Review of the year at Christmas

Thanks for those who have been in touch and apologies that the majority of my contact is limited. Hopefully by this time normal service will resume.

When I first set down to write this review,  I had the usual feeling that there is nothing to write but there is plenty to write, but having sat down I realise that this has been a year of happening and it does not look like it will settle down for a while yet. So what was supposed to be the year that things quietened down with me finishing my thesis ended up quite eventful.

My thesis is not finished yet but at last is gelling. I hoped to get it done by Easter but with the best of my pushing I just did not manage it. I wonder now if there was more I could have done but that is wondering. I think I had underestimated the intensity of the final stages of writing. As a result it took over my brain between Easter and early summer as I tried to get it to gel and worked on the suggested changes by my supervisor. I could make the changes, and they did improve it but it did not set. I even got during August to putting it into final form, but I was not happy and indicated so to my supervisor when I sent the copy for him to read through. He agreed, suggested a major redraft and I am working through but it is at last coming together. The point which was probably most indicative was when at last supervision he asked me something and in a sentence I summarised the whole thesis. The change was to move the metaphor far earlier in the thesis and this just allows so much more use to made of it. It really is the core strand around which I build the thesis. I have just added the second important strand and now will need to pull the other strands into their respective places so the argument becomes a rope rather than tangled net.

The reason for aiming for Easter for finish was in part that Sarah Hall the minister at St Andrews was leaving there. She had had perhaps the most successful ministry of any recent minister at St  Andrews and is much missed. The congregation is missing her even more as the situation in Sheffield is in flux, and there is no plan over the long term provision of ministry for the whole city. Some of this is that locally people were waiting on synod which had the power to decide funding. However, synod felt that it was its duty to respond to local desires. In other words each was waiting for the other. As the ideas are very different and not looking towards the old system of pastoral negotiation where a combination of size and mission governed the amount of ministerial oversight you could expect, there are problems. Unfortunately much as I would have liked to be involved with finding my thesis more demanding than I allowed for at exactly the time the congregation was hoping for me to get more involved and ever so often I took on what was supposed to be a small job and then found it had a hidden demand that took three or four times the energy. By the end of June it was obvious that I was not coping and with other commitment the only way to manage church was to take a complete sabbatical.

Then early in July my mother and father went to meet up with friends at Tittesworth Reservoir which is fairly near Macclesfield. It was a warm day and dad had been off colour during the morning but on the afternoon collapsed and an ambulance was called. My mother is getting increasing forgetful with dementia and is no longer allowed to drive. So my sister got a panic phone call and had to go down to Macclesfield to collect Mum. She slept here the first night while I organised myself to get over and take up the care of Mum the next day. We went down that afternoon to visit Dad at Macclesfield and agreed he should go for angiogram at the North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke on Trent. Unfortunately it was found that dad had more wrong with his heart than they thought at Macclesfield and they kept him in at Stoke. This was bad news as with Mum’s dementia it was difficult to get her there. Initially we thought of car but it would mean that both Cathy and I would have to go on every journey, one to drive and one to keep Mum stimulated so she did not switch down, as if she would do that she would forget what the point of the journey was. Adrian, Cathy’s husband suggested train instead. This meant that one of us could take her as we could give her our whole attention on the train. It was still a full day for every single visit. With Dad likely to be in hospital for longer we had to decide on longer term care for Mum. In the end we ended putting her for respite care in a home near my sister. My Dad joined her when he first came out of hospital. They were not happy there and got home as soon as they could and function much as they did before although we are trying to get them to keep a slightly higher level of care than they have.

Work wise I am still in the same job as I have been for over twenty years. It has changed many times. I work far more as research support for various groups. At the present these seem largely to be in Human Nutrition, Linguistics, Landscape and Medical Education. You will notice that I manage to cover three faculties in that. One irony is if you had asked twenty five years ago my parents which daughter would do research into human nutrition, they would have replied without hesitation my sister. Quite a lot of the stuff I am presently involved in falls broadly under the heading of food security. This looks both at the stuff around food poverty here but also at long term sustainability. With linguistics I partly support the users of statistics and I also deal with users who are using NVivo software. NVivo support is much like SPSS support was twenty years ago. Maybe in ten years time people will be using quite happily on their own but at present there is a lot of hand holding and people think of me as more skilled than I actually am.

I finally got a holiday in November. This was booked in the summer when I thought I would submit at the end of October. However with needing to redraft it was clear I would not. Also I had booked a cottage close to where my God family were living. Unfortunately their whole household disintegrated in September so none of them are now living near there. Even with this I decided that I needed a holiday and went. It was superb. I spent a lot of time exploring some of the more lonely birding sites in the area that are good in the autumn and then coming home to a real fire. Of course I had to set the fire up in the morning but I found that doing that gave me something to look forward to each evening.

Cathy, Adrian and their children still seem to be doing fine. Adrian is happy enough provided that he has enough work coming in. He does not like being idle. Sam is in his first year of GCSE and had great difficulty in choosing which subjects to stop as all his teacher thought he would do well at their subject. Hannah is doing well, enjoying dancing and is getting into the top years and starting to think of high school. Cathy was absolute brick during Dad’s illness. She took over all the organising of financial matters which left me able to spend time with Mum without having to worry over finding somewhere to look after her.

Writers group is doing well. We have done a couple of readings this year, one as part of the Broomhill Festival. The person who booked us was surprised at how professional a group we were. Not only was a programme developed but we also had everyone on strict time limits and finished on time. Then there was our annual reading for the Off the Shelf which is getting more and more professional. This year I organised a sound system. I could have connected up some metal boxes and it would have worked as well. That is not to say it did not work, it did but at a psychological level as people largely did read close enough for the microphone to pick them up and people were not confident moving the mic so it was close to

Since the holiday  it has been back to the usual routine and getting the thesis sorted. I have at present three chapter in supervisor draft, I hope to get another two before the end of the Christmas break and maybe start on a third. I am spending Christmas with my parents and we will be going up to Cathy’s for Christmas day.

A long with submitting my thesis next year will also be my parents golden wedding if they both survive. Not quite sure how we will celebrate has still to be suggested.

In the lull before the final push to submission

I am getting this written before I put my head down next week for the final submission of my thesis. For the most part I have not been working on it although today I started to read through and I really should have done a full read through before my supervision on Wednesday so I need to get a move on. It has been odd not having it to work on whenever I had the energy but quite a bit of time has been filled with social commitment of one sort or another.

The Monday after my last blog my writers group got together for one of our socials. We have maybe three or four a year at odd spacings. Usually two of them are like this one, just a pub night together outside term time.  We have one after reading as part of Off the Shelf which is again at the Bank Street Arts  on Friday 25th October. I hope that thesis does not take over too much before I get there. The group is now up and functioning for this term. We are full with members who came last term and have not had the usual drop out. One of our members had found an anthology produced by the group before any of the current members joined. It showed us that the WEA used to sponsor books and secondly that a friend I thought had been in the group actually had.

The week after that I went over to join in a family celebration for Cathy and Adrian’s eighteenth wedding anniversary.  It was held at a Chinese Restaurant and we ordered a banquet for most of us but individual dishes for my nephew and niece. This was partly to make sure they ate something but it was also to supply them their favourites. Sam’s was a noodle dish while Hannah wanted the deep fried chicken dumplings. Try finding the second on a menu of a normal Chinese restaurant but Cathy had a brainwave and ordered her sweet and sour chicken with the sauce separate. I think I might try Sam and the local noodle bar when they are next over. My Uncle insisted on paying although I had arranged with Adrian that I and he would pay 50%. We thought this would balance things.

On the following Tuesday  I went back over to spend the day with my Aunt and Uncle and my parents. We went to Styal Mill which is what the picture is of. We got a ploughman’s meal from the restaurant and then went to book tickets for the Apprentice house as I felt that a trip around the mill would be too much for Mum and Dad. Dad still tires easily. He managed to walk down the hill to the mill but after lunch was quite prepared to sit while the rest of us walked around. Mum at one stage was asking where Dad was, I think actually meaning to ask where Uncle Charles was, but not quite getting there even after being told Dad was sitting next to her, when she started asking where Harry was.

This weekend I went to York for a meet with a number of posters on Ship of Fools. One of the long serving host was over from Canada. We went to the Ask restaurant for dinner including this little fellow who is sat by a glass on the table. In York, the Ask restaurant is in the Assembly rooms. This is a huge hall building with really impressive decoration. The sort of place where you get asked whether the marble is real or painted. Quite a few of us also made it to evensong at York Minster before the meal. It was a good evening although the echo-ey nature of the hall (possibly a good thing when they were Assembly room) meant that the conversation across the table was limited.  There was a minute of confusion when we realised that the person booking the table was not there and we did not know what name the table was booked under. Somehow “ship of fools” did not seem likely, none of us could remember the person who booked actual name (as opposed to their shipname). When we looked at the list it was obvious which, but we then turned to ask a couple behind us if they had that name! They answered “Yes” and looked relieved which must have confused the restaurant staff even more. It was saved in the name of the host who had come from Canada, and none of us had met him in real life previously.

Work is very busy at present with more than enough to keep me going. Indeed I may be taking a thesis day on Wednesday to see my supervisor but I will also be doing work for work on Friday which is normally my day off.

I seem to at present have a fascination with the way the Autumn is coming this year. This is a picture I took tonight on my way to Evensong. As far as I could tell all the trees in the right hand side of the picture were the same species and are planted along the road. The trees on the left are actual the end of a separate group that is planted along a path. Yet one of the trees has turned a brilliant orange while the rest seem to be staying green. I did not notice the dark leaves on the left which may be a similar phenomena.

Time I think I wrote another chatterings.

Leaf in the Gardens at Dunham Massey,
shades of autumn

Well Dad survived surgery, and he went to join Mum at Shawside at the very start of August, Basically so that he had time to recover somewhat before they went home. Dad lost track of time somewhat so we had to keep reminding how long he had been in Shawside. After barely a week, he was sure he had been there a fortnight. Anyway just before my sisters birthday and at barely a fortnight they came to their own home. 

We put in someone to come in every day, partly to clean, to be around while Mum bathed twice a week and to also give them some social interaction each day. We also organised for them to order meals from Wiltshire Farm, for them to give an order to Help the Aged for Sainsburys  (you phone it through rather than do it over the internet) and also for an alarm to be installed. Mum and Dad have very assiduously since been finding reasons to get rid of the help. I think, the daily person in might have continued longer, if she had not surprised Mum and Dad one Sunday before they were up. It left Mum feeling very uncomfortable. The installation of the alarm was not done well. They succeeded in almost cutting through the phone line. Ruth, thankfully went around and sorted so the phones were work. Dad eventually got his computer man out to fix the computer. They are now back in full communication.

However,once Mum was is Shawside I did find time to get on with my thesis. So when at the end of July I saw my supervisor he felt I could still submit by the end of October. However to do that I needed to get a decent/proof copy of my thesis to him by 16th September. For me getting from Second Draft to Proof draft was very intense. On one level all the corrections suggested by my proof readers needed to be dealt with. On the other there was still quite a bit of sorting out what was being said and getting it clear in my hear. I needed for instance to draft an abstract. The thesis has a limit of 80,000 words, the abstract is 200. Condensing the central ideas into 200 words was challenging to say the least. I could have done it in 500 with ease. Then there were details to check such as the Bibliography. I spent two whole days just working through nearly every single reference and checking that I had the right information in the Bibliographic database and then making sure I had that information in the Bibliography. Finding out that I could not easily include originally published  information and so had to produce the Bibliography and then manually add all that information was a pain. However not half as much a pain as would have been doing the Bibliography from scratch by hand. It went on for twenty pages when I had finished. That is not all the books I read towards this thesis, just all the books I referenced. Were I to try and include all I read then it would be twice that length. There is a couple of books that I may need to include, but the vast majority of the rest were interesting excursions that helped my exploration, but not necessary to the argument.

Anyway despite printers malfunctioning and post offices being closed I got it posted on Thursday morning by special delivery. It has at least been signed for, and I hope that it gets to my supervisor by tomorrow.There is a slight snag in that I sent it to his official address at Birmingham and not to the building where his research office is. I never know quite how to deal with University post. Sometimes is all seems to go through a central office, at other times individual buildings get deliveries. So I am hoping it has got there. 

When I had got it off in the post I took sparkling wine and snacks into work that afternoon. It seemed the right thing to do. When I formally submit I will be in Birmingham, I will be in Birmingham for my viva and I expect that when I finally send in bound copies I will also be in Birmingham. So this was probably the one time people in work would be around to celebrate. I now see my supervisor on 2nd October and then it is my head down for submission. I just hope that neither he, nor my final proof reader finds major problems with the thesis. I am aware of a lot of niggles that need sorting and suspect that there is some expansion of the conclusion, but I hope that on the whole everything is good enough for a doctorate.

This last weekend I have been over to my parents. I was officially bringing the car back plus it was my Birthday. Yesterday worked well, I arrived just before lunch time having done a shop at Waitrose so as to bring something over for today. The journey over was pretty smooth although the traffic delay at Hollingworth was bad, not the worst I seen it, I can remember delays right through Glossop but still pretty bad. However though busy the M60 was pretty straight forward. We almost turned around and went out so got to Dunham Massey for lunch at the restaurant. They are building a new visitors centre there which looks interesting. I suspect we would still go out to it. Afterwards,we went for a walk around the gardens. Well a bench crawl around the gardens. In fairness to my parents they had been on a walk to the local shops that morning.

Today Mum and Dad were tired. Although Mum cooked a roast chicken for lunch and we ate it, Dad went up to bed shortly afterwards as he was that tired. Mum was also showing signs of tiredness and when I got in this evening and run back Dad and Mum had gone back to bed.

After Sarah's Leaving Do

First of all I went to a conference on “Opening the Gates to Heaven” which was held in Northampton at a Youth Conference centre on a business park. Northampton is an odd place to get to by train. My checking of tickets suggested that it would cost me over £120 to pay for a six hour journey. They insisted on either sending me by a whole host of local services or going into Birmingham and out. I do realise now that it might have been possible to book advance fare to London and then get another train out. However given that it is 3 hour drive at my speed (I know other people could have done it in just over two) and that car hire was around £40 there really was no competition even with petrol on top (another £30) the hire was quicker and cheaper. There should be a map of Britain where the towns are spaced according to the rail fares charged between them. It would be very interesting to see. The actual conference was a fairly URC affair. It was organised by an interested group based at one church in London with some support from the Faith and Order group. It was open to all, although I think I was the only person who was not either formally trained or in training to be a leader of worship (thus a mix of ministers and authorised lay preachers).

The conference had two main speaker and about five people giving short talks. Actually Yorkshire was one of the better represented Synods but we did seem to be mainly lay preachers. Really as most of our lay preachers are elders we should change the name.  The problem I have is that worship leaders seem to be worrying about what they are saying, and not by what people are hearing. The fact is that what worship leaders “say” and what people “hear” are not identical because while a worship leader may be clear in their own minds of their intentions, the hearer starts out with a different set of experiences which means they may understand what you are saying in a different way. There is a cartoon I recall of a short cleric who had gone into the a high pulpit with a sermon on a long piece of paper. All the congregation could see therefore was the top of his head and the scroll of his notes flopping down the outside of the pulpit. His opening words were “Today I would like to talk to you about communication...”. If you add to that the Reformed bias that says “Get your theology right and your worship will follow”, then I am not sure you will go anywhere. The trouble is my thesis is persuading me there is quite a bit of truth in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi"or that as we pray, so we believe and so live (which is a rough translation). However if that is the case then you need to find how people experience prayer.

Thesis is on the whole going well although maybe not as quick as I would like. I have two chapters in second draft and therefore they have gone to my proof readers. I have another chapter which I hope is in second draft after my supervisor asked me to revise it and another that I have just started redrafting but I think I know where I am going with it. The big problem is getting the time slots required to do redrafting. I need at least a day to get any work done and better still if I can get most of two or three consecutive days to work on it. Whereas when I was doing first draft I could spend short spell because I was writing small pieces. Second draft is far more about rearranging the pieces so as to create something that is more structured and makes an interesting argument rather than pure description. I write detailed description first and while I am doing so the theory is forming in my mind, so I then need to go back and do some pretty major restructuring. Once accepted into second draft however there is little point in major restructuring. I have to do some on one of the chapters but the other I would prefer to leave alone.

At work I seem to have taken on quite a bit of teaching. I have done two sessions on NVivo for Linguists. These are mainly masters and I suspect doctoral students who are doing their research training year.  I am having problems in keeping up with the training needs of the University on this topic. Then I am also teaching with MASH  a course for Linguistics (yes same department but a different area) on using statistics. The basic idea is to give them enough skills to not feel daunted by the statistics in papers. Linguistics as a subject is rather peopled by individuals who were glad to get rid of maths at GCSE. The fact that they find themselves now in a subject that is increasingly using statistics and complex statistics at that is frightening for them. The big thing from my perspective is that I am having to learn R as that is what most linguists use. This is not the easiest of statistical packages to use. However unlike medics the Linguists seem to think that using a package that is capable is more essential than having one that is easy.

The weekend before last I went over to see my parents. This was simply an over one evening and back the next but if I did not do that I realised I would not be getting until I submitted my thesis. Therefore it was a matter of taking the time out. Hopefully my parents will be over next month. We went for a walk in Lyme Park, hoping to see hares but the weather was so bitterly cold that after all of a hundred yards we returned to the car and went in search of a cafe for a warm drink. Dad is beginning to work through the stuff that needs doing as if anything happened to him, then Mum would struggle by herself. Together however they work very much as a team, with Dad remembering what needs doing and quite often Mum doing it. However Dad has never been the most proactive at contacting people and sometimes being almost as slow as reluctant as his father who would rather do things for himself than ask help off anyone. Needless to say my father and grandfather would do their best to help anyone who came to them if they could.

Last weekend it was the annual church meeting. In that I am due to finish my thesis in less than six months, I felt that it was probably the right time for me to stand again as an active elder. I have also agreed to be table elder 1 and that is difficult if you are not an active elder. As you do an apprenticeship as table elder 2 for the year before being table elder 1, this was agreed over a year ago. However I did have to specify that I needed re-election. I was last elected I think in 2000 (it may have been 1999). It must have been a late Easter that year as I was ordained on Easter day. David Hill asked afterwards if I had ever been non-serving. He had presumed that I needed to resign, but as I had served for over six years (on a five year term of office) I did not really see how I could resign. Sarah asked me whether I would leave for the vote and I said “Yes, I’d prefer to” which must of surprised her but being out of the room while the whole thing was going on seemed much preferable to being in even though I was pretty confident that there would not be any problems. Needless to say I was voted on.

Writers group is going well at present, indeed we have twelve members and next term we are probably going to be playing hot chairs to get a seat as there are at least thirteen people who want to come. Actually I suspect we could run with fourteen and with people who are willing to miss a turn or who do not turn up we would manage just fine. From my poetry perspective, I need to find a way to tell which of my poems are good and which are not up to scratch. I can tell when a poem is unfinished but the qualities that differentiate a good from an adequate poem feel totally beyond me. I am realising however that I am developing a second style of poem, my usual poem tries to capture one moment, one incident succinctly. There is thus a sparseness about them. I have written some which are just four lines long. The fresh style is a narrative, that is there is more story to it and the feeling as if something happens or we move somewhere. They are thus longer pieces. I suspect it was the development of these that made one of the group comment on the lyricism of my recent work in the autumn. The other thing is my poems have been darker and bleaker this term. It is as if  that with Margaret (another member who is very good a writing Gothic pieces) being off, I have felt the space to explore some of the darker atmosphere.

Slowly slowly the wheels are turning to having me back on the Chaplaincy at the University as a religious advisor. The biggest problem I am having as always with this role is getting synod to think actually what it is doing. Synod has now appointed me and written to me to say so and to the chaplaincy. That is good but as far as I can tell they have appointed me to act as contact person without working out how I am to keep them in the loop or they me in the loop. I might be happier with the situation if district had not been so ready to treat me as irrelevant last time.

Finally I come to today. I have not talked about the weather but we have had our share of cold and snow. In particular we had snow on Friday and Saturday here. On Friday it fell in the morning but had largely melted by the evening but at night it started snowing again. That snow continued for the better part of the day and though cleared in late afternoon it was well below freezing so not melting. The result was even down here we had two to four inches of snow. Jean and James were reporting 6 feet in their back garden. The result was that yesterday they were making the decision on whether to continue with today’s service and celebration. Actually I think the service would have happened regardless but maybe not the celebration. The numbers that turned up were good. I think in the region of a hundred, especially if you include the clerics who turned up after the service. To my knowledge there were three or maybe four and yes they were all clerics. The result was that the hall was packed for the meal. People seemed to be making a real effort to come including at least one couple from Chesterfield. James ended up doing a lot of running around due to the snow. Jean was at one time worried because he had dropped her then gone out to collect Derek and Sarah. It became apparent only when he got back that he had also realised that John might need a lift and David did not feel that he could cross the carpark to his flat. The snow may have been a bit of a blessing as the hall was full, as was the garden room and we were close on filling the committee room. Any more and we really should have been taking the meal through to the church. Sarah used her ability in writing to give more of the story of  Sarai a women around the time of Jesus who connects with him at various times in his life.On the whole it worked as well as any Palm/Passion service does. A bit of a pity the time in the church while the meal was prepared was taken up with an organ recital. Douglas was good but I suspect quite a few people would have appreciated the extra time to talk to Sarah and with other people.

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.

During a very busy time with the thesis

This will have to be short as my parents will phone in a bit and I also need to get the flat into some sort of order so that my cleaner can come tomorrow and sort things. I am afraid things are busy, busy and although I am hoping I can take two unallocated days holiday before the end of August I am not holding my breath.

The four major things are the coming over of Cathy with Hannah and Sam to Sheffield, going to supervision the following wednesday, my parents visiting on the Saturday and finally going geocaching at Shaw with Cathy and Hannah and Sam.

Cathy, Hannah and Sam seem to be pretty good at bringing good weather with them when they come over to Sheffield, as the day was gloriously warm. I remember for my mum’s eightieth birthday we considered sitting out to drink coffee, not bad when you realise my mum’s birthday is in February. Anyway they came earlier than usual and we took them up to Waterstones on the pretence that Cathy and I wanted a coffee and a natter. They are innocent enough to think we would really walk right across town to get a coffee just because we liked the coffee shop.  The fact was that I was giving them book tokens for them to spend while we nattered. It worked and it was amazing how much having spending money and Aunts and mums who were not going to give huge amounts extra concentrated their minds. Then we went to Ponds Forge but it was the National Swimming Championships and they were not allowing people into the leisure pool until 12:30. Anyway Sam wanted a tennis racket from Decathlon and Hannah needed a new swimsuit so we went along there, which was quite a walk, bought the things and got ourselves a drink for a local Sainsbury’s supermarket. Then came back and joined the queue for the leisure pool. Sam was clearly the best swimmer there and I could see some people staring at the way he confidently dived into a wave. Then we went and found a chinese buffet, not the usual one as that has shut but one up by Victoria Hall which did a good line in prawn crackers. Then back to the station where the kids played table tennis before catching the train home

The following week I had a supervision at Birmingham, the day was damp for once.There is more on my thesis blog , but the day was unusually damp. My supervisor suggested restructuring my thesis, as I was struggling with the theory for the chapter on worship and then the argument was going to have to be written in. That means major rewrites on all three data chapters to date. Instead he suggested that I wrote the theory into three separate chapters. Oddly enough the act of doing this which I though was initially going to change the basis of my thesis has re-adjusted it and has made it come more clear. I know what I am arguing in each of the three chapters. I am still slightly concerned about my final one, where I have to step back and take an even bigger view than I have done in my other two theory chapters but which will pull the whole thing into a cohesive whole. There are also bits of the chapters which have been written that I need to pull out and put into the new chapters. My supervisor said it meant I was only halfway through but it felt as if I was only half way through despite my count on my blog saying I was three quarters. I have also put the third chapter into a draft form which means that once it has been proof read these three chapters can go out to the congregations for reading.

Then at the weekend my parents came over, we are making a habit of going out to Old Moor nature reserve when they come as it seems to provide a good entertainments. This time they had a DVD of birds showing on a large screen in the cafe and it succeeded in distracting both me and Dad while we ate our lunch and later had a cup of tea. There were no unusual sightings this time but trundling between hides and then sitting in them seems to suit my parents as a way to spend the afternoon. The fact that there are nice cakes back at the Gannet Cafe for when they are feeling peckish is no bad thing. Dad as usual had been pessimistic about the weather but I said we could at least get lunch at the cafe, in the end he was too warmly dressed for the weather and there was no sign of rain.

Then last Tuesday I hired a car and went over to Cathy’s for the afternoon. The aim was to see if we could get geocaching to work. We tried for a couple of spots very local to them, one in a park that is being refurbished and the other just the other side of the road from it. The answer is that my sister is very good at finding the caches provided she is looking in the right place for the right thing. However my older satnav is not that good for finding them being only accurate to about 50 m, my phone one is a lot more accurate and in both instances the description is that accurate that when it was right we knew the place to within half a meter.  There are some problems in woodland areas but if the detail is accurate enough we can find them eventually. The only problem with my phones satnav was it decided to take me interesting routes through the back streets of Manchester both going and coming back. I should have obeyed my instinct and gone on the M60 when I crossed it going rather than being diverted.

Other than that I have been busy with work and not had the normal space in the day to fit in extra students so I have been diverting them to MASH (Maths and Statistics Help). However that is looking like a cooperation that might well work out so as to make that side of my work more like a team than an individual with me specialising in long term support of researchers and they with taught students and with doctoral students splitting it between us. We will also be working to create resources others can use without seeing us personally and to move towards providing just in time workshops on using statistical research. The other thing is that I am getting more managerial roles, not managing people but the sort of thing that keeps things moving such as making sure people are informed and that environment feels good.

At the end of Low Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After a busy Easter

No writers group this week, I am going to have to write a paper for them on epublishing, I am not sure that they are aware of the options and how to go about them. The problem is that I suspect many of them think that web-publishing, epublishing and publishing on demand are one and the same thing. What I think they actually want is website that show cases their writing and allows the group to interact. It could either be joint blog or a fairly simple content management system which allows interaction. The thing is that setting up such a website is beyond me at present with a thesis to write. Anyway part of the problem of running a website is that it needs to be publicised so others would need to be willing to do this.

The week was busy in work. with working on a paper and also preparing on-line course material well editing it at least. Plus I took Thursday off as I was aware that Holy week services, and other Easter commitments were going to dig deep into my time.

Wednesday I awoke to find it snowing. It was just settling so before I went into work I nabbed some pictures of cherry blossom and snow. Unfortunately only one of the really came out, I will attach it to the blog posting of this when I get home. The weather cleared by lunch time although still miserable and wet. Given the warmth of last week it was a real change around.

Thursday evening St Andrews had a short Maundy Thursday Service, this takes place before the choir rehearsal. This year it was a drama from Iona Community “Eh .. Jesus?” “Yes Peter” set in the last supper and based around the last supper. At the end I realised that the next people in were the Broomhall Breakfast and started moving the chairs and tables; as it became clear that there was a purpose to what I was doing, first Sarah and then others joined in. That resulted in the room being set up by ten minutes the tables were in the right place. If the disciples were as efficient maybe they did the washing up before going to the mount of Olves. It looks as if James and Jean did the setting up, I was on standby for helping.

Friday was the Breakfast, I had been booked by Sarah weeks ago. Although like many ministers she seems to think that there is more time between events than there actually is. St Andrew’s tends to turn up early and this week the Breakfast decided they wanted to sit and talk. Last week at Breakfast Phil (who I call silver due to the amount of jewelery he often wears and to distinguish him from Phil with the ponytail) had been in hospital for several weeks, we need to think about ways of getting news through because we would like to take some sort of care for those who come and who is ill.

We then set up for the Friday meditation service that Sarah. Sarah also wanted to look for a diary date during the time but we had only vaguely got the projection stuff up, when people started arriving. For a first Sarah even had the hymn words on the projector, but most of it was pictures and words to think about. The whole service was about broken covenants. I struggle with the theme as the covenants are normally on God’s initiative and it seems always as if he dictates terms. Is this really what we mean by covenant. It was hard hitting as we faced human failure. Anyway I setup the projector and the sound system and as I did so realised that what we really needed was to be able to get the projector away from the computer so that the computer could be placed where Sarah felt happy with it. Rather than try anything fancy it occurred to me a single long cable would do as well. I might need to configure the electrical extension leads differently as well but it was all doable fairly easily. Anyway I have ordered the cable and we shall see.

Friday evening I went around to a friend/colleague called Margo for a meal. We have a close research relationship which has developed over the last eighteen or nineteen years since I came to Sheffield. Times have not always been easy, nothing to do with our relationship just various life events but the last year or so she and I have worked very closely indeed. At Christmas time she held a very enjoyable party to which I was invited and on Friday I was invited around for a meal. She is also has a student project looking at how people at breakfast manage their eating and she went to check out what URC stood for. Well her background is Presbyterian Church of Ireland although she has not been to church for decades. So an interesting conversation ensued around St Andrews.

Saturday I ended up with the end of a mild migraine. So I shopped and then realising that I was not getting better went back to bed for a couple of hours but that cleared it, completely and utterly. This was just as well because as well as two case studies for my thesis to finish typing up I was also meeting James down at St Andrew’s to set up communion. I have agreed to be second table elder this year with a view to being first next year. I also understood I was have a varied first table elder as James’ had not had a deputy this last year but people had taken turns. I should have been suspicious when James started being very thorough about making sure I knew how things were done. However with three to four elders checking on me the first Sunday I was on pulpit duty I just thought it was a resurgence of that gene. Anyway we got it basically setup, with Jean checking up on us at times.

Anyway it was communion today, things went well on the whole although perhaps going straight from congregational member to table elder (rather than a serving elder) was a bit of a leap. There have been changes while I was away and the service is a lot less fussy than it used to be, but still not the simplest of URC services. I reverted to the old form and put a tray of glasses close by the minister. It also made sense when James gave me the communion case. It was not until Sheila, and said she was table elder two to my table one, I queried this as I want a slightly longer apprenticeship and she agreed that she would at least do the chasing of elders for serving communion (we need six, four main ones, one for the choir and one for special diets although we do not at present do gluten free so it is only the non-alcoholic wine).

It was therefore about 1:00 p.m. when I got home, then it was pack and get out to come to my parents. Dad has forgotten that I have travelled across most Easters and decided that I was going to struggle to get a train. I had to keep reassuring him. When I said I had seen the rising sun he said “from the train?”. I am not sure where else I was likely to say that from! Maybe next year I had better hire a car so as to stop him worrying.

Chattering on a train ot Edinburgh

It is about a fortnight since I last wrote. I will try a thematic rather than a day by day diary. Work has been busy, too busy at times as I can see items slipping off my to-do list by me not getting time to do them. I am at one trying to get a course I give onto video, don’t worry I won’t be appearing, only my voice and what is on the computer screen! The problem was when I agreed to it I thought it would simply be recording the course I had giving, nice easy and simple. However the software is on my computer in my office. That means I need to record it separately. If I am doing that it makes sense to record it in five minute to ten minute segments and not as the whole hour. If I am doing that it also makes sense to upgrade it to the most recent form of the software. In other work what would have been a three hours of work is not going to take more like thirty hours and I need to find the time. This is not helped by the fact that I am very busy with lots of things going on that are taking me out of the office.

The first of these was I had a trip down to Birmingham for a supervision session. It was one of those rare occasions where there really was nothing to talk about, the stuff I was writing for my thesis was long winded but otherwise largely fine. One section of about a thousand words was really in the wrong section and another bit needed cutting but otherwise not much. I have it down in too much detail at present and will need to shorten it at some stage. This is not surprising, I am aware of writing in detail in order to delay when I have to write something more difficult. Nor had Google scholar been finding anything particularly interesting to read. Sometimes it turns up that is very useful; other times it turns up things with no connection at all. I like to do it at Birmingham as it saves me having to do complex log ins. However as I discovered yesterday my machine at homes seems to know when Birmingham has a registration and when Sheffield has and will ask me for the relevant login! I was impressed especially as I got hold of the original of a paper I have quite a tendency to quote.

Writing is going smoothly with still around two thousand words a week. I have written about using writing as an analytic technique, more accurately creative writing. The whole process of re-creating a person or an event forces you to think of details that you just pass over when experiencing. For instance at St Andrews the kitchen was down the hall, therefore if they have coffee after church they had to somehow get hot water into the church. When I had coffee after church it just happened, but when I sit down to describe it I am faced with “how did they do that?” question. Now that fact has no real relevance to my thesis, but when I a person acts in a certain way perhaps makes a speech I need to work out why, not just accept it as happened and that is often very theoretically insightful. For instance why was it Bill who found the way through and not Ethel, why does the Pentecostalism of A grate at Herringthorpe but that of his close friend B just sits happily and so on. These are questions novelists are used to asking themselves, what seems odd is the no ethnographer has spotted this connection between portrayal and analysis. As an ethnographer my first resource is my notes and interviews and not my imagination but I am still faced with the conumdrum. I also have started the first serious theoretical piece in that I have started writing where my research is with respect to the methodological research tradition. It is pretty much mainstream ethnography but at the more postmodern/playful end. That means a variety of things, firstly I can and do write in the first person when it is me who does something, I also need to give an account of my research position and to reflect on the way characteristics of my identity have interplayed with my research. Perhaps more controversial is my use of auto-ethnography to try and establish a space other than the congregations themselves from which I can talk of the Reformed tradition or more accurately what it means to be a Reformed Christian within the URC at the start of the twenty first century. The account because it is me, this is a piece of academic research and because what I am is partly because of what others have been, will involve interacting with the literature of the tradition but it is not simply another formulation it is an attempt to try and tease out how I personally experience the tradition.

Yes I was on strike on Wednesday 30th November, the UCU was out and as I belong to the UCU I was out. This had an interesting effect of my work and I suspect of many academic staff, in that what actually happened was the work got scrunched up into the remaining working days in the week. This actually meant very little time to do the background work. This was not helped at all by the fact that I discovered that I had manage to do an analysis on a partial data set on Friday rather than the full one and that when I did the full one something I thought did not happen appeared to happen. I need to find what is wrong with the graph, I suspect it is the form it is in, in which case it is easy to rectify, but it won’t be rectified until Thursday as I am at a conference at the start of this week. I am also acting as a “translator” between computer science and human nutrition on quite a big research proposal. It was interesting, at times the computer scientists were assuming I was a nutritionist, when in actual fact I had just been working on with the nutrition researcher for nineteen years. I probably if pushed could also do a good impression of a researcher into kidney disease.

Last weekend and the reason I did not post was that I was at my parents. They had been down to my great aunts funeral and my Mum was quite taken with this part of my father’s family who she really does not know. To be fair Dad only knows those of his generation, the paths divided I suspect about the time he went out to South Africa and they did not reconnect when he returned. This Great Aunt who died was in her nineties but was also an aunt by marriage and I think married to a brother who was younger than my Gran. There is not much prospect of us connecting as they seem to be spread throughout Southern England and we are solidly Northern in residence. There is now I think no known relatives of Dad’s in Birmingham. Other than this they seem to be getting on. We had a massive hunt for a pattern for the jumper Mum is knitting for Dad, only for Dad to eventually find it in his study. So I have now tied the pattern to my Mum’s knitting bag. The only difficulty was that the trains there and back were standing room only! I was shattered by the time I got in despite the fact that I got a fairly good standing space.

Today has been a bit of a learning experience. I picked up my purse when I went to the station but forgot to check my debit card was in it. It normally is but yesterday I ordered a book for my thesis and forgot to put it back! So I ended up at the station with plenty of time but unable to get my ticket. Only option really was to buy another and I went to the desk in trepidation expecting it to be very expensive. It cost only about twenty pounds more than my original (I just hope I can cancel the tickets and get some sort of refund as it is still not the sort of money I like to toss about. I fortunately (due to previous experience) was carrying an alternative credit card. I really must see if I can find a solution to this. I really am not sure that apart from going to London there is much point in getting saver tickets. London prices are just ridiculous if you do not buy in advance, but when not doing so, the difference is much smaller.

They call this quiet!

Right I think this will have to be a highlights writing again as life has been busy and I don’t think you want to read a book about what has been going on. Early part of the week before last was a mix between busy and down with a migraine catching me out on the Tuesday and have SRDS which is the annual personal performance review on the Wednesday.

Then on the Thursday it was off to Birmingham for a supervision. It was useful in a number of ways. Firstly even though I have not finished my placement I am now writing for my thesis. The writing before has been exploratory on the whole and I have tended to have based it around essay/article approach. This gives a very intense and immediate focus to what I write, however when I write for my thesis, the pieces are less focused. I am often putting a marker to say here is something that either needs to go elsewhere or will be written about elsewhere. I suspect if I get to writing a Reformed piety it will be rather different to other people’s yet people will recognise it as delineating the area. The reason being is that most people seem to describe as elements that must be there for it to be Reformed, I tend rather to see it as a sets of tensions and forces that have to be negotiated. The form is rarely totally dominated by a single group of thought and different strands include different elements. What makes them Reformed is that the negotiation takes place.

Friday was the breakfast and there were forty six meals served. I was whacked by the end of it but also was officially in work. At one stage Sarah and I had to set up another table so people coming in had somewhere to sit. It seems as if it is more popular in the summer when it is pleasant to get up and go outside but we are not sure. There also has been some grumbling about the Archer project.

Saturday Mum and Dad came over. Shopping list was as follows:

Decaf coffee, fruit, veg, soya dream all from Waitrose

Shoes, black flat with a high buckle strap for Mum

Mobile phone for Dad as his old one was switching on but not maintaining a connection. As you'd guess we spent quite a while going around the shops. Fortunately everything we wanted seemed to come fairly readily to had. O2 does a really cheap phone that has fairly clear buttons which Dad was happy with, Jones had a sale on where a pair of Ecco shoes in just the design mum wanted in her size were available. This was good as the combination is not usually very common in summer. We then made the mistake of going to Marks and Spencers for a drink. I forgot that the cafe is now on the second floor. This is not a good combination with my parents as there is no down escalator from the second to the first floor so with Dad finding going down steps more difficult these days I have to persuade him to use the lift.

Sunday was a very busy thesis day. Not only was their worship on the morning followed by church meeting but there was also Baptisms at 6pm followed by socialising. The people getting baptised were all church youth, who had been brought up in the faith. As part of the service they had the poem GodGazer which the two girls had found very meaningful. I found it difficult to connect with and I am wondering why. It is a polemical poem, my work is mainly descriptive and I felt at times that the polemic was allowed to break the poetic voice too readily or used as a “get out of jail free” card when he really should have worked harder at what his was doing. I don’t object to breaking the voice particularly the rhythm but you need to be doing it for a purpose and less is more. That said, I would also say two of the readers were under rehearsed and that that made it harder to appreciate. A performance by the author is also on the web Oddly enough though not directly inspired by this I think the next poem I take to writers group will be more polemical. There is stuff boiling around as well. Anyway the church was packed, about 50% from Herringthorpe and 50% friends and relatives, some coming quite a distance. The moderator Kevin Watson preached and there was a band, partly from musicians in the church and partly from friends who had come in. There were traditional hymns at the start and the finish but officially set to new tunes. Amazing grace at the start was at least in part, one of the verses was used as a chorus and was definitely sung to a new tune however I am not sure of the rest of the verses. The other one was Lord of all Hopefulness, which as far as I can tell was same tune but different accompaniment! However at long last I have seen evidence that my suspicion that there is new music I don’t know is correct. All the songs chosen by the young people to be sung after their baptism were new to me. At about 8:00 pm when the church was emptying I went home, the congregation went around to one of the parents/grandparents home and carried on partying until the wee hours of the morning. Facebook can be quite useful for fieldwork sometimes.

Officially this has been a quiet week. It certainly does not feel like it. During it I have been tackling a dataset for a student doing her masters in Human Nutrition. The problem was the sheer quantity of data and getting it into a form where she could hope to write a paper from it. The problem is that the data is electronically recorded and therefore it is easy to collect but the tendency is too collect too much.

I have also come across something odd. I sometimes been finding that I wanted a chocolate at the end of lunch and it was chocolate and not generally something sweet. I decided to try and see if coffee would do instead. I made filter coffee and see if that did. It did. So I presumed caffeine fix, until I read the packet and found I was using decaffeinated! So that rules that one out.

I am taking this weekend quiet. Friday was my study day and I started putting together the introductory paper for the study day next week as well as serve breakfasts (forty four this week). Yesterday I did some shopping. I bought a long armed stapler as I need it for putting the booklets together. I did a Wordle of my thesis but not exactly. I also bought a cardigan and a pair of pyjamas. All my current summer ones are comfy but old variety and I spending the night in Woodbrooke Hall before the study day. Today I have been in, largely due to the Race for Life being on in Sheffield city centre. What I have learnt is that going to my placement church on such days is a nightmare of logistics, it might well be quicker by train and bus.

Recovering from the bigness of last weekend

Let’s see about this week. Well it has been quieter or at least I have been quieter during it. Then that was not difficult after the presentation last weekend

Monday I was going to go into work as I had a meeting with my boss, even though I had an essay to write and knew I also should be calming down after my presentation. However when I checked my work email before going in I found she had postponed the meeting. Therefore I decided to take the day off and get on with the essay. The essay was easy enough to write, well what I was writing of it. It is often only when you start writing about a topic that you realise the background that you need. In this particular case, it was hymns. I decided on a very broad brush strokes approach to classification and am now wondering on going back and reclassifying the revival based hymns. I will need to spend some time on the history of hymns, main problem is that there is a clear content difference between the top hymns as Herringthorpe and the top ones at St Andrews, this may be largely a construct of the fact Herringthorpe uses far more from the Charismatic’s stable while St Andrews uses far more Modern ones. I am at present struggling to classify it but I suspect broadly speaking Charismatic ones tend to focus on the work of God while modern ones tend to focus more on our response to the work of God. Anyway I got it finished and to writers group that evening which was good.

However having had an unexpectedly good day on Monday, Tuesday hit me for a six. I think I had a migraine, I also lost my voice. I lose my voice less often these days than I did a decade ago so it was a surprise to find I suddenly had no voice. Having had this originally as my day off I had no appointments so did not feel too bad over ringing in sick. It also meant that I did not make Bible Study on Tuesday evening. There may be no need to speak at Bible study but there is an need to respond to people when you socialise around it and I have yet to find a way of being in public space and not talking too much for my voice when it fragile.

Wednesday I had a frail voice back so went into work. However I had a meeting I had missed the previous time it was on and then prayer meeting so I went. The first meeting suggested that it would be a good idea if the department knew how many papers we had published. It does the department some good as it shows we are supporting researchers. However whether I should have done is a mute question as my voice was still very frail and had disappeared completely by the end of prayer meeting. However knowing that I had no voice on Wednesday afternoon I put things together so that I could do my SRDS preparation the next day at home. This included going through various work records and also getting hold of departmental plans. They always say they are assessing against departmental aims but then I usually find that they are assessing me against institutional aims.

Thursday I worked at home, first doing the SRDS and then submitting my papers for my supervision. This was a quiet day in and was exactly what my voice required although I went to the doctor’s for a routine visit and then onto work to lend Rosie my album from the time I spent as a volunteer on Iona because she is going up there at the end of this week.

Friday I had my voice back, which is good but with not having it earlier in the week I had deliberately been making appointments for this week rather than for Friday. I also had an email I needed to respond to and also an analysis I needed to do. I however also went and checked for papers I was either author on or acknowledged. I found that I was author on 17 papers and acknowledged on another 25. The biggest number that is missing is the number of theses I am acknowledged on and I suspect that would quite possibly take me close to a hundred or so. The problem is that the theses are rarely online so the only way to find out is to go to the library and check all the theses. On the evening I went out the Herringthorpe’s Ladies’ night. I thought this was going to be an art evening in the practical sense, but no it was a demonstration by a lady who has been an art teacher for ages although she herself is self taught. She chose to do an autumn scene in pastel, it was interesting watching her work but pastel is not my thing although I have had some fun with it.

At the weekend I was over with my parents. They are chunttering along as usual. Ruth came over on Saturday and helped tidy the garden. It now needs some fresh flowering plants in it to bring colour in amongst the green. However I am not sure what is the best way of getting such plants into the garden. It is not enough just to buy them as mum could really do with someone coming along to plant them as well. At present I think immediate colour is probably more important than longevity. Today I did the routine checks on Dad’s computer that I try to do every time I am over. He has Anti-virus and I try and also do a couple of scans for malware and spyware plus checking to see if his version of Windows is up to date. The later is not usually necessary, but Dad tends to only have the computer on for the short times he is actually using it and I suspect that sometimes when this is the case the computer does not always up date when it should. I had planned to do this while they were at church but they decided with the showery weather that they would go this evening in the car instead of walking this morning. So after a while Dad came down to join me basically to see how I was getting on. Anyway he stayed for a while until when the last download was taking slightly longer I suggested we went up for coffee rather than wait. Mum had decided as she had nothing better to do that she would cook dinner which was therefore would have been ready about 11:30. Anyway we persuaded her to come through and have coffee with us although she was cross with us for leaving her alone for so long (about an hour for me, less for Dad).

Busy time, with many different paces

Right the week after I wrote was quite exhausting, not only was I only semi-fit, no cold symptoms but I tired easily, but there was a Data Curation Roadshow I was attending for two days with work. Having two full days when I was dealing with people (largely strangers) continually for four to five hours was exhausting. The topic was interesting and I am fully aware of the gap between what does happen and what ideally should happen. At the moment if you are fortunate then if you want the data behind a paper, the researcher has it on a disk which they can unearth. If you are unlucky then they have long ago chucked out the scrap of paper which the original data was on after all they had gained the publication. This is true except for a few high profile disciplines and some very large studies where the data is fully documented and stored on secure maintained fileservers.  What we need to do is move to a method of automatic archiving of data with regular reviews but that will cost a huge amount and nobody has yet found a funding model by which it raises money. Also once the research is complete a researcher often looses interest in the data set, also many researchers don’t feel they have data, they just have video recording and pictures and such.

In the middle of attending this course I also had an interview for my PhD. It was with a couple about my age and their son aged about my nephews age. This is the second time a child of that age has been interviewed but both times parents were present. Often when I am dealing with people who are younger members they are less what my supervisor calls insiders than older members, now this couple were as much insiders as me. The boy Luke lasted all of twenty minutes and then went back to playing with his Xbox. At the end of the time they asked whether I had anything to input about the mission of the church. This was because they had an elders retreat day this weekend that was looking at the mission of the congregation particularly with respect to the children’s work. The problem is not shortage of children, they have around 100 children on the books at present, but shortage of leaders. Well I stalled, not because I had nothing but I have a huge amount and it is still at a fairly unprocessed state. Anyway of the following two nights I wrote up both the interview and but a short paper together and emailed it to both them and the minister. It was pretty much thrown together, however it had the core of what I wanted to say to the church. I suspected that the minister would want to get back, but although I made it clear I was ready to talk, she didn’t.  We will see how it develops.

Over the weekend I was writing, it was interesting to do, the time I had and the word space meant that I could not do justice to my sources. The piece therefore I feel is sketchy, I have more to do and this is only my first real attempt to write something about Reformed tradition as central to my PhD rather than as something that runs alongside it. It is surprisingly different how I can think when addressing this issue. It is as if the sociologist becomes dominant rather than the person who does organisational studies, I suspect that actually by looking at it, I distance myself from some of the Reformed character in me, who actually feels rather at home in organisational studies, this is the stuff we handle rather well. Sometimes I suspect we are too good at organisation and could do with a bit more chaos. I also conducted a second interview on the Sunday this time with someone who was very new to church (yes all church) having only been attending Herringthorpe for three years and before that churches were places for hatching, matching and dispatching but she had married into a Christian family and when her husband had wanted to return to church she had ended up going with him to Herringthorpe. I am however rather relieved to find Philip Benedict has written “Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social history of Calvinism”  which covers upto about 1700, it means a different perspective at least on the early stuff and the last section is titled “New Calvinist Men and Women” and I suspect it will be useful.

This week was quieter in work which in someways was good. I managed to get the papers off to my supervisor although I am now seeing him on Wednesday next week instead of Thursday. I suspect that he did not realise Thursday was St Patricks day as his excuse is that he had to be in Liverpool on it. That would fit with his current research topic, he did Chinese New Year in London last year, I did a quick google for a related paper but can’t find any. It may be a totally different situation. I also found the week slightly confusing as I took Tuesday as my day off to finish my essay as I had so much on, on Monday.

On Friday evening I went to James and Jean Dickson for the evening. They seem to be keeping up pretty well given that James is 80. I had spotted that the building that has my office in has a map of the area before St Andrews was built with lots and lots of wells marked, as these wells do not seem to be attached to particular property I suspect they mark the site of springs coming to the surface. I mentioned this to James and he wants to take a photograph of this map. We shall see if this is possible on Tuesday.

This weekend I have been over to my parents, on Saturday we had lunch with Ruth she seemed to be in good form. She cooked a meal that suited us all very well  including fruit salad. Although some restraint was practised over the delicious first course none was practised with the fruit salad. The only snag was my parents had decided that as I was over it was chance to eat lots of nice food, so they had salmon for supper as well. I spent quite a bit of time making sure Dad’s computer was virus free, except I suspect it was never infected but his mechanices account had been compromised and someone was spoofing emails using my fathers email  address which they had got from his account. Today I ended up entertaining my parents by reading postings Crappy Choruses and Horrible Hymns thread on Ship of Fools which had them giggling. Some of the pieces really demonstrate what can go wrong while composing pleasant dittys to the Lord. I went back