Right this week has been a week of two halves with an evening out between the two of them. The first part of the week was dominated by the need to produce a report by next Monday, the problem as always is sorting out the data. Once the data was sorted the results wanted were so prescriptive that it was a matter of filling in the holes. However that always takes longer than you think and we did not start filling the holes to the second session. We also managed to make good progress with an article. That being said, I still ended up very drained each day.
One thing that did come through is that I needed a method for making progress on my thesis visible to me. I worked out that if I can write 400 words for 5 days a week then in 40 weeks I will have written 80,000 or my full thesis. Well that is the theory anyway. Let me first put a number of caveats around that. First writing this way means that I need to plan each chapter in great depth before starting to write it. Second, the four hundred words are first draft, a lot of the referencing and checking will be done on the second draft. Finally I know there is a lot of reading, exploring and such that has to go on concurrently with the writing. The first task is therefore to plan in detail most of the methods chapter. However this week I have been having fun, creating a mandala for me to fill with coloured balls or rolled tissue paper. I am creating a Triskele but am using a Pythagoras tree (scroll down for actual one used) which is proving fascinating to draw out but unlike the original triskele the arms interlock.
By Wednesday I was looking forward to the writers group social. In many ways writers is the group that I socialise with these days. We are on the hunt for a bug without loud music but with atmosphere in Sheffield. I think we have fairly conclusively established that such a pub does not exist in the Devonshire Quarter. However the talk was good in the first part of the evening and the company was pleasant. I must really bring something in for Christmas time as I find I never end up buying drinks at these evenings.
Thursday I did my final interview for my thesis. It feels strange to be wrapping things up after so long, it will feel even stranger I am sure when I sit down to write after the holiday. The interview went well and it is interesting to listen to what Pauline had to say. In many ways I suspect she has a very good idea how the congregation ticks. The comment by her that she would change nothing personally but that there would be change while she was there, I think shows a shrewd approach to the congregation. I think what she has probably done successfully is to persuade the congregation that doing things differently isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Indeed there probably see it as in some ways a good things but are not too sure on the principals that should guide that change. This leads to a conservatism as they have to battle issues out.. They seem to be looking seriously at taking over the pre-school group that uses their premises (its current management are retiring). At times I could see myself in Pauline. In her tendency to see a job and therefore go and tackle it; including the feeling guilty if I can’t.
Friday I served breakfast again. We served 47 or so, but at the start we were really slow having barely double figures in the door when we opened. One of the breakfasters, comes with his bike, helps set out tables, has cereal and coffee and then goes down to Waitrose for 8:00 a.m. to sell the Big Issue. Needless to say the helpers at Breakfast who see him there always stop to buy a copy. I did put my alarm on, it is a sunrise alarm (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lumie-Bodyclock-CLASSIC-Wake-up-Light/dp/B0049AHZSM/ref=sr_1_5?s=drugstore&ie=UTF8&qid=1315763031&sr=1-5 ) and I got it while I was really battling with depression as it enabled me to get up. I did only wake once during the night so perhaps it was an improvement although I still started to wake before it started lighting as I heard it click on.
Afterwards I went to collect a prescription, I went to get it and when the second pharmacist was handing it over I showed my pre-payment card for the second time. Only he commented on it being out of date. Panic! Since I have found myself very good at not changing cards over (not just prepayment presciption cards, but membership cards , credit cards and the like) I have made the rule to immediately put them in my purse.when I receive them. So where was it, had I forgotten to pay. I decided to check my paper piles before I contacted anyone. In the one by the door, where my cleaner normally puts the post, I found it in an unopened envelope.! Obviously had arrived a day my cleaner was in and she had put it there, while I forgot to check the pile when I came in.
Saturday I went household shopping on the morning then finished the report on Herringthorpe.,The finishing of the report meant going through it at least twice. One to take account of Ruth’s proof editing and one to combine it with the fair copy from James. It is done and sent..It also decided to get warm again after being quite autumnal earlier in the week although it pelted down in the evening. The fact that the sun was shinning through the rain created quite a spectacular view out of the window, so much so that I did not go and look for rainbows that would have been out the other side of the house.
Today went to Herringthorpe, only one church meeting and one Sunday to go. Also I got stopped by two students of oriental extraction who were asking where they could get food, clothes and computers. From where they were I presume they were new overseas student at Sheffield University and they had simply come with a minimal amount. The girl did not seem to have the sort of clothes she really needed even for today which was a mild autumn day. This was at 9:50 in the morning. I just hope some of the shops open at 10:00 a.m. and they did not have to wait until 10:30. There was a panic at Herringthorpe today. by 10:15 the carpark was full and people were parking in the overflow car park. This was partly as there was a baptism and the church seemed fairly full when I got in. Then at 10:20 a coach turned up with more members of the baptismal party. There was a hasty opening of doors so as to allow for extra chairs. The Baptismal party was large I would say about sixty people. There were no less than eight god-parents. I think this says something of the parents.
Showing posts with label PhD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PhD. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
When even quiet times are busy
Monday my writers group met despite it being bank holiday, actually I spent most of the day doing practical administrative work for my PhD, getting copies of the recordings made while based at Chesterfield ready to send to the interviewees. This includes finding out what I had done previously, summarising content and making sure I have CDs, preparing covering letters and so on. It is also amazing how many mistakes you can make doing it. In the evening however I walked out through the Collegiate Campus of Sheffield Hallam University and on through Endcliffe Park to the home of Jenny one of my writers group. The walk out was good after the day doing admin and a small group of us meeting around Jenny’s dining room table was also nice.
Tuesday was back to work and I needed to finish off work I had intended to do on Thursday but the computer had been playing up. I sincerely hope the new computer comes soon. Tuesday evening I shopped as I did not need to go to bible study. Wednesday was also quiet with just seeing a single student but I had work that needed to be done. Thursday I joked with Margo after her first appointment of the day that I would get the piece of work I had been doing the previous day finished if there were no emergencies. My computer heard me because the keyboard promptly stopped working. I am pretty sure it was completely knackered as at one time the computer thought it was a mouse rather than a keyboard. So despite the fact that I have a new computer coming I had to get hold of another keyboard. They gave me what I suspect was old stock from the workshop which worked fine with my computer.
On Thursday evening my supervisor emailed me about making a study day at the start of July. There are three people associated with him who are all finishing ethnographic placements over the summer so the study day is to discuss finishing placements. Actually I would like some advice on balancing PhD with home church demands. It is very clear St Andrews is counting the weeks until I get back, but it is also clear that I need space to work on my PhD as I will only have a year to get it into a full draft.
Friday was my day off and I just carried on with doing the admin by early evening I had got them mostly finished. I still need to do this for all but one of the Herringthorpe ones. Anyway by afternoon they were ready and I went out to get them posted. So that is one admin job out of the way. There is plenty more to go before I can get writing. However chance to do some reading. So I took the plunge and started Jonathan Edwards “The Religious Affections”. Two things I have been reminded of in reading it. Firstly that by affections Jonathan Edwards does not mean affectations nor emotional responses. He means something much closer to purposeful intentions. That is not to say the emotions don’t have anything to do with it. For example if your intention is to visit your Grandmother, there is one thing that that is certain and that is it is not unaffected by emotions. Your emotions may be indeed very strong. In other words the will is affected by emotions. What makes these different from just assent is that it intentions that are strong enough to be followed through on. The second point is Jonathan Edwards is steering a middle course. He is not saying reason bad, emotions good; nor is he saying reason good, emotion bad. Rather he is saying that at the heart of religion is a synthesis of the two which leads to the development of the fruit of the spirit.
Saturday I went shopping, most of it was routine but I had seen a nice set of clothes in Marks last week and I decided that I would treat myself to this. I have really not had going out clothes for a while and there are a few things coming up where I could do with something smart but not too showy. Other than that I spent quite a bit of time curled up in the back room in a space I had cleared on the sofa trying to read some more Jonathan Edwards. Actually started enjoying it once I had actually got onto his own writing rather than the academic preamble. I am reading the Yale version.
Today was a normal Sunday. Herringthorpe seems to me at times to be a hyperactive child. To my knowledge today there was there was morning worship, pastoral visitors meeting 12:00 noon, pre-baptismal lunch-discussion, music group meeting and evening service. I suspect some people were here for three or more of those and NOT JUST THE MINISTER. That must be an exhausting pace to keep. Oh well I have got another interview set up.
Tuesday was back to work and I needed to finish off work I had intended to do on Thursday but the computer had been playing up. I sincerely hope the new computer comes soon. Tuesday evening I shopped as I did not need to go to bible study. Wednesday was also quiet with just seeing a single student but I had work that needed to be done. Thursday I joked with Margo after her first appointment of the day that I would get the piece of work I had been doing the previous day finished if there were no emergencies. My computer heard me because the keyboard promptly stopped working. I am pretty sure it was completely knackered as at one time the computer thought it was a mouse rather than a keyboard. So despite the fact that I have a new computer coming I had to get hold of another keyboard. They gave me what I suspect was old stock from the workshop which worked fine with my computer.
On Thursday evening my supervisor emailed me about making a study day at the start of July. There are three people associated with him who are all finishing ethnographic placements over the summer so the study day is to discuss finishing placements. Actually I would like some advice on balancing PhD with home church demands. It is very clear St Andrews is counting the weeks until I get back, but it is also clear that I need space to work on my PhD as I will only have a year to get it into a full draft.
Friday was my day off and I just carried on with doing the admin by early evening I had got them mostly finished. I still need to do this for all but one of the Herringthorpe ones. Anyway by afternoon they were ready and I went out to get them posted. So that is one admin job out of the way. There is plenty more to go before I can get writing. However chance to do some reading. So I took the plunge and started Jonathan Edwards “The Religious Affections”. Two things I have been reminded of in reading it. Firstly that by affections Jonathan Edwards does not mean affectations nor emotional responses. He means something much closer to purposeful intentions. That is not to say the emotions don’t have anything to do with it. For example if your intention is to visit your Grandmother, there is one thing that that is certain and that is it is not unaffected by emotions. Your emotions may be indeed very strong. In other words the will is affected by emotions. What makes these different from just assent is that it intentions that are strong enough to be followed through on. The second point is Jonathan Edwards is steering a middle course. He is not saying reason bad, emotions good; nor is he saying reason good, emotion bad. Rather he is saying that at the heart of religion is a synthesis of the two which leads to the development of the fruit of the spirit.
Saturday I went shopping, most of it was routine but I had seen a nice set of clothes in Marks last week and I decided that I would treat myself to this. I have really not had going out clothes for a while and there are a few things coming up where I could do with something smart but not too showy. Other than that I spent quite a bit of time curled up in the back room in a space I had cleared on the sofa trying to read some more Jonathan Edwards. Actually started enjoying it once I had actually got onto his own writing rather than the academic preamble. I am reading the Yale version.
Today was a normal Sunday. Herringthorpe seems to me at times to be a hyperactive child. To my knowledge today there was there was morning worship, pastoral visitors meeting 12:00 noon, pre-baptismal lunch-discussion, music group meeting and evening service. I suspect some people were here for three or more of those and NOT JUST THE MINISTER. That must be an exhausting pace to keep. Oh well I have got another interview set up.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
From Moderator's prayers to Salsa Classes
So what has happened this week. Well Monday was quiet I think. I know I was busy in work but apart from shopping and such I can’t remember anything major happening. On Tuesday I finished the backlog at work and saw a PhD student who is the sort who seems to suspect statistics are very delicate electrical circuits and if you don’t treat them just right they are liable to give you an electric shock. She first presented the data as two t-tests. However on typing in the second set of data I spotted one group was identical to the previous study. So I went and redid the analysis using oneway ANOVA. Then spent fifteen to twenty minutes repeating again and again the same information on how to read the output. I also suspect I signed up for Linkedin, now I must admit at some stage I really should do this, but at the present the real reason was just to see an article. Unfortunately the sign up seems to involve providing contacts and the time I wanted to spend on it was not that much. I tried to remove from the list it found the obvious distant contacts but thinking through it at the time was beyond me. I will sort it at sometime and some stage just not at present.
However that evening I went to a prayer meeting called by Kevin Watson. Well it was one of those times when someone decides to ask relevant questions for my research and all I have to do is sit back and listen. He wanted to know what had been happening and what was God doing at Herringthorpe. Great questions from my perspective and it was worth listening just to hear what people thought God was doing at Herringthorpe. Yes they came out with the story that I was familiar with, but they could have come out with other stories, there was also one cryptic comment by a church secretary who commented that God is changing Herringthorpe’s attitudes. Well the result was I came back and wrote up immediately.
The price came the next day when I had a migraine. Actually it was strange in that I did not wake with it, but as soon as I got to breakfast I started feeling very tired. So decided to see if an hour back in bed would clear it, only for me to realise as I got into bed there was a headache and other migraine symptoms as well, so I got up, rang into work and then crashed for four hours.
However was back in work on Thursday and trying to catch up on time missed on Wednesday. I had a data set that had been problematic. I thought I knew what was wrong but it was going to be a lot of work. I tried it and it did not work. So I sat back and suddenly the obvious popped into my brain. What people had eaten for breakfast might just effect the results of their pre-race test! and that would cause problems when dealing with the post race test and altering for pre-race performance. It worked and I finished the report and got ready for a meeting with my boss on Monday.
Friday was supposedly a write day, but at least the first part was interrupted . I turned up to breakfast to find not only had some of the food not made it, but they were short staffed and the Archer Project had decided to shut without telling us. So I did breakfast duty for a while on an ad hoc basis i.e. I was both sides of the counter doing what was required. I therefore went about 8:30 and got back about 10:15. I had also picked up Philip Benedicts book “Christ’s Churches: Purely Reformed - A Social History of Calvinism” and I realised not only was the last section on “New Calvinist Men and Women?” which picks up Max Weber’s contention that Reformed Christianity brought in a new “psychological” understanding of what it meant to be a person and explores the historical evidence for this. His results would not be conclusive for two reasons., Firstly the he would not want his carefully nuanced academic tome to be read either as simply full agreement or disagreement rather as interesting hints and such. Secondly the data is largely external data such as the percentage of illegitimate children born during that time. It is quite a big jump to go from practical workings out to internal understandings. However Philip Benedict is also a good writer and I found the work intriguing. Needless to say I spent the rest of the morning reading that. The result was I only got around to writing in the afternoon and in the evening Herringthorpe ladies were having a Salsa night. The lady teaching was good and she made it simple enough that we managed a form of Salsa dancing. I had not realised you needed shoes that could slip. It was good fun. It sounds as if a group of the ladies enjoyed it so much that they will be going to her regular class on a Monday night. Unfortunately that clashes directly with writers so is not on for me.
Saturday I spent writing. Unfortunately I have not finished the essay yet. It is going to be a long one and I think it is important enough to write the extra. There seems to be some hidden rule of writing that the more time available the more time it takes to write.
Today I went to Herringthorpe for the Palm Sunday service. Junior church is definitely down on normal weeks although the creche was up due to grandchildren. This year they sort of managed a procession (last year if I recall the crosses were given out at the end of the service as Pauline had forgotten to do them). Evening service was cancelled due to the fact that two families would be away so I have only had to do the church heating this afternoon.
However that evening I went to a prayer meeting called by Kevin Watson. Well it was one of those times when someone decides to ask relevant questions for my research and all I have to do is sit back and listen. He wanted to know what had been happening and what was God doing at Herringthorpe. Great questions from my perspective and it was worth listening just to hear what people thought God was doing at Herringthorpe. Yes they came out with the story that I was familiar with, but they could have come out with other stories, there was also one cryptic comment by a church secretary who commented that God is changing Herringthorpe’s attitudes. Well the result was I came back and wrote up immediately.
The price came the next day when I had a migraine. Actually it was strange in that I did not wake with it, but as soon as I got to breakfast I started feeling very tired. So decided to see if an hour back in bed would clear it, only for me to realise as I got into bed there was a headache and other migraine symptoms as well, so I got up, rang into work and then crashed for four hours.
However was back in work on Thursday and trying to catch up on time missed on Wednesday. I had a data set that had been problematic. I thought I knew what was wrong but it was going to be a lot of work. I tried it and it did not work. So I sat back and suddenly the obvious popped into my brain. What people had eaten for breakfast might just effect the results of their pre-race test! and that would cause problems when dealing with the post race test and altering for pre-race performance. It worked and I finished the report and got ready for a meeting with my boss on Monday.
Friday was supposedly a write day, but at least the first part was interrupted . I turned up to breakfast to find not only had some of the food not made it, but they were short staffed and the Archer Project had decided to shut without telling us. So I did breakfast duty for a while on an ad hoc basis i.e. I was both sides of the counter doing what was required. I therefore went about 8:30 and got back about 10:15. I had also picked up Philip Benedicts book “Christ’s Churches: Purely Reformed - A Social History of Calvinism” and I realised not only was the last section on “New Calvinist Men and Women?” which picks up Max Weber’s contention that Reformed Christianity brought in a new “psychological” understanding of what it meant to be a person and explores the historical evidence for this. His results would not be conclusive for two reasons., Firstly the he would not want his carefully nuanced academic tome to be read either as simply full agreement or disagreement rather as interesting hints and such. Secondly the data is largely external data such as the percentage of illegitimate children born during that time. It is quite a big jump to go from practical workings out to internal understandings. However Philip Benedict is also a good writer and I found the work intriguing. Needless to say I spent the rest of the morning reading that. The result was I only got around to writing in the afternoon and in the evening Herringthorpe ladies were having a Salsa night. The lady teaching was good and she made it simple enough that we managed a form of Salsa dancing. I had not realised you needed shoes that could slip. It was good fun. It sounds as if a group of the ladies enjoyed it so much that they will be going to her regular class on a Monday night. Unfortunately that clashes directly with writers so is not on for me.
Saturday I spent writing. Unfortunately I have not finished the essay yet. It is going to be a long one and I think it is important enough to write the extra. There seems to be some hidden rule of writing that the more time available the more time it takes to write.
Today I went to Herringthorpe for the Palm Sunday service. Junior church is definitely down on normal weeks although the creche was up due to grandchildren. This year they sort of managed a procession (last year if I recall the crosses were given out at the end of the service as Pauline had forgotten to do them). Evening service was cancelled due to the fact that two families would be away so I have only had to do the church heating this afternoon.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Christmas Round Robin 2010
December 2010
This is just a quick note to stick in with the Christmas cards to let people know how life is going. The year has been busy, I have to keep reminding myself that I am trying to do 80% of a full time job and 50% of a full time degree and somehow those have to fit together. I basically get around to planning the University’s Advent Wreath after my December Supervision and Christmas happens after the carol service.Health wise I am actually lots better this year. In January I had a resurgence of migraines so sat down and asked what I had changed. In the end all I could think of is that I might have with changing supplements slightly dropped my magnesium intake, so I went out and got some and the change started almost immediately. Since then other little things seem to have helped, changing to a quieter office (I had the choice of a noisier one or a quieter one and I had realised that if things got noisier I was in trouble), stopped eating prawns and some minor messing with other supplements. The net result is not only fewer migraines but I have substantially reduced the medication for depression.
Holidays are often taken up with doing PhD work but I spent almost a fortnight with my God-family in the Rhins of Galloway. As I go up there regularly and what we do is between family excursions is go for walks and explore religious sites often at the same time but interspersed with drinking lots of coffee and ginger-beer while eating chocolate. There is a lot of Christian sites covering the whole of Scottish Church history, from Pre-Celtic to the Covenanters. However although the big ones such as Whithorn are known many of the smaller sites are largely unknown. We decided to create a website that gives people information on both the sites and on the walks in the surrounding area.
I also attended a conference of the Society for Liturgical Studies. One of the problems with my PhD is there isn’t a developed academic community to talk to, so I end going to conferences that overlap with my discipline. A surprising amount of identity work is done around worship and sacraments in both my congregations. So I find myself regularly writing about liturgical events or discussing liturgical controversies. The Society was interesting to say the least, an organisation who expressed the desire for more Free Church liturgists to join, who defined liturgy in such a way that most Free Church liturgist would not be interested. They also kept referring to people from the Reformed tradition.
Otherwise I am as busy as usual, if anything work at the University is busier than it has been for a while. I am not sure if this is part of the University refocusing on research due to the economic climate or me being in better health so more pro-active.
Hope that you have a good festive season and that during next year the blessings outweigh the sorrows. With Love and best wishes, God Bless Jean
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Balancing Work, Thesis and parents
This week feels as if it has been very busy despite not having writers group nor going to Bible study. However that was counteracted by teaching on Tuesday and being on a training on Thursday plus editing my essay on Friday and Saturday. So busy. Also Dad was at SST, and somehow as he was sleeping at home each night, as it was in Manchester I did not register this and so on Monday I did not ring mum as I normally do when Dad's away. This all came out in the wash when I rang on Tuesday as it was Dad's birthday and found that Mum had been cross with Dad for coming in so late.
Thursday I went to a postgrad training in Birmingham. Well it was instructive in at least one way, they talked about supervisor-supervisee relationship and I realised a lot of what was wrong from my perspective was organisational rather than due to the actual relationship. However the volcano erruption in Iceland made the trains very crowded even when I was aiming for the less crowded ones as people could not fly down from Edinburgh to Heathrow and such.
Friday and Saturday were quiet days. I was tired after the day in Birmingham, as I had to leave the house at 6:30 and did not get back until 18:30 which makes a long day. I also did a silly thing. I was downloading email from Btinternet as they have my account numbers for the train fares and I had to delete messages on my mobile phone. I have today found that deleting them from my mobile also deleted them from my BT account. So I have lost about two months worth of recent messages. The problem is I cannot find anyway to delete stuff over a month old or put it in a separate folder. Yesterday I also received a Tesco shop and got a drawing scanned in. So at last I can try tackling an web-page for a walk rather than a site.
Today went to Herringthorpe for the their annual general meeting. They are distributing the reports by email to those who have email accounts. They are also presuming that this will save paper. I am not at all sure. The thing is that if you are photocopying you can do double sided but most home printers don't. They did not send me any so I will have to download them from the web. I wonder if the problem with finances are that we tell people what we need to meet demands, but not what we could do if we raised extra. The thing is that if a congregation meets the basics then anything beyond that can be used in creative ways either for evangelism or to provide better facilities or for service of the neighbour hood. I came home from it and slept for three hours without difficulty.
Thursday I went to a postgrad training in Birmingham. Well it was instructive in at least one way, they talked about supervisor-supervisee relationship and I realised a lot of what was wrong from my perspective was organisational rather than due to the actual relationship. However the volcano erruption in Iceland made the trains very crowded even when I was aiming for the less crowded ones as people could not fly down from Edinburgh to Heathrow and such.
Friday and Saturday were quiet days. I was tired after the day in Birmingham, as I had to leave the house at 6:30 and did not get back until 18:30 which makes a long day. I also did a silly thing. I was downloading email from Btinternet as they have my account numbers for the train fares and I had to delete messages on my mobile phone. I have today found that deleting them from my mobile also deleted them from my BT account. So I have lost about two months worth of recent messages. The problem is I cannot find anyway to delete stuff over a month old or put it in a separate folder. Yesterday I also received a Tesco shop and got a drawing scanned in. So at last I can try tackling an web-page for a walk rather than a site.
Today went to Herringthorpe for the their annual general meeting. They are distributing the reports by email to those who have email accounts. They are also presuming that this will save paper. I am not at all sure. The thing is that if you are photocopying you can do double sided but most home printers don't. They did not send me any so I will have to download them from the web. I wonder if the problem with finances are that we tell people what we need to meet demands, but not what we could do if we raised extra. The thing is that if a congregation meets the basics then anything beyond that can be used in creative ways either for evangelism or to provide better facilities or for service of the neighbour hood. I came home from it and slept for three hours without difficulty.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Leech ware, Advent rings and Christmas shopping
News is going to be in highlight form. I have made a productivity break through. I found out about Leech block for Firefox and it has meant that I can keep more control over how much I browse sites that have the capacity to enthral me. I also found that totally banning myself is not a good move, but that if I give myself a short time on those sites I actually tend to control my use of the sites a lot better. However when I ban some sites others come along that are time wasters such as Snowdays and the Haggis Hunt. The Haggis Hunt is only onto 25th January but I think the Snowdays may need to go onto the banned list. The fun sites on the Haggis Hunt are Eilean Donan and Paris. The Paris one actually is of the Eiffel Tower which looks absolutely lovely when lit up at night.
Otherwise let me think, at work I have been busy, sometimes with PhD students and sometimes with doing some programming to provide a report on a weekly basis. Really the first test of it will be next Monday as up until now I have not run it without being very much in control. I am pretty sure that it will work ok and it is just in time for the busy period of term, i.e. this and next week. One of the students came to see mr just at the onset of flu, which I am glad to report I did not go down with. However I do wish people with cold and flu would think of others before they decided to visit them.
PhD wise something interesting seems to have happened to my with respect to Chesterfield. Now that I am finally finished at Chesterfield, I am far more prepared to sit down and transcribe and also to spend time with the interviews. I wonder if some of the tension that I felt before was the tension between getting new data and trying to handle old data. The effect of stopping it has meant that I am far more relaxed at doing things like transcribing. I am also prepared to go back to diary records and start to build analyses out of these. It is far more a question of sampling the data and then trying to see what I build out of that. The advantage is that by doing this sampling I am actually starting to build a much fuller analysis. Things are happening slowly.
Also I have the Advent ring for the Chaplaincy to do again this year. I have decided I am bored with red and gold. So this year we are doing white, purple and silver. I just hope everything comes together and that includes the person in charge of lights having something other than the traditional orange or red filter. The big miracle will be if the silver ropes of beads turn up! At present they should arrive at my home tomorrow because I once again managed to fill in the wrong address on the delivery notice. If someone lets the delivery man in I might get them in time. If not I will have to do it without them. I checked at the local Sainsbury (technically one of their small shop, the equivalent to Tesco Express, but so big it would have been a full sized supermarket a decade ago) and they had none in. As they seemed to be the only shop selling them I tried getting them online. Then I messed up and now its too late. So if they don't come we will do without. I already have quite a lot of spray paint and ribbons and some white beads bought last year from John Lewis who had none in this year. I have picked six bags of greenery and had two definite donations and one maybe. Lets hope that I get more from somewhere.
However yesterday I broke the back of Christmas shopping. By that I mean I have three things left to get, but all of those are from places I would go to anyway. Given it was the next to last Saturday before Christmas, it was understandable that most coffee shops were rather full. I just looked at the queue in the Marks and Spencer one and decided against it. However having done a mamoth shop, I was feeling whacked and had to walk back home as the last shop on the list was on the way home. I fortunately decided to walk up by the Cathedral, and at the corner with Leopold Street there is a Lavazza Coffee shop which had a few customers in, only one couple waiting to order and lots of spare tables. When I left it was getting close to full and anyway placed there I suspect it is mainly a workers coffee shop. However the ability to get a coffee without even waiting and sit down and rest for a while was brilliant. I think I might check if these are regularly open on a Saturday and if so, make them the coffee shop I go to if I am in town. I have rather gone off the one that is next door to where SPCK used to be, since it got refitted. It went very up market, and what I liked was that it felt the sort of place where nobody minded if you sat in a corner, read a book and drank a coffee. Now it feels like a place where you go to see and be seen.
Today I went to Herringthorp, I think I am beginning to settle. I got a Christmas card unexpectedly off one of the elders well a couple of elders. I had not thought that I knew anyone well enough for them to think I should get a Christmas card, but obviously because I ended up working with the husband of the pair at the Christmas fair they thought it would be the right thing to do. I suppose I should have gone back for the Christingle service but honestly I was tired and I had the greenery for the Advent ring to pick, and one place I wanted to do during the light because I am not sure that drug users don't use it as a place to congregate out of watchful eyes when it is dark. During daylight it is next to a busy road and they would be observable but at night the traffic is less and the light does not really reach that far.
This week is busy with the Carol service on Tuesday and a supervision on Thursday. I intend to take Friday off so as to allow me time recover. Actually Saturday is recovery time as well, as I am planning on making home made chocolates for presents and to take into work.
Otherwise let me think, at work I have been busy, sometimes with PhD students and sometimes with doing some programming to provide a report on a weekly basis. Really the first test of it will be next Monday as up until now I have not run it without being very much in control. I am pretty sure that it will work ok and it is just in time for the busy period of term, i.e. this and next week. One of the students came to see mr just at the onset of flu, which I am glad to report I did not go down with. However I do wish people with cold and flu would think of others before they decided to visit them.
PhD wise something interesting seems to have happened to my with respect to Chesterfield. Now that I am finally finished at Chesterfield, I am far more prepared to sit down and transcribe and also to spend time with the interviews. I wonder if some of the tension that I felt before was the tension between getting new data and trying to handle old data. The effect of stopping it has meant that I am far more relaxed at doing things like transcribing. I am also prepared to go back to diary records and start to build analyses out of these. It is far more a question of sampling the data and then trying to see what I build out of that. The advantage is that by doing this sampling I am actually starting to build a much fuller analysis. Things are happening slowly.
Also I have the Advent ring for the Chaplaincy to do again this year. I have decided I am bored with red and gold. So this year we are doing white, purple and silver. I just hope everything comes together and that includes the person in charge of lights having something other than the traditional orange or red filter. The big miracle will be if the silver ropes of beads turn up! At present they should arrive at my home tomorrow because I once again managed to fill in the wrong address on the delivery notice. If someone lets the delivery man in I might get them in time. If not I will have to do it without them. I checked at the local Sainsbury (technically one of their small shop, the equivalent to Tesco Express, but so big it would have been a full sized supermarket a decade ago) and they had none in. As they seemed to be the only shop selling them I tried getting them online. Then I messed up and now its too late. So if they don't come we will do without. I already have quite a lot of spray paint and ribbons and some white beads bought last year from John Lewis who had none in this year. I have picked six bags of greenery and had two definite donations and one maybe. Lets hope that I get more from somewhere.
However yesterday I broke the back of Christmas shopping. By that I mean I have three things left to get, but all of those are from places I would go to anyway. Given it was the next to last Saturday before Christmas, it was understandable that most coffee shops were rather full. I just looked at the queue in the Marks and Spencer one and decided against it. However having done a mamoth shop, I was feeling whacked and had to walk back home as the last shop on the list was on the way home. I fortunately decided to walk up by the Cathedral, and at the corner with Leopold Street there is a Lavazza Coffee shop which had a few customers in, only one couple waiting to order and lots of spare tables. When I left it was getting close to full and anyway placed there I suspect it is mainly a workers coffee shop. However the ability to get a coffee without even waiting and sit down and rest for a while was brilliant. I think I might check if these are regularly open on a Saturday and if so, make them the coffee shop I go to if I am in town. I have rather gone off the one that is next door to where SPCK used to be, since it got refitted. It went very up market, and what I liked was that it felt the sort of place where nobody minded if you sat in a corner, read a book and drank a coffee. Now it feels like a place where you go to see and be seen.
Today I went to Herringthorp, I think I am beginning to settle. I got a Christmas card unexpectedly off one of the elders well a couple of elders. I had not thought that I knew anyone well enough for them to think I should get a Christmas card, but obviously because I ended up working with the husband of the pair at the Christmas fair they thought it would be the right thing to do. I suppose I should have gone back for the Christingle service but honestly I was tired and I had the greenery for the Advent ring to pick, and one place I wanted to do during the light because I am not sure that drug users don't use it as a place to congregate out of watchful eyes when it is dark. During daylight it is next to a busy road and they would be observable but at night the traffic is less and the light does not really reach that far.
This week is busy with the Carol service on Tuesday and a supervision on Thursday. I intend to take Friday off so as to allow me time recover. Actually Saturday is recovery time as well, as I am planning on making home made chocolates for presents and to take into work.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Supervision week with some sorting out of things
Right what has this week brought. Monday was washed out with a migraine. I just curled up and slept. In some ways it was worse than normal in that the whole time I was feeling rotten, in other ways better, as it only lasted one day.
Tuesday I awoke and realised not only had the migraine left, it had also left me in a state I would call anti-migraineous. If migraines make me feel rotten, not want to be bothered with anything and want to curl up in bed, then this made me feel as if I could tackle everything that I was okay, I was slightly more bothered than usual and that I was able to do what I needed to do. That was good in some ways. I had plenty of energy to go to Herringthorpe for a Bible Study. I even sorted out what to eat by getting a pasty from the student shop. Not so good in other ways, I had two Amazon parcels and was too much in attentive to check they actually had in them what they said they did. Herringthorpe does bible study differently. It may have started with an Alpha group. They have a fellowship meal at 6 p.m. in the church which people don't have to go to, then at present they split into an Alpha group and a bible study group. They Bible study group go through to the church, and Pauline gives them a talk on the passage of scripture they are looking at for about three quarters of an hour. The Alpha group I presume watch a video in the hall during this. Then everyone comes back for coffee. Then it is into small groups, the bible study dividing into two. Neither group is led by Pauline. What is noticeably is they have a lot of people who are happy leading groups like this.
Wednesday was officially my quiet day. Still busy but nothing major. So I did a shop and other regular chores.
Thursday was off to Birmingham for a supervision. I had booked myself on an earlier train having got muddled over times (my diary said 12 noon my brain said 2 p.m., my brain was right). It meant that I had plenty of time at Birmingham, time to search for leads and such, time to buy a Birmingham hoodie (I wore and old one on Tuesday and people just seemed more relaxed about me being there if I wore something that said which University I was at). I also was in the one place in the country that was not flooded. I don't think I even had to cope with a mild shower. A funny-peculiar of the day was I went for a Taxi on the way home. Being the law abiding sort, I let the person in front of me get into a taxi first, only for the taxi driver to ask me where I was going, and then ask her to get out and get the next taxi. It turned out he had kids to pick up so could not do the long journey she was asking for. There were plenty of taxis. Another is I picked up the book "Worship and Liturgy in Context: studies and case studies in theology and practice" printed by SCM. It sounds like a general book on worship. Now let me start giving you clues its editors are Duncan B Forrester and Doug Gay. It has two articles by David Fergusson. Other names I recognise include John Bell and Norman Shanks. The chapter titles are clearly all based in Scotland. There really should be a hint, other than the editors names, on the cover that its perspective is definitely Scottish.
Friday was a bitty day, just never seemed to settle. I know this probably was partly coming in from Birmingham, partly that I had reason to take my lunch very early and partly just my brain working over time the day before.
Saturday I went to St Andrews Sheffield and spent a couple of hours just fiddling around with bits of equipment around the audio desk. Nothing much really, just testing every microphone, sorting out stuff that had just been stuffed into boxes and so on. We seem to have equipment breeding. I know its breeding, they had the box to put an electric guitar output straight into the mixing desk. I can not imagine that on any occasion St Andrews has regularly had someone playing the electric guitar. It might just have had someone playing the acoustic guitar on a handful of occasions, and the person would normally have been a guest preacher. I wonder what pieces of equipment have to breed to create one of those and why by natural selection it survived where something more useful, such as a phantom power supply box has not. Mind you I did find no less than 3 electrical extension leads of which one was of unknown origin. Otherwise wrote up last Sunday's notes.
Today I got to Herringthorpe. They were celebrating Bible Sunday, so they had Gideons in to present and they also gave Bibles to the children. They give bibles to children in Junior Church who are in years 2,7 & 12 of school. Children who already have Bibles are allowed to choose books as an alternative. What was clear was that they were giving them age related Bibles. They claimed they did not give kids new bibles if they already had them, but I would be rather concerned for any lad who in year 12 was still using the Bible he was given in year 2, I think I would want him to have something more adult although something aimed more at the year 7 might be more appropriate. The links are just to examples. Oh the other thing is that I have discovered Herringthorpe has its contingent with Pauline who thing "she's not Elizabeth Caswell is she" and tend to stay away. What is more this group appears to include at least one older person (I'd guess about eighty). If as I suspect, Pauline has actually moved the church to more mainstream URC in ethos then maybe I am going to have to revise my ideas that older people and Charismatic praise band led worship do not mix easily unless the older person is a long time charismatic. I suspect in fact what it was is they like Elizabeth's charisma and Pauline does not have that.
This week will finish the SPSS course. Now what dramatic thing do we expect this time, having had a burning building on the previous session for this course. Next Saturday is both Herringthorpe's Christmas fair and David Legge's induction at Sherwood. Otherwise a pretty normal week.
Tuesday I awoke and realised not only had the migraine left, it had also left me in a state I would call anti-migraineous. If migraines make me feel rotten, not want to be bothered with anything and want to curl up in bed, then this made me feel as if I could tackle everything that I was okay, I was slightly more bothered than usual and that I was able to do what I needed to do. That was good in some ways. I had plenty of energy to go to Herringthorpe for a Bible Study. I even sorted out what to eat by getting a pasty from the student shop. Not so good in other ways, I had two Amazon parcels and was too much in attentive to check they actually had in them what they said they did. Herringthorpe does bible study differently. It may have started with an Alpha group. They have a fellowship meal at 6 p.m. in the church which people don't have to go to, then at present they split into an Alpha group and a bible study group. They Bible study group go through to the church, and Pauline gives them a talk on the passage of scripture they are looking at for about three quarters of an hour. The Alpha group I presume watch a video in the hall during this. Then everyone comes back for coffee. Then it is into small groups, the bible study dividing into two. Neither group is led by Pauline. What is noticeably is they have a lot of people who are happy leading groups like this.
Wednesday was officially my quiet day. Still busy but nothing major. So I did a shop and other regular chores.
Thursday was off to Birmingham for a supervision. I had booked myself on an earlier train having got muddled over times (my diary said 12 noon my brain said 2 p.m., my brain was right). It meant that I had plenty of time at Birmingham, time to search for leads and such, time to buy a Birmingham hoodie (I wore and old one on Tuesday and people just seemed more relaxed about me being there if I wore something that said which University I was at). I also was in the one place in the country that was not flooded. I don't think I even had to cope with a mild shower. A funny-peculiar of the day was I went for a Taxi on the way home. Being the law abiding sort, I let the person in front of me get into a taxi first, only for the taxi driver to ask me where I was going, and then ask her to get out and get the next taxi. It turned out he had kids to pick up so could not do the long journey she was asking for. There were plenty of taxis. Another is I picked up the book "Worship and Liturgy in Context: studies and case studies in theology and practice" printed by SCM. It sounds like a general book on worship. Now let me start giving you clues its editors are Duncan B Forrester and Doug Gay. It has two articles by David Fergusson. Other names I recognise include John Bell and Norman Shanks. The chapter titles are clearly all based in Scotland. There really should be a hint, other than the editors names, on the cover that its perspective is definitely Scottish.
Friday was a bitty day, just never seemed to settle. I know this probably was partly coming in from Birmingham, partly that I had reason to take my lunch very early and partly just my brain working over time the day before.
Saturday I went to St Andrews Sheffield and spent a couple of hours just fiddling around with bits of equipment around the audio desk. Nothing much really, just testing every microphone, sorting out stuff that had just been stuffed into boxes and so on. We seem to have equipment breeding. I know its breeding, they had the box to put an electric guitar output straight into the mixing desk. I can not imagine that on any occasion St Andrews has regularly had someone playing the electric guitar. It might just have had someone playing the acoustic guitar on a handful of occasions, and the person would normally have been a guest preacher. I wonder what pieces of equipment have to breed to create one of those and why by natural selection it survived where something more useful, such as a phantom power supply box has not. Mind you I did find no less than 3 electrical extension leads of which one was of unknown origin. Otherwise wrote up last Sunday's notes.
Today I got to Herringthorpe. They were celebrating Bible Sunday, so they had Gideons in to present and they also gave Bibles to the children. They give bibles to children in Junior Church who are in years 2,7 & 12 of school. Children who already have Bibles are allowed to choose books as an alternative. What was clear was that they were giving them age related Bibles. They claimed they did not give kids new bibles if they already had them, but I would be rather concerned for any lad who in year 12 was still using the Bible he was given in year 2, I think I would want him to have something more adult although something aimed more at the year 7 might be more appropriate. The links are just to examples. Oh the other thing is that I have discovered Herringthorpe has its contingent with Pauline who thing "she's not Elizabeth Caswell is she" and tend to stay away. What is more this group appears to include at least one older person (I'd guess about eighty). If as I suspect, Pauline has actually moved the church to more mainstream URC in ethos then maybe I am going to have to revise my ideas that older people and Charismatic praise band led worship do not mix easily unless the older person is a long time charismatic. I suspect in fact what it was is they like Elizabeth's charisma and Pauline does not have that.
This week will finish the SPSS course. Now what dramatic thing do we expect this time, having had a burning building on the previous session for this course. Next Saturday is both Herringthorpe's Christmas fair and David Legge's induction at Sherwood. Otherwise a pretty normal week.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Three weeks catch up post
Three weeks ago I was still getting over the cold although I had to be in work by Wednesday. Then I was at a conference for work. This had a study day beforehand that looked useful. I suppose it was, in that it made me aware that a lot of what I want to learn about a piece of software is not going to be in any book! Oh and that some statisticians still think that small sets of numbers which follow neat tidy patterns so you can work out the result, is what all statisticians like to use so they can get a feel for things. It was all right for me, I followed but I am not sure that the average member of the audience did. There was one other statistician in the group of about fifteen. The computer suite where the teaching was was okay but I am beginning to think that the one thing that was missing was the teacher being unable to see what was going on on anyone's desktop. That meant the lecturer had no idea when people were faking interest out of politeness as he had lost them half an hour ago.
That evening had arranged to meet up with a friend through ship of fools who lives in York. We went first to a pub on Goodramgate and then up a flight of stairs to the Thai restaurant. The pub was at least in a midweek early October evening a locals' pub, the sort of place where there are groups of guys sitting together having a comfortable chat before going back home. The Thai was the sort of place you'd have to be a local to spot. Its entrance was a rather plain doorway between two shops and then you had to go up a narrow flight of stairs, there is no way you could get a wheel chair up there, it isn't wide enough. The upstairs room was one of these open plan restaurants in much the same way as you find in big Chinese places but the room was probably only the size of a couple of living rooms knocked together, so not so huge you were lost in it. The food was delicious, well I like spicey, hot food (one of the dishes had ginger in it) and the price very reasonable. So rather than ending either sitting in, in a small cramped room or ending up being co-opted for a committee and going to its meeting, I had an enjoyable evening. Unfortunately I paid for it the next day with something that started like a migraine but I was able to knock it with strong pain killer but I was still overdrawn so did not stay until the end of the afternoon session, going home once they had had the session I was at the conference to go to, nor did I make the colour evening at Herringthorpe that evening.
The weekend however was spent writing an essay. It actually went quite well despite the fact my normal four day spell had been reduced to two and a half, as there was a departmental meeting on the Monday morning and I felt I ought to attend as the VC was coming and so a stronger whip than usual and that evening was a rehearsal for a reading my writers group were going to do on the Thursday. I had done a couple of writing sessions earlier in the month as I knew I would be short of time so the writing was easier than if I had come cold to a half baked idea. This one is probably my most successful writing to date for my thesis.
The reading on Thursday went well. We were more varied this year, we had a screen writer as well as the usual collection of novelists and the few poets. Actually we brought back a poet who has gone on to bigger and better things, so there were still three of us this year. We met at the Quaker Meeting House as the old venue wanted to charge. I am guessing but it would have helped if there had been clear information from the start. The road on which the Quaker meeting house goes Cathedral, Vegetarian Cafe (Blue Moon), Bar, Quaker Meeting hour. The bar must had been decorated by someone with weird taste. It was in what used to be offices, maybe even offices for the cathedral or the burgesses. There were preservation orders on various bits, but not apparently on the office walls so they had left the plaster ceillings as they were but knocked out the walls to make a big space. They also had cardboarded over the back windows and painted them white. Then had decorated in would be nineteen seventies wall paper only it was not "cool" enough so rather than being brightly coloured it was all in shades of black grey, silver and maybe the odd bit of red. To add to it someone had thought hippie curtain ideas would go with the wall paper and there was a bead curtain. Strange indeed.
The following weekend I had to write a presentation to give the following Tuesday for my supervisor and also made it to Herringthorpe. So it was very intensive. I just really did not have the time to do it earlier. In someways it took less time than I expected, partly because I realised I could take some of the presentation directly from my presentation to elders. Herringthorpe is weird. Lets put it this way, I went to another parade service, attended two services a month both of which were parades. Numbers were down but might be due to being second parade, not liking all age worship, swine flu, the minister preaching elsewhere etc. What they got was a proper all age worship, actually done fairly well by one of the congregation's lay preachers and his wife plus the music group. Most of the congregation there seemed to be enjoying this. This individual had some of the persona of a stand up comedian which helps. Still no hymns I don't recognise but now I have to add the fact that the congregation are perhaps less conservative about worship than the minister. Lets say it is not living up to its reputation actually I am going to go as far as to say St Andrews Sheffield might well have got on very well with Pauline as their minister if worship style was what counted. In fact I could see grumbles arising about how conservative she is.
Then on Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. It went well, I didn't even get wet, despite leaving my waterproof at home. I ended up buying another ink pen, just a cheap one. Anybody wanting a cheap cartridge pen just let me know, John Lewis' own brand seem to do the cheapest I think for all of £3. The one I bought on Tuesday was from the stationary shop at the University main buildings and cost over twice that. I had a bit of a panic over the presentation. On Thursday I emailed my supervisor asking about projection for a powerpoint presentation. He said as we weren't meeting at Selly Oak there would not be. The problem was not the lack of projection ability which I got over easily by borrowing a pc from work which has a screen you can turn around 180 degrees but the fact that as far as I knew we were at Selly Oak indeed he had specifically emailed me to ask me to relocate to there from his office. Fortunately I bumped into him in the foyer of the Arts Tower and checked that the session was at Edgebaston.
Wednesday I was teaching a course. It showed me how much I relied on knowing how students were doing to know whether I had to repeat something. They had put the desks into straight lines and I could not see what was going on on the screens so I was never sure if students had followed what I was doing or not. It previously had had machines around the edge and although people tended to sit at machines and twist to see the screen it was possible to know whether a student was lost, following or gone off on their own tangent. The only ones that concern me is when a student is lost and I don't realise.
Not surprisingly after those two days my body decided it was not doing Thursday so I spent most of the day in bed.
Friday was back in work and then over to my parents. Ruth came over for a meal, she turned up earlier in the afternoon hoping to help mum with the garden. Mum allowed her to sweep up the leaves and does not seem to have developed a list of jobs she is not telling Ruth about. Dad decided to provide wine with the meal for Ruth and myself although he and mum drank water. I was dispatched downstairs to pick a bottle and as Ruth was there the FairTrade one was the obvious one to choose. Mum had cooked venison. This was Dad's choice. It was delicious but I am half wondering if Dad is going to keep on wanting Mum to cook venison whether a slow cooker would not be a held. Saturday I set up the Freeview box for Mum and Dad. Fortunately it came without a SCART cable so we had to go and get one of those, a trip to B&Q was therefore in order, which gave me the excuse for taking mum to buy some plants as she was worrying over blank bits of earth, particularly in the front garden. Ruth if next time you are down there are a couple of heather plants in the back garden in pots then they are to be planted in the front garden, I am hoping mum has chance to plant them before you go. The snag with the freeview box is that it will need retuning twice in the next month. I have left the manual out with Dad with the quickset up instructions on the page that tell about retuning. Basically you have to get it to reset itself.
I caught the train back and there were a couple of retired ladies who were originally from Bury and a man from Sheffield sitting in the seats opposite. The man was with his wife and three kids. The man had an off the wall sense of humour and the ladies who were going home from Derby had had a bad day and needed a laugh and were ready to play up to get it. There was just a lot of good humoured teasing and joking around arranging a Baileys ice-cream and coffee party!
Today I was over to Chesterfield for the last time with my PhD. I was giving the report to church meeting. However John Marsh had been preaching the previous sunday, plus it was half term week and then some absent themselves simply because it was church meeting. The result was a smaller than usual congregation, although there were about twenty three people present. The main item was my report. I think it went well. It was an interesting time to do it, as David is leaving in a couple of weeks and therefore they are getting very much into sorting out how things will happen during the vacancy. Some of this showed during the church meeting. Helen took a couple of paper copies of the report to put into the pastoral profile, fortunately it does not have my name on it. The report might look like a light weight piece of work, but talking to mum and Dad tonight I worked out to produce a report with such a depth of knowledge behind it, would mean employing somebody at least for two days per week for two years! In other words although only five pages long and a lot of that pictures, there was a lot of careful selection from a huge amount of information. I in the end culled it right down to a central message which was basically that they needed to decide what sort of congregation they wanted to be and then work to be that, rather than doing nothing so as not to risk displeasing anyone.
That evening had arranged to meet up with a friend through ship of fools who lives in York. We went first to a pub on Goodramgate and then up a flight of stairs to the Thai restaurant. The pub was at least in a midweek early October evening a locals' pub, the sort of place where there are groups of guys sitting together having a comfortable chat before going back home. The Thai was the sort of place you'd have to be a local to spot. Its entrance was a rather plain doorway between two shops and then you had to go up a narrow flight of stairs, there is no way you could get a wheel chair up there, it isn't wide enough. The upstairs room was one of these open plan restaurants in much the same way as you find in big Chinese places but the room was probably only the size of a couple of living rooms knocked together, so not so huge you were lost in it. The food was delicious, well I like spicey, hot food (one of the dishes had ginger in it) and the price very reasonable. So rather than ending either sitting in, in a small cramped room or ending up being co-opted for a committee and going to its meeting, I had an enjoyable evening. Unfortunately I paid for it the next day with something that started like a migraine but I was able to knock it with strong pain killer but I was still overdrawn so did not stay until the end of the afternoon session, going home once they had had the session I was at the conference to go to, nor did I make the colour evening at Herringthorpe that evening.
The weekend however was spent writing an essay. It actually went quite well despite the fact my normal four day spell had been reduced to two and a half, as there was a departmental meeting on the Monday morning and I felt I ought to attend as the VC was coming and so a stronger whip than usual and that evening was a rehearsal for a reading my writers group were going to do on the Thursday. I had done a couple of writing sessions earlier in the month as I knew I would be short of time so the writing was easier than if I had come cold to a half baked idea. This one is probably my most successful writing to date for my thesis.
The reading on Thursday went well. We were more varied this year, we had a screen writer as well as the usual collection of novelists and the few poets. Actually we brought back a poet who has gone on to bigger and better things, so there were still three of us this year. We met at the Quaker Meeting House as the old venue wanted to charge. I am guessing but it would have helped if there had been clear information from the start. The road on which the Quaker meeting house goes Cathedral, Vegetarian Cafe (Blue Moon), Bar, Quaker Meeting hour. The bar must had been decorated by someone with weird taste. It was in what used to be offices, maybe even offices for the cathedral or the burgesses. There were preservation orders on various bits, but not apparently on the office walls so they had left the plaster ceillings as they were but knocked out the walls to make a big space. They also had cardboarded over the back windows and painted them white. Then had decorated in would be nineteen seventies wall paper only it was not "cool" enough so rather than being brightly coloured it was all in shades of black grey, silver and maybe the odd bit of red. To add to it someone had thought hippie curtain ideas would go with the wall paper and there was a bead curtain. Strange indeed.
The following weekend I had to write a presentation to give the following Tuesday for my supervisor and also made it to Herringthorpe. So it was very intensive. I just really did not have the time to do it earlier. In someways it took less time than I expected, partly because I realised I could take some of the presentation directly from my presentation to elders. Herringthorpe is weird. Lets put it this way, I went to another parade service, attended two services a month both of which were parades. Numbers were down but might be due to being second parade, not liking all age worship, swine flu, the minister preaching elsewhere etc. What they got was a proper all age worship, actually done fairly well by one of the congregation's lay preachers and his wife plus the music group. Most of the congregation there seemed to be enjoying this. This individual had some of the persona of a stand up comedian which helps. Still no hymns I don't recognise but now I have to add the fact that the congregation are perhaps less conservative about worship than the minister. Lets say it is not living up to its reputation actually I am going to go as far as to say St Andrews Sheffield might well have got on very well with Pauline as their minister if worship style was what counted. In fact I could see grumbles arising about how conservative she is.
Then on Tuesday I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. It went well, I didn't even get wet, despite leaving my waterproof at home. I ended up buying another ink pen, just a cheap one. Anybody wanting a cheap cartridge pen just let me know, John Lewis' own brand seem to do the cheapest I think for all of £3. The one I bought on Tuesday was from the stationary shop at the University main buildings and cost over twice that. I had a bit of a panic over the presentation. On Thursday I emailed my supervisor asking about projection for a powerpoint presentation. He said as we weren't meeting at Selly Oak there would not be. The problem was not the lack of projection ability which I got over easily by borrowing a pc from work which has a screen you can turn around 180 degrees but the fact that as far as I knew we were at Selly Oak indeed he had specifically emailed me to ask me to relocate to there from his office. Fortunately I bumped into him in the foyer of the Arts Tower and checked that the session was at Edgebaston.
Wednesday I was teaching a course. It showed me how much I relied on knowing how students were doing to know whether I had to repeat something. They had put the desks into straight lines and I could not see what was going on on the screens so I was never sure if students had followed what I was doing or not. It previously had had machines around the edge and although people tended to sit at machines and twist to see the screen it was possible to know whether a student was lost, following or gone off on their own tangent. The only ones that concern me is when a student is lost and I don't realise.
Not surprisingly after those two days my body decided it was not doing Thursday so I spent most of the day in bed.
Friday was back in work and then over to my parents. Ruth came over for a meal, she turned up earlier in the afternoon hoping to help mum with the garden. Mum allowed her to sweep up the leaves and does not seem to have developed a list of jobs she is not telling Ruth about. Dad decided to provide wine with the meal for Ruth and myself although he and mum drank water. I was dispatched downstairs to pick a bottle and as Ruth was there the FairTrade one was the obvious one to choose. Mum had cooked venison. This was Dad's choice. It was delicious but I am half wondering if Dad is going to keep on wanting Mum to cook venison whether a slow cooker would not be a held. Saturday I set up the Freeview box for Mum and Dad. Fortunately it came without a SCART cable so we had to go and get one of those, a trip to B&Q was therefore in order, which gave me the excuse for taking mum to buy some plants as she was worrying over blank bits of earth, particularly in the front garden. Ruth if next time you are down there are a couple of heather plants in the back garden in pots then they are to be planted in the front garden, I am hoping mum has chance to plant them before you go. The snag with the freeview box is that it will need retuning twice in the next month. I have left the manual out with Dad with the quickset up instructions on the page that tell about retuning. Basically you have to get it to reset itself.
I caught the train back and there were a couple of retired ladies who were originally from Bury and a man from Sheffield sitting in the seats opposite. The man was with his wife and three kids. The man had an off the wall sense of humour and the ladies who were going home from Derby had had a bad day and needed a laugh and were ready to play up to get it. There was just a lot of good humoured teasing and joking around arranging a Baileys ice-cream and coffee party!
Today I was over to Chesterfield for the last time with my PhD. I was giving the report to church meeting. However John Marsh had been preaching the previous sunday, plus it was half term week and then some absent themselves simply because it was church meeting. The result was a smaller than usual congregation, although there were about twenty three people present. The main item was my report. I think it went well. It was an interesting time to do it, as David is leaving in a couple of weeks and therefore they are getting very much into sorting out how things will happen during the vacancy. Some of this showed during the church meeting. Helen took a couple of paper copies of the report to put into the pastoral profile, fortunately it does not have my name on it. The report might look like a light weight piece of work, but talking to mum and Dad tonight I worked out to produce a report with such a depth of knowledge behind it, would mean employing somebody at least for two days per week for two years! In other words although only five pages long and a lot of that pictures, there was a lot of careful selection from a huge amount of information. I in the end culled it right down to a central message which was basically that they needed to decide what sort of congregation they wanted to be and then work to be that, rather than doing nothing so as not to risk displeasing anyone.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Week ending with a walk with Billy Anne
Anyway having looked at my diary I find I was in Birmingham for a supervision last Monday. I was in a state of panic going as I had forgot to print out the papers. I tend to do this in work. I had two options, one was to print them out in work before I went and the other was to go down there and print them out. I decided that in this case the extra hassle of getting into work did not outweigh the hassle of using an unfamiliar printing system. So I went into work. Just as well I did as both the rooms, I use for computing when I am there, were shut. This only meant therefore I did not get to check my email, rather than have to panic about finding a room and then sussing how the printing works. The other thing I normally do is a bit of a literature search. Checking if there is any papers I should be reading but I have learnt a trick so I can do that at home without going through a complicated set of menus. I took my umbrella and just as I was setting off for the station home it decided to rain. So my umbrella was truly wet. I am also learning that 5:00 p.m. train is very nice thank you. The people who are at a business meeting in Birmingham all get the 4:30 pm train and the people who work in Birmingham all get the 5:30 p.m. train so I get this one in between and there is usually lots of space on it!
At work we have had the results of the Voluntary Severance Scheme. It has not quite got the number of redundancies the University wants but when the fact that older staff were disproportionately represented in the scheme it might do. CICS has been quite heavily hit and what we are loosing is some people with a wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that managers are going to find things don't happen and wonder why, then realise that the staff that did them have gone and no one has been delegated to do them. The good thing to come out of this from my perspective is that two of the staff who are leaving have decided to set up a walking group that goes for walks once a month and asked me whether I'd like to join. It was just as I was starting to get restless over walking again and wanting to be out doing it, so the timing is perfect for me.
Then Billy Anne made one her bi-annual visits to Sheffield. She said would I organise a days walking before she came, then she said would I organise it for the Sunday 16th August. Well St Andrew's Chesterfield was already holding a walk on that day, so I saw no reason to organise a second. So at 11:30 ish we headed out to Chesterfield to meet up with others on the walk. I made a mistake of thinking that because the roundabout which we turn off from the A68 was a messy last week, it would not be this week (the work on the new Tescos store is going very rapidly, which was the cause of the problem, and I just was over optimistic). The queues were worse, stretching all but twenty yards to the next roundabout. If it had been twenty yards longer we would have taken an alternative route. So we had a long wait and were later than planned at getting there.
We went the scenic route after us following Alec out of the carpark and me then realising he was probably heading home. So back to my map reading as the SatNav was failing to give me Clumber Park (arrgh). We got there, via Coal Aston which is definitely not on the route and then skirted Worksop. Fortunately I was better at navigating around the grounds and we got to the car park that they were meeting in and joined them for lunch. Then we divided into two groups, one group sat around by the cars and otherwise entertained themselves; the rest went for a walk around the lake. Well almost I don't think we got into Hardwicke village but crossed on a bridge before that. The pace was a gentle amble, the sun shone, there was an ice-cream van half way around and then swans and grebes on the lake. At one stage trying to get pictures of swans I crouched down and my left ankle which was bearing my weight decided it did not like this so plonk me down with undue ceremony. No injury apparent at the time but I woke with a stiff back the next day. John, Tricia and David's son thought it was hilarious which it probably was but only he would tell me. We ran Dorothy and Audrey home so were not dependent on my map reading skill and had a commentary and tour all the way. Including arguments about where the former military training college was and being told to stop on top of a narrow bridge to admire somebody's garden (which was delightful) Pictures of the walk are up on Flickr. .
At work we have had the results of the Voluntary Severance Scheme. It has not quite got the number of redundancies the University wants but when the fact that older staff were disproportionately represented in the scheme it might do. CICS has been quite heavily hit and what we are loosing is some people with a wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that managers are going to find things don't happen and wonder why, then realise that the staff that did them have gone and no one has been delegated to do them. The good thing to come out of this from my perspective is that two of the staff who are leaving have decided to set up a walking group that goes for walks once a month and asked me whether I'd like to join. It was just as I was starting to get restless over walking again and wanting to be out doing it, so the timing is perfect for me.
Then Billy Anne made one her bi-annual visits to Sheffield. She said would I organise a days walking before she came, then she said would I organise it for the Sunday 16th August. Well St Andrew's Chesterfield was already holding a walk on that day, so I saw no reason to organise a second. So at 11:30 ish we headed out to Chesterfield to meet up with others on the walk. I made a mistake of thinking that because the roundabout which we turn off from the A68 was a messy last week, it would not be this week (the work on the new Tescos store is going very rapidly, which was the cause of the problem, and I just was over optimistic). The queues were worse, stretching all but twenty yards to the next roundabout. If it had been twenty yards longer we would have taken an alternative route. So we had a long wait and were later than planned at getting there.
We went the scenic route after us following Alec out of the carpark and me then realising he was probably heading home. So back to my map reading as the SatNav was failing to give me Clumber Park (arrgh). We got there, via Coal Aston which is definitely not on the route and then skirted Worksop. Fortunately I was better at navigating around the grounds and we got to the car park that they were meeting in and joined them for lunch. Then we divided into two groups, one group sat around by the cars and otherwise entertained themselves; the rest went for a walk around the lake. Well almost I don't think we got into Hardwicke village but crossed on a bridge before that. The pace was a gentle amble, the sun shone, there was an ice-cream van half way around and then swans and grebes on the lake. At one stage trying to get pictures of swans I crouched down and my left ankle which was bearing my weight decided it did not like this so plonk me down with undue ceremony. No injury apparent at the time but I woke with a stiff back the next day. John, Tricia and David's son thought it was hilarious which it probably was but only he would tell me. We ran Dorothy and Audrey home so were not dependent on my map reading skill and had a commentary and tour all the way. Including arguments about where the former military training college was and being told to stop on top of a narrow bridge to admire somebody's garden (which was delightful) Pictures of the walk are up on Flickr. .
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Two Quieter Weeks
Right lets see what I can recall from the last fortnight. I think I will stick to main events rather than a day by day spiel. Monday 6th July I was down to Birmingham for a supervision. Main article was to review my report to St Andrew's Chesterfield. The report was in depth but is going to need some revision before I give it to them to take into consideration last Sunday's interview. There are still problems with dealing with details. I was puzzled by my supervisors response that the report was for the minister only. Two reasons, I expect elders to be interested in detailed reports and I also know with this minister that he won't read it if it was just for him. In the end it turned out that my supervisor had little idea what role the Elders play in an congregation and the depth of their involvement with the running and decision making on a day to day basis. He eventually grasped that elders were closer to ministry team than to PCC in the Anglican setting! It seems so simply that the minister does not run the Church but the elders meeting did and the minister plays a leading role within that setting. So it looks as if I am going to have to produce a chapter on the Reformed Character of the URC in my thesis otherwise I will find blank questions from my examiners. Travel was smooth except for the journey back when the train was delayed between Birmingham and Derby.
The Tuesday I had a migraine. I think if I hadn't I could have claimed I was cured of migraines as I had just done so much over the weekend and Monday. It was the first for quite some weeks. Yes the absence has really been due to an absense of migraines. Its actually quite tricky balancing things at the moment. I know I am better but I also know that if I go back to previous ways I will get more migraines. Humm.
Nothing much to report on Wednesday but Thursday was the day that St Andrews Chesterfield debated about whether children could take communion. Although many there see it as a continuation of whether confirmed(children who have gone through church membership) children could take communion I think this in many ways both was more recent and much deeper. Up until Easter time this did not arise as the children were in Junior Church during communion. The problem was that this Easter they came in and then the congregation did not know what should happen. Technically they held an open table and were proud of their open table but was it open to children. The deeper thing is to do with the acceptance of certain families into the congregation. These are families who are second generation and the mother was brought up in the church, but went away to college and came back. There are two such families. The mothers are being expected to go through membership classes again. One has done so and one has refused to. The mothers up until recently have not been asked to be elders. It was these families whose children were excluded from communion.
was until Friday then, I had a meeting in my diary which means I am back processing data, rather a lot of data some of it totally new to me. I am going to see what can be done with what we have got but I think at least one lot of data will need to be not produced as simply I do not have the where with all to deal with it.
Friday evening was completely different. I ended up organising a trip to evensong and then on for a curry at Naawab's. This was for Codepoet (as he is known on Ship of Fools) who is training for the Anglican ministry and had a placement at Parsons Cross in Sheffield. Balaam and LRP also from Ship of Fools made it as well. Cathy they live in Huddersfield. The rest of the West Riding shipmates did not make it. I was expecting Nawaab's to be close to full but it was at best half empty. The food was good, price about what you'd normally pay in Sheffield for a meal. Apparently the menu is not as extensive as it is in Bradford but they still went beyond the normal. For a good quality curry Division Street is becoming a place to go. As Aagrah's and Nawaab's have now joined Nirmals. I wonder if any of our out of town curry houses which are often also good will move into town. The choristers at evensong were definitely at the tired point for end of term. There were according to Codepoet glares from the choirmaster to various choristers during the service. One managed I think twice to drop his music. I imagine he at least stood a good chance at missing the end of term party on Sunday!
Saturday was quiet. Sunday I went to the communion service at St Andrews Chesterfield. The children should have taken for the first time. I think it was coincidence. Another family came that week, which meant that there was a third little one who as far as I know had not been to Junior Church at all during the last two years. This was the cousin of one of the little girls who is normally there. The mother who had been one of the leading protagonists in favour of children at communion stepped in and took the two younger girls while there was a communion service. I give her full credit for handling tactfully the situation. Then it was onto the pub for lunch with two members mother and daughter as indicated earlier.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were busy working days. On Wednesday I went around to Stuart's new room as he wanted to show it off. He rents his room from Monica Hanna. It really was only a visit to see his room which is now on the first floor and much better looking than his previous one.
Thursday I took the morning off to do some transcription and then into work on the afternoon hoping I'd have chance to play with the data but Dr Hussein had booked in that morning but otherwise a very ordinary day.
Friday was at Breakfast and then had a Greek class. Then a study day, Saturday a Study day and I took this morning off but am going to the barbecue this evening at St Andrew's Chesterfield that replaces the normal just desserts.
The Tuesday I had a migraine. I think if I hadn't I could have claimed I was cured of migraines as I had just done so much over the weekend and Monday. It was the first for quite some weeks. Yes the absence has really been due to an absense of migraines. Its actually quite tricky balancing things at the moment. I know I am better but I also know that if I go back to previous ways I will get more migraines. Humm.
Nothing much to report on Wednesday but Thursday was the day that St Andrews Chesterfield debated about whether children could take communion. Although many there see it as a continuation of whether confirmed(children who have gone through church membership) children could take communion I think this in many ways both was more recent and much deeper. Up until Easter time this did not arise as the children were in Junior Church during communion. The problem was that this Easter they came in and then the congregation did not know what should happen. Technically they held an open table and were proud of their open table but was it open to children. The deeper thing is to do with the acceptance of certain families into the congregation. These are families who are second generation and the mother was brought up in the church, but went away to college and came back. There are two such families. The mothers are being expected to go through membership classes again. One has done so and one has refused to. The mothers up until recently have not been asked to be elders. It was these families whose children were excluded from communion.
was until Friday then, I had a meeting in my diary which means I am back processing data, rather a lot of data some of it totally new to me. I am going to see what can be done with what we have got but I think at least one lot of data will need to be not produced as simply I do not have the where with all to deal with it.
Friday evening was completely different. I ended up organising a trip to evensong and then on for a curry at Naawab's. This was for Codepoet (as he is known on Ship of Fools) who is training for the Anglican ministry and had a placement at Parsons Cross in Sheffield. Balaam and LRP also from Ship of Fools made it as well. Cathy they live in Huddersfield. The rest of the West Riding shipmates did not make it. I was expecting Nawaab's to be close to full but it was at best half empty. The food was good, price about what you'd normally pay in Sheffield for a meal. Apparently the menu is not as extensive as it is in Bradford but they still went beyond the normal. For a good quality curry Division Street is becoming a place to go. As Aagrah's and Nawaab's have now joined Nirmals. I wonder if any of our out of town curry houses which are often also good will move into town. The choristers at evensong were definitely at the tired point for end of term. There were according to Codepoet glares from the choirmaster to various choristers during the service. One managed I think twice to drop his music. I imagine he at least stood a good chance at missing the end of term party on Sunday!
Saturday was quiet. Sunday I went to the communion service at St Andrews Chesterfield. The children should have taken for the first time. I think it was coincidence. Another family came that week, which meant that there was a third little one who as far as I know had not been to Junior Church at all during the last two years. This was the cousin of one of the little girls who is normally there. The mother who had been one of the leading protagonists in favour of children at communion stepped in and took the two younger girls while there was a communion service. I give her full credit for handling tactfully the situation. Then it was onto the pub for lunch with two members mother and daughter as indicated earlier.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were busy working days. On Wednesday I went around to Stuart's new room as he wanted to show it off. He rents his room from Monica Hanna. It really was only a visit to see his room which is now on the first floor and much better looking than his previous one.
Thursday I took the morning off to do some transcription and then into work on the afternoon hoping I'd have chance to play with the data but Dr Hussein had booked in that morning but otherwise a very ordinary day.
Friday was at Breakfast and then had a Greek class. Then a study day, Saturday a Study day and I took this morning off but am going to the barbecue this evening at St Andrew's Chesterfield that replaces the normal just desserts.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Supervision and interviewing followed by a migraine
Monday was quiet, very quiet in many ways. I spent some time trying to see what I could do with nxview and raw photographs but in the end downloaded an add on to GIMP called UFRAW as the version of NXView that came with my camera seems to be a cut down version and much more about organising slides than converting raw files. The UFRAW seems to give everything the full NXView does and more. You can see some I did on flickr . Otherwise a quiet day.
Tuesday was a supervision day so it was off to Birmingham in the morning. The train was smooth, on the evening I caught the 5:00 p.m. train out of Birmingham New Street. I have learnt that it is a good one to catch. The office workers aren't out yet and the conference people aim for the 4:30 p.m.. There are major works in the quad a Birmingham as they are fixing a service tunnel and the weather was unpredictable, there were showers so I ended up having lunch in the common room. It is exam time and that means fewer students around but not as few as vacation time, so I managed to get a computer to check emails before seeing my supervisor. The supervision went well and I am on track. I need to get down to transcription. Now all I need is the discipline to sit down and do that little by little.
Wednesday I woke rough but not much the worse for wear so went into work slightly late. At lunch time only Cliff and I ended up at prayer meeting so ended up talking with him. I passed Janet Brown's card onto him as she was having difficulties with getting her computer online. Cliff sorted it on thursday but warned that the computer was very near the end of its life. Cliff is if anything conservative in what he condemns. Otherwise a quiet day, I shopped on the evening, partly as Tuesday I was in Birmingham but Waitrose also seem to have Tuesday like the old fashioned Monday and lots of things are out of stock by Tuesday evening. Wednesday evening I can nearly always get what I want. I also hit on the brainwave as my dishwasher was not draining properly, of putting in some drain unblock, leaving it a while then running a wash through to see if that would clear it. I don't know if it did clear it, because someway through the first wash the dishwasher blew the fuse circuit it was on. I reset the circuit and fitted a new fuse but on plugging it in the fuse blew again. I decided this probably meant that it had given up the ghost. If it was just the electrics that had gone it might have been worth getting an engineer but it wasn't draining properly and it was leaking and I had been nursing it along for a couple of years. The only place locally that stocks such dishwashers (they are the compact sort and really quite rare) that I am aware of is John Lewis. So I went onto their website and found that they only have one in. So that was the decision made for me. However it took me a hour to get the order through. The new one is 75% more expensive than the old one was, but it has major advantages too (like the inside is metal and not plastic so less likely to crack and leak). I doubt it is as simple as my old one which was very basic.
Thursday afternoon was the interview with David and Tricia the minister and wife and my placement congregation. However my brain had been working over night and I realised that un fitting the dishwasher was not something I really felt up to doing. So I emailed Ted and asked if he would do it for me. I also had to go into work to print out the paper work for the interview. There were several noticeable things about the interview with David and Tricia. That they did not mention that it was an elderly congregation, that they were worried about the level of socialising (too low, in a congregation I can barely keep up with the social events). They worried about people class difference being barriers in a congregation that values people for "being able to do X for anyone". X varies from "talk to" "do anything" "can ask anything of" but being open to all is also important. I gave probably about an hour back, about what I had found out. David was incredulous that I could find so much out in such a short time which had taken them about ten years. David wanted me to write a Grove book on how to hear a congregation. I won't do that until I have finished but I guess I might refer him to "Studying Local Churches" and suggest he dips into chapters as they take his interest. I think he was surprise that I affirmed his impression that there real was no community around the church. Yes it is in the middle of suburban housing but it is actually on the join of several housing estates and these face different directions so all of them have their back on the church.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been dominated by a migraine, largely my fault for not giving into it on Friday or Saturday (I got myself up for a doctors appointment on Friday plus Ted came around to unfit the dishwasher and to do a short shop on Saturday which just seemed to be more than my body was ready to take). Hopefully it will clear overnight and I will be ready for work tomorrow.
Tuesday was a supervision day so it was off to Birmingham in the morning. The train was smooth, on the evening I caught the 5:00 p.m. train out of Birmingham New Street. I have learnt that it is a good one to catch. The office workers aren't out yet and the conference people aim for the 4:30 p.m.. There are major works in the quad a Birmingham as they are fixing a service tunnel and the weather was unpredictable, there were showers so I ended up having lunch in the common room. It is exam time and that means fewer students around but not as few as vacation time, so I managed to get a computer to check emails before seeing my supervisor. The supervision went well and I am on track. I need to get down to transcription. Now all I need is the discipline to sit down and do that little by little.
Wednesday I woke rough but not much the worse for wear so went into work slightly late. At lunch time only Cliff and I ended up at prayer meeting so ended up talking with him. I passed Janet Brown's card onto him as she was having difficulties with getting her computer online. Cliff sorted it on thursday but warned that the computer was very near the end of its life. Cliff is if anything conservative in what he condemns. Otherwise a quiet day, I shopped on the evening, partly as Tuesday I was in Birmingham but Waitrose also seem to have Tuesday like the old fashioned Monday and lots of things are out of stock by Tuesday evening. Wednesday evening I can nearly always get what I want. I also hit on the brainwave as my dishwasher was not draining properly, of putting in some drain unblock, leaving it a while then running a wash through to see if that would clear it. I don't know if it did clear it, because someway through the first wash the dishwasher blew the fuse circuit it was on. I reset the circuit and fitted a new fuse but on plugging it in the fuse blew again. I decided this probably meant that it had given up the ghost. If it was just the electrics that had gone it might have been worth getting an engineer but it wasn't draining properly and it was leaking and I had been nursing it along for a couple of years. The only place locally that stocks such dishwashers (they are the compact sort and really quite rare) that I am aware of is John Lewis. So I went onto their website and found that they only have one in. So that was the decision made for me. However it took me a hour to get the order through. The new one is 75% more expensive than the old one was, but it has major advantages too (like the inside is metal and not plastic so less likely to crack and leak). I doubt it is as simple as my old one which was very basic.
Thursday afternoon was the interview with David and Tricia the minister and wife and my placement congregation. However my brain had been working over night and I realised that un fitting the dishwasher was not something I really felt up to doing. So I emailed Ted and asked if he would do it for me. I also had to go into work to print out the paper work for the interview. There were several noticeable things about the interview with David and Tricia. That they did not mention that it was an elderly congregation, that they were worried about the level of socialising (too low, in a congregation I can barely keep up with the social events). They worried about people class difference being barriers in a congregation that values people for "being able to do X for anyone". X varies from "talk to" "do anything" "can ask anything of" but being open to all is also important. I gave probably about an hour back, about what I had found out. David was incredulous that I could find so much out in such a short time which had taken them about ten years. David wanted me to write a Grove book on how to hear a congregation. I won't do that until I have finished but I guess I might refer him to "Studying Local Churches" and suggest he dips into chapters as they take his interest. I think he was surprise that I affirmed his impression that there real was no community around the church. Yes it is in the middle of suburban housing but it is actually on the join of several housing estates and these face different directions so all of them have their back on the church.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been dominated by a migraine, largely my fault for not giving into it on Friday or Saturday (I got myself up for a doctors appointment on Friday plus Ted came around to unfit the dishwasher and to do a short shop on Saturday which just seemed to be more than my body was ready to take). Hopefully it will clear overnight and I will be ready for work tomorrow.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Mainly Easter Weekend
Last week was pretty okay as a Holy week. I got to the Maundy Thursday evening service. I am deciding that David Legge is a straight Zwinglian. Possibly even on factual side of that. It shows itself in the form of the communion services which is not always the case with those of Zwinglian persuasion. Interesting question: is the congregation Zwinglian in their eucharistic theology. There are signs that that might be the case although that is not what I would expect with an ex-Presbyterian (I am more used to them tending towards Lutheranism).
Oh I have also found the "quick" method to get my writing juices flowing at least slowly. The answer seems to be to hand write my ideas for the first day. I will write very little but by the second day my word speed is about up to passable on the computer. Don't know why it works but it beats trying to write on a computer for two days before the ideas start coming. I know I should try and write 500 words a day even if it is sociological nonsense but I never do. I always write up until my deadline and then break, read, observe and interview, realise it is almost the deadline time again and start the intense writing. Mind you by the end of this academic year I will have written 90,000 words approximately with another 60,000 to be written before I start "writing" up.
Sunday was hectic. With being on placement with a congregation I really should be at their worship on Easter Sunday. This is after all the high day in the Churches calendar and there is no sign at my placement congregation that it thinks we should not keep the basic Christian calendar despite being ex-Presbyterian. Query: Both the ex-Presbyterians I have known have communion on Easter Sunday, however I have known Congregational churches choose to have a celebration service instead, which would be a method of lowering the fuss on that day. Why are ex-Presbyterians into communion on Easter Sunday. I would say amongst ex-Congregational churches of my experience it was more common to have communion on Maundy Thursday than Easter Sunday. The Chaplaincy at St Andrews did not have communion at its main service on Easter Sunday the one year I was up for Easter. So where does the tradition come from?
Anyway I got home after the service, having left slightly earlier than I usually do but people were leaving pretty quickly, dropped the car off at the parking space about 1:00 p.m. having come back via the Ecclesall Road due to road works on my usual stretch and the fast route likely to be blocked with traffic, was tempted to go via Nether Padley (about the same distance but on slower roads). Went to the toilet, grabbed a glass of water and emergency food supply and changed my shoes before setting off to the station. Fortunately when I got to the station Marks and Spencers was open so I got a sandwich and a packet of crisps. I then went to the till but with normal Sheffield politeness the man sent me to get a drink as the food cost £2:38 without the drink or £2:00 with the drink. I picked up my pre-booked ticket and caught the train half an hour earlier (around 14:10) than I planned so had to phone my parents to say this. I also learnt there was no 13:40 train. I had booked the later train as just too many things could have gone wrong, a service over run, getting lost on the way home as I was on an unfamilliar routte, having to fill the car with petrol and so on. They conveyed it onto my sister. For those catching trains to and from Sheffield, from the Manchester end catch the one about twenty minutes past the hour at Manchester (25 minutes at Stockport) and from Sheffield the 10 minutes past the hour train. The reason being these are run by transpeninne who genuinely seem to want to make a go of the route. The trains are normally three carriages or more long, so not as crowded as the other ones, run on time, more of them and actually give the cheaper advance tickets. What is there not to like.
I therefore got to Stockport at around 3:00 p.m. and Mum and Dad had just pulled up at the Station, I simply dumped my bag in the back and we set off for my sisters for Dad's 80th Birthday celebrations. The meal was great. Unlike Christmas when there is always enought to feed most of the neighbour hood as well as ourselves this time things worked out almost exactly right. It was helped by the fact that Cathy knew which of the two desserts most people were going to choose. I got Sam and Hannah Easter presents. The irony being that the biggest hit was the t-shirt I got for £4 from a closing down sale (albeit one that has been going on for at least three years, somehow I don't quite believe it).
The last couple of days I have been spending with my parents. At least the time I have been awake I have been spending with my parents but I seemed to want to go to sleep at the drop of the hat. Dad got 14 birthday cards and a basket of house plants from the church for his birthday. The house plants have been passed onto my Mum who will no doubt tend them when she has the time. Still I'd like to find someone who could do some redesigning of the garden. The idea of my Mum balancing on narrow beds in order to tend the top of their garden is not good even if she is the most agile eighty year old I know, often beating me at getting down to something on the floor.
Oh anyone want to read about Chaos then James Gleick's book "Chaos: Making a New Science" ) is an easy read. Its left me itching to get at the mathematics of it to see if I can actually get my head around it. Hope you have a good Easter week
Oh I have also found the "quick" method to get my writing juices flowing at least slowly. The answer seems to be to hand write my ideas for the first day. I will write very little but by the second day my word speed is about up to passable on the computer. Don't know why it works but it beats trying to write on a computer for two days before the ideas start coming. I know I should try and write 500 words a day even if it is sociological nonsense but I never do. I always write up until my deadline and then break, read, observe and interview, realise it is almost the deadline time again and start the intense writing. Mind you by the end of this academic year I will have written 90,000 words approximately with another 60,000 to be written before I start "writing" up.
Sunday was hectic. With being on placement with a congregation I really should be at their worship on Easter Sunday. This is after all the high day in the Churches calendar and there is no sign at my placement congregation that it thinks we should not keep the basic Christian calendar despite being ex-Presbyterian. Query: Both the ex-Presbyterians I have known have communion on Easter Sunday, however I have known Congregational churches choose to have a celebration service instead, which would be a method of lowering the fuss on that day. Why are ex-Presbyterians into communion on Easter Sunday. I would say amongst ex-Congregational churches of my experience it was more common to have communion on Maundy Thursday than Easter Sunday. The Chaplaincy at St Andrews did not have communion at its main service on Easter Sunday the one year I was up for Easter. So where does the tradition come from?
Anyway I got home after the service, having left slightly earlier than I usually do but people were leaving pretty quickly, dropped the car off at the parking space about 1:00 p.m. having come back via the Ecclesall Road due to road works on my usual stretch and the fast route likely to be blocked with traffic, was tempted to go via Nether Padley (about the same distance but on slower roads). Went to the toilet, grabbed a glass of water and emergency food supply and changed my shoes before setting off to the station. Fortunately when I got to the station Marks and Spencers was open so I got a sandwich and a packet of crisps. I then went to the till but with normal Sheffield politeness the man sent me to get a drink as the food cost £2:38 without the drink or £2:00 with the drink. I picked up my pre-booked ticket and caught the train half an hour earlier (around 14:10) than I planned so had to phone my parents to say this. I also learnt there was no 13:40 train. I had booked the later train as just too many things could have gone wrong, a service over run, getting lost on the way home as I was on an unfamilliar routte, having to fill the car with petrol and so on. They conveyed it onto my sister. For those catching trains to and from Sheffield, from the Manchester end catch the one about twenty minutes past the hour at Manchester (25 minutes at Stockport) and from Sheffield the 10 minutes past the hour train. The reason being these are run by transpeninne who genuinely seem to want to make a go of the route. The trains are normally three carriages or more long, so not as crowded as the other ones, run on time, more of them and actually give the cheaper advance tickets. What is there not to like.
I therefore got to Stockport at around 3:00 p.m. and Mum and Dad had just pulled up at the Station, I simply dumped my bag in the back and we set off for my sisters for Dad's 80th Birthday celebrations. The meal was great. Unlike Christmas when there is always enought to feed most of the neighbour hood as well as ourselves this time things worked out almost exactly right. It was helped by the fact that Cathy knew which of the two desserts most people were going to choose. I got Sam and Hannah Easter presents. The irony being that the biggest hit was the t-shirt I got for £4 from a closing down sale (albeit one that has been going on for at least three years, somehow I don't quite believe it).
The last couple of days I have been spending with my parents. At least the time I have been awake I have been spending with my parents but I seemed to want to go to sleep at the drop of the hat. Dad got 14 birthday cards and a basket of house plants from the church for his birthday. The house plants have been passed onto my Mum who will no doubt tend them when she has the time. Still I'd like to find someone who could do some redesigning of the garden. The idea of my Mum balancing on narrow beds in order to tend the top of their garden is not good even if she is the most agile eighty year old I know, often beating me at getting down to something on the floor.
Oh anyone want to read about Chaos then James Gleick's book "Chaos: Making a New Science" ) is an easy read. Its left me itching to get at the mathematics of it to see if I can actually get my head around it. Hope you have a good Easter week
Sunday, March 29, 2009
A quiet week for a change
Monday I had a migraine again. In all fairness I had had inklings of it all weekend and taken Sunday off due to feeling slightly migrainous but Monday was not good. I was glad when it was gone on Tuesday.
Tuesday I was into work. They are running out of space for all they want to do in the building where I am working. The result is they want to shorten my workspace by about 2 ft. Nothing much to worry about really except I have to make sure I have a place for a chair and then I need to chuck some old boxes. Then shopping in the evening for food and such.
Wednesday was totally undramatic except we tried at work my ginger cake which was too dry. My mistake for missing out the oil, but this led me to ask further how to make it more moist and not only was the absense of oil spotted but the suggestion of putting in sweet potato. I redid it on Friday night so that Mum could try it on Saturday and the new recipe works really well. I need to cook it for longer, I think 45 minutes at 200C in my oven, as it flopped slightly while cooling. Once I have confirmed that was the only error I will release the recipe and let others try it. It is very gingery but that is what you should expect from a ginger cake.
Thursday was my day for visiting Birmingham for supervision. I originally planned to walk out from the city centre but the weather forecast was for poor weather so I decided to train in instead. In Birmingham the train runs right onto the Edgebaston Campus and within half a mile of the Selly Oak one. Actually a small break through on how to keep my self from hitting a crisis point when I arrive back at Sheffield. The solution is soup from the buffet at Birmingham New Street Station. I turn up for the train ahead of the one I am booked on and I buy myself a bowl of soup and eat it before I catch the train. It has enough energy stuff in it to keep me going until I get home and can cook myself tea. I found a couple of papers that were relevant to my PhD and then saw my supervisor.
Friday, was quiet as a whole although I ended up making the ginger cake on the evening and that meant going shopping but as I needed to shop for lunch the next day anyway it really was only the cake that was extra. So I also got out my acrylic paints and had a go at just painting, nothing really specific just messing around with the colours to see what sort of effects I could get. The main problem was that the set lacked black, and there really is no way you can mix black. Other than that I am going to have to sort out what I use as a palette and then get some ideas about what I want to paint when I do this sort of painting. I am not sure at all at present.
Saturday my parents came over. I asked them to come later than usual as I awoke fairly tired. So they came about lunch time, I kept putting the meal on too late but we were eating 1:10 p.m.. The main course was a ready made pie, green veg and sweet potato and butternut squash mash. The pie and the green veg were ready prepared and the mash just pre prepared into cubes which needed boiling and then mashing so very very simple. The pudding was the ginger cake with soya "cream" which was good enough to require second slices of for all of us. The fact that it was low sugar, had oats and sweet potato in made it very easy to justify. We then went into town to find Easter presents for Hannah and Sam. Mothercare provided Hannah's before we got down town but Sam's was just not turning up. In the end we gave up and came back home as Mum said Dad was getting tired and he was certainly not finding it easy going. We then had ginger and lemon tea with Apple hot cross buns before Mum and Dad went home.
Today I was over to Chesterfield, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. The service was fine, except David's sermon did not pass basic biblical muster, too simple a solution to the problem of why do we have the Old Testament. My answer is simply because without it we would have a very sparse view of God's relationship to humanity. The gospel and the church do not come out of nowhere but out of a tradition that spans millenia. David's seemed to think it was something to do with the evidence of failure of our law keeping. Now the only problem is that covenant pre-dates law, by a couple of centuries and covenants that matter are always made solely by God. It is because they are the chosen people of the covenant the Jew's recieve the law. The initiative is solely God's. Anyway things look as if they will be fairly quiet over this week with just house group to go to. Holy week I have Maundy Thursday service and then there may be a Good Friday but as I need to write that weekend and it is my fathers 80th Birthday I am wary.
Tuesday I was into work. They are running out of space for all they want to do in the building where I am working. The result is they want to shorten my workspace by about 2 ft. Nothing much to worry about really except I have to make sure I have a place for a chair and then I need to chuck some old boxes. Then shopping in the evening for food and such.
Wednesday was totally undramatic except we tried at work my ginger cake which was too dry. My mistake for missing out the oil, but this led me to ask further how to make it more moist and not only was the absense of oil spotted but the suggestion of putting in sweet potato. I redid it on Friday night so that Mum could try it on Saturday and the new recipe works really well. I need to cook it for longer, I think 45 minutes at 200C in my oven, as it flopped slightly while cooling. Once I have confirmed that was the only error I will release the recipe and let others try it. It is very gingery but that is what you should expect from a ginger cake.
Thursday was my day for visiting Birmingham for supervision. I originally planned to walk out from the city centre but the weather forecast was for poor weather so I decided to train in instead. In Birmingham the train runs right onto the Edgebaston Campus and within half a mile of the Selly Oak one. Actually a small break through on how to keep my self from hitting a crisis point when I arrive back at Sheffield. The solution is soup from the buffet at Birmingham New Street Station. I turn up for the train ahead of the one I am booked on and I buy myself a bowl of soup and eat it before I catch the train. It has enough energy stuff in it to keep me going until I get home and can cook myself tea. I found a couple of papers that were relevant to my PhD and then saw my supervisor.
Friday, was quiet as a whole although I ended up making the ginger cake on the evening and that meant going shopping but as I needed to shop for lunch the next day anyway it really was only the cake that was extra. So I also got out my acrylic paints and had a go at just painting, nothing really specific just messing around with the colours to see what sort of effects I could get. The main problem was that the set lacked black, and there really is no way you can mix black. Other than that I am going to have to sort out what I use as a palette and then get some ideas about what I want to paint when I do this sort of painting. I am not sure at all at present.
Saturday my parents came over. I asked them to come later than usual as I awoke fairly tired. So they came about lunch time, I kept putting the meal on too late but we were eating 1:10 p.m.. The main course was a ready made pie, green veg and sweet potato and butternut squash mash. The pie and the green veg were ready prepared and the mash just pre prepared into cubes which needed boiling and then mashing so very very simple. The pudding was the ginger cake with soya "cream" which was good enough to require second slices of for all of us. The fact that it was low sugar, had oats and sweet potato in made it very easy to justify. We then went into town to find Easter presents for Hannah and Sam. Mothercare provided Hannah's before we got down town but Sam's was just not turning up. In the end we gave up and came back home as Mum said Dad was getting tired and he was certainly not finding it easy going. We then had ginger and lemon tea with Apple hot cross buns before Mum and Dad went home.
Today I was over to Chesterfield, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. The service was fine, except David's sermon did not pass basic biblical muster, too simple a solution to the problem of why do we have the Old Testament. My answer is simply because without it we would have a very sparse view of God's relationship to humanity. The gospel and the church do not come out of nowhere but out of a tradition that spans millenia. David's seemed to think it was something to do with the evidence of failure of our law keeping. Now the only problem is that covenant pre-dates law, by a couple of centuries and covenants that matter are always made solely by God. It is because they are the chosen people of the covenant the Jew's recieve the law. The initiative is solely God's. Anyway things look as if they will be fairly quiet over this week with just house group to go to. Holy week I have Maundy Thursday service and then there may be a Good Friday but as I need to write that weekend and it is my fathers 80th Birthday I am wary.
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