Chatter after an autumnal week

Its funny how having a single item on some-days can make the day seem overloaded, this is the way I felt around having an appointment for S. S is an overseas student who is researching the economic effects of AIDS in I thin Sub-Saharan Africa. A good enough research topic and one which would be interesting to here the results from. The problem is that I don’t believe a single one of his results due to the input of data being so poor. I have not seen him for a couple of years and I learnt he was relying on my keeping a good copy of the data (I had done so but more because I am pretty methodical over keeping data) rather than because I felt I ought). Anyway it was writers group on the evening and I was just hoping my selection would work for the reading. I got there and realised my either/or option had been interpreted as two separate poems so had to do a quick shuffle of papers. Secondly one of the poems I was reading for the first time (although I had sent it around the group the previous week) and I really wanted the groups feedback on that. They liked the selection so I decided to stick with it. Anyone got any idea how you select work for a reading because after five attempts I still don’t know.

I have it agreed that before a supervision I can have one work at home day to spend on my thesis (I think it might technically once a month but as I don’t always take one supervision I am not too fussed on that. This time I found that the only date I could take it was Tuesday, so I did and because my piece was already written for the supervision and with the proof readers and I was feeling the need for reading, I sat down and spent most of the day reading. I finished one book on the theory of what Religion is called Crossings and Dwellings by Thomas A Tweed. This is not because I need to define religion but because his understanding of religion picks up very much the ways I want to talk about congregational life. The theorists who share your metaphors are often worth reading to see what others have done with them. Then got onto Ravished by Beauty by Belden C. Lane  which is an attempt to try and iterate a Reformed ecological spirituality. No my thesis is not interested in ecology but I am interested in the way he has built a spirituality as I have to do that.The reason Jonathon Edwards was not picked up is the book has gone into hiding and I hope it surfaces soon. Actually reading days are also good mental health days and I have felt a lot livelier in work since.

Wednesday I had a course on teaching statistics. Not that I am planning on teaching statistics but I do need to keep contact with the statistics teachers in the university to do my job and this course which was part course, part social was a time to do that. One of the problems with my job is that the department has some measure of responsibility towards providing the statistical software that is widely taught, but nobody tells me what they are teaching so I normally find that we have a package on site only when people want it on the network and there is some difficulty so the people call me in to liase. I was at that from about 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. or later. Partly because there is a definite need to tackle a masters course that is causing problems and there were at least three different perspectives all agreeing that this needed tackling.

Thursday I went on another training course, this time actually for personal development as it was about influencing people. Useful if only because I am beginning to understand what I might need to do to be more effective in that side of my job that requires me to develop things. I am really good at one to one support on research issues but I also need to find ways to create cooperation so that more effective ways of providing support are forth coming. On the afternoon I spent dealing with a number of queries from Human Nutrition. One member of staff is failing to communicate with me there so I am finding she expects things and I have not done them because she has not asked. I therefore have a bit of a panic on this coming Monday, suvivable but I am sure I will find the time to do it.

Friday was my day off, first priority was to get the words written up for thesis, another 2226 words typed and you can hear more about how it is going on my thesis blog . Actually I find it interesting the way blogs attract interest. The blog this goes on is open and generally chatty with a lot of posts on it. However I have a third blog where I post occasional musings. This has a far lower postage rate, but has a much higher hit rate, and has been very high the last week or so with over 300 hits and I can’t find the link to it. I must admit the post linked to I linked to on Ship of Fools actually both the highest hitters have been posts I posted to say something at more length than I felt comfortable doing on a Bulletin Board so linked to from the ship.On the evening my writers group held its annual reading. This was held at Bank Street Arts Centre which is a bit out of the way behind the Cathedral.  It is a strange mix of buildings and feels a bit like a set of houses around an enclosed courtyard but none of the buildings that would have been the houses feel particularly substantial. The floors are on all sorts of levels and on an evening to get to the room where we hold the reading you need to go in one entrance, down a flight of steps to the courtyard and up another flight of step to the second entrance. All the steps are in the courtyard. They also have a cafe/bar which serves alcohol, coffee, cake and such on am most odd basis. The room we were using at the time had an exhibition of entry to Sheffield International Arts book Prize. These were actually quite intriguing and if people go during the day you can just walk in off the street and see it and other exhibitions.

Saturday my parents came over, I decided that I needed to know what they wanted to do and they said that was to buy wool for mum to knit a jumper for dad and would therefore like to go to John Lewis’. So I thought fine a single leisurely trip down town, especially once they decided they would like to eat out. Getting to John Lewis’ was easy, and fortunately there were only a limited number of patterns for men’s jumpers. So it only took half an hour to find a pattern. Then we had to find a wool, it had to be double knitting and dad wanted green and brown fleck. The only problem was that the only such wool was over £5.00 for 50g, yes it was very nice but that meant the jumper would cost seventy pounds. Mum baulked at that and suggested that we bought a jumper instead. This I saw was a non-starter with Dad for whom Mum knitting the jumper was at least half the point of getting the wool (knitting helps keep Mum’s brain and hands busy). So we put the wool down then went downstairs to buy socks for Dad, he wanted longer than average socks, eventually we found some black ones that would do. Having done this we went to find some lunch, ended up in Yates Pub opposite, very high marks for having food Dad was happy to eat (salmon and salad), very low marks for the amount of noise but with the volume such that you could not keep going over and over the knitting problem. At the end of the meal I spelt out the problem to them and we agreed we would go back and get Dad a green flecked wool instead of green and brown (I had spotted one earlier).  The other options was to try another wool shop or to buy Dad a jumper. So then back and re-found the pattern, got a ball of wool and handed it to the assistant (I was a bit deliberate over who I took their purchases too as I knew one lady really did know what she was doing). However disaster struck there were only thirteen balls and the pattern called for fourteen. However this assistant is canny and she checked the length of the wool, the length on the recommended wool was 120m per 50g, the length on the wool we chose was 150m per 50 g so we only needed 12! Phew. After that my shopping took very little time at all.

Today I was at service at St Andrew’s. Kirsty Thorpe  was preaching. She was peaching on it being 400 years to the day of the publishing of KJV. This certainly pleased Elizabeth Draper who told me at least twice how much she had enjoyed it. There must have been around thirty in the congregation although I suspect that numbers were reduced somewhat as one of Margaret Falls holidays was going away that afternoon and not all members are as committed as Jean and James who were at worship in the morning althoughgoing away on the afternoon. There were about thirty in the congregation. I feel a bit as if I am being pulled in all directions, the sound desk would like me back on the rota, the choir would like me to join and I also am aware that I fulfil a valuable role just by being a member of the congregation and listening to one or two people. The mix in worship was less widely spread than at Harvest although there was still a couple of faces I did not recognise. I am still too recently back to know whether they are new faces or faces that have come in the last four years.

After lunch I went to a healing service at Endcliffe Methodist Church. This service had been prompted by the slow recovery of Matthew (Jo and Ted’s foster son) whose heart stopped suddenly at the end of August just after they had got back from holiday. Medics have no idea what caused it to stop and it took them a while to get it going again and so there is brain damage. Matthew has also had a number of chest infections that have impeded his recovery. The service while acknowledging the prompt was not solely for Matthew and there were around thirty to forty people there. I ended up talking afterwards with one of the members there I knew through work and learnt that they are now a small congregation so I suspect there were quite a few people like myself who had come to pray for Matthew, Ted and Jo.  The service was quietly organised with lots of time for personal quiet prayer although I still had capacity (hunger?) for more. Once I have actually got myself to stop and be still I often don’t want to leave it. Songs were modern charismatic, which is what I expected and I suspect that there are still issues over the expression of anger but there were no big promises and just lots of time to pray, there was not even a laying on of hands although you could come up for prayer at the end. I walked back with Jo and Ted as they live on one of the possible routes home. While still on Endcliffe church steps we were accosted by a very drunk young man who just wanted to tell us he was a Christian and did so repeatedly although he seemed to think it left him free to denigrate others who were rude about him. Later on we were accosted by one of Matthew’s former school mates (junior school) who wanted to know how he was and had been praying for him (Roman Catholic).

Busy working week followed by a quieter weekend

This week has been busy and yet cope-able with. The main reason is that masters students are panicking over their projects. Unfortunately they tend to have the idea that I should drop everything and tend to them. I am however booked up for the whole of next week already and half of the week after. It is easing then as I am no longer teaching.but I have now set my email so that people emailing me get warned that I am busy. There is a marked difference between this and dealing with a masters student who already has a PhD. She asks for bookings weeks in advance and takes responsibility not only for being their herself but checking with her tutor. On the other had we hope she gets a paper in a good medical journal as a result of her work.

Monday was normal writers group, while Wednesday was the start of extra sessions. The only problem with extra sessions was that we had got it on a week where there was a great demand for tables. Not only were we wanting them but the Oratorio choir, a display in the church and Network. Next week neither Network nor the Oratorio Chorus are meeting! A week later start would have been so much easier. but that is life. The writers group did not realise that there were two groups on and not one.

Tuesday I had the second part of an interview that had been cut short last week. There was no way I was going to get away from work early and as the person I was interviewing was also going to Bible study there was a pretty fixed time. It was one of the few days I could not see how I was going to get an evening meal. So I treated myself to a brownie from PJ Taste which are really scrumptious. However once I was there his wife sussed I had not eaten and made me a sandwich and a piece of cake along with a coffee which I ate while interviewing. I have hopefully set up another interview the weekend after next and that really does put me on the home straight.

Wednesday was a meeting and teaching day in work. It looks like I will be down to Birmingham twice in August, once for supervision and once for work. This is about running servers for arts or social science research teams, who tend to use different operating systems to the hard science and engineering folk. It is a new area, but I suspect that unless we are prepared to provide a service that works for them we are going to struggle even more. These people use computers because they ease the work, they really do not want to struggle with the tricks that make things happen and idiosyncratic solutions will abound.

Thursday was quieter. Did I say this was going to be a quieter week, well it was than last week. I just was advising from 1pm to 5pm fortunately with someone I know really well. The result was at 3:30pm we both decided we needed a break, so went and got a coffee at PJ Taste as the Union would have been shut. This meant a change in venue.

This week there were only thirty eight to the Breakfast. I know that is only just under forty but it felt a lot easier than the last couple of weeks. This may be due to the fact that everyone hit the deck running,. Mary was there before 7:30 (Sarah and I at 7:30 and Roy and Beryl the cooks shortly afterwards). Mary had put on the ovens and the water and I knew I needed to look after the hall, checking things were done. Fortunately only Pat and Josh turned up very early and they are both workers, so less confusion over who was doing what. By the times the others had come in, things were largely sorted so the lounging around did not get in the way of doing the work. Josh is an absolute star, he comes early and helps set up, during breakfast he makes sure the tables are clean, have sugar and condiments, there is cutlery in the box and milk out. He will hand out Geo Bars if asked and basically keeps the hall running apart from serving and taking orders. However by the time I had shopped at Waitrose I was ready for bed again and slept for a couple of hours. Spent the rest of the day pottering.

Saturday was a quiet day, shopped, did some thesis reading and also sorted some of my back up of my thesis.

Today I went to Herringthorpe for morning worship. It was another believers baptism, this time of a lad about Sam’s age who is from a strongly URC background. The baptism seemed to be at a half way point between the full on evening service of some weeks ago and the normal morning baptisms. The service was an all age worship but none of the uniformed organisations were there. The music included a lot of the more modern hymns. This included Amazing Grace in the Chris Tomlin version ( listen to the whole to it as the first two verses sound very similar to the traditional).