Broken Computers, Birmingham visit and a Community Party

News this week. Firstly my work computer has been sick all week. This clearly does not mean that my home ones are sick. Indeed I have been using an old computer at work, which I feel happy playing around on as it was mine and I know what it is like. I could borrow another computer but then I feel restricted in what I can do, I cannot set it up to suit myself. The latest stage is that it is due to go back into the workshop, this time I have specified what is wrong with it. I just hope they can fix that otherwise it will have to be a new machine as the machine is not safe on the network in its current form and I cannot make it safe. It also will not do the work I want it to. They are on the third attempt to try and fix it.

Otherwise work wise I have been reading through papers on fibre and its ability to prevent colon cancer (well that is the point of interest from our perspective, however some were more interested in Type II diabetes). This are tough studies to be a participant in, if ever there was an argument for paying people to participate these are the studies. Some of the diets are pretty lousy, one was eating so much fruit and veg that even I was thinking no way! Hardly surprising that it only got a study size of ten people. Some however I could see working. For instance one sent people chocolate muffins to eat with their normal diet! I kid you not. The muffins were made with different amount of fibre in and some had very high amounts indeed. However the real problem was that fecal matter had to be collected during the study. I am reminded of Dr Johnson’s comment on a woman preaching: “Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

Then on Wednesday I went to Birmingham for a supervision. The journey out went smoothly with me getting to Sheffield Station early enough to get a coffee before I caught the train. The journey on the whole went well. I am deciding Helen Cameron’s book “Resourcing Mission” is not the book I hoped it was. It is not fish, nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The themes it takes are largely sociological but the analysis of them is a mix of person contextual theology and sociology light. There is not a cohesive theme running from one to the next.  She use a typeology typical of organisational studies but rather than spend time showing how the behaviour is manifest in different institutions by examples she just delineates it, using examples only as introductory pieces. I don’t want to know that churches that are gathered organise money in way XYZ, I probably could say that with more clarity than she, I would be interested in how she argues from such churches behaviour to such conclusions. Finally it claims to be contextual theology, but “Lets do Theology” does this better. If she intends the chapters to be briefing tools then she has barely scratched the surface on what is needed and there is no “go further” section at the back.  Very different to my response to Hybrid Church in the City although I suspect that it would be better titled “Church in the Hybrid City” by Christopher Baker. There is a serious attempt to engage with sociology, followed by  a serious attempt to reflect theologically on these implications. The irony being that normally I find stuff coming from the direction Helen Cameron useful while I steer clear of stuff that comes from where Christopher Baker comes from.

I was in time for my supervision and my supervisor is now happy that what I have written on cafe church is a paper. I am surprised given how popular cafe church is that there is little written about it in the serious books. I now need to do a reading review of what I have read in the last year. I suspect this is two years really and more than just a list of books. I then spent some time on the computer searching for things on older people. One of the interesting papers that came out was that there appeared to be a correlation between people’s involvement in extra curricular activities as a teenager and their involvement in voluntary associations later. This would suggest to me that the government’s policy on teaching citizenship is wrong headed and what we need to be doing is rather than spending class room time on teaching them to be good citizens, rather be encouraging their involvement in extra curricular activity. I suspect particularly activities that they themselves have a role in organising. Its not our teachers who will build the civil society of the future, nor the parents, but the youth leaders. You want to change society for the better become a youth leader and I don’t just mean those with those titles, I mean guiders, scouter, youth team coaches, people who organise youth orchestra and allow youth volunteering in the community. They all add up to being a massive citizenship teaching organisation and all the better at it for giving the children fun while they are doing it..

I also ended up giving another student a quick tutorial on using computers for research. The thing is for a number of books I tend to read them at least partially on line. I ended up reading a paper in a book on Torrance Theology just by searching for it. Alright so the paper was called “Calvin and Cafe Church”. Unfortunately it was not really about cafe church.but all new forms of church (I think that wording is title neutral, what with “emerging” and “liquid” becoming so quickly sort of brand names). It is amazing how someone can not realise how much stuff there is on the computers these days to help a researcher.

Anyway after that we went upstairs to meet up with my supervisor. He decided that as he could get five of his PhD students together for a day he would take us out for a meal in the evening. We were joined by another PhD Student and a research fellow who works with my supervisor. He took us to Deep  , a Carribean Restaurant on the Bristol Road just around the corner from New Street Station. They had a buffet and I just ate what I felt like. I may have got some things wrong. I did not eat akee and salt fish because it looked like cold pasta salad which is not a favourite of mine. However I ate goat stew without any problem. The other thing was I think he was expecting some of us to order wine or beer, but none of us did. The reason we didn’t is I suspect largely due to circumstance. Quite a few of us had long journeys home like myself and others were in the final stages of writing their theses for submission. In other words we had reasons for staying sober. I suspect that the others were all driving. Anyway got safely home afterwards but was very tired so headed almost straight to bed.

Saturday there was a party held by I think the Broomhall Centre (formally known as the Broomspring Centre) for local people in Gell Street Park. As with all Broomhall events it was late in getting going. I was there around 1:30 and there was hardly anyone, Sarah at 2:00 pm found much the same (it started at 12:00 noon) but by closing time (4pm when I went back) the place was absolutely heaving with people and people were not dispersing. From the feel of it I suspect it is the indirect successor of the Broomhall Carnival.  The big things that brought people out were activities for children. There are some photos I took on Facebook which will be accessible to those who are recorded as my friends on Facebook.

Today I went to Herringthorpe for the morning service. It was the moderator Kevin Watson who was leading the main part of the service while Pauline took the communion. Prayers for Pauline and her husband Alex on Friday please as Alex is having major operations for bowel cancer at the Hallamshire. The service was on the love of God and the need to share that love with those around us. It was well prepared and he clearly used images as well as words so please don’t think with my next comment I am criticising him. He centred his image for the love of God on embrace which is not an image I find easy to handle. Normally I suspect it would be water off a ducks back but not this morning, maybe tiredness due to time of the month, maybe Stuart saying he was coming around the previous evening for a chat and not showing (he came around today instead). Maybe just the business of the last while catching up with me but I was at least at one point seriously considering if I would be better off out of the service. I didn’t and I suspect that I was sorted enough for no-one to notice at the end of worship at least no-one commented on the fact.

Long post involving a picnic, various socials and a broken PC

Monday the 12th was writers group social and it was held at the Bath Hotel which is technically my local and I do go in it more often than any other. I would guess between once and twice a year, I also vaguely know the owner. Indeed at one time I was on teh edge of their social group. Something I did not cultivate as it is also the social group of the head of my department. The connection is basically we live on the same street but I have lived here longer! The evening was pretty pleasant until 9:00 pm when the band started up in the other room.  That also seemed to be the key for other people coming into the back room where we were, and between the noise from the band and the other conversations I could not follow what was being said so decided to go home. There was a good turn out as well. I would more than there had been for the last few weeks but then we open it up to former members as well as current ones.

Tuesday it was the last Bible Study at Herringthorpe and Roy led it on Peter and the need for change. He got so strong on leadership being about getting inspiration from the Lord and then acting on it, that even his son Steven had to tackle him on it. Roy is struggling with the committee nature of the URC and I am afraid this is coming out. I suspect he needs both to see revelation happening in a meeting, rare but does happen and also to hear why it is done in that way.  Anyway I am well briefed in committees as listening rather than speaking.

Wednesday was a fairly normal day although we did have a tropical rainstorm in the evening just about the time I wanted to go shopping. It was falling in bucket loads and ever so often the wind would pick it up as it splashed onto the roof opposite and create a white line of spray. It was tropical even in the time it lasted and I waited half an hour, walked down in light drizzle and it was fine by the time I walked back from the shops.

Thursday my computer started giving notice that it was going sick. It decided to download the managed service from the network for some reason. As I don’t have the password it could not. I switched it off and it came back okay but the puzzlement of what happened left me feeling insecure with it.

Friday was my day off and it was a writing weekend. As always with a writing weekend I was tired so did not make Broomhall Breakfast. I did however manage to decide that I really should re-write the essay. That sounds like editing but it was largely not. What I had to do was give an account of Cafe Church and how it is part of mission. Surprisingly there are no books solely on Cafe Church. The problem then is that although it has been part of emerging church, it also was for a time part of alt.worship and I suspect is going mainstream evangelical at least in some of its more commercial forms. So it is not something that one can just by a text on the overarching topic and read the relevant chapter.Well earlier in the month I had done some searching on Amazon and found “The Hybrid Church in the City:Third SpaceThinking” which as cafe church is often described as “third space” and hybridity is obvious, part cafe part church, oh and it was by Christopher Baker, well not Johnny Baker but still the same surname. Well it was but not in the way I was thinking. It’s first section is a serious bit of sociological writing on hybridity mainly based on Homi Bhabha theory. It was a lever which allowed me to create a greater depth to my paper, with analysing Cafe church as a deliberate hybridisation and that this meant that there was a change in the discourses in it. However to get that far I actually had to do some serious reading.

Saturday I picked up the hire car for the weekend. I had ordered it from Hertz as Hertz worked out cheaper for two days than did citycar for the day and I had no time worries. I ordered an Corsa as I enjoyed driving that on holiday but instead got a Seat Ibiza Ecomotive which was quite pleasant to drive and hiring for two days meant that I could do a shop at Waitrose with a car which makes life lots easier.

Sunday I took a break from essay reading and went with Herringthorpe for a picnic at Cannon Hall. It was interesting to go, in that the people who went were predominantly from the younger age range of the church. I know what the weather was threatened. My decision on the morning was either had to cancel or to trust God. On setting off I drove Frieda home. Frieda is one of the older people of the congregation and is getting quite frail.  I suspect that really she should be in sheltered housing, a wardened flat would be ideal, but she has a large pre-war semi-detached house with a large well kept garden. The family who keep an eye on her were going to have to do an extra car journey so I volunteered. She is the sort who wonders why I would see her to the door when she has just told Pauline in front of me how she fell over and knocked herself out on her own front door step. She is generous to a fault herself. However I managed to loose the car keys after letting her in. It turned out to be a mistake on my part when I had accidentally dropped them into my bag when I had tried to put something else in it and they had fallen to the bottom. The picnic at Cannon Hall was much like a cross between childhood picnics there and church picnics of my teenage years. So we sat closer to the carpark than in my childhood but still did not go around the house. I went to check what I recall as where we picnicked and the flat stone bridge is still there but the stepping stones have gone (well misplaced, the route of the ford was still clearly there) and the bank access to the river has become overgrown. It was obvious nobody had picnicked there for a long time. There also was a game of rounders. The team I was on won, not due to me, but due to the fact we had the only lefthander on our side and she could hit a ball. Odd because I am almost sure there was another lefthander young enough to play. There is now a little cafe by the carpark but the ice-cream van still serves good ice-cream or appeared to do so from what I saw others eating.

Having finished the essay on Monday, Tuesday saw me back in work and then onto Bible Study Social in the evening. I think this is an end of term event. I remembered my lactase tablets which meant I could eat fairly freely and not worry over whether I was eating too much milk for my system. This is tricky with buffets for although I can do cold meats and salads without a dressing or none creamy, there is often milk in things you don’t expect, such as sausage rolls. It also meant I could eat a small chocolate muffin without worrying though my main dessert was strawberries and raspberries. Afterwards Pauline decided for entertainment that we would have a beetle drive. Now as far as I know Beetle drive was pretty standard non-conformist culture. It has enough skill in it not to be gambling and some people are very good. Tony Burnham if I recall correctly used to win every time. They had just mastered throwing the die quickly. The quicker you can shake it the more goes you have before the shout of Beetle. Well a lot of them had not played before and of course the table with four people on it won, as the others had six.

Wednesday I spent time with Cliff in the church making minor changes to the sound system. Basically fitting a draw to the cabinet which means things no longer are stuffed on top and likely to fall down the back so perhaps loosening the wires. We took out the minidisc player. The technology is obsolete and nobody after Barry left actually got it to work. Then my computer went on strike properly. I spent the afternoon trying to sort it and gave up just before 5:00 pm.

Thursday was not a good day. My computer was in a huff and the technician who would see it went home sick. Eventually I borrowed a computer off Alison the senior departmental secretary and finance guru, which meant that I could handle Margo’s queries about meta-analysis. I also composed an email explaining the situation to my boss who is away until Monday. It is totally frustrating to know that the machinery you need for your job is

Friday was better, I made breakfast which was quiet. I don’t mean nobody came I mean that people who did come were not as talkative as usual and if anything tended to drift off into sleep.Then I got into work and my PC problems had been passed to Dave a colleague who I have known ever since I started in the department. He got the van boys to collect it and bring me my old computer out. This I have not used for two years and was then five years old. so not a modern machine but one I know that is trustworthy. I am running old software on it as it does not have the spec to run more modern stuff but it works. I am wondering if it is worth trying to turn it into a Linux machine when I am in safer waters. It would mean that it was usuable in such emergencies, indeed I would also be able to run SPSS linux and R on it. If this works then I will keep two machines the older always being a Linux. Also on Friday was the works Barbecue. Work only has two departmental dos in a year. The Christmas Party and the Barbecue, therefore I try to go to both. I wonder why sometimes I go but I still feel I ought. Apart from the music, maybe next year I will bight the bullet and put stuff up for people to use, but I presume people are not going to like it, but with some of what was inflicted on me, I cannot see that a few Christian choruses would be too bad.

Saturday morning I spent largely collating stuff for my next supervision, it was amazing how much I had done and how often I had forgotten to keep a record of what had happened. Maybe I will end up having to include these letters as part of my data as sometimes the only record is in these. Then I went down town. Big mistake, town was heaving from the Tramlines Music Festival and they had a continental market as well. Some of the normally busy shops were quiet because it was that difficult to get to them. I think there only were a couple of other customers in Lush when I went there and there did not seem to be any queues in Waterstones but the food part of Marks was still busy.

Today I did not go to church as I needed space to try and sort out what I wanted to do over the summer for thesis, what holiday I had left and what changes I needed to make to the interview schedule. All trivial jobs in themselves but they were not getting done and with them not getting done meant I was not getting on with other things that needed doing. Since then I have slept and talked to my parents and written this letter.