From a Bright-Cold Winters Afternoon

The Monday before last I took a piece of poetry I had written to writers group as I usually do only this time the piece was written from a voice that was not my own. In this case Jack Frost, it was rather fun to do, but I do think that the cold was getting to me! Since that worked fairly well I have since written a piece that is pure fantasy, well it is a way of talking about feelings that I need to work through but being put in a total fantasy situation. I will see on Monday how well that works.

Work wise I have been busy. The work keeps coming in and every time I think it is going to ease I find something more. At present I have four long term bits of work on. An analysis that is ready to role but I am finding it very difficult to explain what the results are and this is once I have transformed into variables that are easier to interpret. Every time I think I have it sorted there is something new. I have a course which I am trying to get into videos so people can study it at their own pace and now have a new analysis which is looking at folate. Then there is the research bids. By the way for sharing documents I am finding Dropbox really good. Once it is installed on a computer it just looks like an extra folder in which you can store things but it shares those things with everyone else who has access to them. On top of this I am dealing with queries that come in and there is hidden reorganisation going on as well. I wonder how I get my department to realise that ninety percent of research computing is not done on big machines. Fifty percent of it is done I suspect using Word, bibliographic searches and such.

On Monday this week I spent sometime with someone from the the Research and Innovations Services and they were saying what I have always known, that researchers want a continuity of care when they deal with CICS, computing queries for them are not one offs but part of the ongoing research process and to have to deal with someone new each time is bewildering. On the other hand the machine room guys don’t want to be hassled with answering the phone. The thing is CICS actually do have more staff than me doing this but none of us publicise our work as their are far to few of us. The fact is that I am run off my feet doing what I do, I suspect if we had a team of a dozen of us doing it we would all be equally busy and we would find the same with some other specialised groups.

The photo is one of two I managed to take with my camera with a macro filter, I am still learning to use it particularly as it seems I need to use manual focus. I might see if I can buy a pot of snowdrops next weekend and have a go taking photos indoors where I can spend lots of time fiddling with the controls without my fingers going numb. I also got a new coffee maker called an Aeropress. This was to replace my large cafeteria that fell out of a cupboard and smashed. Unfortunately the Aeropress though it makes good strong coffee only makes small quantities. I wish I had found that website before I started trying it might have saved me a lot of bother.

This weekend and last weekend have been thesis writing ones. The result has been almost 6,000 more words onto my thesis although and I have also been trying to cut my methodology chapter down to size. It is now under 20,000 (in fact I think it is under 19000) but it could still do with going on a diet.  It was in the region of 23,000 all put together so I guess I have lost around 4,000 words. The nice thing has been despite having to cut back like this I have still managed to put in more words than I have cut. So I am getting closer and closer to my end point. I also have crossed the 30,000 point so if things keep going I may make 40,000 words by Easter (or the half way point).

I seem to have got myself a couple of jobs at St Andrews Sheffield, one is being a committee of size one (very convenient for meetings) which takes long term view on audio and media including budget (a bit like the choirs praise committee but with even less members). Then St Andrews is reviewing its committee structure and I seem to have been recommended for being on the working group for that. I hope we can think out of the box as if I and James have read the suggestion right it will be more work intensive than the present one (a single extra level of complexity) but what Sarah has talked to me about is much leaner.

New Year in Scotland and coming home to snow

On the 28th December I headed north to visit Morag and Tony for New year. Lets be clear now. Most of the UK has been bound by snow this last fortnight, but it is only most, not all. As can be seen from this photo. You will have to look closely but you can tell that part of main land Britain actually escaped the snow. If you know where the Solway Firth is, that inlet that looks like a smile on the west end of the Scottish border, now follow the Scottish coast west, there is a bump belly below Dumfries, followed by the point protrusion which is the Machars of Whithorn. Carry on past and just as you are getting to the point that seems to point out westward, look again carefully and you will see a double penisula, with little or no snow on it. That is the Rhinns of Galloway and it was where I was staying. We got very cold spells and severe frosts but very little snow indeed. If you wish for further proof there then my pictures of the time are up on Flickr. We spent the time, taking things as easy as we could with two excited girls and a bearded collie puppy called Dora. I think I am probably in big trouble with her at the moment as I seem to have escaped permanently! She does not like people escaping from her pack. Sorry I have no pictures of Dora, the main reason being that what she wanted was attention and that meant physically being fussed. We did most of the usual things, we climbed the creeky hill (don't look for it on a map, these things are relative, and basically this was a walk from sea level to the top of the peninsula, Creeky is short for Creechan, went on a walk with the Ramblers Association, which was meeting locally (Morag is trying to get a walking group going in Stranraer as one of her jobs) visited the old parish church site (pre Kirk Covenant and I refer to by its dedication St Catherine's to distinguish it from the present parish church, St Medan's, the middle parish church, Kirk Covenant). If that was not enough religious sites, there is a pilgrimage site and several other former churches in the parish, excluding the link to Sandhead and Ardwell. No I am not even starting on religious sites in the Machars of Whithorn. We are talking about setting up a website to bring together the things we discover while we are doing the exploring. It looks like it will be a mix of information of religious sites (no decisions made on Standing stones and such), short walks, coffee shop - local eatery reviews and places to stay. It may include bits of theology, devotional works, fiction (Mo tells her daughters stories about people who were once around these sites), information on other things to do nearby and so on. In other words its a method of focusing what we would be doing anyway. 

Getting back was interesting. As a rule I could make any journey but the last one hundred yards. I actually got stuck, trying to turn the car around at my parents to put it in another place. Two fostered children by a neighbour came to help and we got it moving again. The next day I went A6, A625, A623 and A612 back to Sheffield as both the Snake (A57) and the Woodhead (A628) were closed. Dad was in favour of me using the M62. I was slightly worried of about the route from M62 to Sheffield, unless I used the M1 which seemed a very long way to go. I got to Sheffield again fine. The roads were very clear here and I was okay until I tried to park my car in my parking bay. I simply could not get it out. In the end went down to Waitrose and bought cat lit which I mixed with dishwasher salt (the advantages of having a non-standard dishwasher which cannot take tablets). Anyway I was glad to get the car back to Hertz on Friday!

While I was at Drummore things kept dropping out of pockets, and pockets that were buried deep too. The first time it happened it was my B&B ladies keys which I had had so I could lock the door. That day, I had done practically nothing, except walk Dora on the beach and get pulled over by her. The assumption I made was that in the fuss of being pulled over and tidying up (I succeeded in scratching the outside of my lip and it bled slightly)  that the keys dropped out. The next day when all we did was the walk up the Creeky hill and around and my mobile phone went missing. I left it twenty four hours to see if it would try and tell me its power was running out. There was no point in ringing it as there is no reception in the area, I use it instead of a watch. However this resulted in me giving permission for someone to try to ring it knowing they would fail: no reception, battery flat and the chances being that the electronics were ruined due to a wet night on the Creeky hill. Anyway I was due a free upgrade and the replacement sim cost me all of five pounds. The new phone is apparently Sony Ericsson T715 although I wish it was in the silver colour scheme rather than the one I got (grey) the difference being that the silver has white font while the grey has a metallic aqua font. I have not changed my phone number (old sim disabled, phone too old to bother about), however if I had your phone numbers on my previous phones I now no longer have them. Would you mind ringing or texting me, so I can store them on this one please.

Otherwise, I have bought myself some more thermal underwear, baked bread, worked on designing the website, warming the house up (another of my storage heaters had gone phut. I guess I must look to replacing it this year which will be interesting. Storage heater is really great for the one that is left functioning in the house but the rest of the rooms are better with timed heating as I am not usually in much after 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. at night. So storage heat, heats the house largely when I am not in. For core heating which is what the hall does that is fine but for rooms used only some of the time a pattern of heating is better. So am looking to replace one storage heater with an electrical heater on a timer, with probably a second electrical timed heater in the room next door replacing a panel heater that has a wonky timer, I thought it was broke but it is only the timer. Oh well I shall no doubt find it interesting when I decide to do it.

Oh Morag I have long cherished the idea of getting Tony a paper log maker, but since you don't yet have solid fuel heating there is still no point. However there may well be some peace over you buying the Guardian. The question will be whether you could keep long enough to read it. Did I ever tell you of my experience with the Times. I had answered a survey which said I was an occasional reader. They rang me to ask whether I would like to become a subscriber. The first question was when had I last bought the Times. I answered honestly that I did not think I had ever done so. They presumed because I read it occasionally I bought it occasionally. I don't buy it, my father does and I read it when visiting him i.e. when on holiday. Therefore I am an occasional reader but am unlikely to want to subscribe. After all I only have the time for such activities on holiday.

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.

Hair colour and Summer Fairs

High lights this week include the fact that emails were sent out from me telling people what we were planning to do next year and I got emails back that allowed me to adjust the plans so that people could teach. I much rather make these alteration before we hit crises rather than afterwards. Then I made a date for seeing Pauline and also I worked a full week for the first time in ages. That does not mean I have been sick every week but holidays and bank holidays mean I have not had full weeks in work. Oh and I have not had a migraine today after a very heavy day yesterday.

So the week on the whole has been quiet. The regular rhythm of going to work and such. I was at writers group on Monday which went well. Tuesday was just a normal day and Wednesday the only exceptional thing was that I had Dr Nagi to see me and I did a lot of programming for him for his thesis. Data reorganisation mainly but I had learnt one or two tricks so things that could have taken days took minutes. The current favouring of area under the curve worries me. It seems to measure two things together, the level of the variable for which it is calculated and the time that data has been kept for the variable. This would make sense if there was some idea of cumulative damage done by the variable being either too high or too low but normally the variable itself is seen as an indicator of disease progression. They need to have some sort of baseline but starting point isn't a good one. Thursday I took half my day off as I was expecting to be tired after Wednesday and also to try an split a recording up. Friday at last we had a greek class again and have them set up for the summer. I also got my hair cut and it is back short and manageable again. For those who don't know my hair is getting lighter but not going grey. Cathy's I think is doing the same. At an event recently someone for the first time I can recall commented "You'd burn easily with your colouring?". The answer was such a definite "yes" that I have always wondered why people saw me as not having the pale skin, blue eyes look and put it down to having brown hair. So I put it now down to people seeing my hair colour as something of the red scale. Of course its only brown because my genes are indecisive, my mother has black hair and my father red. So my body compromised and I got brown as did Cathy. However the black pigment tends to stop being produced once we hit forty and the result is that our hair is slowly turning a pale red. Most people would see this as a blessing, but oddly when I found I was first doing this I felt most miffed. Going grey was a sign of getting older, going a washed out sand was not a sign of anything in particular and just another half colour to cope with.

Saturday was the Summer Fair at Chesterfield. I got there for around 10:30. I was not the first there by any means but I was fairly early. There was Marion and John plus a friend of Marion, also Nancy and Bill . John would have been there at 8:30 in the morning if he could have but had to wait until 9:00 a.m. for a lift from Bill. Actually people come in shifts, you get the early birds like these, then you get the over lunchers which Helen and Patrick fall into and then you get the catering ladies who do the teas in the church and who only arrive at lunch time. In actual fact John and Bill had an easier job of it this year as the scouts had largely set up the tables. I went to lunch with Marion and John which actually worked out as a brilliant break as they both went to get ready while I could just sit and make notes on what I had seen on the morning. I think the person with the hardest stall this time was Ethel, not because she did not have enough stuff but because she had too much stuff. Seriously the table was loaded when she went home for lunch and she came back to find more stuff had been brought while she was away. At the end of the afternoon the table still looked half full but she had probably sold a table and a half of stuff. I am not surprised she was too tired to make Just desserts on the Evening. The problem with being photograher is that you walk miles during the day. At about 4p.m. I realised that my legs were aching with the walking and standing I was doing. The problem is that you are always moving and on the go and you cannot have a chair to sit down for a while. I also missed the mid afternoon tea and coffee run. I was therefore worn out by the end of the afternoon so I asked Helen for a lift back to the station which she did while Patrick was counting the money. I was rather disconcerted to find on getting into a taxi at Sheffield station to find my legs just folded at the knees rather than try and step up into it.

I took Sunday rather quietly going only to the evening service and getting up when I was ready. The service was on the holy spirit and at one point the tea urn decided to boil in the background. I wasn't the only one in the group to think "Help that isn't Pentecost happening again" when it did so. I calmed myself down by reminding myself that God does not seem to like exact repetitions.

Yesterday was a bit of a washout as I seem to have got a sinus infection from somewhere. I presume it was left over from the cold a couple of weeks back and that having a glass of wine on Sunday stirred up a histamine reaction and that set me up for it. Yesterday at 3:30 p.m. I realised I was fanticising about being in my bed at home having taken pain killers so I thought that the best thing was that I would go home and see what an hour or so in bed would do which meant missing writers group.

Today I have been out to Rotherham to visit Pauline and to see the church. It must now be the largest church in the former district unless one in Doncaster beats them. They have a weekly congregation of about 120 so bigger than St Andrews when I first attended it back in the 1990s. Actually if they are going to set assessment on things I suggest they do a weighted mean of members, attendance, income and reservers and then subtract from that an allowance for new members and children. I suspect we would see growth much quicker with that formulation than any other. The manse like the one at St Andrews is directly connected to the church grounds and they are looking towards extending their buildings even further than it is already, replacing the activity hall with a community hall, that is building a new two storey building. The membership is local the furthest distance travelled is five miles.

Then home relax and finish writing this up.

Later this week I have annual church meeting at Chesterfield and a funeral on Friday as well at Chesterfield. Actually only the second since I came and it is of someone I interviewed. I have to decide how I handle transcription with his wife and there is one photo I took that I also need to think about. I am not playing politics with the church but how do I stop myself being used for politics and is it even right to.