From a Sunny Sunday with a Gentle Breeze

I am going to try to keep this short but I am trying to write something rather than nothing. I did not make writers group almost a fortnight ago but did last week. They are needing to raise a small sum of money to pay for the publication of the latest book and also for the venue for the reading in the Autumn. The suggestions so far tend to be selling things to each other, such as books we have read. Not sure anyone wants second had copies of Jonathan Edwards “The Religious Affections” printed by Banner of Truth. I bought it a while ago but have since upgraded to the proper academic text.

I have moved offices as you will know from my earlier email. It involved a huge amount of chucking out and I know if I had had more time some of the stuff I chucked out could have found another home, but I learnt while at University that while I can be organised and get things packed in advance, mood wise I am lot happier if I do it at the last minute. This confuses people who think I am not ready but after all the moves with the department I know precisely how long it takes me to pack and how long it takes me to unpack. The result was that I filled four cases and two boxes plus had various oddments to move as well. Everything was clearly labelled and everything got across there that I had put to pack. I should have thought I needed a door stop but didn’t, so now I need to get one. The office is south facing, I have had people commenting on the view which rather surprises me as the window Iook out of from my desk looks directly onto a brick wall which is quite badly marked with soot and cabling but otherwise is unremarkable. However from the other window you can look out over the southern part of Sheffield if you stand up. The office has air conditioning I just hope it also provides heat in winter. The major problem with the building is at present there is no real staff space. The common room that was down stairs is going to estates and the only other room that has water in it, apart from the loos, is being used as a temporary class room. I suspect that means I will be at Jessops West even more frequently for coffee than previously.

The weekend I had to get ready the papers for my supervision. The last two weeks have been tough but exhilarating to work at. Writing the description is pretty straightforward and the trick is to put too much detail in, but when it comes to theory I find that I really have to work very hard indeed to write something that is technically good and that it requires a lot of readings as well. Despite the fact that I am have read widely, I find that I am often having to fill in the gaps around where I specifically want to write and find the right theorists for the area. One interesting thing is I have found the work by Richard Jenkins on Social Identity and this pointed me to the work of Fredrik Barth so another theorist around Ethnicity. Anyway my supervisor likes the theory part of this chapter and his view and mine on where the chapter was at were identical. Basically it needs a lot of cutting down, a few extras added and theory worked through. So lots of pretty intense work and I am really glad there is a long weekend next weekend as it will allow me to see the back of it. I have decided that any weather that is not middling for the UK is bad news for the rail network. On the way down my train was ok except it was in front of the train that was supposed to be half an hour early. I could see people getting peeved at this as at Sheffield people were not advised to change trains. However coming back was a totally different story. The train that travels exactly the same route an hour earlier had not left the station. so they were going to join it to the train I was due to get. As the earlier train was a rush hour one this meant both trains were full of tired and grumpy people including me. Fortunately we had a train manager who has a brilliant sense of humour and through it let us know he understood our gruntlement.

Yesterday my parents were over, they came slightly later than usual so we did not go to Waitrose, but instead went straight out to Old Moor. After having a bacon butty and salad at the restaurant we went along the quieter route for a walk. There were not as many people nor as many birds as there were on the other route but it was pleasant and warm day with a slight breeze and we just enjoyed being out in the sunshine. At the bittern hide at the far end of the walk a pair of Reed Bunting flew just in front of us. Dad said “Its just a big sparrow” but they are bigger than an sparrow, the markings are better defined and the head is solidly black with a white collar. So I got out my bird book and checked and it was definitely a Reed Bunting. Mum was then getting cold so we came back and had tea at the cafe, then drove back to Sheffield and parked near St Georges to see if we could see the Peregrins. Dad was deciding that we would not see them but they might be around as a stream of feathers were ascending from the top of the tower. I decided to walk around to see if I could see better and I spotted one of them feeding on a ledge. So I called Dad over and pointed it out. Then Dad spotted a second sitting of top of one of bits of carving which was really easy to see. The result was a very happy father. He is now talking of going to Martin Mere next time I am over. These work well as Mum enjoys being out with people around while my Dad enjoys the bird watching and the paths are level and easy to walk along.

After a Baptism

I am going to try highlights but I am trying to recall what has happened and not finding it that easy. I think this is possibly because things have been dominated quite a bit by thesis writing. The weekend before I rather got distracted. I had a recalled a quote from Lord of the Rings for my thesis and I needed to trace it. It took longer than I imagined to find it but I ended up spending quite a bit of the Saturday reacquainting myself with Lord of the Rings. I had forgotten what a rollicking good story J.R.R. Tolkien can be and would decide to read a page to check for the quote and then realise I had read twenty pages without stopping. This weekend I am at the changeover point on my second chapter. Upto now I have been writing in the current chapter the easy bits, which are the detailed description of what went on that I see as important. The big challenge with this is the selection of material. There really is far too much stuff there and that is without dealing in detail with the interviews. From the few times I have done in depth analysis on the interviews, as opposed to simple reviewing there has been tons of stuff just below the surface, at least enough for another thesis and I am having to keep myself from being distracted by it. I am however moving into doing the theory for this section. I seem to suffer a loss of confidence as I approach this, yet once I am really writing it I am able to do so. This may be the legacy of having moved so much out of the areas where I know I am capable into an area which I still feel a novice in. I have at least got through the totally terrible first draft (did not even both computerising it) but have started computerising a second draft. This coming week is going to be interesting as I try and redraft that section so that it is ready for me to fit the chapter together next weekend, all but the last section which is relating the stuff talked about back to Reformed Piety.

Meanwhile Fleur sent me a flyer on a meeting at Westminster College on the topic of Reformed Spirituality . Now it is organised by the by the United Reformed Retreat Group So I spent quite a bit of time sorting that out. I know I really should apply to the retreat group but have not got around to doing it yet and I had to pay Westminster up front.

Work wise it has been busy, the senior bosses have this last week caught onto the fact that the move is happening in the immediate future (this weekend and next) and have therefore been driving the secretaries batty with , have you thought of X. The normal reply was “Yes six weeks ago”. On Wednesday evening I was given my bit of it when one of them saw me leaving work. The fact that I had sorted out to my satisfaction most of it two weeks ago and that I knew I had lots to throw out but apart from that and packing most things were sorted, just had not occurred to him. The fact being that if things weren’t sorted by now I would be feeling very threatened given the way things were set up originally. I am jolly glad that people lower down the department have done the organising.

Last Friday as I returned from doing some shopping after the Broomhall Breakfast I spotted the police helicopter hovering over the church, this made me nervous, not because I thought there was anything going on in the church but there had been a bit of a to-do with a couple of Breakfasters and talk of sorting it out in the car-park afterwards. Any I went back to the church then walked with Mary home while Sarah I presume deliberately went the other direction. The helicopter left as we set off and there was no trouble.

I don’t think I would recall this but that evening Ship of Fools learnt of the death of Genevieve, now Ship of Fools knows it can mourn a death, and Genevieve was a shipmate who I respected hugely although with little contact. She seemed wise and intelligent. However I am realising that the circumstances of her death (she was shot in church in USA by someone the church had been helping) in close proximity to the incident in the morning just unsettled me.

Otherwise another paper has been published in work and I think another three have or are about to be submitted. I have been busy filling in forms and such. Otherwise I have been dealing with doctoral students in landscape or such with a few foreign language students thrown in for interest. There is more than enough to do.

Today was the baptism of Theo Wheat and also of Annual Church Meeting. The baptism went well and the crowd that came for the Baptism filled the church. The comments afterwards were appreciative and St Andrews members are a disciplined lot who got back to church meeting on time despite the chocolate rich tea biscuits. Sarah is impressive in her management of church meeting and managed to get through the whole ACM procedure and introduce the Church Life Review in under an hour! This is in marked contrast with the meetings I recall as a teenager which could take up a full afternoon as each committee gave their report verbally. The big problem was that as it was a small church everyone went to everything so we really did not need a report on it.

On a wet Sunday Afternoon

A fortnight to report as I did not get around to it last week so I will try and do events based rather than a day by day account.

However the week before last was pretty mundane, the only problem was that work decided that it wanted me in early three days out of four. Therefore I was struggling to get my thesis writing done in a morning. I managed it before work on the Monday but Tuesday’s meeting was even earlier and I didn’t. I was hoping to get it done at night but was just too tired.The final one was on thursday and once again I managed it before work. It seems easier to move things around so I do it in a morning than to try and fit it in on the evening. However apart from these early starts the whole week was not overly busy. This was such a surprise to my brain it started having bright ideas. Whether any of these are any good will have to be seen but I have let other people know.  I also recorded a test for the NVivo course.

The other two notable things that happened that week are that my writers group started up again and I am glad to be back, even if I am tired in work on a Tuesday after attending on a Monday. It finishes as 9:30 which should mean I get to bed by 10:30 but it is anything up to midnight before I manage it. The other is Elle has started attending Broomhall Breakfast. She is one of Margo’s students and is looking at eating patterns with people at the Breakfast and from the Breakfasts point of view looking at its contribution to their diet. There are perhaps three groups. There are a group of people who are part of normal society if pretty marginal to it. Some are employed, quite a few are self employed, or work combining if you prefer or vulnerably employed. Then there are the drinkers, I suspect most of them are housed, they get by through camaraderie and sharing money for next drink. These are not employed. My impression at the moment is few of them are on anything stronger than drink.. Finally there are chaotics, who drop in, sometimes for several weeks but for various reasons attendance regularly is unlikely. These may or may not be housed.

The weekend was a writing one. That meant most of the time indoors but Stephen  from the Breakfast has an exhibition on at the Access Space He claims he never could do representative art but once he started working with geometric designs he has gone from strength to strength. If you have the chance just pop in and see.

The big problem over the weekend is my right hand started hurting from the use of the mouse. On Monday I went into work and it was so painful I was almost yelling out loud at time. It presented as a repetitive use injury, so I looked at the options and in the end decided to get a Bamboo Pen and Touch. I was not happy with the idea of using just a pen as that seemed to involve holding the hand in quite a cramped position and while I am happy to do that for writing, I am not sure I wanted to quite work a mouse like that. I was pretty sure due to where the pain was that most ergonomic mice which seem to be designed to take the strain off the wrist and I was not too sure about tracker balls. Well I am getting used to it. It is more different to work than I expected. Although they have programmed it to do the same sort of things a normal mouse does and more, they have also programmed it to do them in several ways. As I am finding this is essential as tasks that with a normal mouse seem the same, feel very different with a touch pad. However I was developing skill and the big thing was that my hand was not hurting any more. I am still debating whether I buy a second, at present my paln is to carry it between home and work.

Tuesday I was off to Birmingham for another supervision.The weather was dry and I even managed to sit outside in the sunshine after my supervision. The supervision was short but sweet, in that my supervisor assessment was at the top of my range  of where I was at. That meant a chapter could be put to one side while I got on with writing the next. More detail of where it is at can be found on my thesis blog. My supervisor asked me how the trains were and when I said fine he looked surprised. It turned out he had been using local trains that morning and they had been properly topsy turvy; whereas with my train coming at least from Newcastle if not Edinburgh and going onto Reading it had been little affected. The other thing was with the train to the University I just get the first available rather than worry about timetables as they are at most fifteen minutes apart.

I have finally got moving dates. The problem has been that I am not moving to Burnswick but to the Computer Centre. That meant I did not know whether the Brunswick move applied to me, or whether I was going to be timetabled as a separate move to happen between the two Brunswick move weekends. I also now know which office I am in. The result of the change around is I am going into my immediate bosses office unless something happens to change it, then it is the office next door. The other big advantage is for the first time since I started the job I will have a south facing room. I hope that that makes up for the closeness of the buildings opposite. I have asked for a big book case and three office chairs. It just suits my style of working to let a guest sit on an office chair rather than a table chair. Table chairs are lower than desk chairs.

Wednesday it started raining and although there were times on Friday and Saturday when you could get around without getting soaked, the threat of rain has been ever present. I was relatively unaffected until Friday morning, then after Broomhall Breakfast I came home to find that locally we were having another series of powercuts. However after an hour or so they cleared and I settled down to get on with things. Unfortunately that did not last. Just before 5:30 pm the power failed again. So I sat down and started reading. As it got darker I lit some candles and moved my reading position to the window. At 9:00 p.m.m I decided that I may as well go to bed, but just as I did the lights flickered very quickly on and off several times. The longest the power was on I had just got around to resetting all the clocks and was doing the last one and it went off again. The annoying thing was that everytime it went off smoke alarms from several flats would also go off. They would ring for a round half an hour. There was no point going to bed until they stopped ringing. Eventually got to bed, woke again at 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. when the lights flickered on several times briefly. However there was no power when I got up. I used my dongle and checked the internet and found it was not expected on to 11:30 a.m., so I replanned my day and went to Costas for an early coffee and then a leisurely shop around town. Got back around 12:30 but the power was still not on, was just checking to see how long it would be when it suddenly came back on. That was good news as the estimated time on the webpage was 7:00 p.m. Northern Grid also put a note through my door saying I was due a refund due to the power cut. We have had an awful lot of power cuts recently and I suspect the blue huts opposite on Broomspring Close have something to do with trying to fix it. This power cut seems to have done less damage than the one a month ago.

After a tough week

Well Monday on the whole was a good sort of day, work wise I think I was reasonably paced and managed to get through a fair bit of stuff. Also my writers group had a social at the The Three Tuns  which is apparently haunted not that any of the writers group reported anything odd, but it may go some way to explain the small number of drinkers in the evening. Margaret one of the group who is great at doing Gothic style stories would have had a field day with that. It was in the evening a bit away from most of the social life spots in Sheffield at night, not that any of them seemed to be active. It met the requirements of atmosphere without loud music but the wine was not up to much. However it was a good evening.

Tuesday the first of the disaster came to light. I had messed up I got to giving the course I was due to and then realised that I was due to give another on Thursday which I had managed to loose from my diary. Normally in these situations I would move everything else around, but Thursday I had my supervision in Birmingham booked, the only thing in a week that happens regularly that trumps giving a course. Drat, drat, drat. So it had to be cancelled. I feel slightly better in that we have managed to replace it with two courses in a smaller room, which means that it involves more effort on my part. It also looks good for people who are having to rebook in that they now have two dates to choose from. So more choice this way but I dislike doing it. I also made the mistake of deciding to be nice to students and let the work on spare machines expecting about a dozen out of the sixteen names to turn up, fifteen turned up and it meant the class was crammed and the students were noisy. Going down to Waitrose on the evening I found out Neil had been denied his flat because he would not give up the dog he rescued eight months ago. If he had had the dog for over two years it would have been fine. That dog is better looked after than Neil is.

Wednesday  I went down with a cold, I find that if I hit a cold quick and hard it seems to become much less trouble in its symptoms. So I took the day off, spent extra time resting, vitamin C with zinc and echinacea and also had eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils in the atmosphere. The result was that the cold was largely asymptomatic by Thursday but with not being in work I got further behind than I was.

Thursday was a supervision day, the main symptom as far as the cold was concerned was that I had lost my appetite, however I was in a strange mood, I can’t quite put my finger on it, if anything I was functioning a bit higher level than usual, not spectacular but I seemed to be able to judge times better, I was not panicking about so much and I seemed to know what I wanted to do and just able to do that. The supervision went well on the whole, I have a lot of work to do in the next six weeks and partly it is writing another piece for my methodology that outlines why I chose that approach. I also need to go through and deal with how the discipline of working in my methodology differs from what would be done if I considered another methodology in particular if I had considered mixed methods, empirical research. I actually did consider it, way back, long long ago, but the more I explored qualitative methods the more I considered that the discursive ethnography was going to be more appropriate. Basically the topic was not ready for empirical approach yet. I am involved in empirical methods through work it is just I could not find the cohesive understanding that I think is necessary to use that approach.

Friday, well I made it to breakfast, which had around 35 people there. Apparently the Lord Mayor had had breakfast at the Archer Project either this week or the week before and it was thought that might explain the drop in numbers. It is odd how we seem to have high numbers when the Archer project is closed or having difficulties and low numbers when they have something special on and yet our regulars never seem to change dramatically. Sometimes one will disappear for a few weeks, and sometimes we loose one through illness or other circumstance but they seem to come pretty reliably. I went home and did some writing before going into work so only taking about half the morning of my working at home day, I realised I had quite a bit to do in work. So I went in. At 2pm I went to meet someone to talk about a project that was on the go and came back at 3pm to find that the top management of the department had put out a list of where people are going to be in the new offices. The moving to offices is moving us out of rented buildings and into University owned buildings. Up until fairly recently it was assumed by all that I would be going into a single room, but the exec decided nobody but themselves would be in single rooms. They were warned that they had to see me before they announced this. They did not. Now as far as single rooms go, I have never demanded one personally, others have said it was necessary for me. So I am not going to be dogmatic about it although a single office is really the only sensible way to do my job. However they did not check I was happy with the people they put me with. I am not, one of them has crossed personal boundaries with me, and while I do not mind working with him as a colleague he is fine, I do NOT want to be in a room on my own with him. It is a three person office and I can’t see how with it being that number such times can be avoided. My reaction is so strong that I do not feel able to cooperate with the current proposal.

Fortunately I had meal out with the Dicksons on the evening. It was really a big deal being with people who I knew I could be less than fine with and they would understand. It is funny the upset has left me feeling physically cold a lot of time and wanting to be with people but at the same time knowing I cannot really cope people who want me to respond to them. There is the need for space that is supportive.

Saturday, was a sort out day, I had to spend sometime in the morning. Unfortunately someone had sent me a letter with the wrong postage on and I forgot to take it to the sorting office. I might see if I can sort it at some other way during the week. I also put together a document that stated what my preferences were with respect to room and sent that to my boss and her superior. Then I went into town and managed to find a very thin brown scarf that although very wide fills in round my neck nicely and Blacks had an ALS beanie hat going for £5 (previously £15). I happen to find most ALS clothing very comfortable to wear although they tend to be very casual. I am not sure why they are so comfortable, initially I thought natural fibres but since then I have had stuff from them that is definitely man-made fibre. When I got home I did the writing up for the week on my thesis. The whole writing process this week has felt like moving through thick mud.

Today I went to St Andrews. The congregation was I think sparser than usual but on the whole seem much as always. I ended up doing the final lock up because Jean and Sarah both had their hands full with the stuff that they were taking home. The stacking of chairs in the cupboard is problematic. Chairs should only be stacked six high, BUT the cupboard is such a size that unless the stacks are put in exactly right then you can not get all the chairs in if only stacked in sixes. I know I have unpacked and packed that cupboard several times in order to get chairs in correctly. If I had not known that they did fit I would have given up!

Office move

Lets see, Monday saw me off to Birmingham for a supervision. I persuaded myself that I had booked the 10:30 train when in fact I had booked the 11:00 one. Also the ticket machine decided to not release my ticket, even though I am pretty sure I put in the right number. It said that the ticket had already been collected which is what worried me, so I went to the ticket office and they issued the ticket without problems. So I ended up taking the wrong seat because I was on the wrong train. I had plenty of time and there was plenty of space for me to work on doing searches for my PhD. I came across the idea of Bio-ecological systems. Now it is not directly applicable, in the sense I do not expect to find something that is worked out for child development can just be taken over by congregations but the idea of layers of systems that interact is something that I seem to be working towards for my PhD. The question is can I produce a layered model where the interactive boundaries are so clear. I somehow doubt it but it is worth a go. Also the layers are not simply layered, each one getting larger but sometimes they are rather overlapping. Any congregation places itself both with respect to the profane society and the sacred society. I wondered if secular was a better word than profane but decided probably for discursive reasons (i.e. the way the discourse is framed in ethnography) that profane is probably the more correct. Then went to see my supervisor. His comments on my essay were useful and I need to sit down and do the re-write pretty soon. Maybe next Saturday. He also suggested a different way of transcribing. However I was pretty whacked by the time I got in.

Tuesday, the business of the last few days caught up with me and I ended up with a migraine. So a quiet day and I did not make Bible study in the evening. However this was fortunate as although work had said they were moving me the day before, they only did it on Tuesday.

Wednesday, I went into work to find the mess the porters had left. They had been asked to remove a bookcase-cum-cupboard and had not done so. The net effect was that with the three bookcases I was bringing they had not managed to get everything into the room. So I set about organising the room as well as I could. The first thing was to move one of my bookcases outside the room and then remove a bookshelf that had been put up by Cliff. The workmanship showed that it definitely was not a workman employed by the University. To start with all the wood looked as if it was recycled; secondly all I needed to do was to remove three screws. Luckily I carry a screw driver with me although I almost came home for a better one. However I did have to get one big box of books up and two crates of files, and that up two flights of stairs. I refused to move the bookcase-cabinet down, it simply was too large. I was shattered by the time I got home and went straight to bed.

Thursday I actually got some work done. That is once I had got through the morning, when the porter came and too the cabinet part of the bookcase-cabinet away. I realised I could re-cycle the bookcase part by putting it on top of one of my lower bookcases instead of on-top of the cabinet. This means I have added at least another bookcase worth of book/folder space. I am however going to have to make difficult decisions in the near future. Some are straight forward, like folders where I have one piece of paper from five years ago, need just putting out. Others are more difficult. I have the last set of printed manuals for two lots of software, all manuals for both are now on DVD or web. I am reluctant to throw out the manuals simply because they are the last on paper but given that it is several versions (three for one and seven for the other) since they were issued their relevancy is getting less and less.  Then there are the journals of the Royal Statistical Society. While I am at the University I have access online if I need it, but if I move on, do I want to keep these? Hmm. Anyway managed to sit down and tackle the latest oviduct study for the group from the Jessop Wing. I discovered in the evening that my paper for the Society for the Study of Liturgy conference in September has been accepted.

Friday was another full day. I got up early so as to make breakfast in case Janet Brown was in to see me. She has been the last two weeks but I was really suspecting her next week. Then it was also departmental meeting. The elephant in the room is funding. We all know cuts are coming we just don't know how big or how the management is proposing to tackle them. However this was not announced on Friday, rather we had a fluffy meeting with awarding ABBAs to staff who had contributed significantly to the department. I am not sure how much one was a sop with the telephone operators getting one prize, but they were still being moved out of a private office in the computer centre. The other to the departmental secretary was richly deserved. She was left in September in charge of a team where the senior half had just left including her manager. She stepped up to the challenge and the department has not decayed into chaos. During the year we have had to recruit a number of more junior staff just to cover some of the roles. Somebody is going to have to inform her boss that the assumption for meetings is someone already present will take minutes not that the secretarial staff will provide a minute taker. That afternoon I reviewed a qualitative paper and then wrote up the week. I have another paper to work on next week, but it looks as if it is  being accepted for publication. Then on the evening I went out with Stuart to Nirmals. When I had mentioned Nirmals earlier he said he'd never been, and as it is an experience, I felt that as he had lived local to it for about a decade it was time he went. Mrs Nirmal runs the restaurant, and she is very definitely in charge. Stuart asked me to recommend for him what he should have off the menu, I said that there was not much point as Mrs Nirmal will inform us of what we should have. I am quite happy to go with Mrs Niirmals suggestions as usually they are brilliant. Friday night was no exception to this. For instance she suggested one rice and one bread. The rice was good, but the bread was peshwari naan and another home made bread that had spinach in it that she had made herself.  She also imports mangos from Mumbai in season, which it is at present. If you think you have had good mangos in the UK, then you should try some from Mrs Nirmal, they are in a class of their own.

Saturday my parents came over. It turned into a shopping day. The morning we went around Waitrose, mainly because I had not find time and energy to shop earlier in the week so was out of everything including coffee. Actually my parents then bought plums and decaff coffee beans. We also bought lunch although I forgot the carb so had to pull rice from the freezer. Then we went into town to shop, to buy wool so that Mum could knit a jumper for herself. The specifications were quite precise, we had to get a not to simple, not to complex pattern, in a fairly thick wool. However before we did that we had to go through the process of looking at what else there was, so mum would be sure this is what she wanted to do. We were also supposed to shop for trousers but Mum decided she did not need any new ones. On the other hand dad wanted a new battery for his pedometer, so I had to find the battery sort, then take him to Maplin (I got him to get two so when one runs out, we just put in the next, and then buy a new battery), I also then had to set it up. By this time I think we were all getting tired so we went back to my flat had a cup of tea and then the parents headed for home and I went to bed.

This morning I was over to Herringthorpe for the all age parade service. It was also the last one on the theme of Fruits of the spirit. In many ways it was a festival service with all the stops being pulled out. They actually seem to be developing a descent worship band. They now have a cellist, keyboard player, two guitars and somebody playing a simple drum. They also have two teenage girls with very good voices. Then they had drama and the all age worship team have some people who are very good at that (I think four or five to date, and I am not including the minister). So it all comes together very well indeed.  They have a depth of worship leadership skills that many congregations would envy. On the other hand I suspect that there is a group of people who stay away on these Sundays because they do not like the style of worship. This seems a big shame and against the spirit of congregational worship. The line is that you don't pick and choose, but come for the times you do enjoy worship and also for the times when it is not your style. Just like when you are with your family you don't expect everything to suit the children or everything to suit the grandparents but the fact is both are around for the bits that the other enjoy. All right so I am exceptional in that I have yet to find a form of worship I could not get anything from including what for me is the most challenging and that is worship dominated by loud music. I care not whether the music is on the organ or from a rock band. When I participate in that style, just sit further back in the congregation. The band at Herringthorpe today were all unmiked so their volume was less that Douglas Jones going full blast. Oh the last hymn was "You shall go out with Joy". They sang it through twice, standard URC style but unusual for Herringthorpe which seems to have a once only rule. Then they said the grace and it was obvious to me that the band were going to play that again, only it wasn't to the band or the congregation, but they eventually got organised too but the projectionist had to hunt for the words. Even so it was only played through twice again. The thing is that traditionally that song is repeated, going faster and faster, until either the band or the congregation give up.

This week may be quieter,  however have bible study on Tuesday and a meeting connected with Herringthorpe and tFr on Thursday afternoon, please pray for wisdom as I am not particularly happy in this role, but I am realising that Sue who is heading the Needs Assessment Group needs supporting. I just wish that there was somebody in the congregation who was more au fait with community work than there appears to be, who could support her. Next weekend should be quieter but I will need to do some shopping (I need new smart sandals).

Life around packing up offices

Monday was the date of my annual review for work. I was not expecting major plaudits but there was an acknowledgement that I was doing fine at present. Actually my major grump that I can start saying things must be done weeks in advance and NO ONE listens until its too late and we annoy people by changing things when they are expecting continuity went home. The fact is when we update software we need to do it earlier than when we first install software (or rather we need to do it in a test environment earlier) so that we can tell staff what version will be running the next year before they go on holiday.  So next year I have to work at getting people to do things. Something I am oddly reluctant to do at work, when it comes to PhD I am ready and willing. So I am going to have to look at courses on that sort of theme. I suppose I better hope for a breakthrough like last years when I realised why I was doing something, what was reasonable to suspect me to do and so concentrated on getting myself focused on a restricted number of tasks each day rather than trying to tackle everything. Actually having short lists is great because they give you time to play but you keep on top of things and I can manage a day at a time. In the evening I went to writers group. It was good to be back, although it turns out that Jan, one of the group has what sounds like quite a serious form of cancer.

Tuesday was a busy day with me doing an analysis for Jessops hospital and then talking through it, also I got the new slow cooker I had ordered. I finally decided over the weekend that the present one was:

1. broken- the setting button had come off and no longer allowed me to change the settings
2. I needed a bigger one, when I started I thought I would cook perhaps double meals for myself and put one in the fridge. In actual fact I cook about four meals and put three in the freezer. The old one was not quite big enough for meals for four
3. Had a long difficult clean after over filling it the last time due to number 2

so I ordered a new one. Still to use it but it is about double the size and I am planning to stick with cooking four meals, two reasons: firstly that is what the recipes normally work with, secondly my freezer isn't big enough to take any more. Oh I also arranged to seem my supervisor next Monday on the grounds that although I was moving next week it was unlikely to be Monday.

Wednesday I found out that I was moving on Monday. I have actually twice moved offices when I was away. What I do is pack everything up, label it all, then porters move it across and I unpack afterwards. It means I do not waste a day, nor do I get in the porters/van boys way. So I spent Thursday and Friday packing when in work.  I have labelled everything, I think in the end they will decide I have been neurotic about it, but I wanted to make things as simple as I could. Every last thing has been packed. i can lift every single box although a lot I would not want to walk far with them. Books went into smaller boxes although ring files went into crates. I am going to have to weed out the defunct files once I am in the new office as there are quite a few where I have been waiting for over five years for someone to come back with a PhD questionnaire that they carried out. They are not going to now. The new office is a single office again, but this is short term as the department is  moving big scale oin 6 to 18 months, to the Brunswick Street building (former nurses home). This will mean the pulling out of a lot of staff from a lot of dispersed places.

Friday Evening I went to the Dicksons for supper. It was good to spend time with them again. Amongst topics James brought up was that he had a scan of a photograph of Lorna Trevorrow, but the original photo graph was damaged, could I do anything about it. I was dubious, I can do repairs of some things but I was scared that there might be a complex background or a lot of colour detail, bot of which makes it very hard indeed to manually do repairs. Photoshop CS5 I believe does them automatically but that is way beyond my budget and so I was using GIMP, which means that I have to have to do a lot more of the work myself. However the picture turned out to be a studio portrait of about fifty years ago in black and white. This meant none of my worries were founded. So I said that James could send them to me and I would have a go.

Saturday was an easy day, I really had very little planned for it. I needed to shop in town but wrote a list and largely stuck to it, although I still haven't got the hook. I also went to bed on the afternoon and then wrote up two diary entries for my PhD. Stuart came around to return my church keys. WE spent a time chatting together before he went off to watch the world cup match so that he was up to speed the next day at work.

Today I went to Herringthorpe and spent some time talking to the daughter of one of the regulars. Her mother rebinds the hymn books and such. Actually the rebinding is getting a bit much for her and were I joining the church I would be volunteering to help. Music is a hot topic at Herringthorpe. I saw a music rehearsal for next Sunday's parade service going on at the same time as people were complaining about the use of the electronic keyboard. There is some thinking to be done over this tension as this has a far wider range of hymns than any other congregation I have known. I am guessing that the music is actually a substitute item for the real issue but what is the real issue?

Holidaying followed by a busy week

Lets me assure you it has not been laziness that has kept me from
writing for the last couple of Sundays. The first one was a blazing
hot day and I with Cait and Jenny were scrambling up and down cliffs
trying to find St Medan's cave. We did not find it and there is no
real sign of the path. The next stage I suspect is to try and find it
from the sea but that will be a few years into the future. Last week it was simply writing for supervision that kept me from writing here.

So lets me start with describing my holiday. I hired a Corsa, a far better size of car than the car at Christmas. It actually took a huge amount of stuff, although Jenny complained that she was short of space in the back of the car. Given that when I was her age my parents owned a Renault, I did not have much sympathy, plus its purpose was to get me around. One snag with the car is that someone (I suspect a previous hirer, had polished the windscreen with car wax, Tony did a marvellous job of getting it clean after I drove through a flock of suicidal flies just outside Manchester, the wipers would not touch the mess). Actually I think the modern Corsa has replaced the Astra as my favourite car to drive, despite having reverse in the wrong place. The decrease in size makes it more moveable and therefore I feel more in control. It has good viewing as well.

Wigtown Monastory site
Originally uploaded by jengie@btinternet.com

Morag seems to be doing well, and thoroughly enjoying her work as a
walk organiser (I think it is one of three jobs she holds down but I
heard little of the other two). Mostly she worked in the morning and
then came out with me on the afternoon. Sometimes we did bits of
things that helped her as a walk organiser on the afternoon but I bet
she did not count these into her working hours.

On the afternoon we would meet up somewhere, normally a coffee shop and then go and explore somewhere. At the start we were travelling further afield than
we normally do, going for walks in the area of Stranraer and even
spending one day over on the Machars going as far as Whithorn, but as
the week wore on we settled back to doing very local things. A couple
of decent walks from Chapel Rossan bay, one with Dora their dog and
the rest of the family and one on our own. I think we visited
everywhere we normally do except Kirkmadrine and we were in Logan
Gardens only for coffee (two days running).

The weather was glorious, nine dry days and two mild showers on the 10th. The down side to being in Scotland when the first good weather of the year occurs is that
that is when the farmers make their first cut of silage. Now I suspect
from my point of view the problem is not the fact that they are
cutting silage but it is the first cut and that is known to release
all sorts of things into the air, more so than second or third. Well I
was on hayfever treatment for about three days then the silage was
mainly in and I did not need the treatment. On the Saturday we went to
Port Logan and had a go at geocaching. We failed I think because we
were climbing over the rocks too much and not enough looking for loose
rocks near the path. The girls are growing up but not yet at the stage
where their mum and I are too boring to be seen with. No doubt it will
come. Although Dora the dog seems to think that the pack is complete
if I am there and she has to herd me in. She is a bearded collie but
shows most signs of having gun dog instincts, only she does not wait
for the bird to be shot before fetching and so far they have all
escaped to sea. However if she ever turns up at Sheffield having run
away I will know why. This set on Flickr contains most of them, there
are some duplicate pictures I have not bothered putting up but
otherwise that is most of what I took.


Since then I have had a busy week. Al; right so Tuesday was over
written with a migraine, except I managed to get to a meeting with Sue
from Herringthorpe who is chair of the Needs Assessment Group(NAG).
Made too important decisions, firstly that neighbourhood meant
immediate area of the church not including a more deprived area about
a mile away as yet. The reason was two fold. Firstly the realisation
that if the church did take on that area, they would have to do
something based in that area they would have to do something that
either meant deliberately going into the area or they would have to
bring people to the church, plus there is a cultural difference
between church members and people in this area. None of this would
matter if they were enthusiastic about community work, but as yet I
have no sense of real enthusiasm and I do not want them to overreach
themselves by taking on a challenge they are not up for. The other
thing was to use "loneliness" as a theme for something the
congregation may know how to tackle. Hmm not sure I should be doing
this but if this project is to get off the ground and church meetings
decision is that it should then decisions like this need to be taken.

Wednesday I was back in work and life did not stop while I was on
holiday. I found someone wanted to see me, and several other bits of
work needed doing. However one thing is that I am moving offices again
and expect to move again in six to eighteen months time. This time it
is back to 289 Glossop Road, top floor, quiet with quite a bit of
space (it used to be a 2 person office). Actually if I am honest the
move is just in time, as I am finding the main office of the computer
centre more and more distracting as I try to work at present. I
presume due to getting better but I don't like moves. I was offered
two other spaces but those would have been worse than my current
space.

Friday I started putting up a shelf over my bed (when I told Dad
earlier he automatically heard bookshelf). The reason being that while
I was away I found myself quite naturally saying evening prayer if the
books were on a bedside table by my bed. The nearest I can get for a
bedside table is a shelf, so I have now put up a shelf. It is
horizontal (near perfectly, i.e. I cannot tell the difference with a
spirit level). That said the first hole I drilled was a failure and
had to be filled in again and the rawplugs that came with the
attachments were useless. I ended up using some I bought and they
worked perfectly. The final hole I drilled worked fine. I learnt a lot
about drilling into walls and breeze blocks in doing it. Also over the
weekend got the papers ready for the next supervision.

Saturday ended up shopping at the same time as James and Jean, each
time we went out separate ways in the supermarket we ended up meeting
up again. If you want to know why I was wondering around in such an
odd manner I was looking for a hook to hang something from. Most
people use them for tea towels, I wanted it for a light cross as I did
not fancy banging in a nail just below my newly hung shelf. A thing
that Safeways used to have in, but I could not find anywhere in
Waitrose. Hence madly wandering up random aisles with a trolley load
of shopping. I will have to try Maplin next. I also sent out my
supervision papers to my supervisors.

Today due to time of the month I decided to skip morning worship and
only go to evening worship. I am going to have to debate with myself
whether that is a good idea. Not because I found them manipulative or
high powered charismatic, anything but. For those that remember
Parrswood Evening services during August, that is what the strongly
reminded me of. For those who wondered why I was nervous of
Herringthorpe, please understand this, it was not finding something
different, but finding myself at home that scared me, and that is what
I did tonight, liturgically I was at home, the people might be
acquaintances but the style, the manner and the content were familiar.
The familiarity of that service was unnerving, the problem is that
every time I find 'a home' in many senses then I have to move on from
it. Moving on is difficult, the more I do it, the less I like doing
it. I do not want to be drawn into the feeling of home, just to have
to leave it, and with this being a study placement I know now I must
move on in just over a years time. I learnt that my supervisor was
busy on Thursday (well all next week) and that we should really
rearrange. The thing is that if I had known it was for the week after
next I would have timetabled myself differently i.e. had this weekend
as a writing weekend and enjoyed the bank holiday.

Also before I forget I have started a Twitter account, no I am not
asking you to subscribe, it is pretty inane, being comments mainly
about what I am doing. However if at any time you want to check how I
am because you are concerned then have a look at it. It can be seen by
any of the following methods:
1) Look at my chattering blog and it is in a box on the left hand side
2)On my webpage http://www.jengiejon.info
3)On my Facebook wall you will need to be a friend of mine on
Facebook to see it but if you have a facebook account and want to be
just let me know.
4)Or if you have a twitter account follow jengiejon on Twitter.
So lots of ways. The reason for using twitter is it allows me to put
one message in lots of different places and therefore I hope people
who want to know how I am can find at least one of them.