In work this week I finished the next draft of the NVivo document. I must admit I still have one or two bits to add, but I think the most important thing now is to for me to put together the first of the videos. This is going to be one of the few that involves both teaching and also using the software, it is not the first of the videos in order. I will also need to keep it short and I have had to order a book to do it. Otherwise I am teaching myself confirmatory factor analysis as I really need to start encouraging people who are dealing with scales to use that technique when appropriate.

Friday I went to the breakfast, there were only forty there but as the volunteers were down because it was so far out of University term the kitchen was busy, also Sarah was away with it being the week after Easter. Fortunately Joshua was there and he really keeps things tidy in the hall when he is. It was also obvious when I was there that there was help needed to get the hall s straight. Particularly as the Ethiopian Orthodox church which hires our premises was celebrating Good Friday. They wanted to be in from 10:00 a.m. or earlier but as breakfast serving only stops at 10:00 a.m. that was not possible. Fortunately people decided to leave slightly earlier this week than last week and two of the regulars Dave and Peter stayed to help clear, so we were clear by 10:30 a.m.

I then spent the rest of the day working on my location chapter, I have sent it to my supervisor and I hope it does not need another draft. On the other hand I am realising that I am beginning to know what theory I need to put into my chapter on community. I also found that I am better concentrating on editing if I have music on in the background. Saturday and today I have spent time writing up another section on my community chapter and I am beginning to know what theory I am going to put into the chapter, there will need to be bits on system theory and on organisational anxiety, something on ordinary theology. Then need to make it clear how these feed into the flows of the congregation around of themes. Also start to move to the way the congregation addresses people.

On Friday evening I went up to James and Jean for a meal. It is a very good relaxed evening and one I look forward to. They are going up to Melfort next week, this time without the family, but their daughter and family have managed to find a house fairly close to them and thus the family is getting more and more settled in Sheffield. Just hope that their son-in-law finds a post in this country soon that is an easier commute than Cork.

Today for the first time I was back on the sound system, this might have been slightly earlier than attended but John a church member has had stroke and though physically he seems not to have too much problem it has affected his memory and he is certainly not well enough to do it at present. Any way it was not until I got to working the system that I realised that people had been trying to get it right and thus fiddling with the levels, only they kept turning things down. I was therefore tuning it during worship, it appeared that the preachers diction improved when in actual fact I was upping the treble and mid so as to remove the bass boom that the system had developed. The preacher managed to choose three songs from Common Ground, one of which we did not know and the theme of his sermon was anniversaries. That said doing the sound almost means I am slightly disconnected from the actual meaning in the service as I am concentrating on whether I can hear what is being said.

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.

On a warm day at the end of February

Monday I can’t remember much happening at work although it was definitely busy. I did not manage to find the time to print my piece for writers group until the evening. Writers itself went well with the piece I wrote being given a good hearing. The weeks I enjoy are the ones when I feel at the end of the group session I know how to make the piece better. There is quite a bit of work to do on last weeks, particularly the middle stanza (which I had not really thought of as a separate stanza). I am struggling with the home work this week, I normally just do my own thing but this week I had a poem already drafted which would improve vastly if I could put it in the voice suggested for the homework. The trouble is that I am finding it a difficult voice to sustain in poetry, although it is one I have used in prose. The scene is not long enough for prose and does not lead anywhere yet. So it needs to be tackled in the poem.

Tuesday was busy, busy, first thing was a meeting at the medical school to discuss a bid proposal, then off to the Northern General to give a course in Primary Care on the use of NVivo. They had initially asked whether I could do it in an hour. It is a pretty solid two hours worth of teaching, and I mean talking. It is not my idea for a course, too compact, to heavy on my voice and dense, dense, dense. If I persuade people that there is a tool that could be useful for their research then I am happy, the real learning of the package takes place afterwards. I even miss out major areas which would be useful to any researcher but I don’t have the time. I basically have enough time to take them through the first few stages of a project and no further. I also should have been more careful as a number in the group had pretty bad colds.

Wednesday was again busy day at work and then I came home to prepare for the supervision the next day. Was sitting down to relax and answer emails, when I heard a pop and the lights flickered out. Went to check the fuse box and sure enough one had flicked, plus the bathroom light did not come on. I also spotted that my network did not seem to have come back, checked in the back room and found the router dead. However before I could do anything about it we were into a full scale power cut, with burglar alarms going off and no street lights. However my laptop switched to battery and I managed to find my internet dongle so ordered a new router to come on Friday, thinking I would spend Friday evening getting myself back connected. It also caused the hot water system to fail. This is not a big thing as most of the time I do not use it.

Thursday was supervision day but I awoke with the feeling of a blocked nose developing on top of a burny throat. However as it was supervision it was a go anyway day and the cold was only half heartedly there. The weather was warm, the sun shone and the train journey was smooth. Unfortunately my supervisor had to go and make a video in the middle of the supervision, so it was split into two sessions. The day was so warm that after the supervision I went to the ladies loo in order to remove a thermal t-shirt I had on underneath my jumper. I tend to dress warm for supervisions simply because I seem to catch fewer bugs if I do. I have quite a bit of rewriting to do especially around the theory of space. I will hopefully tackle it this coming week.

Friday I awoke and realised that whereas I had managed to pretend I did not have a cold on Thursday there was no way I was going to manage that on Friday, so I had to decide what to do. In the end I decided that taking Friday off work was probably the best although that meant not getting my router. So I have been surviving on my internet dongle. This has a limit on it that my router system does not. I suspect I am fairly well within it as my normal downloads are text based but I do not feel as able to use my router.

Yesterday I decided to try going down town but felt so rotten while out that decided that the best thing was that I stayed in the rest of the day and today. This was unfortunate as St Andrews was discussing its church profile at church meeting today (admittedly I had forgotten that until after the decision). However I have put the extra time into reading around space and realising that what I need to do is write some notes on sociology of place rather than space. I also need to develop the theorising in my descriptive writing. I am well aware that the two go hand in hand as, as one develops so does the other. The question that I am finding difficult is how much theorising/analysis apart from the broadly descriptive to put in my results sections and how.

Chattering on a foggy November day

Thought I’d start with a bit of poetry well not mine and I did not have a camera at the ready to capture the texture of this morning so from John Clare:

"So dull and dark are the November days.

The lazy mist high up the evening curled,

And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;

The place we occupy seems all the world."

-   John Clare, November

It gives a feel for what the feel and texture of the weather is like here at present.

Well Monday was the sort of work day where I could do with a bit better pacing. I had two heavy (i.e. energy consuming) meetings on the morning. The second of which was a meeting with the Doctoral Training Centre which delivers research training for Social Science doctoral students and early researchers about creating a core of material that people can use to become more proficient at using NVivo. The result is that I am going to try and record my course onto Echo 360 and try putting it up on the web so people can use it when they want. I don’t think this is particular special as NVivo already has a lot of tutorials up on line and that will be part of going further. In the evening went to writers group and took a poem about the safe from Hanover which was left discarded in the builders rubble. Don’t think it worked as well as last weeks but I am glad to have written it.

Actually Tuesday and Wednesday were relatively quiet days in work, time to catch up, review some of the training I have been too and sort out where to head next. I am hopefully going to get to look after a group of webpages, I just suspect I need to find out who is the departmental webmaster. Also spent some time on a project on nutritional information in Men’s Health Magazines. It is certainly shall we say interesting, although the last few weeks have been spent trying to weed out the useless categories (e.g. anyone know what cabbaggin is? No nor do we but we guess it comes from cabbage).

Thursday was busier, editing a paper in the morning and also spending the afternoon reviewing work. My boss is going to have to learn that it is no longer possible for her to assume that when she has a spare hour she can just book it with me. I have significant amount of time booked every week up to Christmas. Partly that is with teaching which starts the week after next .
Friday I managed Broomhall Breakfast, and stayed on after to help put away as Sarah had gone early and there weren’t many of the men hanging around. then went into town to do a weekends shop and finally sat down to write. I got a fair bit written but am conscious that I need to go back over part of what I have written to finesse it. It is writing about writing always somewhat tricky. Anyway I have just done a final go over it and sent it to my proof readers (thanks Ruth and James) . I was using pomodoro technique  it does seem to work quite well for these writings up. I ended up with over 3,000 words this week, hmm. I think word count wise I will be able to take Christmas and New Year off, well maybe writing after New Year.

Yesterday I sat down and finally got all the interviews I had done at Herringthorpe and not sent copies out of, ready to send out. That was twelve different envelopes with CDs, forms and a covering letter plus a reply envelope. I had the bad habit of interviewing people for an hour and twenty five minutes and CDs only took an hour and twenty minutes so I was often having to split the interviews. I thought I was going to run out of CDs so ended up with a quick journey down town to buy CDs and labels for the envelopes. However the envelopes are filled and now just need posting (next Friday?)

I should have been at the study day for the Society for Liturgical studies but they were so badly organised that by the time I knew I was going other things had cropped up. The big problem with a study dayl in London is you have to book early to find reasonable priced accommodation nearby and I did not fancy an early train in and a late train out, especially as I had given my word to be a church meeting today (to deal with the technical equipment). However one of the organisers wanted to ask me about a paper I had written. Well one of his questions was fine, had I selected the church I wrote it about (yes and no) but the second was about my analysis method and that is part of the creativity in my thesis I had to give quite a thought out reply and also felt I needed to copy my supervisor in on it.

Today I went to St Andrews for worship this morning. It was Music Sunday and included one of the Middleton boys playing a piece called siesta on his guitar as well as the choir performing a couple of pieces. Stuart was reading a passage so I knew he was not working today. Church meeting was discussing Zero Intolerance/Radical Welcome . I am aware of many misgivings about the campaign, I also happen to think it is a good thing, not because of the stuff it does but because it says “We do evangelism”. I have a theory that as evangelism has had low profile on many of the denominational central bodies (it was seen as the duty of the local church and therefore not their business) it has been seen as not important by the local church, now with the centre clearly putting effort into it, local churches are perhaps going to raise it on their own agenda whether or not they participate in the actual campaign. Almost certainly I suspect in twenty years time we will look back at it as a crass first attempt, but hopefully we will have developed skills to actually make this sort of evangelism work for us. However I suspect most people are for it, in the same way most people are for motherhood and apple pie. However the “welcome” here intended is far more than a friendly handshake at the church door. It is in the end a commitment by the congregation to be open to change that is required if new people want to join. I am not saying new people should not change, but I am saying the change is not just one way. We, those already there, have to be prepared to change as well. That is deeper, much more difficult and I am afraid I suspect many in the church aren’t ready for it.

Lets be clear it is easy to tackle the headline issues that are open to discrimination, such as race or sexuality; you can talk about those and get an understanding by the congregation but difficulties such as coping with boisterous children in worship amongst a group of senior citizens, honouring different peoples cultural norms and creating an environment that supports those with chaotic life style whether due to working patterns, drug abuse or poverty is often more difficult and more challenging. The big problem for being welcoming may not be the settled gay couple with two jobs who enjoy classical music, but the young married couple with four kids who have a can of beer in the pushchair, go out for a quick fag during the sermon and use expletives in conversation or the older man with a drink problem who wets himself during a service (neither of these are not hypothetical, I have seen them in church and I have seen congregations struggle). The prejudices do not necessarily fall where we think they do.

Anyway during setting up the audio visual Sarah brought a long extension cable on a wind up reel but it was not winding. Fortunately I realised this before it was put in use. Mum and Dad’s church had a heater fuse because they used a cable while still wound. So we used others and I brought it home and unwound it and rewound it. As it now easily unwinds and winds again I think I will take it back to the church. Stuart came around later on, mainly I suspect because he rang the Dicksons and they were slightly abrupt with him and he wondered why. The answer was simply because he rang them immediately on them getting in from church meeting and it really was an inconvenient time. He really must learn not to take things so personally.

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.

Teaching week with some research reading time

Right this last week has been busy. This is always the case when I have a teaching week. The nice thing was that due to the way I had paced myself the week before and the fact that I had spent quite some time checking that things were sorted before hand.

Monday was relatively quiet, in that the morning was fairly routine although I ended up showing a person NVivo. I have found that when I start showing people what that computer program does, particularly those on the more literary-qualitative based research they are delighted. I am then honest with them and say that such programs come at a cost and the cost here is not the software but the hardware that you need. I am for instance using the software for my Reformed Spirituality part of my thesis and am linking it to the relevant books on Google or elsewhere but also quoting bits and coding the bits I am quoting. Thus I hope that I will have the ability to produce quite a nuaunced explanation of what is actually going on. By the way can anyone give me a brief explanation of how piety differs from spirituality? This is a very light way of doing this. There was no writers group in the evening.

Tuesday was the first of the taught courses. I was in work finishing off slides. This time I have taken responsibility for updating the course material. This is not hard work as it is not like many courses where it would mean I had to keep up with the latest reading. Rather all that it means is that I have to check that the latest software runs as I said it did two years ago. This is easy because I actually open the software and use it practically every day. The other thing that has changed is that responsibility for looking after the room and making sure it is ready for courses has been given to one person. This meant that I was able to ask for a check of things and to make sure things were working before I went up. So the course went well and I even had the energy to go to Bible Study afterwards although it was obvious during that that I was tired.

Wednesday was a sunny day, indeed it has remained sunny right up to today. The afternoon I spent on a study of cognitive performance by participants in a race. It was interesting. I have sat down and I think there is probably something there, but it is tricky to get it out. The main problem being that it is a relatively small data set and therefore many things are strongly correlated.

Thursday was the second course day, in someways simpler, but wish I would remember to get in as early as I did on the first. Admittedly I got distracted at lunch time. I pointed out on Ship of Fools that discernment of the Word of God is communal in Reformed theology and somebody wanted me to back up my assertion. Well I have gained much of my understanding by talking with people who are Reformed rather than from reading the texts. So I had a moment of doubt. However that evening I had assembled in less than an hour a number of statement that clearly indicated that an individual on their own was not sufficient an interpreter of the Word. These included quotes directly from Calvin’s Institutes (his section on the Church as our mother is useful) and the Westminster Confession. I could have looked further and I undoubtedly would have found more. I of course know that they placed centrally the teaching role of the cleric within the congregation but still it is interesting to see how easy it was.

Friday and Saturday were research days. I got through quite a bit of reading despite the ease with which I get distracted. I managed to read the crucial chapter in Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. I am not interested in his economic argument but about how he discerned or understood the “Protestant Ethic”. It is interesting, partly because he does focus on what I think is going to be my argument about what Reformed Spirituality actually is. However I suspect he made a mistake and chose to focus on the English speaking Reformed tradition with particular relationship to America. That he is not well read in this shows at times, he quotes the Savoy Declaration and not about church government. He also quotes the Westminster Confession. They are both Reformed documents but you don’t normally quote from both if you have read them thoroughly. The Savoy Declaration is for large parts lifted verbatim from the Westminster Confession. He also wants to hang everything on predestinarianism, I suspect in this case if I have to hang it on one of the pegs of TULIP I would hang it on Perseverance of the Saints (intriguingly in the TULIP summary of the Synod of Dort there is no P for Predestinarianism). The haunting question is “How do you know if you are saved?”. I also finished Howard L Rice’s book on Reformed Spirituality and reviewed it on Amazon. Next books up are “Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed” by Philip Benedict, Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” and Jonathon Edwards “The Religious Affections”. Ideally all should be read by next weekend, this will not happen.

Friday night I went to the Dickson’s for a really pleasant meal.They were just back from Norfolk on one of Margaret Fall’s trips. Their major grumble was that they spent too much time on the bus getting brief limited glimpses of many things when they would have preferred to have seen fewer places but had longer to explore them. It was also nice to get there in the light. I got asked about when I was coming back and they were surprised to find out that it is as soon as October.

Today Herringthorpe had the Watoto Children’s Choir  and you can hear snippets of them. They are lively and explosive in their performance. I turned up at 10:10 and the car park was already full, people who are late to such services are going to struggle to find parking! I better start checking out the side roads and yes I think the congregation size has grown over the time I have been there. I also got my parking permit for the church and it is now in my bag in case I need it. It only functions for one car unfortunately so here is hoping that if I need to go during the day that that car is available. I must admit I came away early, I had enjoyed myself but I had also over done it.

A week in due to a cold

There isn’t much news this week due to the cold. Normally if I get a cold and I can spend the first day in and bombing it, that is the last I hear of it. Not the case with this one. Having spent last weekend in I was hoping to go into work on Monday only for it to boil out over night. So cancelled Monday’s meetings in the hope that I would be better for Tuesday as I was teaching.

I did do the teaching on Tuesday but even with fairly strong suppressants I was far from well and thoroughly exhausted by Tuesday evening. I knew that even if the cold would miraculously get better overnight I would still have been exhausted on Wednesday. However the symptoms started to ease Wednesday afternoon although I still tire easily but I am not coughing and spluttering all over the places as I was earlier on.

The up side of this was that I have got a lot of reading done. Not only did I manage to finish David Cornick’s book “Letting God be God” but also “Living the Christian Life” by Robert Ramey and Ben Campbell Johnson. The second book, if anyone is considering doing a membership refresher course might well be worth considering as it looks at different aspect of Reformed community life although it is based in PCUSA rather than the UK, also I have read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (the Guardian has a decent review. However speaking as someone from a URC perspective, Robinson must be an acute observer. She gets things right in ways that had be laughing with recognition. That says something. Is it accidental that John Ames good friend is Boughton the Presbyterian Minister in the town or that they tend to agree at least on matters of theology? I am now about half way through Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor. It is a fuller edition rather than the shorter one many have read. I think next will actually be “Working the Angles” by Eugene Peterson for a modern view on pastoral care (he was minister at a Presbyterian Church for thirty years).

Yesterday Mum and Dad came over for the morning. This time the request was not to go into town but to go and shop in Waitrose. There appear to be a few things that mum and dad have difficulty getting locally that they can get from Waitrose but they failed to get decaff coffee beans. If I had been up to it, I would have tried to persuade them to go into town to Pollards the specialist coffee shop and to see if they had the beans but after lunch I was very tired, I presume due to the cold so sent them home and went and slept myself.

Today I went to Herringthorpe in the morning. It was the Sunday after Holiday Bible Club, but please don’t think of the chaos that used to be around them at Parrswood. Here as it is holiday there were a few children with grandparents who aren’t there usually but junior church is reduced as quite a few are taking the last weekend away after helping at Holiday Bible Club. There also was a lady talking about the Christian Bookshop that has been set up in Rotherham. However please don’t get any hopes up, this is a small venture and definitely evangelical in bias. It really takes some skill to have a bookstall with nothing I want to buy on it.

Coping with snow in Sheffield

I think this will be highlights as I can’t remember over the fortnight to give details.

By the time I got back from Writers Group on Monday 22nd, I had a burning sensation at the back of my throat, which normally heralds a cold; so I looked in my work diary and as the next day was free in work, I took it off and bombed the cold, the result of which is that it did not develop.

The next day I had some premonition of the coming weather as I ordered snow boots and a down gilet and snow boots unfortunately they have not arrived yet. I also was helping out with the Arts and Humanities PG Open Day. They call it an open day but it lasts about four hours in the afternoon and it is mainly Sheffield Undergraduates who come.

The weekend was writing weekend. It was also church fair at Herringthorpe on the Saturday but the snow arrived overnight and as I had no duties, plenty of writing, I cancelled. I did get to church on Sunday although the congregation was reduced as more snow had fallen over night but then there was a Baptism which increased the numbers. So the church was still fairly full. The writing was progressing well although I am struggling to find methods of talking about the ways the congregation uses space as part of creating an identity. Part of it is that I am realising that I have to cope with a different understanding to space to that that is assumed with other theorists of religious space. The nearest I can get is sacred space in the Reformed tradition is four dimensional with the time boundaries being as important as those in the other three dimensions. This is not the essay I intended to write, there is something about introversion and extroversion that needs writing but I am cautious over how to deal with this. I was ahead of myself so went to writers group on the evening.

Tuesday I think proved my dedication to teaching. The gig I did had only come through the previous Thursday when finally the Social Science RTP decided to contact CICS and see if we had anyone who teaches NVivo. If they had actually gone back through their records they would have seen my name for having done this in the past but doing something sensible like that isn’t what they are about. So I got on Thursday an urgent email. There was no way I could write anything special especially as it was a writing weekend, but I do have a 2 hour course I give to introduce academics to NVivo but even to do that straight requires some preparation as I work off my memory. The other snag was that it had to be given twice on the afternoon to two different groups. So that already was a tall order, when you add that it was the day the snow settled in, and although about 12:30 pm the roads were clearing by 13:30 it was coming down harder than ever. Then the students were protesting over cuts to Higher Education and staging a sit in. I’d never been to the room which was in the bowels of Bartolome House. It seemed to go okay. There were only eight I think to the first time but upwards of twenty to the second and therefore I finished after 18:00 p.m.. Unfortunately despite my best efforts to gather all my cold weather gear stuff when I left, a glove remainded in the room and when I noticed I did not have the energy to go back and look. In the midst of me doing this my university email account was switched to Gmail.

It was still snowing on Wednesday. I went in late due to the previous days length and the place was like a ghost town. What is more remarkable is for the first time I was sent home by University due to poor weather. That is not to say it was the first time I have gone home early due to poor weather but that has normally been my decision, this time the senior management in the University told everyone to leave before dark, so when the flood lighting started coming on in the building opposite I thought it was time to leave. I walked down to Waitrose and promptly saw another member of staff had also used the early leave to go shopping. Also met up with a former colleague who was doing a quick shop. Also bought myself a pair of gloves but these were women, and with my long fingers even large women’s are really too small, I can wear them for a while but the fingers always end about half way down the bottom segement of my fingers.

Friday I made it too the breakfast albeit late. On the way back I came across a mum, who I presume is the wife of one of the overseas students, pushing her daughter in a pushchair to playgroup. Daughter was squalling, Mum believed it was due to not wanting to go to playgroup but I suspect by that time it may have had more to do with absence of hat, mittens and blanket. I am not quite sure what to do, the quicker that child got to playgroup the better.

Yesterday I mainly did two things, I cooked a big pot of sweet potato, carrot, ginger and chilli soup. It was going to have coconut in it but I could not lay hands on the coconut milk I thought I had so it had to make do with Soya Dream instead. I think if I was making it for anyone else but myself I would cut back on the amount of Chilli I put in. I also went shopping. I went into Blacks as well as buying yet another thermal base layer (can one have too many) bought another pair of gloves. So will have a spare pair while up in Scotland however I suspect there will be no shortage of takers for them.

This week I have a trip to Birmingham planned provide the weather is such that the trains are running. If the current forecast is right, this should be the case. After that I can start Advent properly and just to make sure I am due to go out three times over the weekend socialising. I also will be collecting greenery for the Advent Wreath at the chaplaincy, the carol service being the following Tuesday. I will cut back on greenery and paint (only four cans this year I think not six)

A Cold causes limited damage

Right lets see about the last week:
Last Monday the books were finally available from my writers-group. If you want a copy please let me know, we are officially charging £4. Those who want a copy please let me know. Sarah I will put your copy in your pigeon hole and another for Derek Collins. Alright its partly me showing off as I did the layout as well as the first pieces in the book (I did not collate so had no say over that). However in my opinion the second piece is from a novel that really should be published. Because I wanted to see what the finished product looked like and so even though I new I had something virusey but was keeping going. On the night Jude read a superb piece and she is not always the sort of writer I find easy to get on with.

Tuesday I still had the virusey thing, although some of the symptoms in shared with a cold it also put me off eating, not made me nauseous but just meant I rarely felt like eating. However as I had a team meeting and a advice session with someone in Education, basically I am helping her to do her analysis in NVivo by partly being more expert than her on using NVivo, partly being a sounding board and partly by just saying “yes you are doing fine”. Fortunately I had called off house group on the evening because I felt that with supervision the next day it would over tire me. So I went down to Waitrose to shop and to buy some cold suppressants for the next day. I wanted the same ones as worked last year but when I got there they had added guaifenesin which is an expectorant but it also interacts with amiltryptyline which is one of the drugs I am on. I took some once before accidentally and it is not pleasant, even on the low dose I am on. The problem was then that I had to find an alternative. It made my shopping twice as long as I would have liked.

Wednesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. Things went smoothly, my supervisor suggested that I really needed to do a re-write rather than an edit of the paper as my language had got too caught up in the editing. The difference between a re-write and an edit is with a re-write I start with a fresh document, take each section and write from memory what is important in that section having read the section first. With an edit I take the actual words and try to put them into a better form. His conclusion is that I need to limit my editing. The good news is that I seem to have ended up with a weekend to do this because everything else has to be done earlier in the month.

Thursday I finally gave into my cold/virusey thing and spent most of the day in bed. I surprised myself in that I slept until after mid-day. However had I needed I suspect I could have gone into work.

Friday I was up and in work. Admittedly I came home slightly earlier than I normally do but I was working fairly well and not just sitting there doing nothing. Stuart came around in the evening to have a glass of wine (he brings the wine) and eat garlic bread. One of the ironies of life that at present we manage to meet more regularly in a purely platonic way than we ever did when we were going out.

Saturday was one of those in days where I did bits and bobs. I went down town on the afternoon, to buy soya flour (I make a form of scrambled egg for breakfast that uses it and soya dream as well as egg). Also bought some page dividers, I will shortly be on my third folder of written work for my PhD. When I have filled this one I will really be down to serious writing of my thesis. Actually I suspect before then. One thing I did not manage to sort is how to finish my work flow process for poetry. I write it in a small note book originally maybe do two or more drafts, then I produce a more polished piece for my writers- group, but after that there should be a final edit and then put somewhere to keep. The choosing what to keep them in is what is puzzling me and my current work folder is getting rather full!

Today I went to Herringthorpe, it took longer than usual due to the verge being tidied. This seems to largely consist to litter picking rather than actually gardening and certainly does not involve any work on the road. However one lane either way of the parkway is closed. I also ended up parking in the Doctors car park due to be late and there being a baptism. Today we had the blessing of a parent and the baptism of a child. There is no need to tell me that that is liturgically awkward, someone prepared to make promises on their child’s behalf that they cannot make for themselves. There is nowt as queer as folk. If anyone had said to me at the start of this thesis that I would have to spend a good portion of my thesis on the sacraments, I simply would think that they were talking through their hat but in St Andrews Chesterfield one of the major flash points was communion and at Herringthorpe it is baptism. The congregation is split between adult baptiser and fairly strict paedo-baptists. There is also the strong feeling that they see these families at Baptism then don’t see them again. The big question, what does it mean to belong?

Next week is busy, I am hoping on Wednesday to call around at the doctors surgery after a prayer meeting at the church and see if I can persuade the manager to give me an interview. What is really interesting is that in some ways the boundaries between Herringthorpe and this Doctors surgery are not clear cut and they need to get along. On Friday I am off to ASSESS at York.

A warm week in Sheffield

Monday was a relatively quiet day, writers group in the evening. It felt wrong to be coming into a quiet building because no jugglers were meeting. There were three things on the go with the group. One was the actual class, another is the preparation for the observation and the third is preparing the book for publication. I have said I will do the layout. a bit of cheating and some knowledge of Microsoft office should not make it too arduous. Margaret one of the group is just finishing a novel which in my opinion is by far the best writing in the group. Her biggest challenge is to get it sent off to an agent over the summer rather than decide on yet another re-write. I am pretty sure there will be agents willing to take it. In fact I suspect all the group want to buy a copy already and will be really disappointed if it isn't published. We are discovering more and more twist and turns to the story each week and we would love to know how they all fit together.

Tuesday was an NVivo day as there was a query about why a certain files would not open in it. I eventually discovered that it was to do with memory management but my own machine is playing up. I am not quite sure what with at the moment but it managed to corrupt at least one programme while I was sorting it. That is a file went missing for some reason, I suspect the computer tried to overwrite it but did not do it properly.  After work I got my haircut. My hairdresser agreed it had gone wild. Will people with curly hair who think this does not happen to people with straight hair please take note. Then on the evening I went to Herringthorp for Bible Study. Whereas St Andrews Sheffield seems to go for husbands always sitting with wives, Herringthorpe goes for men on one table and women at another. I also am realising my understanding of prophecy is significantly different to what some people at the church would hold. I am not sure that you tell true prophets by the fact their prophecy comes true, or that a person who is a prophet only is so occasionally. It seems to me that while coming true is a criteria it is only useful for short term prophecies, secondly that if I wanted to fool someone creating a short term prophecy that came true is fairly easy. The question that is more important is does this fit with God as we understand God to be. Hmm something to think about there.

Wednesday was a relatively quiet day. At work I went and sat down with the reviews of a papers that had been rejected and tried to work out why. The first thing that was clear was that we were not sending it to the wrong journal. Rather it seems that the problem was that because we were sending it to a journal that is outside the normal range where this research group sends papers, we had not made enough adjustment to house style. Specifically we had not actually read around the literature enough and we had also not been clear enough in our explanation of what was being done. It was very clear that the reviewers were making mistakes due to not understanding what was happening. In the evening I did a Waitrose shop. As a treat I bought a packet of Gingerbons which are delicious ginger flavoured gums. The company obviously knows how tempting they are because they are individually wrapped in wrappers that take some opening. I gave up trying to open them with my bare hands and used scissors instead.

Thursday morning was relatively quiet as far as I can recall, I wrote my findings on the paper to the main author. Then it was off to TFR at Church House in Rotherham. TFR is an organisation funded by the Anglican and Methodist Churches to enable involvement by the Faith sector in regeneration. Herringthorpe found them and managed to persuade them to provide an advisor while it goest through the process of analysing needs in the local community. This started out under the Buildings Group when they were thinking of going for public funding. I suspect that the advisor thought he was dealing with people who were doing this sort of thing for the first time. In actual fact he was dealing with me and Sue Ball who was a health visitor, did her masters at some stage and is now part of the management at the local health authority. So neither of us were exactly beginners. It showed, we came with a research proposal and were able to answer the questions he threw at us. The effect of asking directly about funding for the second part of the project was for Mark to have fourteen possible sources for such funding according to what we decide is necessary. Now we need to take the proposal back to the NAG meeting next Wednesday.

Friday I had a late start, the effect of the previous afternoon was that I was fairly tired and certainly was more than ready to go back to bed after going to the Broomhall Breakfast. I also needed to start putting together the slide show for the NAG meeting and I needed to write up last Sundays worship as I had not found time earlier in the week. Oh and I did type faces for the writers group publication. I have I think put out a mix, Two serif, two san serif and one modern. For those who think modern is going to be something like comic sans, forget it, its a halfway house between serif and san serif. Oh and none of these were fancy fonts.

Saturday I went shopping in the morning, I was up pretty promptly and in Jones Shoe shop before 10:30 a.m. The result of which is that I got a pair of semi smart sandals with low heals. There is very little with low heels this season and I was wondering whether I would have to buy a summer shoe instead. However I found a pair which have the straps interweaving a bit like celtic knotwork designs. They are pretty comfortable and look summery. I also shopped for the stuff for the brainsorming session I am hoping to run for the youth group on Thursday. I am hoping there are not more than ten of them at the group or I am going to have problems with the equipment. Came home and finished off the Presentation for the NAG meeting on Wednesday. One of the issues we have to get the rest of the group to understand is that there is no way Sue and I can do the first part of the research on our own. I am thinking that as it is a group of about 8 people and we want to do about twelve interviews, doing one or two each would be fair. We are giving people three open ended questions to ask. Actually there are two reasons for this which have nothing to do with Sue's or my time: firstly I want people to get a feel for what other people are saying and talking to them is the best way to do that; secondly I want people to build relationships with people outside the church who are involved in working with the community. However I also want them to see what is reasonable and what isn't.

Today I did not go to church. With three evenings at Herringthorpe this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday plus how tired I was last night and I still needed to write up Tuesday's Bible study. It just felt as if I would be better in this morning. I just felt off colour, nothing that a couple of extra hours in bed did not put right. So I got up wrote up Tuesday's bible study and then went and had a shower. It is really good to have a shower in the middle of the day with the warm temperatures that are around. I have since had lunch, created a front cover for the writers group book and written this.