A warm week in Sheffield

Monday was a relatively quiet day, writers group in the evening. It felt wrong to be coming into a quiet building because no jugglers were meeting. There were three things on the go with the group. One was the actual class, another is the preparation for the observation and the third is preparing the book for publication. I have said I will do the layout. a bit of cheating and some knowledge of Microsoft office should not make it too arduous. Margaret one of the group is just finishing a novel which in my opinion is by far the best writing in the group. Her biggest challenge is to get it sent off to an agent over the summer rather than decide on yet another re-write. I am pretty sure there will be agents willing to take it. In fact I suspect all the group want to buy a copy already and will be really disappointed if it isn't published. We are discovering more and more twist and turns to the story each week and we would love to know how they all fit together.

Tuesday was an NVivo day as there was a query about why a certain files would not open in it. I eventually discovered that it was to do with memory management but my own machine is playing up. I am not quite sure what with at the moment but it managed to corrupt at least one programme while I was sorting it. That is a file went missing for some reason, I suspect the computer tried to overwrite it but did not do it properly.  After work I got my haircut. My hairdresser agreed it had gone wild. Will people with curly hair who think this does not happen to people with straight hair please take note. Then on the evening I went to Herringthorp for Bible Study. Whereas St Andrews Sheffield seems to go for husbands always sitting with wives, Herringthorpe goes for men on one table and women at another. I also am realising my understanding of prophecy is significantly different to what some people at the church would hold. I am not sure that you tell true prophets by the fact their prophecy comes true, or that a person who is a prophet only is so occasionally. It seems to me that while coming true is a criteria it is only useful for short term prophecies, secondly that if I wanted to fool someone creating a short term prophecy that came true is fairly easy. The question that is more important is does this fit with God as we understand God to be. Hmm something to think about there.

Wednesday was a relatively quiet day. At work I went and sat down with the reviews of a papers that had been rejected and tried to work out why. The first thing that was clear was that we were not sending it to the wrong journal. Rather it seems that the problem was that because we were sending it to a journal that is outside the normal range where this research group sends papers, we had not made enough adjustment to house style. Specifically we had not actually read around the literature enough and we had also not been clear enough in our explanation of what was being done. It was very clear that the reviewers were making mistakes due to not understanding what was happening. In the evening I did a Waitrose shop. As a treat I bought a packet of Gingerbons which are delicious ginger flavoured gums. The company obviously knows how tempting they are because they are individually wrapped in wrappers that take some opening. I gave up trying to open them with my bare hands and used scissors instead.

Thursday morning was relatively quiet as far as I can recall, I wrote my findings on the paper to the main author. Then it was off to TFR at Church House in Rotherham. TFR is an organisation funded by the Anglican and Methodist Churches to enable involvement by the Faith sector in regeneration. Herringthorpe found them and managed to persuade them to provide an advisor while it goest through the process of analysing needs in the local community. This started out under the Buildings Group when they were thinking of going for public funding. I suspect that the advisor thought he was dealing with people who were doing this sort of thing for the first time. In actual fact he was dealing with me and Sue Ball who was a health visitor, did her masters at some stage and is now part of the management at the local health authority. So neither of us were exactly beginners. It showed, we came with a research proposal and were able to answer the questions he threw at us. The effect of asking directly about funding for the second part of the project was for Mark to have fourteen possible sources for such funding according to what we decide is necessary. Now we need to take the proposal back to the NAG meeting next Wednesday.

Friday I had a late start, the effect of the previous afternoon was that I was fairly tired and certainly was more than ready to go back to bed after going to the Broomhall Breakfast. I also needed to start putting together the slide show for the NAG meeting and I needed to write up last Sundays worship as I had not found time earlier in the week. Oh and I did type faces for the writers group publication. I have I think put out a mix, Two serif, two san serif and one modern. For those who think modern is going to be something like comic sans, forget it, its a halfway house between serif and san serif. Oh and none of these were fancy fonts.

Saturday I went shopping in the morning, I was up pretty promptly and in Jones Shoe shop before 10:30 a.m. The result of which is that I got a pair of semi smart sandals with low heals. There is very little with low heels this season and I was wondering whether I would have to buy a summer shoe instead. However I found a pair which have the straps interweaving a bit like celtic knotwork designs. They are pretty comfortable and look summery. I also shopped for the stuff for the brainsorming session I am hoping to run for the youth group on Thursday. I am hoping there are not more than ten of them at the group or I am going to have problems with the equipment. Came home and finished off the Presentation for the NAG meeting on Wednesday. One of the issues we have to get the rest of the group to understand is that there is no way Sue and I can do the first part of the research on our own. I am thinking that as it is a group of about 8 people and we want to do about twelve interviews, doing one or two each would be fair. We are giving people three open ended questions to ask. Actually there are two reasons for this which have nothing to do with Sue's or my time: firstly I want people to get a feel for what other people are saying and talking to them is the best way to do that; secondly I want people to build relationships with people outside the church who are involved in working with the community. However I also want them to see what is reasonable and what isn't.

Today I did not go to church. With three evenings at Herringthorpe this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday plus how tired I was last night and I still needed to write up Tuesday's Bible study. It just felt as if I would be better in this morning. I just felt off colour, nothing that a couple of extra hours in bed did not put right. So I got up wrote up Tuesday's bible study and then went and had a shower. It is really good to have a shower in the middle of the day with the warm temperatures that are around. I have since had lunch, created a front cover for the writers group book and written this.

Transcription, Womens Bowling and Pancakes

Lets see, This past week did not get off to a good start with a migraine, which I think was due to my normal bad behaviour on a Saturday over eating (I eat when I feel like it and what I feel like although it is not all fruit and ginger chocolate biscuits) By the way that reminds me I have found something so tempting that it is doing well if it lasts in my store cabinet a day and that is Buderim Naked Ginger which is similar to a strong crystallised ginger (think Humdinger not Waitrose) but does not have the sugar coating. The problem I have with the sugar coating is that it feels uncomfortably rough in my mouth, the same reason as I tend to pass on backed crunchy muesli. Then I went to Fairtrade Breakfast which was cereal, toast and fruit at Herringthorpe, which basically added to my bad behaviour and all my attempts to then getback on track were too late, and not helped by buying a fair trade dark chocolate bar. Actually I should have been suspicious when I ate that bar in one sitting.

Tuesday I was back in business and got on with things. I went to the bible study on forgiveness, which was interesting because it was not nearly as self satisfied, indeed I had the strange feeling that it was a topic which I might know more about than people there. It felt very much as if they had never faced a single big issue to forgive, which certainly for me was the experience that formed my own understanding of the necessity. I forgave then firstly because the bible said I should and secondly because I did not want that to rule my life. I suppose I had some awareness of how this would effect me if I allowed it to, but that is just me being me and I would not claim any merit and I have to watch that the small stuff does not catch me out, just because I once did it for a big one. Actually I wonder if there is a Screwtape style idea there about the way the habit of being unforgiving is built up in the small stuff, not the big stuff. Now I would distinguish forgiveness from reconciliation, which is the final stage after forgiving and repentance but forgiving itself is worthwhile doing.

Wednesday was my day off work, I actually got a fair bit done.  The transcription is coming along slowly but I am managing to sit down regularly to do this this month and as I get more done every time I sit down (i.e. 5 min in the first session,  8 min in the second session, 12 min in the third session and so on) I will get hopefully get through it more quickly. I also got my notes almost up to date from Herringthorpe. I also did a shop at Waitrose and on the evening Stuart came around. I am pretty sure he came around because he wanted to talk to somebody due to having the day off and not therefore having anyone to talk to. I wonder whether I should have sent him onto the Network meeting at St Andrews, oh well at least he bought me ginger biscuits. He is off to see his Mum this week (too much leave again, I think due to the fact that they often give him time in lieu when he does overtime and he never thinks to take it).

Thursday was a quiet day I seem to recall. That is not to say I didn't get things done, just that it was quiet, I think I am finding ways to be more productive at work.  It helps a lot to realise that though I can be organised I am not naturally organised. That means I need to create methods of working that don't build huge structural keep ups into them.  Things like normal to do lists are no good as I need to keep putting things on them and marking off when I have done them but if I do a daily one and bin it at the end of the day, I cope, after all I have  let tomorrow decide for itself. If anything is not done by the end of the day, it just sits on the do sometime board. I also find that keeping notes of ideas stops me from being distracted from what I am doing at the present. So if I get a good idea, I just make a note of it and get on with what I am doing after all then I can come back when I have time and review the idea.

Friday started with the breakfast and I was up in time for that, actually would have been earlier but spent ten minutes hunting for my church keys only to find them already in my coat pocket. Work was quiet allowing me to get on, although I find coming home for lunch makes a huge difference to how tired I am at the end of day. I realised just as I was about to pack up that I  had to prepare for a meeting on Monday, so I did that. Then did the turn around to get to the younger women's Wii bowling night at Herringthorpe. I had made a mistake and thought it started at 7:30 not 8:00 p.m. which meant I had also booked the car for return to early. This is the first church I have known where regular events have different starting times and there isn't a lot of questions asked about those times. So Bible study starts at 7:00 after the church meal and Younger Women's meeting starts at 8:00 pm. One of the interesting things I found was that I can bowl better on a wii than in real life. I also confused everybody by saying I was right handed which I am but then picking up the hand piece and bowling left handed. I am definitely right handed but when learning something new I often use my left as well as my right, I think because my left is better at putting the whole thing together while my right tends to do the correct things but not necessarily in a coordinated way.

Yesterday was a quiet Saturday, however after last week I decided that one thing I would have to be fussy about and that is to make sure that I get something other than toast and fruit. So this week I tried making egg rich pancakes with blueberries. It worked fine but I need something more mushy than blueberries as a filler as they just rolled out. However having done that I ate properly the rest of the day rather than snacking on carbohydrate rich snacks and coffee. Hopefully this will mean less migraines after the weekends but we shall see. Otherwise transcription, shopping in town, and so on.

Today back to Herringthorpe. The car windscreen was covered with ice when I picked it up this morning and I had forgotten my de-icer at home so it was turn on the car heating an weight for the windscreens to clear which they did surprisingly quickly, less than five minutes. Pauline was back and preached on forgiveness. The communion was largely standard, I am begining to find a way of relating while I am there. It helped I think that the congregation was lighter today. I think I actually find the crowded crush hall too noisy and I cannot participate in conversations until later on and most people have left. I am slowly waking up to the fact that Herringthorp like the majority of churches I have been in, actually has people fighting over the music for worship. It is an intriguing one, in that I characterised it as Moody and Sankey vs Graham Kendrick. My father said this afternoon given that choice he'd go with Graham Kendrick. Actually I find I like a lot of the real modern worship songs, they seem less trying to be a rock star than those of our generation.