After the snow leaves I finally get around to writing

I know. It is last week in January and I have not written since before Christmas. I have just had a bad attack of life. To be more accurate I am having a bad attack of life. At the bottom of this is the realisation that I need to finish my thesis sooner rather than later and therefore I need to pull out the stops to get that done.

Christmas and New Year were quiet and followed the pattern of previous years with me spending time with my parents over Christmas with my parents and then going up to Drummore to my God family for New Year. Oddly this year I was quite nervous over driving up. Highlight of the Christmas presents this year was a scarf that came with the Dickson’s present. They usually give me a very generous book token which was still there but there was a scarf as well in the colours I enjoy which was just great to receive. Previous years I had gone through ice and snow and not thought too much of it, but this year with only rather a lot of miserable rain to contend with made me a lot nervous. Needless to say the travel was more straightforward than usual and I did not even manage to get lost on the Manchester ring road, something that I seem to do every other time I travel.

In early December I finally got to the official writing up stage of my thesis. It is an intriguing state to be in because it means two completely different signals. On the one hand the University of Birmingham stops charging me tuition fees, on the other hand my supervisor now becomes a lot more hands on than he has done before. The plan over Christmas was to write the theory bit for my worship chapter, then take a break and then review the work that needs doing. I came back to the January supervision having done that and with a timetable that means that I should submit around June time if I stick to it but it is heavy. I am also submitting around two chapters a month, well rewritten chapters and not waiting until the supervision to do so. For people’s information a chapter is around 10,000 words and the redrafting is major as this is when the theory tends to take hold. My immediate boss at work has asked if I want extra days for working on my thesis and I would like to take him up on this but it is not the panacea that it appears. I have work I need to get through at work and am struggling to do that in the four days I work at present.

I am also aware that my parents who are doing remarkably well for 84 are becoming more fragile each in their own way. The big worry at present is that it appears that mums diabetes is not well under control and as badly controlled diabetes can exacerbate dementia that may well be causing her to deteriorate quicker than she has been. It might of course also be the winter and mums tendency for her mood to deteriorate when it is dark, wet, cold and generally miserable.

Maybe some of stuff is that I have not been as stable healthwise over the break, I seemed to have had rather a lot of small minor migraines plus a cold just at the start of the Christmas hols. Then this last week when the snow came I managed to have a tummy bug and just recovered from that when I went down with a cold. My normal trick of staying in, tea tree, eucalyptus and jasmine essential oils, echinacea, vitamin C and sleeping a lot did see it but it took a couple of days despite catching it early. The result however was I ended up with a week off work. I had what looked like a tummy bug and realised it might be stress so booked the Monday off as holiday, the Friday was my day off and after Monday I was down with a cold until Thursday. Needless to say I now need a return to work interview.

Also in work I am helping to put together a course for linguists on statistics. I need to do some work with that and I also need to get on with recording the NVivo videos. This on top of the advising I do which fortunately so far this term has been fairly quiet.

Today was the first time I made it back to St Andrew’s since Christmas. Today was not just Homelessness Sunday but also the first church meeting at which the management group was reporting. The group is getting through a phenomenal amount of stuff. It also was the report of the church life review group. Actually I think it was one of the best attended church meetings I have ever seen and it looks as if some of the newer members are starting to attend as well. This is heartening. However I am worried that the groups idea that we should develop cell groups is none starter. Do not get me wrong, I am all for small groups and particularly ones that help people develop their faith. I am all in favour of Bible study but I wonder if there is any possibility of running such a group especially when outreach is part of its remit. I am wondering and may put forward come September time that we explore especially for those who are newer members something like Emmaus. That is a chance to share faith stories in the light of the big topics of the faith. Plans are also starting to be formed for when Sarah leaves. Unfortunately it looks as if she will leave just as I come back onto the eldership.

Writers group has restarted , we have had a bit of a struggle to get numbers up to the level that is required by the WEA but we have now. I am considering seeing if I can write a series of poems based around a library. I have a couple in draft already but I think both need more time. It is a bit of escapism as rather than working from life I am using memories of twenty years ago. Mind you I have a poem that started this morning and may need writing soon and it is totally off topic.

As I said at the start I have a severe attack of life, and I cannot see it getting better quickly, so while I still intend to write these missives, they will be more infrequent over the next few months. Hopefully by the summer I will be into submission and will have more time.

After a tough week

Well Monday on the whole was a good sort of day, work wise I think I was reasonably paced and managed to get through a fair bit of stuff. Also my writers group had a social at the The Three Tuns  which is apparently haunted not that any of the writers group reported anything odd, but it may go some way to explain the small number of drinkers in the evening. Margaret one of the group who is great at doing Gothic style stories would have had a field day with that. It was in the evening a bit away from most of the social life spots in Sheffield at night, not that any of them seemed to be active. It met the requirements of atmosphere without loud music but the wine was not up to much. However it was a good evening.

Tuesday the first of the disaster came to light. I had messed up I got to giving the course I was due to and then realised that I was due to give another on Thursday which I had managed to loose from my diary. Normally in these situations I would move everything else around, but Thursday I had my supervision in Birmingham booked, the only thing in a week that happens regularly that trumps giving a course. Drat, drat, drat. So it had to be cancelled. I feel slightly better in that we have managed to replace it with two courses in a smaller room, which means that it involves more effort on my part. It also looks good for people who are having to rebook in that they now have two dates to choose from. So more choice this way but I dislike doing it. I also made the mistake of deciding to be nice to students and let the work on spare machines expecting about a dozen out of the sixteen names to turn up, fifteen turned up and it meant the class was crammed and the students were noisy. Going down to Waitrose on the evening I found out Neil had been denied his flat because he would not give up the dog he rescued eight months ago. If he had had the dog for over two years it would have been fine. That dog is better looked after than Neil is.

Wednesday  I went down with a cold, I find that if I hit a cold quick and hard it seems to become much less trouble in its symptoms. So I took the day off, spent extra time resting, vitamin C with zinc and echinacea and also had eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils in the atmosphere. The result was that the cold was largely asymptomatic by Thursday but with not being in work I got further behind than I was.

Thursday was a supervision day, the main symptom as far as the cold was concerned was that I had lost my appetite, however I was in a strange mood, I can’t quite put my finger on it, if anything I was functioning a bit higher level than usual, not spectacular but I seemed to be able to judge times better, I was not panicking about so much and I seemed to know what I wanted to do and just able to do that. The supervision went well on the whole, I have a lot of work to do in the next six weeks and partly it is writing another piece for my methodology that outlines why I chose that approach. I also need to go through and deal with how the discipline of working in my methodology differs from what would be done if I considered another methodology in particular if I had considered mixed methods, empirical research. I actually did consider it, way back, long long ago, but the more I explored qualitative methods the more I considered that the discursive ethnography was going to be more appropriate. Basically the topic was not ready for empirical approach yet. I am involved in empirical methods through work it is just I could not find the cohesive understanding that I think is necessary to use that approach.

Friday, well I made it to breakfast, which had around 35 people there. Apparently the Lord Mayor had had breakfast at the Archer Project either this week or the week before and it was thought that might explain the drop in numbers. It is odd how we seem to have high numbers when the Archer project is closed or having difficulties and low numbers when they have something special on and yet our regulars never seem to change dramatically. Sometimes one will disappear for a few weeks, and sometimes we loose one through illness or other circumstance but they seem to come pretty reliably. I went home and did some writing before going into work so only taking about half the morning of my working at home day, I realised I had quite a bit to do in work. So I went in. At 2pm I went to meet someone to talk about a project that was on the go and came back at 3pm to find that the top management of the department had put out a list of where people are going to be in the new offices. The moving to offices is moving us out of rented buildings and into University owned buildings. Up until fairly recently it was assumed by all that I would be going into a single room, but the exec decided nobody but themselves would be in single rooms. They were warned that they had to see me before they announced this. They did not. Now as far as single rooms go, I have never demanded one personally, others have said it was necessary for me. So I am not going to be dogmatic about it although a single office is really the only sensible way to do my job. However they did not check I was happy with the people they put me with. I am not, one of them has crossed personal boundaries with me, and while I do not mind working with him as a colleague he is fine, I do NOT want to be in a room on my own with him. It is a three person office and I can’t see how with it being that number such times can be avoided. My reaction is so strong that I do not feel able to cooperate with the current proposal.

Fortunately I had meal out with the Dicksons on the evening. It was really a big deal being with people who I knew I could be less than fine with and they would understand. It is funny the upset has left me feeling physically cold a lot of time and wanting to be with people but at the same time knowing I cannot really cope people who want me to respond to them. There is the need for space that is supportive.

Saturday, was a sort out day, I had to spend sometime in the morning. Unfortunately someone had sent me a letter with the wrong postage on and I forgot to take it to the sorting office. I might see if I can sort it at some other way during the week. I also put together a document that stated what my preferences were with respect to room and sent that to my boss and her superior. Then I went into town and managed to find a very thin brown scarf that although very wide fills in round my neck nicely and Blacks had an ALS beanie hat going for £5 (previously £15). I happen to find most ALS clothing very comfortable to wear although they tend to be very casual. I am not sure why they are so comfortable, initially I thought natural fibres but since then I have had stuff from them that is definitely man-made fibre. When I got home I did the writing up for the week on my thesis. The whole writing process this week has felt like moving through thick mud.

Today I went to St Andrews. The congregation was I think sparser than usual but on the whole seem much as always. I ended up doing the final lock up because Jean and Sarah both had their hands full with the stuff that they were taking home. The stacking of chairs in the cupboard is problematic. Chairs should only be stacked six high, BUT the cupboard is such a size that unless the stacks are put in exactly right then you can not get all the chairs in if only stacked in sixes. I know I have unpacked and packed that cupboard several times in order to get chairs in correctly. If I had not known that they did fit I would have given up!

From a golden autumn afternoon

Right  Monday was a normal day in work. I had said a while ago I would do an analysis for a senior academic who had had a paper bounced.  I am beginning to have one of the fabled skills of some of the older statisticians. That is to look at data and say what is going on with it. This actually only comes from have looked at lots and lots of data and getting a feel for when things work. So I did the analysis but my brain still nagged me so I looked at what I thought was going on. It showed up a much neater model indeed. In the end I sent in the report, and I will have to see what the outcome is. Anyway it does mean that I am starting to develop some skills in using R. I must remember to put that on my professional development log.

Actually it is ridiculous how much logging of professional development I have to do. Three different processes, none of them interlinked! One for my job, one for my study and one for my professional accreditation. The daft thing is the same thing can count in all three settings. The use of R is both for work and professional development, modeling using GAM techniques counts just for professional development. Thesis fortunately is not interested in either. I don’t object to developing professionally, I thrive on it, I don’t object to keeping a log, that seems sensible but having to keep three separate ones seems overkill.

In the evening was writers group. I  was glad to be back. There are once again more poets in the group. Over recent years since Faye  left we were down to tow, but we are now back up to three and maybe slightly more. Actually it is also a surprise to realise I am not the junior poet anymore. I am begin to know my own voice, and to have some feel for what works and what doesn’t in my opinion. This moves beyond the stage where I can say “I like that” or “I don’t like that”. However to choose successful poems for reading is difficult. I should have made up my mind mid week but I am dithering.

Tuesday I awoke feeling as if I had a seasonal bug, I am not even going to call it a cold as apart from making me feel off colour it otherwise has only created the occasional coughing bout. So I have been battling that. It so far seems to have responded to basically me landing on top of it, so plenty of vitamin C, echinacea, throat infection lozenges and hot lemom and honey cordial with ginger wine to send me to sleep when I went to bed early. I have not much idea what worked but it certainly has not boiled out.

Also I have been writing thesis this week. So one week down and at least forty left to go. You can read about it on my thesis blog . Actually the process of doing timed writing most mornings seems to generate a rush of energy for me. I give myself half and hour to write 400 words (I have re-set that to 500 as I am easily writing in excess of that each day and doing it for four days a week (still aiming at 2,000 words a week). It will be interesting to see if the pace keeps up. Actually I also suspect that at long last I am beginning to get some idea of what my thesis is. Some of this I suspect that a lot of my analysis actually occurs during writing.

This is officially a writing weekend but as I am ahead on the writing I really should be doing something about catching up on the readings. So I hope you will excuse my brevity.

Supervision in the midst of a cold

Right this has been a mixed week. I really have little recall about Monday, I went to writers group and took a poem which I wrote when I was playing. This was a one off and when I say playing I mean playing, I was building a tent in my main room made of blankets and clothing horses. Something I used to do a lot of as a kid, and this one evening decided to do so again. What was interesting was how other writers picked up both the child and the adult in the situation.


Tuesday I was struck down with another cold lurgy, I decided to take the day off and as I was going to Birmingham for a supervision the next day I felt staying in was sensible. Actually on the Wednesday the lurgy was kept under control quite well with cold supressants and caffeine. If only the previous one had been so amenable! I have covered a lot of ground this last month, I am still stumbling for a language, metaphor or analogy to use to explain what I am covering. I am thinking that I will probably end up talking of technologies within the Reformed Tradition, meaning technology in the Foucauldian sense (must read Discipline and Punish the birth of the Prison because I suspect we are adopting “softer” technologies of that sort). Actually I suspect society is moving towards softer technologies so it is not surprising that the church is. However what is it a technology of, I alternated between being a technology of self (see Weber) and a technology of faith. Other options considered are culture, (I would say many of the current technologies are cultural but to call them culture seems wrong, something to do with the relationship between culture and the individual), spirituality (in the sense the way to be a Reformed Christian, what sort of behaviour is expected), tradition (how is the Reformed nature of the congregation created in this setting and why is it Reformed and lets say not Anglican), ecology ( how do things work in this setting). However by the time I got home on Wednesday (I actually spent quite a time after the supervision working through papers, some interesting but when will I get around to reading them) I was caffeined out (i.e. taken in as much caffeine as I could) and still not feeling if I had the energy for getting home. So I decided that treating the next day as still cold was probably essential.



 
Friday I was at the Broomhall Breakfast, I picked up an email on the morning from Sarah saying would I do a computer consultation at breakfast. It actually turned out to be a misunderstanding. The reports were Excel spreadsheets but because they had been called reports Janet’s supervisor had thought that they would automatically given him the figures. This had never been as far as I know in the work flow. The workflow was for the data to come to me and then that to be turned into figures, the advantage being that I can turn around data in about 24 hours if I don’t have to enter it. If I enter then at least a week is needed. Ah well. I also went into work. Not sure I did much more than catch up but anyway.

Saturday I had a quiet day, shopped, mainly food. I also realised that I have spent around £250 on books with Amazon this last month. I know that is a lot, not all those are for reading, some are background reference but when someone in one book refers to another I need to be able to trace. Often it is only sections of books. A lot of what I am buying are scans of out of print books. However it was good to have a lazy day.

Today worship in the morning was all age and very noisy parade service. At one stage they had us singing along to a CD that was so loud I had to cover my ears as it was painful, alright I was directly beside a speaker but a bit lower volume would have been a good idea. Had an equal opportunities moment, there was a dramatised session on Ruth and I think they had not managed to find anyone to be Orpah’s husband. So they asked who was willing to hold someones hand look blissfully happy and then die a horrible death on stage. The only volunteer was a girl scout who is regular member of Sunday School. So we had the story of Ruth with a civil partnership!  Then back again this evening for a session on being guided by the Holy Spirit. Now was the Holy Spirit guiding this morning if so why did  the Holy Spirit let people forget to have a technical rehearsal? Oh the imponderables of life.

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.

Writers group reading and a cold hampers play

On Monday finally finished “Why women don’t Ask”. It is worth reading, yes Fleur it does say something about the Church but I have not worked it completely out yet. One of the surprising conclusions is that if women’s approach to negotiation was the norm, then solutions would be better but only if they are strongly dominant. Against a male style negotiation someone negotiating in a woman’s style would do worse. It is not a simple book and needs some digesting. At the moment it is enough that it is making me more willing to ask for things. On the evening went to writers group, which was a rehearsal for Friday nights reading. The problem is that while the rehearsal is a good idea in principle it only really demonstrates how much work is needed before we actually get up to the level where we are able to read our pieces well. The rehearsal therefore does for timing and getting a feel for faults but nothing else. I unfortunately managed to get the keyboard for my phone swapped to Japanese. Instead of doing the sensible thing and searching the Internet for a solution instead I tried the heavy approach. It worked but it meant I had to reinstall my synchronisations software. Needless to say this took me longer than I would have liked.

Tuesday was fairly quiet. I got my hair cut and also had a meeting over introductory documents for postgraduate students. One of the problems is we draw the distinction between taught students and research students. On the evening went to Bible Study at Herringthorpe and set up with Mike to learn their sound desk by sitting with someone next Sunday and the following Tuesday for Mike to run through. So I should be up to speed by synod on the following Saturday.

Wednesday I had a fairly quiet day. Cliff came down so got to put St Andrews sound system to a more functional state. Somebody, I don’t know how, decided that the spare loose microphone was extra to requirements and went and chucked it out so when another microphone we could not simply replace one. However the church was in luck, some time before Barry had made an extension cable for one of the microphones to receivers which therefore had the part that was broken in it. So Cliff is able to substitute one for the other. I can’t do that sort of work. However a replacement microphone will cost over £40.

Thursday I thought I had a migraine as a woke feeling lousy. It wore off as the day went one but by evening I had the pain high in my nasal passages that normally signs colds. Other than that I did a mock up of the front of the book for the writers group the following day. I made a mistake in what I should have done was to print two A4 images onto A3 sheets as this would have allowed me to trim to the right size, instead I had borders.

Friday I had a heater coming for my flat. I got up early intending to go to breakfast but then checked the time on the email that Argos sent. The time said “7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.”, so although I was pretty sure it was not going to be that extreme and the cold had come out, I decided that breakfast was out. Indeed they turned up exactly when I expected them i.e at 10:00 a.m.. For those who think this is remarkable, I am fairly fortunate living in town centre, this means that I end up normally at a fairly set place in the run, either first thing or last thing. So once I have ordered once or twice from them I have a good idea of when they will turn up.

In the evening I went to writers group reading at the Bank Street Arts Centre. It also had on a jewellery exhibition. They have a bar but it is on a honesty basis so I presume they do not have a license. The room was smaller than the ones we had previously but this suited the group. As always we performed far better at the actual thing than at the reading. I find it intimidating to read something and not get anything back apart from a round of applause. Part of me is left thinking “What did they really think”. I was also fully dosed up on cold suppressants so slightly out of things which might partly have caused my inability to sense what people were thinking. Stuart came down and we got the tram up but for once in my life I did not check where the tram was going and it only went as far as the Cathedral so we had to swap over and get the next tram. Fortunately the tram does not require you to buy a new ticket.

Saturday it was over to my parents. Again I stuffed myself full with cold suppressants so although I was not sneezing all over the place I was not up to much. The only job Dad would let Ruth and Me do was choose the wine. He then dutifully did not have any himself, but his resolve finally crumbled that evening when there were two glasses left in the bottle and nobody to drive home. It is agreed that he will drink wine when others are around and may occasionally have a glass of whisky in an evening. In the evening I got Dad’s email back working or at least I think I did. This is much to my Mum’s relief. She really is not bothered about wine and such but Dad has always enjoyed a glass. It was good to see Ruth although I really was not up to much.

Sunday was much the same. I got the train back about 5 pm giving Mum and Dad plenty of time to get to church, so much so that I was back in my flat before they got there but it did stop them panicking about whether they had enough time.

Today woke with the cold flaring and decided that a day in might well be a good idea. I hope it has eased things. Unfortunately it meant missing Owen Sheers at St Andrews as I am still to full of it to be of much use.

A Cold causes limited damage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A cold and a missed induction

This week isn't one full of news. I finished my SPSS course on Monday, but when I got back I noticed that I felt a bit odd, and that usually means I am going down with something. I was not necessarily sure what, but I sent apologies to writers group worried it was a migraine but feeling rather frustrated.

Anyway Tuesday came and it decided to declare itself as a cold, so yay for it not being a migraine, bah for it then being a cold. My suspect for handing it onto me seems to be a nine month year old child who had a foul one on the train. Mother was not managing her at all well, at least in part because she had a cold, was over stimulated having been out for the day, and tired. Of course her ability to keep germs to herself had not yet developed.  Well it was one of these that landed me in bed the next day (well the majority of the day anyway) and although getting  better towards the weekend has not been quick to clear. I still know it is there, just not all the time. Actually the extent of my creativity this time rose to wet weather pictures, and yes Fleur the yellow blob is Sandra and cleaning the fridge and the bath. The fridge should have been cleaned months ago but I just had not found the time.

Friday I got as far as doing a shop but that was really as much as I was up to and I had two things on on Saturday which were do not miss.

Well I made one of them on Saturday. I picked up the car fine on Saturday morning, had to fill with petrol that led to a detour, as there are no petrol stations on the way to Herringthorpe from my flat. Got to Herringthorpe early enough to get a parking space, even though I was only ten minutes before opening time. Ten minutes later there were none, and people wanted to be into the car park because the weather was bad. This led I think to triple parking. They have a morning Christmas fair which starts at 11:00 and goes onto 2:00 p.m.. It is is some ways very similar to those at Chesterfield. Most of the stalls could have been interchanged. However I managed to get onto the kitchen duties (yes I know that is not exactly difficult for me) which is something I never could have done at St Andrews Chesterfield. They booked me 11-12 but really needed me 11:30 to 1:30 unfortunately I had to leave in order to try and get to my second engagement of the day.

So at about 1:30 p.m. having vaguely sorted myself I set off to Nottingham to try and get to David Legge's induction at 3 p.m. that afternoon. I knew that Doncaster were away to Notts Forrest, kick off 3p.m. same time as the start of the ordination. I also knew that it was going to be easier to come in to Nottingham from a more northerly direction than the Motorway gives. So I had set my SatNav to go via Worksop and Mansfield.  Unfortunately I did not realise this meant the centre of Worksop and the centre of Mansfield. The centre of Mansfield was fine the centre of Worksop was not. Particularly annoying as I did not realise until I was off the ring road. What I also did not realise was although it looked like the main A road on the way down, it was infact most 50 or 40 mile and hour speed limit. Just a couple of miles or so further east is I think the A618, which does not go through Mansfield, and is national speed limit most of the way. It would have been a far better bet. I know now having driven up it. I got into Nottingham and knew the church was on Edwards Lane. I was one piece of information shore. I had assumed that Edwards Lane was a relatively short road. Lanes normally are quite short. Its about two miles long and leads into another long road called Beckhamptom Road. Even worse still it has the Edgerton Road South, Edgerton Road North feel about it, in that there is a major junction splitting the road into two parts. I ended up on the wrong part. The result was that I drove up and down it several times and could not find the church. At about 3:30 pm I ended up deciding that even if I did find the church now I would not go in and drove home without the Sat Nav. Actually originally just heading out of the city inorder to find somewhere I could get something wet to drink. I was half way home before I found one but the drive had been a lot smoother. I went in an ordered a Coke and a pot of tea as I had not had anything to drink since just after 11:00 in the morning. Having got home know that it was probably for the best health wise, I was tired enough only having done what I did but still dispirited at having missed the induction service after making all that effort.

Making the most of a cold

For those who want to see the rain pictures from last week then the best two are posted here.

The wet one from my bedroom window works better as you get the feeling of a really wet day. However as I said last week it would have been even better if I had managed to get myself up earlier so that you got the lights spread through Sheffield in the wet half light of dawn, that would have given the buildings some more shape and form. The evening one really falls down because simply it was not wet enough so I was searching for raindrops on the window. I got a few but not nearly as many as required for the image. Oh well something to try again on another day when it is wet and I am stuck indoors.


My news, is pretty scarce this week as the strange mix of illness last Sunday decided to develop into a cold. Well a cough, tiredness and occasional (at most twice a day) bouts of sneezing. I am not quite sure how it did it but last Sunday and again on Thursday it seemed to manage to mix migraine symptoms in with the cold ones. Mum originally suggested this might be due to flu but as my temperature did not go above 37°C, I somewhat doubt this. This meant that for the first time in all the years I have been in Sheffield I cancelled a course I was teaching. I have taught it before when I have been this ill but with this course and the spacing I have learnt that if I do teach it when ill, I may as well cancel the next one as so many others are off with the cold, plus I do not teach the course particularly well when I am off colour so cancelling and rearranging seemed sensible. Monday and Tuesday I spent most of the day in bed sleeping and when I was up I felt very tired. I find if I keep myself inside my flat when I have a cold the symptoms are less severe but I seem to be very tired.

 Wednesday I felt a bit better and decided to spend the day up and see how I coped. Quite a bit of the time I spent crocheting a duckling for Lynn who was a secretary at work until she retired recently, granddaughter Hannah. Hannah was born back in September and I got the orange wool for the beak and feet soon after. The yellow was bought for my nieces bee, which I do not have a picture of. It is somewhat bigger than the usual crochet amigurumis that I do. No the background was not pale blue, it was white, but if I took the picture with the the background white then the duckling looked positively orange and given that his actual colour is very yellow that would be problematic. It took quite a bit of fixing of the colour transitions for the camera for the picture to come out this well. I also on Wednesday finished another transcript for my thesis. So even though I was at home, it was quite a productive day.

Thursday I got the comeback of trying to be up all day on Wednesday and needed to sleep in the morning. That said I did manage to finish the duckling off. I am not quite sure whether it is a toy or an ornament. The eyes are put on with washers that go over the stem that goes through the crocheting. The washers are funnel shaped so pushing them off actually tightens their grip on the stem and the stem had ridges on to grip them. So as far as I can see about as sturdily on as you can get apart from just using embroidery for the eyes and I am no good at getting that right. Yes I have tried. Certainly they are better on than the using Fimo or Sculpey polymer modelling clay and then sticking them on, which is a technique I have seen recommended.

Friday I did some transcription on another recording. I still need to catch up a lot, but I got one interview sent out on Saturday and another sent back for checking. I just hope the postal strike does not go on too long. I now have five done, one in progress and another eight to do. I would ideally like them done before Christmas (Hah!) so will need to get a move on especially as I am back to making full notes on my placement. The weather has also got much colder so this week I got out my winter duvet. I am enjoying the fact it is down filled and not polyester so it hugs closer to your body and you do not need to warm as much cold air.

Today I made it to Herringthorpe and I got introduced to the congregation. The nice thing is that I did not have any  pressure to take the service, which is why I actually did not get introduced at St Andrew's Chesterfield. David thought that it would be a good idea if I took a service. I don't take main Sunday morning services, and simply my thesis was not the sort of one where I can take a service and tell people about it before I have been with them. The congregation keep telling me repeatedly that they are a welcoming congregation, I have not seen anything to contradict that, but they are in danger of in my mums words "over egging the pudding". My one conclusion to date is that growth is not directly related to how welcoming a congregation is, despite what the denomination has stressed for years. Welcome is one of the things that stops you driving people away, but does not draw people in. Two more groups of members I have come across, the ex Pentecostal and the Scots who mistook the CofE for a sister church for the CofS and wondered why they did not find it friendly (I suspect more to do with wrong expectations of friendship than not being friendly). Oh the first indication of the dominant female name at Herringthorpe, someone said "There are lots of Jeans here", although if I had guessed I would have said Val. Maybe the Jeanery actually covers the whole of South Yorkshire and not just St Andrews Sheffield.

Next week I am giving the course I should have the week before, with the one for this date moving a fortnight later, having a meal out with Cliff, Lynn and others from prayer group and also the first meeting of the University of Sheffield's NVivo users group, so another busy week.

Hoping that this week brings you joys from unexpected places, times of good friendship and opportunities to relax and appreciate life

In which nothing very much happens

Not sure there is much news this week.

I taught the start of a class on SPSS this week, and during my session on NVivo last week it suddenly trigged that what I miss is my ability to sense when a class is getting baffled. So I made little flip cards, which if I have time on Monday I will finish with piece of card and some blu-tac. Simply if I am going to fast and they are lost they flip it over, if it is just one or two then I can wait to the next work session but if it is more then I need to stop and replay. This does not stop the class from asking questions but means I can have some sort of clue to how they are following. The other thing was despite reminders the last couple of weeks, the person updating the notes forgot. So I ended up teaching with half of the documents and then I went up and the software I was using, which I thought was 16 turned out to be 15! So the old notes would have been fine. I ended up teaching until 4:30 and did not get down until after 5:00 p.m.. Which meant I missed completely Cliff Woodcrafts leaving do.

Wednesday was fairly normal only as I am trying to transcribe interviews at present it was my other half day off on the morning. Went in at lunch time firstly to prayer meeting (the microphone for the hall is back and working, I checked it on Thursday when I put it in). Then got on with my work. Same with thursday and friday, being the other half day I was supposed to get more transcription done. I did about half a minute. I really need to make better progress.

Saturday I went to town, I bought myself a tripod. I bought it so I can take photographs that require a longer exposure than I can hold the camera still for, but since getting it I also find I can relax more when I am setting up a photograph, I have the time to check the settings and make sure I am getting things right without wondering about how I going to continue holding it. Slower yes, but I think for me it is better. Maybe I should have got a full sized tripod earlier. I have still to discover whether I will be un-selfconcious enough to use it properly but have enjoyed the photographs I have done today at home. I tried manual focussing something I'd never dare try if hand holding. So I got photos of the rain drops on the glass of my windows. Admittedly I should have got myself up and out of bed earlier so I could have got the deep blue of a wet dawn but I didn't.

Today has not been successful and I am wondering why. I alternate between time of month exhaustion, a cold or maybe a migraine. I got up but partly lost track of time (something typical for me during time of the month), got to the car and things didn't quite come together, including me not looking at the clock, then ran into road works plus there was torrential rain. At the end I was just too late for the service, if I was further on in my placement I would have gone in, but I just felt as if it would cause panic upon panic, as first I would not be there and then I would. So I turned around and came home which as soon as I did it I knew was the right decision as there was enough wrong for me to be aware of it. I got home and went to bed and slept for three hours straight off. Since then have felt as if something isn't quite right, but not sure what. After talked with my parents have decided that at present should assume it is a bug and see what tomorrow brings.

Cold stops play

Right onto News this week. The only problem is what news, the cold (it wasn't 'flu it just a sore throat, coughing, plenty of phlegm and an occasional bout of sneezing, but still very tiring) has kept me largely indoors. On Tuesday there was an event welcoming Research Students and there were desks with information which needed staffing. As one of the few specialist research staff I felt I should be in. Coped fairly well that day, but the next day realised I was in work but just staring at a screen and when I talked I quickly started coughing my head off. So I went home and slept all afternoon.

So apart from that what have I done. Well I have read two and a bit books. The two books read are by Fannie Flagg (she wrote Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle stop Cafe) the first Standing in the Rainbow was enjoyable, largely American nostalgia but actually quite a good story about women and politics hidden amongst the rest. The second Can't Wait to Get to Heaven I cannot recommend, the nostalgia has upper hand in the book and it shows. Heaven is portrayed as the home of 1950s radio host "Neighbour Dorothy" and it is Universalist in the extreme. She gets around how do you deal with bad behaviour in heaven by largely not having anybody who is likely to behave badly. Can battered wives still be beaten up by their husbands? Can people still be treated unfairly and allowed to starve? I am not necessarily strong on judgement but a portrayal of heaven where everyone gets in, that does not deal with the problem of evil doesn't seem to me to be healthy.

The book I have not finished is The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa and I highly recommend it. It is written from the perspective of an iguana and is set in Angola but the book does not get its title from him, I am not going to tell you as it will spoil the story. The Iguana watches the human life that goes on in the house of Felix Ventura, a second hand book dealer, who also creates pasts for people. It is fairly short, well written and the story has enough twists and turns to keep you reading through it.

Other than that, yesterday I put together the handout for my talk to church meeting at St Andrew's Chesterfield, have done some transcription and slept a lot. Oh I also made an arch out of plasticine (it is for the presentation to St Andrew's Chesterfield)

The result of the cold meant that I did not get over to Manchester. I was probably infectious, the cold is exhausting and I had to back for today as I was starting at Herringthorpe. So it was just not going to work. However I went to Herringthorpe. I think I have just about sorted the turnings on the round-a-bouts but I may keep using the SatNav for the number of times it gives me totally impossible advice when driving through Sheffield city centre. I keep being told to go straight on, when I can only turn left or right, or to go right and right again when all I can do is go straight on. For those that are wondering there is a nice cut through the city centre that gets me out from having to sort out how to cope with the awkward part of the ring road. If it had not worked I think I would have taken to doing the ring road in the other direction. Today however I sussed coming back. I left the parkway at the right place and also managed to go back up behind the law courts. Now all I have to do is suss how best to get to where I have to park the car. It may still turn out that going to Western Bank roundabout and turning in is the best idea! Got in and went to sleep for a couple of hours.

I doubt that I will find time to write next weekend as I will be both presenting to St Andrews Chesterfield's church meeting and writing for my next supervision. Once I finish that then I will need to prepare to present a "the experiences of a Novice ethnographer"

Sore throat at Elders

Let me see. There are three events this week. First my writers group started up again. This is fun although we are already in the run up to the Off the shelf reading (It is free and all are welcome to come) which means I have to get two of my poems through another draft and ready to be read for a week on Monday. I probably should be doing them now but I will do it later this week.

Second was that I presented my report to elders on Thursday. It was one of those days and not helped by the fact I awoke with a sore throat. I also forgot to ring the minister to remind him I need to projector and screen. Actually everything otherwise went like clock work except I talked too much, saying some things earlier than I should of and having to repeat them. For the first part of the elders meeting they had a local councillor in talking on ways they could engage with the local community. Why is it that councillors think we should always engage with the homeless. I agree it is a good work, but this is a church already involved in Pathways and other homeless activities and really needs to find places where it can build relationships which will make it more outwardly focused. Its not at this stage about evangelism its about making friends on an ongoing basis. This is just something that have not bothered to do. The one really useful comment was by Helen who said that the majority of the serving elders now were incomers. Very interesting, I had not worked that out before, it shows as she said that the incomers were able to tap into with the powers that be when some of the local people weren't.

Unfortunately I still had a burny throat that evening and decided it was time to call the cold, a cold. Friday we were supposed to have Greek but Betty had just died and Sarah wanted to go up after the Broomhall Breakfast to see what she could do. With that and my cold greek was cancelled. So I nipped into town to get supplies and since then have been trying to hibernate. Unfortunately needed to go out to St Andrews today to set some of the heating (the rest can wait until I am better but the evening service today and the Tuesday group were likely to need the heat on before then). The rest has been sleeping, keeping warm, ginger drink which is supposed to be good for indigestion but also seems to do pretty well at relieving cold symptoms, taking vitamin C and zinc and echinaea plus having an essential oil warmer going with eucalyptus etc in it. Basically I have thrown everything I can at the cold and it is only shifting slowly. So I think I am going to be off work tomorrow but hoping I am back to functioning normally by Tuesday. Voice has gone today so it might be interesting informing people of my status tomorrow.