After Viva

Let me get the big news over with first (partly for those for whom this is repetition) and say that I had a Viva for my thesis on Tuesday, the outcome was not good in that I was asked to resubmit. If you want more info on this I blogged about it on my thesis blog on Wednesday . What it means practically I still have to work out but it was clear that my examiners thought I needed to get more space from my fieldwork. The immediate result is that I have decided to have a break from thesis until after my parents Golden Wedding and then start looking through the interviews and the reports that I should get from Birmingham.

Other than that I have been working and trying to get myself more healthy. Actually the health thing started in the run up to submission when I realised that my anxiety levels were going through the roof. I did not want to ask the doctor for medication for this and therefore I had to do something. I already used mindfulness and such approaches and the only other thing I  knew that reduces levels was physical activity. That started with walks in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and then one Sunday I took myself off to Hillsborough Leisure Centre for a swim.

I was surprised how it works out. There are two pools under one roof at Hillsborough. The beach pool with pirate ship wreck a couple of water shutes and a wave machine. They also have the rock pool which is a small old fashioned swimming pool for swimming up and down. There are five narrow lanes usually (today only four) and the water is fairly warm. Also on a Sunday Afternoon it is relatively quiet.

Well I enjoyed that, that I decided to try Ponds Forge during the week. Then signed up for Fitness Unlimited which costs about £20 per month and if I swim once a week that is cheaper than buying individual sessions. However, it does not give me just swimming but gym, various fitness classes and things like saunas and steam baths. Also if you use the gym there is a small amount of personal training available. As thesis has taken its toll physically with the concentrated nature of finishing I am at present making use of this quite a lot.

Work is busy as always. A paper is in for final review, and also when we started looking at a big data set we found something pretty straightforward that would upset a number of stereotypes. There are some interesting student projects and a couple of PhD students who are getting close to finished.

Today as it was Pentecost Sunday which was the annual CTBB big service and held at St Andrews this time.  I went as they said they wanted someone to help Derek on the sound desk. In the end I did the whole sound but we had two microphones fail during the service and I do not know why.

On Trinity Sunday 2013

Work wise I have been busy, there has been teaching statistics to Linguistics and slowly dealing with them. It has been time consuming on the whole and taken up more than I expected particularly as I had to learn R. Now R is not easy to learn, rather in its raw form it is a bit like finding your way around an unknown city where you have to ask strangers directions and there is no map. The problem is that you often do not know what is the next piece of information you need. Most software on the other hand has both your very detailed instructions and also menus that work some thing like a satnav and yes you can end up arriving in totally the wrong place if you just use them. Yes I can make it dance when I want to, but how much do I want to? Well maybe my need for a decent graphics package will encourage me to see if I can at least learn enough of it to draw good graphs! It has some quite sophisticated graphics tools. There is also a new system for booking courses that some groups are using. They want me to look at it but make the date for a Friday which is my day off. Then I have been busy with Human Nutrition, one paper has just been published but had a very efficient main researcher, one paper about to be submitted, in the end we called off trying to analyse the data in different ways and finally there is one paper where I and the other data analyst do not agree on figures. I am also trying to negotiate the setting up of extra NVivo courses.

I am also slowly being inducted into the chaplaincy. I have so far got through synod, had the talk with this years coordinating chaplain (Peter Cullen), got an SRB check form filled in and also had a request for my username so they could give me access to the shared drive. The chaplaincy is a lot bigger than it was when I was last in this role, oh and it is weird because I am both the newcomer and also experienced hand. Setting up for communion a couple of weeks ago I recognised the cloth they were using and I made a comment about being able to change how it was gathered as they were struggling to get it onto the communion table. Then promptly started untying the knot. The comment came back “Do you know this piece of cloth?” It is just like the question of how the pebbles came from St Columba’s Bay Iona, well I picked them up put them in a rucksack, then gave them to my parents to bring back. The thing that really gave me deja vu was the first communion back in the Octagon Centre. I struggled to get in due to building works but when I did, there in front of Meetings Room 1 was Cat the Methodist Chaplain and a whole lot of students, standing around just as the chaplains used to before Thursday’s communion. No communion is not back in Meetings Room 1 but for a while I really just accepted it was. Unfortunately I am not getting to the away day as it clashes with my next supervision.

Church wise I think things are settling down at church, I am trying to find out where I fit as I am finding it is not to the place I left. This is not due to a shortage of suggestions. I think at times they would like me to do far more that I am capable of. Some of the things are simple, the choir tried to recruit me, but I knew a prior commitment to the sound desk ruled that out and I get slightly worried about a choir that wants to recruit me. The other thing is in some ways Sarah prepared St Andrew’s too well for being without a minister. I am having to run a mild campaign to persuade them that being without your own minister does not mean being without any ministerial coverage and that there are ways that we may have a share of a minister. The problem is that as they do not believe they will get anything out of any discussions they are at present quite wary of discussions. They also are finding that Bob Heathcote’s approach which is to listen first and then propose difficult to understand. They want something that they can deal with and conceptually I think the idea of a collaboration has not been thought through. They want a detail so they can see how it might work. I struggle with this having been in various styles of groups of churches until I came to St Andrew’s. I suppose if you have only experienced one minister to a church model then anything else feels like a foreign country. There are plans for the anniversary service on 23rd June and there is a Mission and Care group in July. This month with the third Sunday being Pentecost and therefore a joint CTBB service I decided I would work that Sunday and go this Sunday. However next month is going to be tricky indeed with me really needing to be there for all Sundays plus some time on one Saturday.

Writers group has been going again which is good, it has become a place where I feel I am among friends and I concentrate on other things than thesis. At present we are partially preparing for the Broomhill Festival Reading where some of us including myself are performing. I am beginning to realise that I am getting to be write more competently, especially when people comment on how good the material is that I plan to read. Choosing it was difficult as I was holding back some of the material I have written for the reading in the autumn. At first people were hesitant to join in so we asked another group called the Tuesday Poets if they would join us. Now there are plenty of volunteers but the Tuesday Poets have given us male voices and as all the writers in the group at present are women this was something we lacked.

Finally thesis for those who do not read my thesis blog. Well I have now submitted possible second drafts for all my substantive thesis chapters to my supervisor. One of them needs quite a bit of work but I am actually quite pleased with the other five. I am hoping that I can get the work done tomorrow. There is then just my introduction, methodology and conclusion to get to the same state. The introduction I think is fairly close to there, the methodology needs cutting by 50% and I have not written a word of my conclusion. The game plan is to do this over the next month or so. Then it is proofing in earnest. less Jean

Suddenly a Sunny Spring Day

I think it is three weeks since I wrote and I may get around to writing again in a fortnight or I might not. That is I might have a Sunday free from thesis. I get these occasionally when I feel I am reasonably where I want to be and I will be at St Andrew’s on the morning. If that is the case then it would be late before I got around to thesis and sometimes having a day clear of both work and thesis is a good idea. The weather has until mid week been really cold but at present we are basking in sunny spring temperatures (don't get excited it is not double figures yet and the gritters were still gritting on Friday night).

Well the last three weeks have been busy although it is busy in much the usual way. I have been writing my thesis and got another chapter into second draft. I have also done minor alterations to the chapter I have already got to second draft and am in the process of getting on with a third.I saw my supervisor a couple of weeks ago. We talked a lot around the middle chapter and the difficulties of writing it. One of the problems is that I need to write about something that in the end is not resolvable into a neat formula. Many have tried it and failed. Even now having sent it to my supervisor I can think of at least two things I really should put in. The next chapter should be more straightforward. It was the one chapter that my supervisor really felt was working when I got it into first draft. I have read through it and I think I need to work on the theory bit at the start. So this week, I need to read through again, think about clarifying that and then think  what I need to include on the second part of the chapter. When I have done this I need to get on with flows which will be harder to knock into shape. I think it may need to go to more what my supervisor calls “poetic”.

Work has been busy largely with bits a pieces that need doing. I have learnt that my assessment for Chartership isn’t now until 2014, this really does not matter to me much, it is not going to be exactly hard to get it renewed if I have my doctorate and I also continue at the rate I am doing with development. I must admit my preferred method is self development rather than going on courses or to conferences. The best sort is what I call client led development which is when I have to sort out a tricky problem for a group of researchers and therefore I sit down and learn the statistics to do that. This is very different from keeping up with what is sexy in statistics. That said I am helping prepare a course for linguist on statistics. It will be interesting to see how this goes. I think personally we are sticking too closely to texts that have been found wanting but we still need to get over that hurdle. It starts next week but the person who was going to teach the first block (I will teach about 50% basically the second and fourth block although I am no expert on either) is now off until her child is born having been admitted to hospital with bleeding. There is another tutor who can take over the actual teaching but she is in the final stages of submission for her thesis. Although the tutor who was going to teach this is doing the slides at home, I am having to do more reviewing and I am also having to learn R to make sure I can cope with queries.
It was communion a couple of weeks ago and Jean D was Table Elder number 1  It went well despite the fact that both table elders were at the start double booked (I was also duty elder and Jean was on creche). Jean thought Marion Howdle was duty elder because that was what the sheet said and then Anne Cathels took that role on. There were no children so no creche. We now have to have a special diets elder for both bread and wine as there is someone who requires gluten free bread. The next communion is Easter Sunday when I am table elder one and it is Sarah’s last Sunday at St Andrew’s. I suspect that I will need to draft a set of ritual notes for communion at St Andrews simply because it is different from what most of the other churches do around here and though David Stec will take some of the communion services he will not take all and even he does not know the backstage stuff (e.g. just before the duty elder goes in with the Bible the minister reminds the elders to observe radio silence i.e. “We are going live folks so shut up”).

I think St Andrews is beginning to catch on that there is quite a long list of things I would like to be at but it is just not going to happen while I have the thesis to write. For instance I am not making Friday Breakfasts, some of this has been just simple coincidences, it started when I was very low one week and just did not feel up to going, then migraine, time of the month, excessive tiredness, colds, tummy bugs, Christmas, departmental meeting etc seemed to occur. However I also know that if I do not go it gives me a full day to work on thesis at the weekend rather than two half days. It is just not working out. If as I am planning at the moment I get my thesis in by the summer then I will be able to help out over the summer. Other things this week included the MAC group, lent groups which are happening and the fact that Yorkshire synod has a study day for elders which sounds interesting are all on the “I would like to but thesis”. This is also meaning that at present I am not going to Sarah’s induction in Southampton. It would mean a whole weekend away from thesis. Actually it would be alright if I had major reading to do as the train journey there and back would give me plenty of opportunity for that but I will almost certainly be at the finer editing stages and I need to be at my own computer for that.

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.

Christmas Roundup of the Year

The year has been dominated with writing up my thesis. I got into the pattern of most days writing by hand for about half an hour before I went into work. This produced the momentum to keep going as I formally typed them in each weekend. The result is that at present I have 90,000 words for a 80,000 max thesis, and two short chapters (introduction and conclusion) not even written. It is alright. I knew that there was going to have to be major edits but I needed to write to actually get some idea what was in my brain. I am hopefully drafting the introduction over the rest of the holiday season (i.e. read through what I have written, write the reason for doing the thesis and then the route that is taken). The conclusion will have to wait until I have worked through the chapters again and got them largely into their final form. The intriguing thing is that writing has been the way that I have done most of the analysis for this thesis. Another reason for the overflow was that halfway through the year the expected number of substantive chapters doubled from three to six (introduction, methodology and conclusion takes the total to nine). Unfortunately I had already written 45,000 words in the three substantive that were written and 20,000 in methodology. So an over flow was inevitable. That said it is to be hoped that I manage to finish the revision around Easter time.

The reason for that being is that I have said from Easter time I am willing to go back onto the eldership of St Andrews URC Sheffield. I have tried to keep my commitment to the congregation limited at least timewise this last year, so as to make space for writing up. I do need to be in worship at least two Sundays a month now, one as I am working the sound system and the second as I do door duty. I am also one of the table elders and will take over as senior table elder come easter, which means I really have to be making elders meeting, as I will need to chase elders for communion duties. On top of this Sarah our minister has announced that she is leaving after Easter. The way things are run in Yorkshire at present, there will not be a direct replacement for Sarah, and we will be a largely self running congregation. Actually something which due to the long vacancies in the past the congregation is facing with a fair amount of equanimity. The other thing is when I look I around I realise that there are probably as many adults under fifty attending the congregation as there has ever been in the time I have been there. This feels strange, because while the congregation is going to grow smaller, I am not sure that I can assume that the demise is as guaranteed as the older generation have always said it was.

Work wise I have moved offices (twice) and moved teams once but am officially doing the same job. That said the workload has increased out all recognition to what it was eighteen months to two year ago. I am jolly appreciative that Maths and Statistical Help (MASH) has largely taken over the handling of queries from Undergraduates and taught Postgraduates. I still seem quite a few research postgraduates, quite often these days with them seeing MASH as well, they tend to use MASH for the basic stuff and me for the depth. I am also helping MASH tutors develop their skills in helping students and it looks as if there may be more teaching. I am still working on NVivo tutorial for online. It is taking longer for me to do than I thought, basically because it takes longer to video than I expected. I can spend five hours easily on a five minute video, a lot of the time I spend psyching myself up to do it.

Writers group is still going along, it provides a place where I am off duty and among friends. I have found with writing my thesis that I have tended to write poetry. The idea that I could cope with the complexities of writing anything much longer while trying to keep hold of all the wild horses in my thesis, just seems to me impossible. A poem, often so short that it is often compared to a haiku (it isn’t, normally too many syllables, and not the right twist at the end). However I am able to concentrate on getting the words right for just that short piece of writing. My writers group have published another collection which we launched at our annual reading as part of Off the Shelf. This is the fourth or fifth collection and the third I have contributed to. Rather  more scary was the realisation that some in the group looked up to me as a writer. I still see myself as very much a beginner, the main difference is that I am better able to tell when others are writing well and when they are not. I find the act of self criticism very difficult indeed and it often surprises me what others think of as good.

Holiday wise I spent the normal extended week at Drummore, this year again in the autumn. The weather was typical British Autumn weather and it was a matter of making the best of the weather when it was dry. That said there is now a path all the way from Stranraer to the Mull of Galloway mostly along the coast. The advantage of this from the holiday point of view is that it has opened up the track towards the Mull. Jenny and Cait are both capable of walking to the Mull lighthouse but Cait finds walking back a bit too far. Dora the dog is quite happy to go walking, will cross styles and such if and only if I have gone over first. I suspect Morag going over might also get her over but Morag was finding her hearing aids difficult and spent quite a bit of time without them in.

My sister came over with my niece and nephew during the summer holidays for the day. We are still able to pull some wool over their eyes. They were willing to believe that we walked all the way across town to have coffee at the Costas in Waterstones just because we enjoyed their coffee. Needless to say the reason was their was a Waterstones and I was pretty sure that with a book token each, that Cathy and I would have time to chat while they decided how to spend them. I also went over to them and did geocaching. Cathy is very good at finding caches if she is looking in the right place but a modern GPS really does make a difference and the sort on smart phones beat the older specific technical GPS unless you are outside the range of a signal. Sam is doing well in school with all teachers happy to have him studying their subject for GCSE, his main challenge is whether he should do Music or Domestic Science. Hannah is doing well, having recently done exam for her dance classes. She is also learning the violin like Sam but where as Sam seemed to have the knack of making his early squawking sound musical, according to Cathy Hannah is not doing as well.

My parents are getting older.  My assessment is that as a couple they manage fine as each compensates for the others difficulties. Each however would struggle very much if doing it alone. The problems arise when each tries to take over the others strengths then problems arise. Today when they were out delivering Christmas Cards around the neighbourhood, Dad decided that he would do the physical delivering rather than just making sure they went in the right address. The result was that he tripped at the first house. Nothing hurt except his pride but Mum would have done it with ease.

Next year the BIG CHALLENGE is to submit and finish my thesis. The aim is to submit around Easter time but I acknowledge that is optimistic and will take a lot of hard work even if everything goes smoothly. When that is over I am going to need to do a lot of assessing where to go next. I can’t even claim that the thesis answers the questions that drove me to study originally. It has put me in a different place from which to try and move towards a solution/answer and I am also going to have to assess whether from the new position an answer looks possible.

While taking a day off from Thesis

I am taking today off thesis but will be back on with it tomorrow as I have a chapter to finish. It should be straightforward but I need to refocus myself and make sure I get to the right point at the end.

I am trying to think back over the last fortnight, which has been heavily dominated by work and thesis, and I really can only think of a couple of other stories with those.

Work wise it is finishing off projects. I have spent quite a bit of time with a PhD student who had done a number of surveys and someone else had done a very interim analysis. I have done about four different analyses for her and I suspect that she will in the end get most from the simple statistics I got to do half way through. A lot of it felt as if she was trying to walk before she could run as she would find a technique in a paper and then want to do that. One I eventually concluded was pointless, the second may produce something vaguely interesting but I am cautious over whether the data is suitable. Well we shall see what happens.

Then there has been work for human nutrition, I am amazed at the way people assume I am an authority because I can do the statistics. I think I have just about got to the last pull on the masters projects there, but next month I am going to be leading a workshop on helping other to analyse ANOVAs. It feels weird to suddenly find out that I am looked upon as this very expert Statistician, as this is basically training people to do the sort of work I have been doing for the last nineteen years. Other than that, I am developing a communications role within my team at work which means that I will be tangential to the power structure but not totally outside it. I suppose that really is where I prefer to be. I am also due to test a range of software next week so it is all go despite the fact I am only in two work for two days.

Thesis wise I have really been getting my head around the tradition, I think I am in the position almost to conclude my chapter on tradition tomorrow and to be able to argue that in some ways it is a self reproducing system of engagement that works on a variety of levels. In writing it has been remarkable easy to argue that what seems to happen in every age is that you get a configuration of similar tension that people work with. As they resolve some of the tensions or a new situation arises that normally involve working with the other tensions in the systems. One such system is that that links meaning and practice. Sometimes practice comes through semi-attached to thought and sometimes meaning seems to disengage from one set of practices but then engage with another (wee cuppies anyone and sharing together anyone). Anyway I have less than 2000 words on this chapter to write and I think I may be able to cover that in the process of writing tomorrow. That unfortunately means my tidy up of the Worship chapter will have to wait to next weekend (well Thursday probably) so as to get the data chapters out to my congregations.

Other bits, Jean and James took me out to Nirmals which is a bit of a Sheffield institution. It is an experience but Mrs Nirmal was certainly less pushy than in the past, only slightly put out when James did not take his mango pip in his hands and suck it. The food was good (the mango was superb), the company excellent but I am afraid I was not up to it and was rather quiet, not really sure why but I was, maybe a bit of migraine in the offing.

I also have bought myself a charcoal grey cardigan. It surprised me somewhat that I should need it as I normally steer away from black but I noticed that I have both two pairs of black jeans and a grey pair. My other cardigans work with them if I am wearing the right blouse but some of my blouses just don’t mix with the cardigans so I decided to get a grey/black one and have it for wearing when I do not want to think.

Today should have been a thesis Sunday but Anne Parker was preaching at St Andrews and wanted to show slides of her trip to Bangladesh in 2011. This meant instead of a sermon we had what was close to a personal testimony, it needs a bit more polish and it will be very good indeed. It also meant that somebody needed to work the technology and that somebody was me. I think if I had been sensible I would have found time this weekend to go to church and set up beforehand, as it was the technology only started talking together during the first hymn. It looked like a loose connection on the projector, I really should do some more researching of that but I had swapped two cables, two computers already and it was not fixed, I was just to give up and suddenly it worked.

Toadstool beads that I made today

Otherwise I have spent today making fly agaric style toadstool beads, I need one for a hedgehog amigurumi I am making. The style of bead is quite specific and I could not find any on the internet even at the website the book said sold them. However the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be relatively easy to make. So I bought some polymer clay and today I had a go at making fifteen. That means I have fourteen spare , but given the amount of time crocheting the spikes requires I am NOT going to make fourteen more hedgehogs. I have ideas for a use and we will have to see. Actually for my first attempt at using polymer clay it seemed quite successful.

I have also been playing around with cover designs for the book writers group is doing. I hope to get another chance to play with that next weekend.

Chattering after a tiring couple of weeks

The weeks have been tiring. Work is still busy, I have been expecting it to quieten down since last September time and it hasn’t yet. I wonder if this is going to be the pattern of things from now on. I don’t mind being busy but when as busy as last week I am actually over stretched and I fail to do things I need to do because I have not got the time. Much of this is consultancy but I am still doing the odd bit of statistical work for people but not finding that I have much time.

Work is taking its time to sort out the situation it got into. I think there are real problems behind this. There is a view that people will get on with who they are put with regardless. This can cause major problem in a department that chooses people for the special skills. The skills seem to come with add idiosyncrasies and when we ignore them we end up with head on personality clashes. The other thing is that I suspect the rules applied now will be scrapped within two years and that will lead to some very grieved people and in the mean time a sort of guerrilla warfare over “time out rooms” with people trying to claim them as theirs. However that is not my concern. I will see what they come up with.

The other thing that happened was I was teaching the course that got cancelled the week before last, this Thursday. On the morning I realised I had not had a reply from someone who I was hoping would check the room for me or tell me who to go to. The licensing situation needed checking. Well not to worry I thought if the XP disks don’t work the managed service would do. I got there the XP disks were not working as the license had timed out. No need to panic just swap them. I even managed to get all of the managed hard disks loaded. Then I started one up and they were not the modern managed service, indeed they were at least three years old! The problem with this is the license for the old version of the software I was teaching was no longer available. PANIC, I had a class of about twelve and no machines. I am therefore very grateful to the Helpdesk who came up pretty swiftly and put fresh license codes into the XP disks.

Last weekend I was partly writing and partly editing my methodology chapter. I only managed to get rid of under 2000 words, which is problematic as I also added a section of about 2000 words on why I chose the methodology I did. Fortunately in finding that I found that one argument I had made had been made quite clearly in the literature in about 2003, there was therefore no reason to be as explicit as I was being. I still need to do more work on cutting down on the number of words. This weekend I have got the introductory bit to my data chapter on location out. Therefore I am going to have to write about actual data next week. I am going to have to deal with the wider location I think first.This is fun as it involves not just the settings but also the ways that different congregations understand themselves as connected to the locality. There are in some-ways such similarities and yet differences. Some of this includes an analysis of distance from members homes. There is also a second problem of the fact that the wider communities that they relate to also understood themselves differently. Anyway if you want to catch up more formally there is more on my thesis blog. What I will say is writing is far more consuming than I expected. It seems to infiltrate into everything and I am not one of those people who felt “I am only writing up, I can do other things”. Don’t get me wrong I suspect some of this is because I actually enjoy doing it, or like the time and challenge. I feel a slight high on going into work if I have done my half and hour of writing before I go in. I tend to resent weeks when I don’t get a full day dedicated to writing because of other commitments.

Writers group has started meeting again, which is a good thing although the heating system decided to loose pressure and not to heat up the first time. This meant that I turned up with grandpa’s blower heater (I really must put the plug on that better, I changed the fuse once and did not put it back particularly well). We are beginning to think about publishing more work this year. The options include web publishing. This is something I know I can do, in that I have the skills but it is not something that I have the time to do at present. I can act as guide but I certainly can’t do it. It also depends on what they want to do. The big thing with a website is to get the publicity it needs to make it successful. However I am glad they are back and functioning, it provides a major part of my socialising while I am doing my PhD.

Summary of the year or Round Robin

This is my attempt to give an impression of the past year, it therefore does not handle the news of the last week in particular, so apologies for those faithful followers of Chattering for whom much of this can be repetition. I am going to work this through on themes rather than give a month by month account.

Firstly therefore let me turn to my PhD. I am now in the final part of the process prior to submission and that is actually writing it up. This is not the same as being a student in “writing up” state, I need to get a pretty good first draft done by the end of June 2012 if I am to be allowed to be in that state from September 2012, the formal “writing up” state is for people close on submission, I am therefore still a fully enrolled student. However it does means I am no longer doing active field work and and am spending a lot of time either with pen and paper, computer or checking books. It also means I have stopped going over to Herringthorpe URC on a regular basis. It was quite a strange feeling to be leaving doing placements after four years. Herringthorpe was a good congregation, different from St Andrews Chesterfield. Some of the differences were just down to dynamics of size, Herringthorpe is almost twice the size of St Andrews Chesterfield and things that functioned at St Andrews failed at Herringthorpe. Not much with respect to the thesis, but there were times when I realised many people at Herringthorpe behaved as if it was the size of St Andrews, for instance you were expected to know who the treasurer was by just mentioning his name. Fine at St Andrews where you did not need even that often as the treasurer was the one with the cheque book, but at Herringthorpe more difficult particularly as they did not fill any sort of treasurer type roles during morning worship. Another thing which became clear is that the two strands “Presbyterian” and “Congregational” related differently to their traditions. Presbyterians were always conscious of being Presbyterian and doing things in that way. Congregationalists never named the tradition, it was always this is “how we do it”. They never felt any need to identify it as “Congregational” or “Independent” or “Reformed”. I suspect to many English Presbyterians this looked like a lack of tradition when in actual fact it is the mark of a dominant tradition. Anyway  with now writing up I have started a blog which keeps notes of my progress. If you want to know how I am doing please make a note of it. Finally as you will see there, the Society for the Study of Theology held a postgraduate meeting in Edinburgh a few weeks back and I presented a paper at that. I am not planning on writing up the paper for publication at present but might well do so once my thesis is done as it is practically publication ready.

Work wise, the year has been more of the same. That does not mean no change, it does mean that for the most part the style has not changed. Perhaps the biggest change is that I more and more being consulted and then cited as a resource during research bids. This means that I am in the process from the start. Some of this is actually down to the fact that I can talk a number of research dialects and therefore am a pretty good translator of ideas between different departments who are doing research. I think I am involved in two to three active bids. It will be interesting to see what comes out. I am also moving some of my teaching into videos just to cope with demand. I am not able (and never have been) to meet the demand for this particular course. My real reason for not trying this earlier is that I do not see it as a particularly good course, very old fashioned talking head. Anyway my hand has been forced and I now need to find the time to actually get it into a video form. I suppose equally remarkable is this year I have not moved offices but am still in the same one as last Christmas, according to estates we should be moving out of there about Easter time. This is a slight delay on the original date for leaving the offices which was sometime in mid 2000.

Health wise my energy levels are improving an enabling me to cope with both the thesis and the increased work load at work. Nothing major just the slow improvement that keeps happening, it is of course far too slow for my liking and I always have a tendency to over stretch myself. I still get migraines but these are less frequent so maybe I am getting better at pacing. Unfortunately the same could not be said for all around. The New Year started with the news on Ship-of-Fools that the person who was the brains behind the bulletin boards (Erin) died very suddenly from flu at the age of thirty-nine. Dad has also lost several  friends, this started with the death quite suddenly of Roger Tomes a long term colleague of his, then in the autumn Doug Thacker died, at a respectable age of 83, but they had known each other since University days and kept in touch and finally Fred Able died. To crown things for him his Aunt died in November. She was in her nineties and family relationships had been distant for a while but she was also the last of that generation to die.

Other family news seems to fairly mundane. Mum and Dad tick along, alternately wondering at how well they manage and at other times getting on each others nerves. Mum is doing particularly physically and Dad is doing very well mentally, but the reverse could not be said. However one compensates for the other, and they seem to keep going. They had a holiday at the Christian hotel in Grange over Sands which seemed to go well despite the weather. The advantage of doing it this was was the chance to have company in an evening. Cathy and family seem to doing fine. Adrian, Cathy’s husband, was made redundant just before Christmas and after three or four months of looking and not finding anything he particularly wanted he decided to go solo. He is picking up a decent amount of work, partly because his former firm is passing work in his direction, but he is also making contacts elsewhere. Sam is doing well at school, still very good on the violin and at swimming with an interest in astrophysics. Hannah seems to be doing well, is much better at settling to read than Sam ever was and is enjoying dancing as well as swimming although in that she will never make Sam’s class.

I spent New Year up with my God family and again went up for almost a fortnight at the end of September beginning of October. My God-daughters are doing well though both have changed schools. Jenny because she was going up to high school and therefore travels now to Stranraer everyday and Cait because she became quite unhappy at the local school. The timing of the autumn rather than spring one, was partly due to Morag’s study pattern and partly because the Wigtown Festival was on at that time. However it worked really well for me as it allowed me to have a break between placement and writing up. In some ways it was a quieter holiday than previous ones, despite there being a lot on at Wigtown, I was not in the mood for setting out at the start of day and coming in late to attend things I was only vaguely interested in. Two of the days I just spent looking after Dora their dog, combing her hair and taking her for long walks along the beach during which she chased any seagulls that decided to take off into the air. While they were sat on the shore she really was not that interested. I will hopefully be up with them again for New Year.

So now all that remains I think is to wish you all that your lives may be touched by the joy that comes at Christmas and that during the coming year you might have the energy to meet the challenges and enjoy your achievements.

Busy week in work, followed by an interview and migraine

The week has been busy at least work wise. For those who think that Universities have holidays can I assure you, you are incorrect. They have teaching time which is called Term and research time which is called vacations. When you are research support therefore your busy periods are distinctly different from what people imagine, largely coinciding with the holidays. The result is that I am just keeping my head about water at present. This last week I have been involved in five separate projects. Four from human nutrition and one from Education. The human nutrition ones are fairly varied. The take up of vitamin B12 in older people. Actually fairly interesting, as the take-up seems to be related to lifestyle rather than eating food groups related to B12. So you get some counter-intuitive findings, where a scale that scores highly on meat intake actually suggests poorer B12 intake (the scale also weights quite heavily for drinking alcohol and is related to smoking).

Then there is couple of sports ones relating mental ability to food allowing for exercise. Unfortunately fitness seems to be confounded with distance so the further people ran the faster their overall pace. It looks an interesting study, but I think they will have to do a follow up study probably getting people in to do a fitness check prior to doing the race. Maybe the researchers in human nutrition need to join with some from physiology and see if they can find funding to work with participants in a specific set of events.  The nice thing I can see is that participating in this study might be its own reward for the participants as they would get training advice and they would take even beginners.

Then there is the study on Butyrate. This is by far the most time consuming as I am having to spend quite a bit of time “developing” a meta-analysis for it. It is not straightforward as there are only about a dozen studies and most of those are inadequately reported. They also are not reported in standard units which adds its own complexities. I also suspect that the things measured are not normally distributed as there seems to be some sort of relationship between mean and the variation in the results. So it is going to require quite careful work.

The one for education was totally different. It was a researcher who had been so busy teaching that they had lost contact with their project and so needed to sit down and think through it again. The thing was that when I had caught onto what she wanted it was very simple to give her a way to do it easily with her project. What she wanted to do was to group like things together; basically put them in the same folder so she could think about them with some other notes on the side. Sounds easy the sort of thing you can do with scissors and paper except some of her things were sound recordings or tape recordings.

Well that kept me busy Monday to Thursday and then on Friday I had an interview in Rotherham for Herringthorpe URC. This one was with a local councillor, unfortunately he was ill but one of the people who works with him was there to talk to me and really gave me a lot of contacts. There is almost far more going on than people thing and I find that quite often those in council positions are some of the few who have an overveiw. I am still in two minds whether I should follow up by actually talking to another councilor for the ward the church is actually in or if I should leave it at that.

Unfortunately by the time I had got back from that I had gone into the migraine, cycle. This one was so long in turning up I thought I might have got over them for a long while. It held off pretty well for going to the Dicksons but mucked up yesterday quite royally. Tescos delivery and migraine don’t mix especially when person suffering gets the delivery time wrong. I “coped” by eating largely dry toast and drinking weak black tea. I went to bed after they delivered and got up early evening, thinking I was better. However by evening after taking five attempts to print something on the back of another sheet of paper, I eventually gave up. My brain was clearly not functioning right so I decided to take today as another migraine day.

So today rather than have a full day at Herringthorpe I have spent it inside, quite a bit in bed and finally got up and could face drinking coffee so am beginning to feel more normal although as the children running around down stairs still makes me fragile I suspect I am not ready for facing the world quite yet. So am not going to the songs of Praise at Herringthorpe.

A busy work week with little news

News from this end. Well none, I have had a busy week at work and I mean busy. I worked 4.5 days having booked a half day holiday and arranged things for it. So that means I have to take an extra days leave next week but next week is short already. Monday is a bank holiday, Friday is definitely my day off. Its going to be difficult deciding which day and a half I am actually going to be in work. Not helped by the fact that I should take a days study leave in that time as part of my writing weekend.

Work has been getting Information Commons figures for their annual report. The problem was I underestimate the effect 6,000,000 records would have on my computers processing speed. Fine for most things I wanted to do, but not for reading in or drawing graphs. When I needed to do that it was make a cup of coffee time or more accurately go for a leisurely lunch time. It is as well I started working with computers at the end of the days of sending programmes remotely from terminals, finding something to do for several hours, then getting a print out back that said you had made an error on line 10 and the job had not run. You learnt time saving techniques just to get small jobs run and I was using those techniques to finish handling the data I was using. However long hours churning numbers don't make interesting topics to write about.

Stuart can now photocopy the service sheets without me or Judith being there. I think in some ways the breakthrough was when I had to pass him onto Judith. Stuart's attitude when it was me I think was that it was a pleasant way to spend some time with me!!! My attitude was that it was a job I had given up to have time to do my thesis and it was not something I therefore wanted to be doing with someone else. The problem was as long as I did come it fulfilled Stuarts idea of what should happen. It was only when I was not there that he actually started to make the effort to learn how to do things. He did not even take in that there were clear instructions in the room on how to do it. With a person who wanted to do it, you could give them the keys and they could sort it out for themselves without any instruction. With Judith Stuart was not getting the reward so he actually set about learning. The result was last night I handed him the keys and he did the photocopying.

Yesterday I did shopping basically because I needed to. I really need to get more skilled with money off tokens. I could have saved ten pounds yesterday if I had just done! Now I have £15 in money off tokens to be spent by the 13th September. I also spent money on work clothes. My computer seems to have taken a dislike to putting in card numbers and the result is that I end up having to do them over the phone. So I purchased just ordinary trousers, tops and a fleece from Landsend, only for them having to ring me this morning to check. Oh well hopefully I will be smarter in work this autumn than I have been of late. Oh I am also struggling to find wool free walking socks. I also got a multi-tool, I was hoping it would replace both the screwdriver (which is quite bulky) and the penknife in my handbag but I decided that the pen knife had to stay, as it had a bottle opener on it. I think it has only been used once but I can think of at least one other occasion when it would have been useful. Oh anybody who thinks that either is going to be any use in a violent attack better think again. They are always bottom of the bag and they need careful attention when openning. If I wanted an offensive weapon my tiny nail scissors are a better weapon than these.

Today I went to Chesterfield for the service. It was quiet as are most congregations over the bank holiday. The magazine was going out and they have a couple of articles about the process of finding a new minister. Aparently East Midlands moderator has already met with the elders and they need to produce a profile and should be getting on with it.

Week ending with a walk with Billy Anne

Anyway having looked at my diary I find I was in Birmingham for a supervision last Monday. I was in a state of panic going as I had forgot to print out the papers. I tend to do this in work. I had two options, one was to print them out in work before I went and the other was to go down there and print them out. I decided that in this case the extra hassle of getting into work did not outweigh the hassle of using an unfamiliar printing system. So I went into work. Just as well I did as both the rooms, I use for computing when I am there, were shut. This only meant therefore I did not get to check my email, rather than have to panic about finding a room and then sussing how the printing works. The other thing I normally do is a bit of a literature search. Checking if there is any papers I should be reading but I have learnt a trick so I can do that at home without going through a complicated set of menus. I took my umbrella and just as I was setting off for the station home it decided to rain. So my umbrella was truly wet. I am also learning that 5:00 p.m. train is very nice thank you. The people who are at a business meeting in Birmingham all get the 4:30 pm train and the people who work in Birmingham all get the 5:30 p.m. train so I get this one in between and there is usually lots of space on it!

At work we have had the results of the Voluntary Severance Scheme. It has not quite got the number of redundancies the University wants but when the fact that older staff were disproportionately represented in the scheme it might do. CICS has been quite heavily hit and what we are loosing is some people with a wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that managers are going to find things don't happen and wonder why, then realise that the staff that did them have gone and no one has been delegated to do them. The good thing to come out of this from my perspective is that two of the staff who are leaving have decided to set up a walking group that goes for walks once a month and asked me whether I'd like to join. It was just as I was starting to get restless over walking again and wanting to be out doing it, so the timing is perfect for me.

Then Billy Anne made one her bi-annual visits to Sheffield. She said would I organise a days walking before she came, then she said would I organise it for the Sunday 16th August. Well St Andrew's Chesterfield was already holding a walk on that day, so I saw no reason to organise a second. So at 11:30 ish we headed out to Chesterfield to meet up with others on the walk. I made a mistake of thinking that because the roundabout which we turn off from the A68 was a messy last week, it would not be this week (the work on the new Tescos store is going very rapidly, which was the cause of the problem, and I just was over optimistic). The queues were worse, stretching all but twenty yards to the next roundabout. If it had been twenty yards longer we would have taken an alternative route. So we had a long wait and were later than planned at getting there.

We went the scenic route after us following Alec out of the carpark and me then realising he was probably heading home. So back to my map reading as the SatNav was failing to give me Clumber Park (arrgh). We got there, via Coal Aston which is definitely not on the route and then skirted Worksop. Fortunately I was better at navigating around the grounds and we got to the car park that they were meeting in and joined them for lunch. Then we divided into two groups, one group sat around by the cars and otherwise entertained themselves; the rest went for a walk around the lake. Well almost I don't think we got into Hardwicke village but crossed on a bridge before that. The pace was a gentle amble, the sun shone, there was an ice-cream van half way around and then swans and grebes on the lake. At one stage trying to get pictures of swans I crouched down and my left ankle which was bearing my weight decided it did not like this so plonk me down with undue ceremony. No injury apparent at the time but I woke with a stiff back the next day. John, Tricia and David's son thought it was hilarious which it probably was but only he would tell me. We ran Dorothy and Audrey home so were not dependent on my map reading skill and had a commentary and tour all the way. Including arguments about where the former military training college was and being told to stop on top of a narrow bridge to admire somebody's garden (which was delightful) Pictures of the walk are up on Flickr. .