Review of the year at Christmas

Thanks for those who have been in touch and apologies that the majority of my contact is limited. Hopefully by this time normal service will resume.

When I first set down to write this review,  I had the usual feeling that there is nothing to write but there is plenty to write, but having sat down I realise that this has been a year of happening and it does not look like it will settle down for a while yet. So what was supposed to be the year that things quietened down with me finishing my thesis ended up quite eventful.

My thesis is not finished yet but at last is gelling. I hoped to get it done by Easter but with the best of my pushing I just did not manage it. I wonder now if there was more I could have done but that is wondering. I think I had underestimated the intensity of the final stages of writing. As a result it took over my brain between Easter and early summer as I tried to get it to gel and worked on the suggested changes by my supervisor. I could make the changes, and they did improve it but it did not set. I even got during August to putting it into final form, but I was not happy and indicated so to my supervisor when I sent the copy for him to read through. He agreed, suggested a major redraft and I am working through but it is at last coming together. The point which was probably most indicative was when at last supervision he asked me something and in a sentence I summarised the whole thesis. The change was to move the metaphor far earlier in the thesis and this just allows so much more use to made of it. It really is the core strand around which I build the thesis. I have just added the second important strand and now will need to pull the other strands into their respective places so the argument becomes a rope rather than tangled net.

The reason for aiming for Easter for finish was in part that Sarah Hall the minister at St Andrews was leaving there. She had had perhaps the most successful ministry of any recent minister at St  Andrews and is much missed. The congregation is missing her even more as the situation in Sheffield is in flux, and there is no plan over the long term provision of ministry for the whole city. Some of this is that locally people were waiting on synod which had the power to decide funding. However, synod felt that it was its duty to respond to local desires. In other words each was waiting for the other. As the ideas are very different and not looking towards the old system of pastoral negotiation where a combination of size and mission governed the amount of ministerial oversight you could expect, there are problems. Unfortunately much as I would have liked to be involved with finding my thesis more demanding than I allowed for at exactly the time the congregation was hoping for me to get more involved and ever so often I took on what was supposed to be a small job and then found it had a hidden demand that took three or four times the energy. By the end of June it was obvious that I was not coping and with other commitment the only way to manage church was to take a complete sabbatical.

Then early in July my mother and father went to meet up with friends at Tittesworth Reservoir which is fairly near Macclesfield. It was a warm day and dad had been off colour during the morning but on the afternoon collapsed and an ambulance was called. My mother is getting increasing forgetful with dementia and is no longer allowed to drive. So my sister got a panic phone call and had to go down to Macclesfield to collect Mum. She slept here the first night while I organised myself to get over and take up the care of Mum the next day. We went down that afternoon to visit Dad at Macclesfield and agreed he should go for angiogram at the North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke on Trent. Unfortunately it was found that dad had more wrong with his heart than they thought at Macclesfield and they kept him in at Stoke. This was bad news as with Mum’s dementia it was difficult to get her there. Initially we thought of car but it would mean that both Cathy and I would have to go on every journey, one to drive and one to keep Mum stimulated so she did not switch down, as if she would do that she would forget what the point of the journey was. Adrian, Cathy’s husband suggested train instead. This meant that one of us could take her as we could give her our whole attention on the train. It was still a full day for every single visit. With Dad likely to be in hospital for longer we had to decide on longer term care for Mum. In the end we ended putting her for respite care in a home near my sister. My Dad joined her when he first came out of hospital. They were not happy there and got home as soon as they could and function much as they did before although we are trying to get them to keep a slightly higher level of care than they have.

Work wise I am still in the same job as I have been for over twenty years. It has changed many times. I work far more as research support for various groups. At the present these seem largely to be in Human Nutrition, Linguistics, Landscape and Medical Education. You will notice that I manage to cover three faculties in that. One irony is if you had asked twenty five years ago my parents which daughter would do research into human nutrition, they would have replied without hesitation my sister. Quite a lot of the stuff I am presently involved in falls broadly under the heading of food security. This looks both at the stuff around food poverty here but also at long term sustainability. With linguistics I partly support the users of statistics and I also deal with users who are using NVivo software. NVivo support is much like SPSS support was twenty years ago. Maybe in ten years time people will be using quite happily on their own but at present there is a lot of hand holding and people think of me as more skilled than I actually am.

I finally got a holiday in November. This was booked in the summer when I thought I would submit at the end of October. However with needing to redraft it was clear I would not. Also I had booked a cottage close to where my God family were living. Unfortunately their whole household disintegrated in September so none of them are now living near there. Even with this I decided that I needed a holiday and went. It was superb. I spent a lot of time exploring some of the more lonely birding sites in the area that are good in the autumn and then coming home to a real fire. Of course I had to set the fire up in the morning but I found that doing that gave me something to look forward to each evening.

Cathy, Adrian and their children still seem to be doing fine. Adrian is happy enough provided that he has enough work coming in. He does not like being idle. Sam is in his first year of GCSE and had great difficulty in choosing which subjects to stop as all his teacher thought he would do well at their subject. Hannah is doing well, enjoying dancing and is getting into the top years and starting to think of high school. Cathy was absolute brick during Dad’s illness. She took over all the organising of financial matters which left me able to spend time with Mum without having to worry over finding somewhere to look after her.

Writers group is doing well. We have done a couple of readings this year, one as part of the Broomhill Festival. The person who booked us was surprised at how professional a group we were. Not only was a programme developed but we also had everyone on strict time limits and finished on time. Then there was our annual reading for the Off the Shelf which is getting more and more professional. This year I organised a sound system. I could have connected up some metal boxes and it would have worked as well. That is not to say it did not work, it did but at a psychological level as people largely did read close enough for the microphone to pick them up and people were not confident moving the mic so it was close to

Since the holiday  it has been back to the usual routine and getting the thesis sorted. I have at present three chapter in supervisor draft, I hope to get another two before the end of the Christmas break and maybe start on a third. I am spending Christmas with my parents and we will be going up to Cathy’s for Christmas day.

A long with submitting my thesis next year will also be my parents golden wedding if they both survive. Not quite sure how we will celebrate has still to be suggested.

Reporting on the last couple of months

Dear All

I am final writing another chattering. I am afraid until my thesis is finished they will be intermittent as it will depend on me having some time to spare to write a letter. As you might have gathered, if you follow my thesis blog, I ended with more editing on my thesis than I expected. The thing being that a major restructuring was required. This was not the dire news it could have been, I already had the feeling that the thesis though written just did not cling together. So the whole of October was spent firstly regrouping and reorganising my thesis, then starting to edit the chapters again. I have redrafted two chapters and am on the way with a third. There really is more on my thesis blog.

Otherwise work has been busy. I found myself carrying more and more tasks in work. I have been trying to keep on top on NVivo training that the University of Sheffield asks. I am afraid that I am not finding enough time to do this as I would like. I am not sure I will ever be able to meet the demand and I seem to become an expert by virtue of nobody else being willing to tackle it. I seriously question whether this is the right way to tackle it.

I am also keeping up with the work from Human Nutrition, this year we are hoping to do some research on Food Banks particularly with respect to the fact that the increase has been exponential in the last year. It is to try and discover how food bank provision is seen by the people who use them. The work I have been involved has shown that homeless people have aspirations to a better diet but the need to get the calories in trumps that. However there is also a culture around food and that can lead to provision being, “unhealthy”, in that the easy improvements would be unpopular with users.

There is also work around sustainability. I am also developing a close cooperation with the department of Linguistics, this is slow but sure. Perhaps one of the more unusual applications of statistics although I know there has been people applying these techniques to the authorship of Paul forever! However the number of statisticians that have actually been involved is low and there is a tendency to use sophisticated techniques when people have not understood simpler ones. There is now a seminar running and a group of about four researchers I see regularly. The final group is a number of researchers from Landscape and Architecture.

Many of them are doing quite complex work and often around the same themes. I have had to refer one of the Architecture students to landscape as what she was doing was very similar to Landscape work in approach although in a different area. Her own department tackled similar issues but took a different approach.

At the end of October my writers group had its annual reading as part of Off the Shelf .It was a good evening and the reviews we got from it were good. I think the fact that we had a reading in the summer helped as we were all up to performing. For some reasons, the fact that I supplied a portable sound system meant that people projected their voice better. The sound system was there but many did not use it. I also think we set the standard higher each year. This showed with the amount of effort we put into choosing the pieces to read. We used to accept what people brought but now Neil (our tutor) starts it with giving instructions on what makes a good piece to read and more attention in the rehearsal is given to the suitability of pieces.

On the Sunday before I got away on holiday my loo valve decided to leak water into the cistern. This meant I had to get a plumber out. In the end I found a firm called Aquagas who came out. They not only stopped the leaking that evening, over the next couple of days the plumber came out several times to get the loo working properly. Due to a lot of misadventures he ended up replacing the innards twice (everything decided to go) and in the end given the time and energy he spent on it, the charge was very reasonable. He kept going until he got it right.

The holiday was supposed to be the one for after submission. In some ways there was a real temptation to not go on holiday as I needed to write; however it was increasingly obvious that I was very tired and that I struggling to keep going. In other words even though I had not submitted I needed a break.I went up to stay in a cottage owned by the person who I have B&B with when I was visiting my God-family. My God-family is no longer there and anyway it was obvious from New Year I would near more space to myself. The cottage I booked was the Auld Smiddy. It is a really well equipped cottage. There was a slight problem with the central heating, nothing that I could not handle. The owner went away at the weekend, and I worked out even if it went completely there was no problem. There was an electric shower, kettle, modern wood fire, two electric heater and a paraffin heater. So without it I would be warm and able to wash. The kitchen was better  equipped than my own at home. There was a sun porch that looked over the fields past another cottage and over the sea to the Isle of Mann. During the week apart from crows and blackbirds that were there every day, I saw in the field: a fox, several rabbits, roe deer, sparrow hawks and a flock of redwings.

Port Patrick

Further a field there was pretty good birding, saw barnacle geese, a red kite, an egret, mergansers, pochards and kestrels. These are just the ones I could recall. I actually found that one of the reasons I liked birding was that I liked the reason to be out in the spaces that it took me to which were wilder than you would think of if you were just touring the area. The places I found were Crook of Baldoon , Wigtown Bird Hides which are down by the Harbour in Wigtown and look out over Wigtown Bay Reserve and finally North of Stranraer I found Wig Bay (that is the best link I can find ) which is World War II causeway that runs by the edge of the bay and gives views of the birds feeding at the sea edge. The wider view is not spectacular as it looks over to Stranraer and Cairnryan. Coffee is available at Soleburn Garden Centre . I also walked for a bit along the cliffs at Port Patrick but there were mainly gulls to see and I am no good at identifying gulls.

I found having a real fire was good. It was not just that it made the cottage lovely and warm but that as I reset it every morning I always knew that I had that to come back to in an evening and look forward to.  I am not sure whether I would feel the same if I had one at home but on holiday with long dark evening it made something to look forward to. I therefore did a lot of reading, not for thesis but books that had been on my to read list for far too long. Only one finished but I did start a second and found one left by another visitor called Skyward by Mary Alice Munroe. It is light, it is fairly predictable but it was enough to get me hooked into the story so that I went and bought it on Kindle when I got home so I could finish it. Unfortunately the storyline I was really interested in was not well concluded but there was still plenty to entertain.

I came back this last week and have been picking up the pieces of normal life in Sheffield. So far I seem to have more energy

In the lull before the final push to submission

I am getting this written before I put my head down next week for the final submission of my thesis. For the most part I have not been working on it although today I started to read through and I really should have done a full read through before my supervision on Wednesday so I need to get a move on. It has been odd not having it to work on whenever I had the energy but quite a bit of time has been filled with social commitment of one sort or another.

The Monday after my last blog my writers group got together for one of our socials. We have maybe three or four a year at odd spacings. Usually two of them are like this one, just a pub night together outside term time.  We have one after reading as part of Off the Shelf which is again at the Bank Street Arts  on Friday 25th October. I hope that thesis does not take over too much before I get there. The group is now up and functioning for this term. We are full with members who came last term and have not had the usual drop out. One of our members had found an anthology produced by the group before any of the current members joined. It showed us that the WEA used to sponsor books and secondly that a friend I thought had been in the group actually had.

The week after that I went over to join in a family celebration for Cathy and Adrian’s eighteenth wedding anniversary.  It was held at a Chinese Restaurant and we ordered a banquet for most of us but individual dishes for my nephew and niece. This was partly to make sure they ate something but it was also to supply them their favourites. Sam’s was a noodle dish while Hannah wanted the deep fried chicken dumplings. Try finding the second on a menu of a normal Chinese restaurant but Cathy had a brainwave and ordered her sweet and sour chicken with the sauce separate. I think I might try Sam and the local noodle bar when they are next over. My Uncle insisted on paying although I had arranged with Adrian that I and he would pay 50%. We thought this would balance things.

On the following Tuesday  I went back over to spend the day with my Aunt and Uncle and my parents. We went to Styal Mill which is what the picture is of. We got a ploughman’s meal from the restaurant and then went to book tickets for the Apprentice house as I felt that a trip around the mill would be too much for Mum and Dad. Dad still tires easily. He managed to walk down the hill to the mill but after lunch was quite prepared to sit while the rest of us walked around. Mum at one stage was asking where Dad was, I think actually meaning to ask where Uncle Charles was, but not quite getting there even after being told Dad was sitting next to her, when she started asking where Harry was.

This weekend I went to York for a meet with a number of posters on Ship of Fools. One of the long serving host was over from Canada. We went to the Ask restaurant for dinner including this little fellow who is sat by a glass on the table. In York, the Ask restaurant is in the Assembly rooms. This is a huge hall building with really impressive decoration. The sort of place where you get asked whether the marble is real or painted. Quite a few of us also made it to evensong at York Minster before the meal. It was a good evening although the echo-ey nature of the hall (possibly a good thing when they were Assembly room) meant that the conversation across the table was limited.  There was a minute of confusion when we realised that the person booking the table was not there and we did not know what name the table was booked under. Somehow “ship of fools” did not seem likely, none of us could remember the person who booked actual name (as opposed to their shipname). When we looked at the list it was obvious which, but we then turned to ask a couple behind us if they had that name! They answered “Yes” and looked relieved which must have confused the restaurant staff even more. It was saved in the name of the host who had come from Canada, and none of us had met him in real life previously.

Work is very busy at present with more than enough to keep me going. Indeed I may be taking a thesis day on Wednesday to see my supervisor but I will also be doing work for work on Friday which is normally my day off.

I seem to at present have a fascination with the way the Autumn is coming this year. This is a picture I took tonight on my way to Evensong. As far as I could tell all the trees in the right hand side of the picture were the same species and are planted along the road. The trees on the left are actual the end of a separate group that is planted along a path. Yet one of the trees has turned a brilliant orange while the rest seem to be staying green. I did not notice the dark leaves on the left which may be a similar phenomena.

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

After Sarah's Leaving Do

First of all I went to a conference on “Opening the Gates to Heaven” which was held in Northampton at a Youth Conference centre on a business park. Northampton is an odd place to get to by train. My checking of tickets suggested that it would cost me over £120 to pay for a six hour journey. They insisted on either sending me by a whole host of local services or going into Birmingham and out. I do realise now that it might have been possible to book advance fare to London and then get another train out. However given that it is 3 hour drive at my speed (I know other people could have done it in just over two) and that car hire was around £40 there really was no competition even with petrol on top (another £30) the hire was quicker and cheaper. There should be a map of Britain where the towns are spaced according to the rail fares charged between them. It would be very interesting to see. The actual conference was a fairly URC affair. It was organised by an interested group based at one church in London with some support from the Faith and Order group. It was open to all, although I think I was the only person who was not either formally trained or in training to be a leader of worship (thus a mix of ministers and authorised lay preachers).

The conference had two main speaker and about five people giving short talks. Actually Yorkshire was one of the better represented Synods but we did seem to be mainly lay preachers. Really as most of our lay preachers are elders we should change the name.  The problem I have is that worship leaders seem to be worrying about what they are saying, and not by what people are hearing. The fact is that what worship leaders “say” and what people “hear” are not identical because while a worship leader may be clear in their own minds of their intentions, the hearer starts out with a different set of experiences which means they may understand what you are saying in a different way. There is a cartoon I recall of a short cleric who had gone into the a high pulpit with a sermon on a long piece of paper. All the congregation could see therefore was the top of his head and the scroll of his notes flopping down the outside of the pulpit. His opening words were “Today I would like to talk to you about communication...”. If you add to that the Reformed bias that says “Get your theology right and your worship will follow”, then I am not sure you will go anywhere. The trouble is my thesis is persuading me there is quite a bit of truth in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi"or that as we pray, so we believe and so live (which is a rough translation). However if that is the case then you need to find how people experience prayer.

Thesis is on the whole going well although maybe not as quick as I would like. I have two chapters in second draft and therefore they have gone to my proof readers. I have another chapter which I hope is in second draft after my supervisor asked me to revise it and another that I have just started redrafting but I think I know where I am going with it. The big problem is getting the time slots required to do redrafting. I need at least a day to get any work done and better still if I can get most of two or three consecutive days to work on it. Whereas when I was doing first draft I could spend short spell because I was writing small pieces. Second draft is far more about rearranging the pieces so as to create something that is more structured and makes an interesting argument rather than pure description. I write detailed description first and while I am doing so the theory is forming in my mind, so I then need to go back and do some pretty major restructuring. Once accepted into second draft however there is little point in major restructuring. I have to do some on one of the chapters but the other I would prefer to leave alone.

At work I seem to have taken on quite a bit of teaching. I have done two sessions on NVivo for Linguists. These are mainly masters and I suspect doctoral students who are doing their research training year.  I am having problems in keeping up with the training needs of the University on this topic. Then I am also teaching with MASH  a course for Linguistics (yes same department but a different area) on using statistics. The basic idea is to give them enough skills to not feel daunted by the statistics in papers. Linguistics as a subject is rather peopled by individuals who were glad to get rid of maths at GCSE. The fact that they find themselves now in a subject that is increasingly using statistics and complex statistics at that is frightening for them. The big thing from my perspective is that I am having to learn R as that is what most linguists use. This is not the easiest of statistical packages to use. However unlike medics the Linguists seem to think that using a package that is capable is more essential than having one that is easy.

The weekend before last I went over to see my parents. This was simply an over one evening and back the next but if I did not do that I realised I would not be getting until I submitted my thesis. Therefore it was a matter of taking the time out. Hopefully my parents will be over next month. We went for a walk in Lyme Park, hoping to see hares but the weather was so bitterly cold that after all of a hundred yards we returned to the car and went in search of a cafe for a warm drink. Dad is beginning to work through the stuff that needs doing as if anything happened to him, then Mum would struggle by herself. Together however they work very much as a team, with Dad remembering what needs doing and quite often Mum doing it. However Dad has never been the most proactive at contacting people and sometimes being almost as slow as reluctant as his father who would rather do things for himself than ask help off anyone. Needless to say my father and grandfather would do their best to help anyone who came to them if they could.

Last weekend it was the annual church meeting. In that I am due to finish my thesis in less than six months, I felt that it was probably the right time for me to stand again as an active elder. I have also agreed to be table elder 1 and that is difficult if you are not an active elder. As you do an apprenticeship as table elder 2 for the year before being table elder 1, this was agreed over a year ago. However I did have to specify that I needed re-election. I was last elected I think in 2000 (it may have been 1999). It must have been a late Easter that year as I was ordained on Easter day. David Hill asked afterwards if I had ever been non-serving. He had presumed that I needed to resign, but as I had served for over six years (on a five year term of office) I did not really see how I could resign. Sarah asked me whether I would leave for the vote and I said “Yes, I’d prefer to” which must of surprised her but being out of the room while the whole thing was going on seemed much preferable to being in even though I was pretty confident that there would not be any problems. Needless to say I was voted on.

Writers group is going well at present, indeed we have twelve members and next term we are probably going to be playing hot chairs to get a seat as there are at least thirteen people who want to come. Actually I suspect we could run with fourteen and with people who are willing to miss a turn or who do not turn up we would manage just fine. From my poetry perspective, I need to find a way to tell which of my poems are good and which are not up to scratch. I can tell when a poem is unfinished but the qualities that differentiate a good from an adequate poem feel totally beyond me. I am realising however that I am developing a second style of poem, my usual poem tries to capture one moment, one incident succinctly. There is thus a sparseness about them. I have written some which are just four lines long. The fresh style is a narrative, that is there is more story to it and the feeling as if something happens or we move somewhere. They are thus longer pieces. I suspect it was the development of these that made one of the group comment on the lyricism of my recent work in the autumn. The other thing is my poems have been darker and bleaker this term. It is as if  that with Margaret (another member who is very good a writing Gothic pieces) being off, I have felt the space to explore some of the darker atmosphere.

Slowly slowly the wheels are turning to having me back on the Chaplaincy at the University as a religious advisor. The biggest problem I am having as always with this role is getting synod to think actually what it is doing. Synod has now appointed me and written to me to say so and to the chaplaincy. That is good but as far as I can tell they have appointed me to act as contact person without working out how I am to keep them in the loop or they me in the loop. I might be happier with the situation if district had not been so ready to treat me as irrelevant last time.

Finally I come to today. I have not talked about the weather but we have had our share of cold and snow. In particular we had snow on Friday and Saturday here. On Friday it fell in the morning but had largely melted by the evening but at night it started snowing again. That snow continued for the better part of the day and though cleared in late afternoon it was well below freezing so not melting. The result was even down here we had two to four inches of snow. Jean and James were reporting 6 feet in their back garden. The result was that yesterday they were making the decision on whether to continue with today’s service and celebration. Actually I think the service would have happened regardless but maybe not the celebration. The numbers that turned up were good. I think in the region of a hundred, especially if you include the clerics who turned up after the service. To my knowledge there were three or maybe four and yes they were all clerics. The result was that the hall was packed for the meal. People seemed to be making a real effort to come including at least one couple from Chesterfield. James ended up doing a lot of running around due to the snow. Jean was at one time worried because he had dropped her then gone out to collect Derek and Sarah. It became apparent only when he got back that he had also realised that John might need a lift and David did not feel that he could cross the carpark to his flat. The snow may have been a bit of a blessing as the hall was full, as was the garden room and we were close on filling the committee room. Any more and we really should have been taking the meal through to the church. Sarah used her ability in writing to give more of the story of  Sarai a women around the time of Jesus who connects with him at various times in his life.On the whole it worked as well as any Palm/Passion service does. A bit of a pity the time in the church while the meal was prepared was taken up with an organ recital. Douglas was good but I suspect quite a few people would have appreciated the extra time to talk to Sarah and with other people.

Christmas Roundup of the Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After a week with rather more to cope with than planned

Right this week was more in it than I planned. There was a twofold reason for this. Firstly I had a cold last weekend and though not serious, I need more rest when I am under the weather than when not. Secondly there were builders in work knocking down walls and such. This is my idea of something that is best avoided but as I did not know until Friday I could not plan last week to make other plans.

Monday it was not too bad and I had writers group in the evening. This was a not to be missed evening as it was the rehearsal for our reading on Friday. However we rehearse on Monday and read on Friday, I for the life of me can’t get up the energy to prepare for the rehearsal as I would for the actual reading.They therefore seem to be surprised when I read much better on the night. This is ridiculous, I have been reading in church since I was around ten, I know how well I need to know a reading to read it well, whether it is a Bible reading or a piece of my own work and that really the actual preparation can only be done in the last twenty four hours.

Tuesday was down to Birmingham for a supervision, the weather was wet and blustery when I set out but by the time I had got to University Train Station it had stopped raining. I thought I might try and pay my fees in person, they having managed to at last bill me correctly. I want a bill before I pay (they usually bill wrongly to start with so paying an estimate whether right or wrong isn’t a good idea). I am actually now stopping following the alerts for new papers towards my thesis. Well I have not stopped them but unless something absolutely shouts at me I am ignoring it. That said there was an announcement on a book on Ethnography and Ecclesiology which has both American and British authors. I also need to trace at least one of the book my supervisor recommended which looks at Pentecostalism and Ritual.I have enough tangents to deal with already. What was also interesting was my supervisor and I had a post thesis chat. It is obviously time I started thinking about that. When it got to walking home I found the sun was shining.

Wednesday I had a migraine, actually I could have had it on Tuesday, but as it was supervision decided to cajole my system into working. Strong coffee and ginger seem to pretty well as a keep going if I have to, however when I woke feeling pretty rough on Wednesday I decided it was going to be one of those migraines which I could try working through but until I gave myself time actually have it I was not going to get better. The main problem with this was I needed time to get bright deep yellow paper for printing the programme for the reading on Friday. Two separate people had done the inside and outside of the programme, I just needed to combine it and print. I found a webpage that would combine two different webpages so it was just getting hold of the paper.

Thursday I made it back into work.The morning spent doing an analysis on drinks consumed in school. What seems to be happening is people are thinking that sugary drinks is mainly drinks like lemonade and coke. However there is a lot of sugar in many fruit based drinks which are seen as healthy options. On the afternoon spent quite a bit of my time with a doctoral student who is looking at green roofs and diversity with respect to time. I also printed off the programmes for the Reading the next day as I had taken the decision to work at home on Friday on thesis. I also met Cliff at lunch time to check the sound system situation. He has taken one aerial and two microphones to be fixed. We are therefore a microphone short. His view is that it is wear and tear but I am cautious.

Friday I went to Broomhall Breakfast, as this is a new academic year there are new volunteers and they are settling in. The result was for the first time ever I was mistaken for a normal breakfaster. I think I should have played along for longer but as it turned out, that was not the only mistake the volunteer was making and having a more experienced person to pick up on the other was what was needed.Then onto the doctors for a regular checkup. I got a bit worried when another doctor came out and said to someone else that my doctor could not see them that day did they mind seeing him. The idea of trying to explain why my medication was the way it was, what needed changing and what did not was going to be challenging within the consultation spell. However it must have been a one off as my GP was there and agreed to the changes I wanted. The rest of the day I had set aside for preparing for the reading and also putting together the desk with the idea that Saturday would then be free to study.

The readings went well on the whole. The room was full although it mainly seems to be family of other members of the group with one or two friends. There being about a dozen readers, then it is fairly easy to get forty people to an event. That said I did not manage to bring anyone but we shall see at other events. There were comments about how well my introductions to my poems worked. Again no rocket science, you want some hook for people to grasp where you are coming from and then a lead in. A hook is normally better if it is something personal they can connect with, a busy day, being scared as a child and so on. On the whole a good evening including going to the pub with other members of the group afterwards.

Saturday was a down day, I managed to shop in the morning and then slept but my brain would not settle all afternoon and I had an early night. I really should have just settled to reading, I suspect it was the come down from the previous week. Today I went to church as I was on sound duty and it was Jeremy Clines, the Anglican Chaplain preaching. His voice did not work well with the sound system but what he did was give more time to Bible readings so we got both the parable of the sower and the explanation, the whole of 1 Corinthians 12 and a good section from Job. Intriguingly in the parable of the sower what struck me that the seed was scattered on the bad soil. There was no careful husbanding it. A point that Jeremy then made. I wonder if we as churches have got too careful over where we scatter seed. That is we need to be prepared to sow in bad soil in order to get the harvest from the good soil.

Catching Breath before I dive into another week

Right lets see about news for this last week. Writers was on again last Monday, at the moment they are running a bit of money raising drive, so I took in Minerva and books in case anyone wanted me to make an Amigurumi and came back with an order for one hippopotamus and one lamb, the hippo is a standard amigurumi and I have half made it already this weekend, the lamb I have to make safe for a child so rather than using dolls eyes and such I will be embroidering (possibly with wool as John Lewis’ was out of black embroidery thread and I really can tell the difference between their darkest navy and black).

I also managed a week ago on Saturday to hand in the material for the cushion cover I was making to show off Cait’s embroidery that she did for me at Christmas. Cait’s work was very well done given that she is largely at nine working on her own with respect to embroidery, I help her when I am up but most of the time there is no-one around to help, her mum has never to my knowledge done anything but the stuff she had to do at school. So I wanted to do something to boost her moral. I got the material to include it into a cushion cover, and actually got it put together on the material but actually getting my sewing machine out to make it up into a cushion was daunting me. So I took it into a repair shop and asked them to make it up. The result is I now have a new cushion cover.

Work has been busy this week. I seem to have stayed to 6pm most nights. Now a lot of this has been due to the fact that I had 4:30 appointments and they needed time. With one of them it was just a matter of doing standard statistics but because I am quick at doing it, they came to me rather than doing it themselves. I don’t really mind this. The person is amazed at how quickly my brain gets into a research project, but the truth is that the engagement during these sessions is quite superficial, when I am working on something in depth it normally takes me a session of playing before I can do a proper analysis. i need to find my way around the data. When I work in these sessions I do not spend time trying to find my way around, I rely on the people there to guide me. It can mean I make mistakes. Another which was really quite interesting, looking at computer games designed to teach clinical knowledge and unfortunately the final number were quite small. However if they have created the game, run focus groups and such it is still a worthwhile project.

I also have managed to do two more videos for the NVivo course. I really need to get these out pretty regularly from now on but I have realised that the ones which are mainly software actually do take me a lot less time to do. I do not have to think of the visuals and so can do a video in a couple of hours session. That is a five minute interview, but by the time I have worked out what needs to be said, set up the computer, done a dummy run through, recorded once and junked then done the final run through and edited, as well as psyched myself up to do it then two hours is often reasonable.

I also found with being on holiday next week that I was struggling with getting everything set. I ended up sleeping most of Friday and was going to fill in the form from the end of Beta testing for SPSS when I got up. The only thing was that I really only got around to it after 5:30 p.m., yes I was sleeping most of that time, and then the department decided to do a major upgrade (see http://cicsupgrade.blogspot.co.uk/ ) and the result was that everything was down and I could not do the bit of work I was planning until Saturday afternoon. It was just awkward with not being in work Monday to Thursday next week I had something to fill in that needed to be done by next friday but I could not do it until this Friday as that was when I was sent the link. However as they were tweeting and such all through the night giving updates on progress it was quite interesting. Indeed at one point in Sheffield it was trending higher than UEFA and this on the day of the England Sweden match.

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 busy Easter

No writers group this week, I am going to have to write a paper for them on epublishing, I am not sure that they are aware of the options and how to go about them. The problem is that I suspect many of them think that web-publishing, epublishing and publishing on demand are one and the same thing. What I think they actually want is website that show cases their writing and allows the group to interact. It could either be joint blog or a fairly simple content management system which allows interaction. The thing is that setting up such a website is beyond me at present with a thesis to write. Anyway part of the problem of running a website is that it needs to be publicised so others would need to be willing to do this.

The week was busy in work. with working on a paper and also preparing on-line course material well editing it at least. Plus I took Thursday off as I was aware that Holy week services, and other Easter commitments were going to dig deep into my time.

Wednesday I awoke to find it snowing. It was just settling so before I went into work I nabbed some pictures of cherry blossom and snow. Unfortunately only one of the really came out, I will attach it to the blog posting of this when I get home. The weather cleared by lunch time although still miserable and wet. Given the warmth of last week it was a real change around.

Thursday evening St Andrews had a short Maundy Thursday Service, this takes place before the choir rehearsal. This year it was a drama from Iona Community “Eh .. Jesus?” “Yes Peter” set in the last supper and based around the last supper. At the end I realised that the next people in were the Broomhall Breakfast and started moving the chairs and tables; as it became clear that there was a purpose to what I was doing, first Sarah and then others joined in. That resulted in the room being set up by ten minutes the tables were in the right place. If the disciples were as efficient maybe they did the washing up before going to the mount of Olves. It looks as if James and Jean did the setting up, I was on standby for helping.

Friday was the Breakfast, I had been booked by Sarah weeks ago. Although like many ministers she seems to think that there is more time between events than there actually is. St Andrew’s tends to turn up early and this week the Breakfast decided they wanted to sit and talk. Last week at Breakfast Phil (who I call silver due to the amount of jewelery he often wears and to distinguish him from Phil with the ponytail) had been in hospital for several weeks, we need to think about ways of getting news through because we would like to take some sort of care for those who come and who is ill.

We then set up for the Friday meditation service that Sarah. Sarah also wanted to look for a diary date during the time but we had only vaguely got the projection stuff up, when people started arriving. For a first Sarah even had the hymn words on the projector, but most of it was pictures and words to think about. The whole service was about broken covenants. I struggle with the theme as the covenants are normally on God’s initiative and it seems always as if he dictates terms. Is this really what we mean by covenant. It was hard hitting as we faced human failure. Anyway I setup the projector and the sound system and as I did so realised that what we really needed was to be able to get the projector away from the computer so that the computer could be placed where Sarah felt happy with it. Rather than try anything fancy it occurred to me a single long cable would do as well. I might need to configure the electrical extension leads differently as well but it was all doable fairly easily. Anyway I have ordered the cable and we shall see.

Friday evening I went around to a friend/colleague called Margo for a meal. We have a close research relationship which has developed over the last eighteen or nineteen years since I came to Sheffield. Times have not always been easy, nothing to do with our relationship just various life events but the last year or so she and I have worked very closely indeed. At Christmas time she held a very enjoyable party to which I was invited and on Friday I was invited around for a meal. She is also has a student project looking at how people at breakfast manage their eating and she went to check out what URC stood for. Well her background is Presbyterian Church of Ireland although she has not been to church for decades. So an interesting conversation ensued around St Andrews.

Saturday I ended up with the end of a mild migraine. So I shopped and then realising that I was not getting better went back to bed for a couple of hours but that cleared it, completely and utterly. This was just as well because as well as two case studies for my thesis to finish typing up I was also meeting James down at St Andrew’s to set up communion. I have agreed to be second table elder this year with a view to being first next year. I also understood I was have a varied first table elder as James’ had not had a deputy this last year but people had taken turns. I should have been suspicious when James started being very thorough about making sure I knew how things were done. However with three to four elders checking on me the first Sunday I was on pulpit duty I just thought it was a resurgence of that gene. Anyway we got it basically setup, with Jean checking up on us at times.

Anyway it was communion today, things went well on the whole although perhaps going straight from congregational member to table elder (rather than a serving elder) was a bit of a leap. There have been changes while I was away and the service is a lot less fussy than it used to be, but still not the simplest of URC services. I reverted to the old form and put a tray of glasses close by the minister. It also made sense when James gave me the communion case. It was not until Sheila, and said she was table elder two to my table one, I queried this as I want a slightly longer apprenticeship and she agreed that she would at least do the chasing of elders for serving communion (we need six, four main ones, one for the choir and one for special diets although we do not at present do gluten free so it is only the non-alcoholic wine).

It was therefore about 1:00 p.m. when I got home, then it was pack and get out to come to my parents. Dad has forgotten that I have travelled across most Easters and decided that I was going to struggle to get a train. I had to keep reassuring him. When I said I had seen the rising sun he said “from the train?”. I am not sure where else I was likely to say that from! Maybe next year I had better hire a car so as to stop him worrying.

On Palm Sunday with cherry blossom on the trees

As it is a fortnight and I don’t suppose that you really want to spend the next couple of hours reading minutiae of my doings (acceptable in small quantities but not in large doses), this blog will take the form of lowlights and highlights.

The fortnight started slow, as I had been struggling with a migraine over the weekend. The ones prior to this I had managed to take a short nap and then get on, this time it was belligerent and my attempts to shake it off did not work. The result when I do this is that I get well enough to be active, I am active and pretty promptly the migraine returns, I call it cycling and the only way I know to get rid of it is to stop and have a day inside where I deliberately do very little. The problem is detecting when a migraine is this sort rather than the sort a quick nap will cure. The trigger for it was the relief at having a major research bid in by the deadline (well actually it happened on the following tuesday). If the bid is successful it will mean a lot more hard work but very interesting work as I seem to be a doing major translation work between different people in the group who submitted.

Then there was March’s supervision. I seem to be fairly fortunate with the weather for my supervisions and this time was no exception with a lovely sunny day. There was the cube for Bromford Dreams . Chris Shannahan is a research fellow and Methodist minister who did his doctorate under my supervisor. He would describe him self as a contextual/liberation theologian and has been studying the way that faith connects with those way beyond the boundaries of the church. Intriguingly earlier in doing this project Martin suggested he did Martin’s Ethnography course and that was the year I gave a talk on my experiences of ethnography. I have attended one of his Urban faith forums at Birmingham and we also ended up doing the study day on writing up together. If people are interested in Chris’ work he writes a blog called “Faith in an Urban World”. There is also a Facebook group for the Bromford Dreams. He is at present looking for funding to take it further.

Sometimes I wonder how I should describe my thesis in technical terms. The small area of study is find, it is Congregational Studies, but where does that fit in the wider view of things. I am in a student in a theology department and my degree is officially a doctorate in theology. My supervisor is in that department, I had to find a degree the department offered and as there was no precise fit I opted for the most general one. If I am theologian I fall very definitely into the practical/contextual sub group. However there are alternatives that I often seem to work as well with. I spend quite a bit of time dealing with liturgy, how it is understood and such. Others of more theologically evangelical views, looking at topics allied to mine would call themselves missiologist.Then there is the actual research tradition I am working in. That seems to be a lot more orientated towards sociology particularly sociology of religion and the actual methodology is straight ethnography (it is about the only thing where I am completely within a discipline and itself is part of the reason why this is such a wide ranging study) so I can also own the label social anthropologist which is technically my supervisors core discipline. This goes without adding that the other contributors such as psychology of groups and social geography. Any label seems to miss a whole lot of the complexity of what I am studying.

Saturday Mom and Dad came over. I decided that it was time we did something different than shopped at Waitrose and then wander into town on the afternoon to see to their other shopping needs. They use Sheffield rather than Manchester for quite a while. I think partly because it is smaller but also because I know my way around and can guide them. So we went out to Old Moor RSPB site by Rotherham. It was a foggy day when my parents came over and Dad was worrying that we would not see anything as the fog thickened as we went out there. I thought that if we got there, then we could at least have a meal at the cafe and a slow walk along the paths which are smooth and flat with the odd bird flitting by. However the sun came out as we arrived and we had a glorious day. We had lunch at the cafe, I thought mum had given her order so ordered it, but when she saw what I decided to go for she decided to go for that instead. So confusion reigned for while, but I just took the steak and mushroom pie that Mum had requested which was very good. We then wandered down one of the tracks. Did some looking at sparrow farm hoping to see yellowhammers but no luck. We did see sparrows, blackbird, a chaffinch and I think some bluetits. Then in the first hide we sat down. At first dad was thinking that there was nothing of interest there but as we settled we saw a little egret, some grey lag geese, goldeneye and gadwall. There were cormorants and coots having a tiff right in front of us at the next. Then we headed back to the centre for a coffee and cake before driving home. The day worked superbly, it had just enough activity for my parents to enjoy it. I also looked at binoculars and was surprised how much difference different pairs made. I am thinking of upgrading but probably won’t until September time just before I go up to Mull of Galloway after all I do most of my bird watching there.

Work wise I have two analyses finished off, just the checking of the papers to do. This leaves me a pretty clear desk at present, although I need to spend some time brushing up on Confirmatory Factor Analysis, a technique that I think is only available in AMOS and which I will need to build the models for if this user is going to do it. It is a sad story, the doctoral student got an statistician to do the analysis and they did a decent analysis, but unlike me who knows a wide variety of subjects they had no idea that some subjects ask additional questions. This person is right in the middle of one of those and needs to do it. However the statistician never sent them the data set. I just hope that they have they are good statisticians who never throw out data (you never know when you will be asked to reanalyse it) and therefore she can get hold of it, otherwise she will need to enter several questionnaires again.

I also need to get my head down with some NVivo course development. The document is basically written and I am going through and making adjustments to it so as to get towards a final version. I should start videoing after Easter (ugh!)

With being ill I missed writers group two weeks ago but made it this last week. We are now off until 16th April and then have another ten week term. I actually enjoyed this last term very much and it has given me more confidence to write poetry from other points of view than my own and/or the all seeing narrator. Doing a couple of fantasy pieces, one as Jack Frost and one about an apprentice was great fun. The poem from a close point of view I found much harder. The final piece of term was to write a monologue with internal thoughts and I have ideas for that, or something I want to explore where the monologue would be a good way to do it. Writers group is also thinking about doing some sort of web publishing.

Today being palm sunday I went to church. Sarah had asked me on Friday if I would be there and I said I would. She also asked me to be on standby in case a reader dropped out as she had a drama for the service. I hope she puts it up on the web as it was very good, if she does it will appear Worship section of St Andrew's website but Holy week and ministers putting up stuff on the web are not a good mix. There was also an URChin service beforehand and there must have been about a five or six families there. Anyway I ended up taking a part at very short notice. In fact neither Sarah or I knew I was taking it was time to read and the person expected did not come up. So very, very short notice indeed and I was working from Sarah’s script which was not the best. The other thing was it was Mary Stark’s ninetieth birthday yesterday and she was in church today. Christina had arranged for their to be birthday cake and bucks fizz after the service. There really seems to have developed a trend of having celebrations after church when members reach a significant milestone. Dr Sloane made ninety earlier in the month but had been ill at the time so there was no church celebration. The other noticeable change is people tend to sit down for coffee, I am not finding this easy to adapt to, I have spent probably thirty years drinking coffee after church standings and I really feel uncomfortable sitting down.