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

Maybe Summer has finally come

Let me start with church, last one was written just afters Sarah’s leaving service, there was six inches of snow on the ground and yet maybe 200 people turned up to bid her farewell. Now I let the cat out of the bag, that was not her last service. Her actual last service was a week later and was Easter Communion. I was table elder 1, which means I was in Anglican speak master of ceremonies. That is I have to make sure we have everything we need and that everyone knows what they are doing and is happy doing it. Saturday set up was very quick indeed particularly as we were in, in the morning and the polishers were not in until the afternoon. That however did mean that we needed to be early to setup on the Sunday.  For some reason wine decided it was not going to behave. The open bottle of non-alcoholic was off, I then managed to pour an extra tray of it (had to be chucked) and finally the chalice got over filled, and a wine glass got dropped. I was just glad we were as low a tradition as we were. Having to wash the large linen table cloth in cold water and then dispose of water reverentially is beyond the lengths that I am ready to go to. There was of course the formal farewells to Sarah after communion with things being presented.  One incident to recall, St Andrews had decided to give Sarah a bread knife as a reminder of her time in Sheffield. However Sheila who was doing the presentation was not prepared to give it to Sarah unless Sarah gave her something in return so that the knife would not cut through the relationship. Only thing is that Sarah like most ministers in clerical gear did not have anything on her. so I ended up lending her 10p! I then had to send the 10p up to the collection as Sheila started wondering what to do with it!

The Sunday after was quieter, it was low Sunday and Sarah had left the previous week. There was still a good turnout and I was able to get a decent number of people for a greetings video to be sent to Southampton for Sarah’s induction. It was as if only once she had gone that people were ready to do that. There being only one week between that meant I suspect a number of people who would have liked to did not get to make a recording because they were away that week. Organising it was very simple really, there were obvious opening and closing shots and then I tried to arrange things so that things were well mixed up between, so mix of greeting lengths, persons and styles. I also only had to edit one video more than cutting off my prompt at the start, and that was for a double reasons: it was too long and it was too personal. Anyway thanks to NCH Videopad  I was able to combine them that afternoon and send them off to various people I knew were involved in the arranging of the induction.

The following Sunday was the date Sarah was inducted to her new charge at Southampton. It was also the first thesis weekend I got in five weeks so I missed out both on going to Southampton and on the video locally. However as the Video link was to the Jesus Centre just across the road from my flat when I looked out at 3:30 pm the carpark opposite was full! Today I heard that they had around twenty to see. The link was not as good as it could have been.

Today it was quiet, with a small congregation. We will see what the weeks ahead bring. At present our Management Team have lots of enthusiasm, in some ways I am happy for them to have their head as long as they do not expect me at present to do anything really substantial. We will see what the weeks ahead bring.

The next thing I will turn to is work. This has been busy, even more so than usual as I  have been teaching a course on Statistics. I do not usually even claim to teach statistics.I advise but I leave the teaching to others. It also involves me in learning a new statistics package. Now that is something I do do, but this time the package is R. I know on the surface I should get on with it. I do like programmy packages and there is part of me that still hankers for the interface of GLIM. Heck I was so fluent in Glim that I basically did monte-carlo tests in it at one stage. That is so far out on the left hand side that most people just would not think to do it. Then give me Genstat and I will manage to get it to dance actually I can get SPSS to but that is due to familiarity. R as I said should suit me. However the more I investigate the more cautious I am coming. The pressures on Open Source packages have sometimes led to them implementing non- open source options.  Anyway the first session I was just not communicating and was trying to think why. The second session I got a lot further with.

I am also starting to work out how I will work with the chaplaincy at the University. There is a difference between before Sarah and now both in the structure of the chaplaincy and also in how I am appointed. I am not keeping a seat warm for someone else this time. There is no sign that there will be someone else, so it is in part up to me to try and sort out how things happen. Otherwise I have at least one paper where I need to sit down and sort out what happened. Hopefully I will get chance to do that in the second half of this week after I have done the third session of the teaching.

Then there is thesis. I am working at the rate I expected but there is more redrafting than ideally I would like. My supervisor was slightly surprised with the time I quoted between going from draft unproof-read to full proofread  draft but then I gave him what I was basing my estimate on. He then realised that simply because I am so much more used to getting my pieces proof-read thank you James and Ruth, that I may actually have a time advantage. This reminds me that at some stage I have got to look up the details of how the files need presenting for submission. I have quite deliberately also not done much styling within Word, as I know that when I come to do the final submission I will need to style according to the way the University of Birmingham wants it. Now this is where my computer literacy comes in. I am used to applying styles to the whole document and therefore I tend to first write the document and only bother about layout at the end. Anyway I now have a possible names for my examiners. I think I am going to see if I can celebrate my Birthday by submitting on it.