If I know that the essay I wrote was a bit rubbish, why am I so despondent at the rubbishness of the mark?
Probably because I usually get away with it and the feedback is rubbish (in that there is almost none) too.
On the bright side:
1) It doesn’t count towards the degree
2) Other people have also had lower marks than they usually get for the same course
3) Dark Chocolate digestives exist
4) It is nearly time to go home and cook dinner for a friend
5) Even if I didn’t really understand the essay, I did enjoy doing the reading for it.

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to have a free day on Saturday. I hoped that it would provide something blogworthy.

Is sleep blogworthy?

How about spending most of the day in bed holding a book while asleep and occasionally waking up to read half a page or so before falling asleep again? Not that the book was boring: it was Where did it all go right? by Andrew Collins, a memoir of growing up in the 70s in Northampton. I think he is about 15 years older than me, so there were many things I don’t recall, but others that I could really identify with. One aspect of the book I really enjoyed were the references to the Molesworth books. Anyone here remember them? Do comment appropriately if so. Hello Trees, Hello Flowers, Hello Bloggers.

One of the things about moving away from somewhere familiar to somewhere strange, is that you don’t know the reputation of the various take-aways. In our old city, we knew pretty much which ones were good and had favourite places to go for Chinese, Indian, Fish and Chips etc. Having moved and gone onto a lower budget, we’ve dawdled in deciding on our favourites. Last night we got some chinese takeaway and it was pretty horrible. Some more work needed in that regard.

It was nice to spend an evening with just the two of us sitting and watching some quality TV (an old episode of Morse which Mr F had videoed earlier in the week).

At the end of a long week, I finally open my laptop and get to work on my to-do list for the week. Ah, it is Friday afternoon and time to go home. Things can wait until Monday.

This week has been busy, made busier by parental visitation and made logistically more tricky by a puncture in the front wheel of my bike. Thanks to the help of Mr F in buying a puncture repair kit and a lovely colleague for helping me, I now know what to do about a puncture. The bike is fixed and ready to go back on the road. I will be leaving shortly on it and heading home.

I was hoping to go out tonight and do exciting English traditional activities involving sticks, handkerchiefs and an accordian, but it seems that I may be too tired.

I have a free day tomorrow so I am not sure what I am going to do. Hopefully it will be blogworthy and that will solve my problems about what to write.

Do have a lovely weekend.

I want to go to bed.
I need a shower before I go to bed because I have to get up at stupid o’clock and if I don’t have a shower I will smell really minging tomorrow.
The bathroom is too cold to have a shower.
I do not see a way through this problem.
I will blog and see if any new ideas come to light.

Very successful shopping trip yesterday: I have another pair of trousers for cycling in, some lovely gloves for cycling in, some new hair accessories to replace broken/lost items and some stationery or perhaps stationary – I am too tired to remember which is appropriate. These last two things will not be used for cycling: if I do anything silly with my hair then my cycling helmet doesn’t fit.

I may have finally sorted out my contact lenses. I do not recommend you change address, prescription and branch of optician in the same month if you have contact lenses by post. The month in question was last August/September time and they are still faffing about.

I have spent some time this week reading parts of the Book of Common Prayer – fascinating stuff, particularly the bits about how they updated it from what was there before. There really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to trying to please people when changing bits of liturgy.

Anyone ever been to a service of Commination?

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Must do better.

In the last few days, as I have been writing this latest essay, I have been adding various words to my computer’s dictionary*:
eschatological
postmodern
postmodernity
metanarrative
synchronic
extrinsic

I am not sure about the absence of hyphen in postmodern, but the literature I am dealing with does not use one so I guess I have to stick with that.

Some words I have been using, I am convinced are not real words and may well confuse me when I am wanting to spell-check something else:
etic
emic

I sometimes think, that when I get out of theological college, I will have learned how to articulate my faith, but only with recourse to a load of jargon. I must remember to speak plainly.

Nonetheless, I do love long words, particularly when they express a concept so perfectly and succinctly.

Antidisestablishmentarianism: such a beautiful sound, but not in the slightest bit relevant to my essay.

What is your favourite long word?

*Please don’t ask for definitions of these. The meanings are circling vaguely around my subconscious but if I think too hard about them, they slip through my fingers.

After faffing about for over two weeks on an essay and getting nowhere, a change of essay question means it is now doable. The books (thankfully nice and thin) are sitting in two piles: the have-read pile is still small, but growing.

This is a race against time: parents arrive tomorrow evening. I should perhaps add another ‘more’ to the list in the title: more prayer. I have come to see essays as a combination of learning things I need to learn and God teaching the tools I need to cope with the demands of future ministry.

How do you think of essays? (Jack, please rant if it would help). Virtual chocolate available in the comments.

… unless they are nice.

No particular reason, I am just all peopled out.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

If you are inclined, go look at Scot McKnight’s post on growing up as a Trumanist (think Jim Carrey).

“C.S. Lewis cured me on the Anglicans, and J.R.R. Tolkien on Catholics, and Fr. Schmemann on the Orthodox.”

Anglican and Catholic I have always been familiar with, having grown up in an ecumenical church where both were represented, along with the Free Churches. Orthodoxy, I only came across a few years ago and my knowledge is pretty much limited to what I have read on Ian’s wondrous blog. I must find some reading to do. I will go and look at what Fr. Schmemann has written.

If I needed ‘curing’ of anything, it was probably of the distrust of American baptists. Thank you Scot for your part in that.

It seems to be a good time to take a brief overview of some books which have been wending their way in and out of my life recently.

First, my amazon parcel from yesterday contained:

Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett. In response to Bimble’s comment, I love the Tiffany Aching books, although the weight to word count ratio is not pleasing. They do have chapters, but then so do his two most recent Discworld books. For those of us who can easily find themselves reading happily into the wee small hours, chapter divisions are like a quick question: “Look, here is another chapter. Are you sure you have time to keep reading?” If you are a fan of Granny and Nanny, you HAVE to read it, if only for You*.

Finding Sanctuary: Monastic steps for everyday life, by Abbot Christopher Jamison. I have only browsed this so far, but it pretty much does what it says on the spine, with references to the participants in the TV series, “The Monastery”. It was in the sale, looked interesting and took my parcel almost into the free postage band.

Reading With God, by David Foster OSB. This is a book of worked examples for exploring lectio divina. Again, I have only browsed it and it looks very interesting. I’ve got a lot better at getting the big picture when reading the Bible, but I am missing out on the small, in depth readings. Again, this was in the sale and took the parcel just over into the free postage band. They really did see me coming, didn’t they?

Otherwise, I am pressing on with Shaman’s Crossing (Robin Hobb) and God’s Politics, having stopped for a break over Christmas for Plains of Passage by Jean M Auel. I thoroughly recommend the Earth’s Children series, starting with The Clan of the Cave Bear. I’m saving up the fifth one for the next set of holidays, or for when I see it cheap in a second hand book shop.

Do you remember last week when I said that I was going to go and watch Sweet Home Alabama when I had finished my essay? Well, I never got round to watching it, so I am off to do that now.

[Edit: I meant to say that for those librarians and classification geeks among you, do take a look at this.]

*Come back when you have read it and you will understand that sentence.