Defying Gravity

Double entendres

2009-02-05T20:46:00.004Z

I'm doing a very very short talk at church on Sunday night. It's on the theme of love because it's near Valentine's day. Given the theme, the day, and the fact that it's informal worship, I have this fear that I'll accidentally say some kind of hideous double-entendre. One badly constructed throw-away comment, and it could descend into a ribald discussion of the ordinand's love life. And then someone will record it on their mobile... and send it to my principal... and then I'll get expelled for inappropriateness in the pulpit...

Kallistos Ware

2008-12-03T18:15:00.001Z

"Each of us from the moment of his or her birth exists in an environment in which it is easy to do evil and hard to do good.... If I know somebody very well, in ten minutes, if I set my mind to it, I could perhaps say to them things so cruel, so destructive, that they would never forget them for the rest of their life. But could I in ten minutes say things so beautiful, so creative, that they would never forget them?"

Bishop Kallistos Ware

Dominant discourses...

2008-10-30T20:27:00.002Z

... or, rose coloured spectacles. I appear to be ranting about this on a depressingly regular basis. We're encouraged to hear - in fact actively seek out - minority voices in research and academic work. But how do we pay attention to minority voices when we're so grounded in the dominant perspective that we don't even notice it's only a perspective?

The Living Library

2008-10-13T15:44:00.001+01:00

The living library - from http://www.mhhe.heacademy.ac.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/the-living-library-/ and http://living-library.org/living-library-at-norwich-mental-health-week.1.html

The idea of the "living library" originated in Scandinavia. "Readers" come to the library to borrow real people in the same way that they would normally borrow books. They can then take them away to a corner for a fifteen minute chat in the course of which they can ask all the questions, and hear real live answers. The idea is being used in the UK as part of a campaign run by mental health charity Rethink, along with youth volunteering campaign Agents4Change, which aims to tackle stigmas, stereotypes and prejudices. How might it be adapted in a higher education teaching context? Further details.
Listen again to the Learning Curve report on this initiative here.

Images of God and caricatures

2008-10-13T10:23:00.002+01:00

This subject seems to have pursued me from Taize to Durham, via Surrey. There are a whole load of inter-related questions, like: how do we identify our images of God? How accurate are they? How might you suggest to someone that their image of God isn't very helpful? In Taize we were asked to think about our caricatures of God, which seemed a bit strange to start with, until we thought about what caricatures are - taking one aspect of something and making it the main feature. They contain a partial truth and partially reflect reality, but the emphasis is off. We all do it, I think, but sometimes those caricatures become limiting and unhelpful, or, probably worse, we think they're the whole of the picture and start imposing them on other people.

In a lecture here it was suggested that someone who has a negative image of God - e.g. that s/he is punitive, judgemental etc shouldn't be encouraged to 'open themselves' to God in prayer. In fact they should be encouraged to distance themselves from that God, and then there is an on-going process to help people reconfigure their image of God. We weren't told how... It makes sense though, although I got the feeling that some people were a bit doubtful about the suggestion that someone *shouldn't* be encouraged to pray... Suspect that bit didn't come across exactly how it was meant.

Image of prayer

2008-10-07T22:16:00.003+01:00

At communion tonight the guy giving the sermon used an image that I want to record here so I don't forget it - but it's too late right now to do much thinking about it. He was talking about the first part of Colossians and interpreted it to say that Christians should have a different identity, a different outlook, and a different lifestyle. In the outlook section he described different ways of receiving gifts - there's the child-like so-excited-I just-have-to-rip-the-paper-off-and-ooh-look-someone-else-with-another-present kind of approach. But there's also the, probably just as excited but more reflective, way of opening gifts - taking time, shaking it, feeling it, gradually taking the paper off, and then finally standing and looking and appreciating the gift approach - a kind of experience of awe and wonder that someone has taken the time and effort to give this gift to *you*. And that second experience is very close to prayer....

Learning style and worship

2008-10-06T22:31:00.000+01:00

We did a session today on learning style. I came out as strongly visual and fairly strongly kinaesthetic - so I need to look at things and move around a bit when learning? I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that... maybe we get on to it another time. But what was more interesting was a couple of throwaway comments that the facilitator made linking learning style with worship/church. I always knew that I have trouble listening to sermons - I'm not sure they sink in for many people, but for me they *really* don't make an impact. I'd learn much more if they just gave me the text of the sermon to read and then discuss. I had to fill out a sheet today about preaching, and one of the questions was 'what good sermons/preachers' have you heard. I discovered that I could remember approximately 2.7 sermons, which is a bit unfortunate considering that I must have listened to at least a million sermons (+/- one or two) in the last 20 years. I have however had many good worship experiences interrupted by a tedious sermon! This is doubly unfortunate since I'm going to be doing the preaching myself very soon...

Leaving and leaving you - Sophie Hannah

2008-08-04T22:20:00.001+01:00

When I leave your postcode and your commuting station,
When I left undone all the things we planned to do
You may feel you have been left by association
But there is leaving and leaving you.

When I leave your town and the club that you belong to,
When I leave without much warning or much regret,
Remember, there's doing wrong and there's doing wrong to
You, which I'll never do and I haven't yet,

And when I have gone, remember that in weighing
Everything up, from love to a cheaper rent,
You were all the reasons I thought of staying,
And none of the reasons why I went

And although I leave your sight and I leave your setting,
And our separation is soon to be a fact,
Though you stand beside what I'm leaving and forgetting,
I'm not leaving you, not if motive makes the act.

Tough love

2008-07-18T14:16:00.002+01:00

Someone pointed out to me that parents might love their adult children without accepting their lifestyle. Fair point, and that kind of idea was in my mind when I was writing the last post, it just never quite made it on to the page. Some of the parents in the film said exactly that. Perhaps this kind of thing would be an explanation for the 'separating father from son' type imagery?

My only additional thoughts would be that often, although by no means always, this idea of not accepting the 'gay' lifestyle works better if it is implicitly assumed that being gay is in fact a sort of choice, or at least can be changed. (And of course the idea that being in an active gay relationship is wrong, but I'm not trying to leap into that debate here.) I suspect, though, this idea that orientation is chosen, or is always the result of some kind of trauma, is going out of fashion, although perhaps not in the US Bible belt if the film is anything to go by. Which leaves us in the position of telling gay christians that they are not at fault for who they are, but that they must resign themselves to permanent celibacy. Not just that they have to stay single until they meet someone they can marry, but that (unless there is a change in their orientation), they will definitely be single, and therefore missing out on that form of intimacy, for the whole of their lives.

Well, you could say that that that's just how it is, and not exclusive to gay people, and I guess that's true. You could also point to problems with our society or culture that prioritise individual romantic/sexual relationships and devalue other forms of relationship or fulfilment, and I think that's also true. But I suspect this conclusion (permanent celibacy) is easier to come to if a) you prioritise rationality/reason/logic over experience and emotion (as modern conservative evangelicalism tends to do) and b) if it doesn't really affect you. If the conclusion is 'correct', on one level it doesn't matter who makes it. But on another level, it does feel as though it matters when heterosexual married christians are coming to these conclusions on behalf of gay christians.

Bishop Gene Robinson and love

2008-07-15T11:49:00.003+01:00

I read this in the bible last night (Matthew 10:34-39):

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— your enemies will be the members of your own household.'
"Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."

Or in a more up to date version:

"Don't think I've come to make life cozy. I've come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don't deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don't deserve me.
"If you don't go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don't deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me."

It's written as if Jesus is being quoted, so we are supposed to assume these are the actual words of Jesus. What's he on about? These verses are familiar to me, because my church background has, at times, been big on sacrifice and taking up your cross. In other church contexts this kind of thing is rarely mentioned, but for me it's always been talked about and we've tried to work out how this would play out day to day. (At one point I designed a 'comfort-o-matic' cross for a friend, which came complete with padded arm rests and a red wine holder.) In some ways that suits me, because I'm a bit of an old testament kind of girl - and I've always been fascinated by the celtic saints who left everything to sail off into the sunset, and then did mad things like stand in the sea up to their necks all night praying (I think it was to keep them awake??). And in a couple of months I'm finally going on my own celtic adventure as I move to Durham.

But last night these verses struck me a bit differently. I'd just come home from the screening of a documentary called 'the Bible tells me so', which interviewed christian families who had a gay son or daughter, and was followed by a Q&A session with Bishop Gene Robinson and Ian McKellan. Gene Robinson is the only bishop in the Anglican Communion to be in an open gay partnership, and one of the families in the documentary was his family. The documentary was - naturally - offering a particular point of view, and so all the families had started out with conservative christian views on sexuality, and most had changed their views as a result of their experiences. All of them loved their children, but most had acted initially in really unloving ways. Shamefully, a lot of the unloving behaviour came about because of what they'd been taught by their churches - not just that homosexuality is "an abomination" (this was repeated frequently), but also that it's a choice and people can choose to chage their sexuality. Whatever someone's theology, it was clear, if it wasn't already abundantly obvious, that churches and christians have been responsible for inflicting huge amounts of pain, and even inciting people to violence. The bible has and is being used in superficial, ignorant and irresponsible ways to sanction pre-existing prejudice.

This made me think more about the second bit of the quotation. Because I'm single, I've probably not paid much attention to this before. But there are a couple of thoughts here. It's actually a really difficult saying to understand, although the 'son against father' bit is a quotation from the old testament so would have meant more to the jewish hearers. Firstly, at what point does my personal sacrifice start to be a sacrifice for other people? If I think I'm asked to prioritise God/faith, that's one thing, but what about when my decisions have an impact on other people? What happens when my choices mean that other people are also being asked to make a sacrifice. This must be more critical when children/partners are involved, but happens in smaller ways too. And it was v clear from the documentary that the parents' choice to - as they saw it - follow Christ had negative effects on their children.

And following on from that, I wondered whether loving God should ever make us act in non-loving ways to the people around us? My gut feeling is that the 2 things are incompatible, and that part of loving God is loving other people. Presumably part of the problem is defining what counts as loving, and that it's possible to love someone without being 'nice' to them. I find a particular problem here with the christian teaching (hopefully mostly in the past?) which said that gay people shouldn't be accepted as they are (because then they wouldn't have any incentive to change) - and surely christian 'love' includes acceptance. This is what we say about God's love, which we try to reflect - that s/he loves us unconditionally. So any behaviour based on non-acceptance can't, by definition, be loving?

Old people and rudeness

2008-07-09T14:36:00.002+01:00

My nan is in hospital. Despite this, she found the energy to be amusingly rude to my mum. We were both sitting by her bedside and my nan tearfully said "oh you should go home, you don't want to spend all your time sitting up here." We both protested (a little too successfully I think) as she perked up considerably and said cheerfully to my mum "well I don't suppose you do much in the evenings anyway" then indicated me and said "she's got a life, but you haven't!"

Grown up points

2008-06-11T22:21:00.002+01:00

Went to see a comedy performance a couple of weeks ago. The person introduced the idea of working out how many grown up points you have - e.g. living in your own flat and paying bills by direct debit = grown up points, awarding yourself grown up points = no grown up points! The thing is, I kind of do that too, and I don't come out of it very well... A few months ago I went to an interview and the person showing me round was asking how easy it would be for me to relocate. She didn't call them that, but really she was asking about my grown up point score. The conversation went something like this:

So, do you have children?
No...
A partner?
No...
Mortgage/property?
No...
How about your job?
I'm a full-time student, it'll finish in a few months...
Car?
No, I don't drive...
[The poor woman was looking desperate by now...]
Pets?
Errr, no..... but I do have some houseplants!!

Scenes from Galapagos 3

2008-06-04T18:12:00.003+01:00

Ok, this is really very odd. On the boat I slept in the bottom bunk, and on the first day we agreed that I'd sleep at the other end of the bed to the way it had been made up, to make it easier for S to get into the top bunk. First night, went to bed, lifted up the pillow, and underneath was a handwritten note that said "Beware of the pig". Ok.... I left it on the side and went to bed, so it was the first thing S saw when she got up in the morning... She politely decided not to mention it... Much debate over the week as to how it got there and why, and I still have no idea really. None of the possibilities seem very plausible, unless I was unknowingly travelling with someone who has a REALLY surreal sense of humour.

Scenes from Galapagos 2

2008-05-23T12:52:00.002+01:00

2 of the people in our group were vegetarian. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to like vegetables very much either, and almost every [vegetarian] meal was greeted with the phrase "It just shows a lack of imagination". After 2.5 weeks, so did that comment, and I think I know more about their food preferences than I do my closest friends. Just to share the joy, here's a list of the things they wouldn't eat:

Meat. Obviously. One of them didn't like the taste, and one of them once had a hallucination about boiled chicken....
Fish. Well actually they sometimes eat fish, but only when they're in the mood. The mood never descended, even when we were on a boat being given fish every day. This was followed up by a comment about fish eating vegetarians not really being vegetarians, unlike them. Right.
Eggs. Eggs in things good, eggs by themselves bad.
Milk & yoghurt. See above.
White things. One of them really did announce that they didn't like to eat white things, although she was possibly referring to white sauces/creamy things. Except for ice cream, which is both white and creamy, but cold. So that's ok.
Some vegetables, served in place of the meat/fish. They were worried that they might get a protein deficiency, and thought that the chef could have shown some imagination and served soya or tofu.
Soya. Arrived the following night, but was rejected because it was one of those fake meat products. (See point 1).

Scenes from Galapagos 1

2008-05-19T14:25:00.002+01:00

V (deaf, 84 yrs old): Mmm, this dinner is nice. [without drawing breath] S, how tall are you?
S: Er, 5'2" I think.
V: My daughter is 5' when stretched, and this wide [holds out index finger and thumb in a loop].
S (who missed the hand gesture): She's how wide?
V: Why? Well she's just built that way, that's why.
S: No, how wide?
V: Why what?

Intervened at this point to avoid death by dinner conversation....

I'd also like to make it clear that even though I might look like I'm 5'4", I am in fact 5'9 when STRETCHED.

Hi honey, I'm home

2008-05-16T21:24:00.002+01:00

Got back yesterday from Ecuador. What can I say, it rocked! I've set up a different non-anonymous blog for sharing photos and a bit of blather about it, but some of the funniest moments will have to go anonymously on here. If anyone's still reading this blog after I've neglected it for so long and wants to see the photos, email me and I'll send you a link.

We're all going on a....

2008-04-27T20:45:00.000+01:00

... spring holiday! I'm shortly off on holiday to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Hoping that it lives up to expectations, since it feels like I've been planning this trip for years. Flying in to Quito, the capital, then up to the cloudforest for a couple of days, back down through Quito for a flight to the amazon rainforest, 5 days in an indigenously owned lodge in the rainforest, back to Quito for a couple of days, and then 8 days sailing round Galapagos. Preparations have mostly consisted of running round Millets throwing random items into a basket and frantically searching for my mysteriously vanished spare camera battery - possibly would've been more useful to learn some spanish/become an expert on amazonian wildlife but I've been a bit distracted by my need to systematically review 40,000 potentially relevant abstracts before I went. Tried to read Darwin's Beagle diary but it was the unedited version and rambled on for pages and pages about his preparations for the voyage, Southampton, the size of his cabin, what he ate for breakfast etc. He should've published a blog...

Seeing is believing?

2008-04-14T20:42:00.000+01:00

Annie Dillard: “Seeing, is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it.”

Prisoners of hope

2008-04-07T13:00:00.000+01:00

Recently I've been thinking about the phrase 'prisoners of hope' (it comes from Zechariah, a slightly obscure book in the Old Testament). What would it mean to be a prisoner of hope? Came across an interesting article on a similar subject, bits of it are copied below:

http://www.rzim.org/resources/jttran.php?seqid=89

Lewis characterizes Sehnsucht as an “intense longing” 3 for union with beauty and transcendence through a desired object—such as a “far-off country”—which is partly realized in the incarnation of hope and especially, Joy. Such an experience, though, leaves one trembling with an acute awareness that one is ultimately separated from the object for which one longs. This sense of separation leads Lewis to reason, “The human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given—nay, cannot even be imagined—in our present mode of subject and spatio-temporal experience.” 4

Just a few days after my Ash Wednesday dream, and yes, after reading Jesus’ pointed reply to the blind men, I had another dream: A troubled young woman failed her exam and went to seek help from her professor. The teacher responded with kindness and then asked her a question, but I awoke before she answered. The question? “What is it that you want?”
In Lewis’ allegory The Pilgrim’s Regress and Augustine’s biography Confessions, the authors depict the power of longing, both for God and for God-substitutes—those things they sought to fill the void that they would discover only God could fill. Augustine and Lewis recognized that our longings can lead us to God. Conversely, our blindness to them actually directs us away from God, for if we cannot see what it is we seek, how will we know if we’ve stumbled upon it? Indeed, “What we do not long for,” observes Augustine, “can be the object neither of our hope nor of our despair.”

It has been my experience that for the follower of Christ, our blindness to what it is that we want, and ultimately, what it is that satisfies, is rooted either in fear or in submerging our persistent longings under the temporarily tranquil waters of “godly contentment.” I do not mean to suggest that contentment is not possible or even desirable, for the Scriptures, and particularly the Psalms, offer us a view of rest. One thinks, of course, of Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want…. He leads me beside still waters,” where the Hebrew reads literally, “beside waters of rest.” Yet only two chapters later, David is pursued by his enemies and cries out, “The troubles of my heart have multiplied.” So though we may find rest beside tranquil waters, they are “streams in the desert,” and their source flows from a far-off country. 5 ....

And so it is that we are pilgrims in Narnia, prisoners of hope 13 spying dreams of dawn in a far-off country, and its Light pierces us even in the Shadowlands. Like those before us, we are given signposts as reminders along the way and invitations to rest beside still waters, or to wrestle with God till daybreak. So who of us, half-hearted creatures though we often be, would hunger for anything less?

Lazarus

2008-03-19T15:39:00.000Z

And an even longer gap this time! Life's still complicated, and my to-do list is still smirking at me. I've tried putting it on the naughty step, but it doesn't seem to help. And I'm still grumpy - and it's very possible that I've been so for the last 3 months!

This week is Holy Week - the run up to Easter - so I've been at more services and church events than usual. On Monday night we had the story of Lazarus, who Jesus brought back to life after he'd been dead several days. Momentarily leaving aside the - humungous (sp?) - doubts and questions that this raises, I wondered what Lazarus' attitude to death would have been after that. Would he be really blase about it - "oh yeah, I die all the time, it's no big deal" - or afraid, or looking forward to it, or what? I guess quite a lot depends on what, if anything, happened during those days he was physically dead, and, as with so many things, the bible doesn't say much about that.

2008

2008-01-03T11:05:00.000Z

Very long gap since the last post, mainly due to life becoming complicated. However, new year, new life and all that... Actually, today I'm mainly feeling grumpy but since there's no-one around to share the grumpiness (they should be very grateful for that fact), it's prompted me to blog about it instead. So... things I'm feeling grumpy about today:

1. Being back at work, obviously. My to-do list is smirking at me intimidatingly from the corner of my desk. I really don't want to make some of the phone calls on that list.
2. The fact that I lost the hearing in my left ear during a flight on New Years Day, and it's still only partially returned.
3. I have a COLD, moan moan, and the cold remedy stuff I've taken has made me feel sick (or maybe it's just the cold, don't know).
4. There's no heating in the office.
5. I'm supposed to be giving my first sermon next weekend and I've only just realised. There goes this weekend on planning and general panicking...

Swimming

2007-10-31T10:31:00.000Z

While I was swimming yesterday evening a children's swimming lesson was also taking place. The man running it was a perfect example of why all sports instructors should undergo compulsory personality transplants, although he did at least distract me from my usual thoughts of "I'm SO bored I might just drown myself for the novelty factor".

He stood on the side of the pool bellowing at the 6 girls, finishing each command with "If you don't understand, put up your hand". If their hand went up, he just repeated exactly what he'd already said, in a slightly louder and more annoyed tone of voice, despite the fact that they didn't understand it the first time. For one particular manoevre, he must have done this at least 5 times, until eventually the girls lost the will to live and stopped putting up their hands. When it became apparent that they still hadn't understood, he got them out of the pool and gave them a pep talk (at the top of his voice) about how they should say they didn't understand if they didn't. His words said, "it's fine to say you don't understand, it doesn't make you stupid", but his tone of voice said "but you are unbelievably stupid for not understanding this". Which reminded me of our old school PE teacher who would tell motivational stories about enormously fat girls who got fantastic grades because they tried very hard, while at the same time totally ignoring any effort put in by those of who were athletically challenged.

When the girls had finally grasped what they needed to do, Mr Swimming Instructor then demonstrated a novel way of praising them. He started shouting out "good boy, well done, see girls, it took a boy to show you how to do it." When they protested that they were girls, he said "oh really? That was so good I thought it must have been a boy doing it." Argh... from bullying to casual sexism in one easy step.

Reading

2007-10-31T10:26:00.000Z

At church on sunday we were shown a video about the work of the bible society, who translate the bible into different languages and formats. It made a big deal about the need for audio bibles, because of the many people who can't read. All fine, except that this message was conveyed entirely by pictures accompanied by written text and a musical backing track - no spoken words at all. Therefore assuming (I assume!) that anyone in a developed country would be able to read from a screen....

Public transport

2007-10-27T21:09:00.000+01:00

I use a lot of public transport. Most of the time I quite enjoy it, I don't even mind too much when teenagers play music on their rubbish mobile phone speakers to the whole bus, though it does get annoying when more than one person does it and they get into a mobile music war. I would like to know, however, when it was that people became incapable of folding their pushchairs. I know the wheelchair space is also useful for pushchairs, I know travelling with a pushchair must be a nightmare, and I can appreciate that people don't want to wake up a child who's only just gone to sleep. But this doesn't mean that I enjoy being run over by an indignant parent and their tiny child in a giant pushchair who is determined to get to the wheelchair space (note: WHEELchair not PUSHchair) even though there are already approximately 50 more people on the bus than there should be. The same goes for the parents who park their pushchair in the aisle, because there are already 2 pushchairs in the space, meaning that the rest of us have to clamber past. And the same definitely applies to the one or 2 parents I've seen complaining when a wheelchair user needs the space, um children can generally be removed from a pushchair more easily than a wheelchair user can remove themself from their chair. I've even spoken to wheelchair users who say that parents have actually refused to move their pushchairs - apparently drivers can request that people fold pushchairs, but can't make them.

On a similarly grumpy note, it's also quite annoying when parents allow their children to sit/stand/dance (yes, really) on a seat when the rest of us are standing and the child is small enough to comfortably share a seat. On a less grumpy note, this morning I saw 2 young teenagers get on the bus, bringing with them a load of fishing tackle in one of those old person shopping trollies. One of them sat down, but stood up when he saw an older person getting on the bus. However the older lady walked straight past the seat, and a young guy sat down in it instead. The trolly was quite sweet, the standing up was sweet, and the look on his face when the bloke sat down was even sweeter.

Online research study

2007-10-24T14:48:00.000+01:00

http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/research/participate/documents/AdvertisementBDIWebStudyFinal.pdf

Thought other people might be interested to take part in this research study about the links between writing and mood. You don't get anything for taking part, apart from a nice warm glow after being so helpful!

2007-10-21T13:22:00.000+01:00

I went to church this morning. The service ended at 11.20am, and these were the things I was asked between 11.20am and noon:

Immediately as the service finished I turned round to speak to the person sitting next to me, who I think was a first-time visitor. Before I'd managed to speak I was stopped by the church treasurer, who asked me to sign some cheques right now because he had to leave. I got up to do so, while at the same time attempting to convey via the medium of international gestures that someone else should say hello to the visitor.

As I signed the cheques, someone walked up carrying a large bronze cross, and asked me to unchain the vestry door so she could take it round the back.

I was about to do so, when someone waved at me from the prayer corner, wanting me to pray with someone. The treasurer went to open the vestry door.

I went and prayed, offered tissues etc. The person recovered herself, and I went into the next room to get a coffee.

On the way to the coffee queue ( a walk of at least, ooh, 20 seconds) the person who I'd been communicating with via the medium of sign language stopped me to ask if I knew anything about the visitor because he'd had such a strong accent he couldn't understand him. I didn't, but had a long and confused conversation, because I initially thought he was talking about the preacher, who had a slight welsh accent and had entertained us by telling stories in a scots accent.

Walked 3 paces and someone stopped me to ask if I could do some photocopying for them. I said I would once I'd got a coffee and if I could remember the code.

Walked another 3 paces and was stopped by someone else. She wanted to know about a notice in the notice sheet, did I know anything. I said I didn't. This apparently wasn't sufficient information, so I added a couple of suggestions of people she could ask and for good luck also outlined their half term holiday plans. This was more acceptable, and I made it to the front of the coffee queue without incident, at the same time waving to a friend to get her to come rescue me.

At this point actually managed a non-functional conversation, which was only interrupted by the photocopying lady who very politely told me she'd got someone else, who could remember their code, to do it for her.

Then all that was left to do was lock up, chase out the stragglers, and run away home. Is it wrong to be slightly horrified at the thought of going to a church service every week for THE REST OF MY LIFE?!

Hairspray

2007-10-13T20:46:00.000+01:00

About twice a year I fill up a free saturday afternoon by buying a super cheap theatre ticket. Today I went to see Hairspray - my tastes tend towards the philistine and I like musicals for the feel-good factor and the fact that you don't need to think too much. I had one of the seats in the gods, the kind where you get an oxygen mask along with your ticket, but the view was ok - I've been to some where I've ended up peering out from behind a pillar. It only started a couple of days ago, so it's still in the preview stage, but it was fine apart from a few lapses in sound and a little problem when the follow spot didn't really follow. I read a paper article a while ago that said Hairspray was successful in the USA because it makes fun of american blue collar workers, but would be less successful in the Uk because... mmm not sure I can exactly remember the logic here, but the prediction was that the stage musical version wouldn't go down well in London. At the time I'd only seen the film version, and didn't really agree that it was mocking a particular category of person. The stage version though does have the mother (John Travolta in drag in the film, Michael Ball on stage) as more of a caricature, if it's possible to be more caricatured than a man in drag- John Travolta's woman is slightly more convincing (as a woman and as a character) at the beginning, and definitely less manky.

So... Loved the film, quite liked the musical, and still not sure if it's stereotyping and if it is, whether it's in an ironic good way or a bad way. Isn't any period piece going to have some degree of stereotyping that time period? But it also reminds me of this vexing question of whether it's ok to call people chavs... is it just an (admittedly derogatory) description of a type of style, or is it similar to racist/sexist labels? Answers on a comment please...

Irritation

2007-10-06T18:04:00.000+01:00

Lots of things have been annoying me this week. Some of them are:

People faffing around.
Someone getting out a very large bible and waving it around while preaching at me to show me the error of my ways.
The academic who prints out his emails to the noisy printer just behind me. He prints one, comes in to our office, goes out to his office, prints the next one, comes into the office, and so on.
Large groups of tourists who stand around looking gormless and blocking the entrance/exit/platform in tube/train stations.
People phoning me just as I'm getting in to bed.
The question "and how is your research going? will you upgrade soon?"
People being understanding and offering rational discussion when I actually just want to rant and be totally unreasonable.

Comments

2007-10-05T21:12:00.000+01:00

I've just changed the settings on here so non-Blogger users can leave comments. Just in case anyone wanted to!

Regression to the mediocre

2007-10-05T10:41:00.000+01:00

Don't tell my supervisor or my genetic/statistics tutors, but I never really understood the concept of regression to the mean. I have this vague memory that it's supposed to disprove the idea that IQ varies by race or something... (Does that idea really need disproving? Apparently so.) But the last couple of days I've been driven mad by a social version of regression to the mean - or maybe in this case I should call it regression to the mediocre. I'm sure social psychology has a proper name for it, but I can't recall it off hand - it's the phenomenon where actions by a group of people sometimes somehow end up being less effective than they would have been if the people had worked individually. Faffing, in other words! People who in their regular lives are independent and capable somehow become incapable of making any kind of decision or taking any risks when put in a group. So the group activities end up being safe, not offending anyone, but taking forever to make a decision, and it's just all a bit boring. Instead of striving for excellence we end up huddling towards mediocrity. It's the exact reverse of Gestalt psychology - the whole becomes less than the sum of the parts.

Valerian

2007-09-30T19:07:00.000+01:00

Following on from my handy list of self-help tips, I can report that herbal remedies are joining my list of 'things that are supposed to be helpful but don't actually'. I've had quite a busy week and was feeling a bit stressed this weekend so decided to try a herbal remedy for stress as I wanted to be - or at least look - calm in church today. I looked them up, and discovered that there's some actual scientific evidence (yep, I'm that sad) that valerian helps. Apparently not in my case. It may have made me feel a bit woozy (or that may have just been a sunday morning feeling) but definitely didn't help with calmness. Although I suppose I don't know how I would have felt without it, so it's not a very scientific test of efficacy. Having already tried hypnosis and useful training courses in an attempt to stop freaking out about public speaking, not sure what the next strategy should be... either convince a dr to give me beta blockers, or just find an alternative career... And if anyone wants to try valerian, I've got an almost full pack you can have...

Christian self-help for beginners

2007-09-25T20:42:00.000+01:00

Some of the helpful and tactful self-improvement tips that I've been given over the years. Follow these, and you too can be a shiny happy person:

1. Stick bible verses on your mirror.
2. Stick bible verses in your bedroom.
3. Stick bible verses on your toilet seat (yes really).
4. When you read the bible, stand on another bible and then you'll really be standing on the word of god.
5. Problems like these are often the result of secret sin. Is there anything you'd like to confess?
6. Feeling bad about yourself is a sin, you know. You need to repent.
7. You're great! Well, no you're not, you're a vile sinner like the rest of us.
8. When you get home, contemplate your sins. (Can we feel a theme coming on here?!)
9. These things you believe about yourself are lies from the devil. Just don't believe them.
10. Imagine, when you get to heaven, Jesus will be there, and he'll say 'why did you waste your life?'
11. Well, I came round here to have a chat, but if you aren't going to have a deep and meaningful conversation I might as well go home. (Jumps up and leaves).
12. You still have these problems even though you're a christian? Didn't you ask god to help you?
13. Spiritual person: Something very significant happened to you when you were 13
Me: Er, no, I don't think so
Person: Did you change school?
Me: No
Person: Parents divorced?
Me: No
Person: Bullied at school?
Me: No
Person: Started periods?
Me: No
Person: Illness?
Me: No
And so on..... until eventually I got: "Well, maybe if you pray about it god will reveal it to you".

Overheard 2

2007-09-20T14:22:00.000+01:00

Might have posted this before, but it reminded me of a text exchange with my sister. I'd just read an 'overheard' column in the paper, which had the line "Imagine if your surname was Key, and your dad decided to name you Alan". I texted this to my sister and got the reply "Imagine being woken up by THAT". Oops.

overheard

2007-09-20T14:19:00.000+01:00

Blogger seems to have decided I'm german, not sure why. Anyway...

Getting off the tube this morning I overheard this, delivered in a calm tone of voice:
Younger man: "I'll come with you".
Older woman: "If you come with me, I'll kill you. So don't come with me"

Can't help wondering what the back-story is for that exchange... The man stayed on the platform, obviously deciding not to take his life in his hands.

Wedding

2007-09-04T22:25:00.000+01:00

I went to the slightly scary wedding at the weekend. Never did find some new clothes, so just reprised this year's wedding outfit. The scary guest just ignored me, which was fine by me. She did cause a bit of a scene by going missing in a strop, resulting in several people who didn't know her running around in a panic, while those of us with previous experience said reassuring things like 'oh she'll be fine, she knows where we are'. She was discovered hiding behind a grass slope in Asda's car park, which was probably not the scenario she'd envisioned for herself. Apart from that, all was good, and the happy couple are well and truly happy and coupled. Best (well, most amusing) comment of the day has to go to someone I haven't seen for a few years. She said "I can't get over how you look - you look..." (great? different? tanned?)... "like a girl!". I kind of thought I looked like a girl the last time I saw her as well, but apparently not. If I'd been quicker I would have said something like "well, the last time we met I was just having my gender reassignment", but I only ever think of these things afterwards.

Clothes dilemma

2007-08-05T15:36:00.000+01:00

05 Aug 2007
clothes dilemma

I'm going to a wedding at the start of september. Pleased to say it's not mine. It will however be interesting for a couple of reasons.
1. It's the first time I've been to a wedding where I was also at the previous wedding of one of the couple. Husband number 2 is much better, so I'm not bothered about that, it will just be necessary to not make ANY reference at all to wedding number 1 even late at night after a few drinks.
2. There will be someone at the wedding who I really don't want to see. 5 years ago I had to change my phone number, email, identity (ok, not identity) to get rid of them. This meeting therefore requires the kind of outfit that instils confidence and self-esteem, and preferably makes me look 6 inches taller and 3 stone lighter. Went to the shops yesterday and discovered that all the clothes are either magenta, lime green, or black... which means I'll probably put it to the back of my mind for a couple of weeks and then have to make emergency lunch time, after work, Saturday and sunday afternoon shopping trips in the final week.

Lefties

2007-07-31T15:38:00.000+01:00

31 Jul 2007
lefties

The news today informed me that scientists have located the first gene that influences handedness. Good, I thought, a genetic basis for being left handed is much better than the other theories, which as far as I understand it, are basically different types of brain damage. Then I looked at the smaller print... This candidate gene only makes someone slightly more likely than average to be left handed (i.e. it's likely to be working in conjunction with other genes or in fact brain damage), AND the same gene is also associated with a higher risk of psychotic illness. Ditch the brain damage and gain psychosis - lovely.

Facebook

2007-07-24T15:39:00.000+01:00

I'm quite a fan of Facebook. Ok, make that quite an addict of Facebook. But this evening hit a new low as I spent 45 minutes sending messages back and forwards to a friend who was upset... because she thinks she's been removed/blocked from someone's friend list. Oh dear. Technology has a lot to answer for. In the good old days you could ignore someone and no-one would know...

Apologies

2007-07-22T15:39:00.000+01:00

22 Jul 2007
apologies

First a confession. My name is Defying Gravity, and I watch Big Brother. Yes, it's shameful but true...

Anyway, tonight I was watching and admiring the BB apology technique. I personally am not very good at appropriate apology giving. I tend to either apologise profusely when there's actually nothing to apologise for - this reaches its pinnacle when I automatically apologise to inanimate objects for bumping into them - or find myself tied up by a British emotional reticence and have to make a huge effort to actually apologise rather than burying my head in the sand/running away/emigrating to avoid the issue. Ostriches and Jonah are nothing compared to me. However I was amused by an apology on BB tonight. It was a development on the 'I'm sorry for upsetting you' (but I'm not sorry for what I did because I still think I'm right and I'm only apologising so that you'll talk to me again and stop throwing things at my head) technique, and went something like 'I'm sorry, you still shouldn't have said what you did and you were well out of order, but I'm sorry anyway'. Well at least it's honest... although can't help wondering exactly what the person thought they were saying sorry for, or whether they genuinely thought that 'I'm sorry for my behaviour but it wasn't my fault, actually it was your fault' counts as an apology.

Neighbours

2007-07-05T15:41:00.000+01:00

neighbours

I live in a block of flats, and I've blogged before about the fact that our downstairs neighbours like to smoke out of the staircase window and then go back into their nice smoke free flat leaving ash all over the window-sill and the hail/rain/snow blowing into the hallway while the open window bangs against the wall. The other problem we have, which will be familiar to all flat-dwellers, is the bins. Our rubbish bags used to be left in a big pile by the back door, which was nice for the foxes and less nice for everyone else. We now have big wheelie bins in special enclosures, and recently we also got a recycling service that has a brown bin, green bags, and orange sacks to be left by our front doors.

This is evidently all a bit complicated for our neighbours. Several months after the bin enclosures were built people are still leaving their rubbish at the back door, where it won't be collected. They're also fond of leaving furniture, fridges, cardboard boxes etc, which don't get taken away. So now we have bin bags and random items by the back door, and recycling bags plus random items in the bin enclosure, and a great stack of letters from the managing agents instructing and threatening everyone. I'm deeply embarrassed to admit that I even went as far as phoning the agent (outside office hours so I didn't actually have to speak to anyone) and left an authoritative and articulate voicemail that went something like:

"um, I'm, um, from flat 23, er, we just rent but, er, well, there are bin bags being left by the doors and, er, I don't think people know where the, um, the , er, bin enclosures are because there aren't any signs and, um, well, lots of the people here aren't, um, well,, they're not that fluent in english, and your letters are, um, well, erm, not that easy to read or, erm, understand, and well I don't think they're reading them, maybe they don't get them or, er, understand them and, erm, well, ok, that's just it really..."

What gender is your brain?

2007-07-05T15:40:00.000+01:00

05 Jul 2007
what gender is your brain?

Ways in which I've been told I'm quite male:
1. When I get home from work I can't cope with having a conversation straight away. I have to process the day first. If I was married it would be my partner going 'have you had a nice day at the office dear?' and I'd be the one grunting and pouring myself a drink. Actually, I've often thought it would be handy to have an old fashioned wife - someone who would know how to do things like make a cake or hem some trousers without having to look up instructions on the internet.
2. I really dislike it when people give non-specific warnings about an 'important conversation that's coming up', e.g. sending me an email saying 'there's an issue you need to know about, please phone me tomorrow night.' That's just wrong. Either tell me what the problem is so that I actually have time to prepare myself, or just phone me and talk about it. I quite like having the prep time, but I really don't like spending a day or 2 wondering what the 'serious issue' is going to be. Actually, I don't really know if this is a male trait, but someone once told me it was, and who am I to argue?
3. Although I have - I think - reasonably good interpersonal skills, in meetings I like to stick to the point. If we have a decision to make, I like to go straight to that decision without faffing around. Feel free to state your opinion, but please do it without unnecessary details or diversions. Tell me about your personal life/ existential philosophy/ detailed procedures for paying the cleaner AFTER the meeting, not during it. Meetings are for problem solving, not for sharing.

Since I'm definitely female, and am not feeling very sleepy tonight, I thought I'd see if I could find some kind of 'what gender is your brain' test. And indeed there is one on the BBC website. I'm pleased to report that my brain is on average female, but somewhat more masculine than the average woman's brain, if that makes sense. It seems to be masculine in very specific ways - I was better at a couple of tasks than the 'average' woman, but on one of the tests of maleness I scored an impressive 0 out of 20 - it appears I don't have any drive at all to systemise things. This is a bit of a relief I suppose, since one of the theories about autism is that it's an extreme version of the male tendency to systemise.

Hello mum

2007-06-25T15:41:00.000+01:00

25 Jun 2007
Hello mum

Apparently I have a regular reader (most probably just the one) - so I'd like to say hello to Bonus Lady's mum.... Hello mum!

24 June

2007-06-24T15:42:00.000+01:00

24 Jun 2007
children in church

Small rant coming on.... One of my friends brought her 2 children to church with her this morning. It was a family service, which is supposed to be ok for all ages. Unfortunately she didn't get to take part in much of the service because some welcoming and friendly member of the congregation sitting behind her early on in the service said SHHHHUSH to her children. Honestly.... what kind of person thinks it's polite and ok to shush someone else's children (who weren't making that much noise) in the middle of a service that's supposed to include children? It doesn't make the children quiet, all it does is embarrass and/or upset the parents, make the kids think they're not welcome, and most probably scare people away from church. But that's ok apparently, because we only want people into church if they'll follow our (usually totally arbitrary) rules. Sometimes you'd think this whole church thing's got nothing to do with god and everything to do with maintaining some kind of 1930s social norm that most people didn't manage even in the 1930s....
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The joy of text

Sometimes I wish my mother had never learnt to text. Since she's been moving house they've increased in frequency, so that I decided I'd have to train her not to expect an immediate reply from me. This decision was reached at Easter when I was on retreat in a convent. Retreat, convent, you think that might give some clues as whether I'd have my phone turned on and how often I'd check it, but apparently not, since I came back to my room one evening to discover a series of texts sent at hour intervals, which culminated in one saying 'why aren't you answering, I'm very worried, has something happened?' Yes, the unthinkable has happened and I've turned my phone OFF for 4 hours....

So over the last few weeks I've been gradually increasing the time in between getting a text from her and answering, to try and get her out of this idea that I reply immediately and if I don't there must have been some disaster. This has been ok until Weds this week when I left it a bit too long. The first text at 9am I forgot to answer, and then I got another one as I was getting on the tube, so didn't answer that either. I then went in to a meeting for an hour, and when I took my phone off silent I had 3 texts. One from a friend, one from my mother saying did you get my texts, and one from my flatmate warning me that she'd had my mother on the phone worrying that something had happened because 'she's usually so good at replying'. Groan...

What I learnt at the weekend

2007-06-05T15:43:00.000+01:00

05 Jun 2007
what I learnt at the weekend...

What I learnt at the weekend was.... don't agree to do something before working out how you're going to do it. This less than profound thought came to me at 4.45am on Sunday morning, as my alarm went off and I got up contemplating the prospect of spending 8 hours on a coach travelling to and from Northampton. A few weeks ago I agreed to go to a friend's confirmation on Sunday morning. I've visited there before so I knew the train was fairly quick from London, and that you couldn't book tickets in advance. I therefore didn't check train times until Saturday, at which point I discovered that there were no trains between London and Northants on this particular Sunday. There was a replacement bus service but it didn't get in til 10.10 and the service was at 10.15. No problem, I thought, it's not that far away, I'll get a coach... and then found that coaches from Victoria don't start until 9am on Sundays, and it's a 2 hour journey. They'll let you travel from Northants to London early on the weekend, but not the other direction. Hmm... Next tactic was to see if I could travel from Oxford. Yes I could, but not before 9am... Finally I had the inspired thought that coaches run all night to airports, and checked Heathrow. A 7.10 bus would get me there on time, there was just the small matter of actually getting to Heathrow, which is 2 bus rides away from where I live... hence the getting up at 4.45am. Moral of the story... don't have friends who live in Northampton.

Is it just me??

2007-05-29T15:44:00.000+01:00

29 May 2007
Is it just me?

Just came across the following statement in a well respected journal (The Lancet):
"The Asian category has a wide geographical variability in its interpretation. Even within the same population, different constructions of the term might exist.7 In the UK, Asian usually refers to "brown" Asians. In the USA, Asian is typically used to describe, "yellow" Asians."

Is it just me, or is that the worse possible way they could have described the difference between use of the term Asian in the UK and USA? Well, perhaps not the worst possible way, but probably the worst way that would still be printed. It sounds like something from the eugenics movement.

Computers

2007-05-28T15:44:00.000+01:00

28 May 2007
Computer crises

I needed to work today, because I've got a day off this week to have a wisdom tooth removed. However my computer equipment had different ideas. My laptop and desktop decided to stop working on the same day, meaning that I spent approximately:

7 hours trying to fix it including uninstalling and reinstalling the same programme 3 times
1.5 hours swearing and throwing things around the flat
1 hour doing a piece of work the first time
45 minutes re-doing the same piece of work because it didn't save even though it said it had
A further 45 minutes faffing around designing a poster without getting round to putting in any content.

I'll have to hide from my supervisor tomorrow while I do what I was supposed to do today. Could be a small problem during our meeting at 2.30pm, but I plan to take precautions - a fake moustache and glasses should do it.

24 May

2007-05-24T15:46:00.000+01:00

24 May 2007
Update to the update on my mum's house

I can report that this evening I scrolled through 311 houses for sale within a 5 mile radius of my flat. Of those my mum decided to save 42, not a bad percentage. She was highly indignant that the estate agents she visited today hadn't offered her some of the houses on the website. I kept saying soothingly 'perhaps it isn't updated that often'. She however is convinced it was a plot to persuade her to buy a more expensive house that they've been unable to get rid of. She could well be right. She was also concerned that most of the bungalows were offered as vacant possession, most probably meaning the former owner died. I think she felt that owning a bungalow might lead directly to sudden death... (I couldn't be bothered to challenge that interesting logical deduction.) By the end I felt like the search process was more likely to lead to sudden death - we were both slumped over the desk, eyes glazed, muttering 'keep', 'don't keep', 'keep', 'keep', 'don't keep'. I kindly offered to print them out for her, but the ink cartridge on my printer is running out, meaning that tomorrow she'll be taking a load of pink sepia toned pictures into estate agents across the county.
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Who would work in the city?

Just picked up an email from a friend who's a lawyer at a city firm. Sent from her work address, she said 'well, it's getting late, I'd better head home'. It was sent at QUARTER TO 1 in the morning.... This now joins the other 2675 reasons why I didn't even try working in that kind of job - I need to do my cleaning at 12.45am, I can't possibly still be at work then!
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Update on my mum's house

I got a text message yesterday to tell me that my mum has had an offer on her house. This creates a small problem, because she gave up looking for houses 'because there was no point finding one she liked if she didn't have a buyer for her house'. I did point out that this would create a bit of a problem if everyone did that, but she wasn't convinced by my logic. Now she's decided that the world wide interweb net is the only way to look at a load of houses quickly, so is coming round to my flat tonight to use the computer. The request was phrased in that way, but in fact she'll come round and watch me use the computer, because crawling round to each individual estate agent on our knees would probably be quicker than my mum using the internet.

I don't mind the computer use, what I do mind is the fact that I still feel the need to tidy up/clean before my mum sees my flat (why??)... this necessitated a cleaning burst when I got home at midnight last night, but I'll still have to keep the shower curtain closed so she can't see the bath, and steer her away from my bedroom and the kitchen. Common sense did at least prevent me doing the hoovering (I wouldn't want to face the wrath of my flatmate), unlike our neighbours who hoover at the most random of times.

Bowling along

2007-05-22T15:47:00.000+01:00

22 May 2007
Bowling along.... Current mood: awake

I've been bowling tonight and am pleased to announce that I got the top score. This is not as impressive as it sounds, since it was almost entirely due to luck and the fact that we played the game with the bumpers down. This meant it was almost impossible to get 0, a score that I would normally be well acquainted with, especially since almost all my points were scored after bouncing off the bumpers. I *think* the reason we had them down was that one of our party was blind, and it would have been a bit patronising to put them down for her and up for us... the fact that it's also a tad patronising to assume she'd be terrible at bowling just because she couldn't see seemed to have escaped the people doing the organising - in fact she wasn't v good, but probably no worse than the rest of us! On the other hand I might be totally wrong about the motives, given that I did overhear one of the organisers say that they always played with the bumpers down because they were so bad. It was interesting to see what the people who had bowled more than once before thought about having the bumpers down - some people thought it was great, and the grouchy gits in the corner thought it was cheating and missed the point of playing. I naturally sided with the grouchy old gits.... I have to say though, that making the game easier didn't make it any more interesting and as usual I was bored after about the 3rd bowl. One of these days I'll develop an adult sized attention span.

I also threw caution to the wind and had a cup of coffee after 6pm. Talk about excitement - playing with the bumpers down! Drinking coffee! That's the kind of rock and roll girl I am... This is also why I'm writing a blog at 11.30pm, an activity that should surely give me sad computer geek status if I don't have it already. But writing the blog prevents me texting my friends, who really wouldn't appreciate it at this time. I do find it a bit worrying that a late coffee on an empty stomach has the same effect on me as binge drinking has on other people (haven't we all sent a caffeinated text to the wrong person at 2am? No, just me then? And I'm already looking back at the evening and thinking 'did I really say THAT?'), but I console myself with the thought that it's cheap, legal, and doesn't make me throw up...

Random thoughts

2007-05-14T15:47:00.000+01:00

14 May 2007
random thoughts Current mood: chipper

I don't have much time, but a couple of random thoughts.
1. Who on earth are all these people reading this blog- or at least visiting the page, even if not reading it? I've only given the address out to about 10 people, and I can't believe they're all visiting the page several times a day desperate to find out what's been happening to my flatmate's goldfish etc. So if you're one of the mystery visitors, hello, why not give me a wave and leave a comment?!

2. I forgot that today had been appointed 'departmental photograph' day. If I'd remembered I might have worn a slightly less lurid top, and I definitely would've brought some heavy duty frizz ease with me. I have big hair, in fact very very big hair, at the best of times, let alone on a windy and rainy day. We did get the opportunity to look at the photo before it was printed, but it would have felt a bit too vain to ask her to re-take it - the service is really for taking medical images of actual sick people, which is probably a little more serious that the departmental who's who board.

10 May

2007-05-10T15:48:00.000+01:00

10 May 2007
tony blair
Pleased to note that Tony Blair first became prime minister on my mum's birthday 10 years ago and will step down on my birthday this year. I'm sure this is a sign... of... something...!!??!
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graduation

Yesterday was my MSc graduation, an opportunity to pay large amounts of money to flounce around in a big flappy gown and worry about tripping up the steps onto the stage. Unlike my first graduation (yes, I'm collecting them), my grandma was too frail to come, meaning that the assembled masses missed out on the once in a lifetime opportunity of witnessing an octogenarian in an electric blue suit making inappropriate comments in a stage whisper that's louder than most people's normal speaking voices (she's deaf). Best comment from last time was "Oh my gawd, there's another lot of them, we'll be here all day", to which my mum's embarrassed reply was "No, they're the same ones, they've just come back in."

The electric blue suit did have it's advantages however, since it was easy to spot where they were sitting amongst the sea of grey and black office suits that everyone else was wearing. It would have been more difficult to spot them this time, as my mum and sister steadfastly refused to wear neon clothing, had I not accidentally got them seated in the disabled section. They had front row seats, and a whole row to themselves, and seats that swiveled round so that people with mobility problems don't have to get up to let people past... This happened because my mum genuinely does have severe vertigo and a minor eyesight problem.... I put in a request for them to be seated as close to the ground as possible on this basis (missing out the word minor), and it was evidently taken as a request for accessible seating... Ah well... it was probably a good thing in the end, the seats obviously weren't needed by anyone else, and the families of the people sitting either side of me were up on the 4th floor balcony - my sister possibly would've had to carry mum down from there.

6 MAy

2007-05-06T15:49:00.000+01:00

06 May 2007
60th birthday continued

The 60th birthday that my mum wasn't celebrating continued yesterday with an outing to the Isle of Wight. Going there is always like going back to the 1950s. On the bus I heard a woman resident say that she hadn't been to one of the main island towns for a few years - bearing in mind that the island is something like 20 miles long by 15 miles wide, this seemed like quite an impressive achievement.

I'd looked up what was happening there yesterday, and discovered it was the first day of their walking festival. It was being opened by a speed dating ramble. There was also going to be a speed dating dog walk. I think it was the owners looking for a date not the dogs, but I'm not certain. I did suggest that speed dating ramble to my mum, but she wasn't keen. I'm not sure whether she was more alarmed at the thought of the speed dating or the rambling. At Bonus Lady's suggestion I did wear my glittery stiletto walking boots just in case, but I didn't spot anyone giving them admiring glances.
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60th

My mum was 60 this week. I was under strict instructions not to tell anyone or make a fuss, an instruction disregarded by her work colleagues. One of them in particular has apparently spent the last 3 months telling every patient that came in to the dental surgery that they were 'celebrating a big birthday this year', and on the day itself canvassed every patient to see if any of them would sing happy birthday (they wouldn't). The same work colleague, S, also decided it would be a good idea for me to get my mum to go out to a 'family' meal, and her work friends would be there when we arrived. Sounds quite reasonable, except that my mum is extremely introverted and has always said she'd rather die than have a surprise birthday party - and I don't think she's exaggerating. But arguing with S is like hitting a brick wall, so after a little surreptitious texting of my sister, we decided that the thing to do was agree with her about the meal and tell my mum, to remove the alarming surprise element.

This plan worked fine, although it did test my mum's acting skills on the night. We also couldn't tell my grandma, for fear that she'd announce something along the lines of "yes, they told me you'd be here but we had to pretend it's a surprise." My gran doesn't do subtlety. I'm not sure she ever did, but it's definitely got worse as she's got older.She also spent the whole evening calling my mum's boss 'the guvnor', with my mum hissing 'she's called the DENTIST' at intervals. Come to think of it, my gran may have become more Cockney as well as less subtle as she's got older! Personally I think I would have called the dentist/guvnor by her actual name, but that didn't seem to be an option.

1 MAy

2007-05-01T15:49:00.000+01:00

01 May 2007
Blogging against disablism
As I'm sure everyone knows, today is interesting for 3 reasons:1. It's the 10 year anniversary of Tony Blair becoming prime minister 2. It's my mum's 60th birthday 3. It's blogging against disablism day Blogging against disablism dayThere's a snazzy image that goes with it, but I can't work out how to get it on to here - so you'll just have to go and have a look for yourself!
I'm planning to ignore 1), might blog more about 2) after tonight's birthday dinner, and like the good disability activist that I am, join in with 3) by blogging (briefly!) about some random thoughts on disablism.

Disablism is discrimination against people on the grounds of disability. Just like we have the race relations act that supposedly protects people from racism, the disability discrimination act is meant to protect the rights of disabled people. Leaving aside the question of whether either act actually manages what it sets out to do, social attitudes are at least as important as the law. Recent reports have shown a) a high level of social discrimination against disabled people (questions were along the lines of 'how would you feel if someone with X impairment moved in next door/married your sister) and b) that employers basically think it's too much effort to employ disabled people because "they don't know what words to use to describe disability". Right.

Part of last nights (highly irritating) discussion about Selfish Young People went on to talk about how people don't have any time, that they're constantly busy with jobs, kids, houses etc. And though the discussion didn't go there, one of my big things is that people use this 'i'm so busy' thing as a marker of status, that the 'correct' answer to 'how are you' is 'oh, stressed, lots going on, you know'. But last night one person sat up and said, "I have too much time, what is there to do?" And weirdly that felt like a courageous thing she did - which is ridiculous, when did it get to be brave to admit you're not busy?
This may be a random leap of thinking, but to me the last 2 paragraphs are connected. When society only or mainly values one particular way of being (i.e. the multi tasking superhuman), people who can't for some reason live up to that ideal are going to be seen as less valuable. Obviously some disabled people are great at being superhuman multitaskers, but some aren't. Some disabilities mean that people do things a different way, or they do it a bit slower, or they need some assistance doing it. But instead of being seen as different ways of getting to the same place, it's seen as not quite 'right'. We've started valuing people as human doings, not human beings. I have friends who feel that they're not important, that they lack value, just because they don't have a salaried job... How does that happen??

Admittedly these thoughts are coming mainly from my experience in the worlds of mental health and learning disability, both of which often carry an even greater stigma than physical disability, so I might be a bit biased. But I do find it quite worrying when even in a church setting, the talk immediately turns to what people should be doing (generally for the church or community, depending on the christian persuasion!) - we talk about a faith that says every person has innate value, of a creator who knows the whole of creation intimately, of loving god and other people, and then get side tracked into focusing on what people are or aren't doing. That's a risky strategy in my opinion - it's letting culture dictate faith... Not that I'm arguing that christians should just sit around navel gazing, but that takes us away from disablism and will have to wait for another post I think!
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The state of the nation....
Frustrating evening. Had a church homegroup, which for the uninitiated is a small-ish group of people from or linked with a church who meet during the week to discuss faith, life, the universe etc... in fact a large part of tonight involved talking about rowing, which I guess comes under the life part. The frustration came about as the discussion descended into a depressingly familiar topic: Young People Today Are Selfish And Don't Do Enough For The Church And Community. Oh Yes And By The Way The World Is Generally Terrible.
By young we're talking under 50ish, sometimes under 65ish. Mainly the problem seems to be that no-one wants/is able/has time to run the mothers union, the jam stall, or the summer fete. The thought that younger people might want to do something different doesn't come in to it. I don't think complaining is a particular talent of older people, younger ones are pretty good at it too (evidence in this blog!!) but I do get sick of it. Really really sick of it, especially as I'm often the token younger person in the discussion and the weight of an entire generation ends up resting on my shoulders. I refuse to believe that younger people don't care, we just do things in a different way. For example I know youngish people who run youth groups, who raise money by doing sponsored runs or jumping out of aeroplanes, who work for charities instead of getting more money in a corporation, who are school governors, who give up time to run church activities, who work with orphans in Romania, and who clean up derelict areas by making community murals.... and they're just the ones I know!!

Aah, what is it about groups of humans that means they end up complaining about the state of the world? In fact, not even complaining about the state of the world - jjust complaining about our little bit of it, which by almost any standard is actually pretty nice.

supervisor woes

2007-04-30T15:50:00.000+01:00

30 Apr 2007
Supervisor woes.... Current mood: busy

My supervisor has a disconcertingly selective memory. Quite often he'll look at something I've done and say 'why have you done that?' - to which the answer is generally 'because you told me to'. Alternatively he'll ask why I haven't done something, even though the request for me to do it never actually made it out of his head. At those moments I'm never quite sure to what extent I should insist on my version of events... What;s the etiquette here when dealing with a superior?! It;s made worse by the fact that his scattiness is highly selective - when I had a boss who was truly vague I knew what I could get away with, and could tactfully say 'my memory of the situation is this' because she knew she wasn't a details person.

Had a slightly different version of this just now, I met him in the corridor, he asked about a piece of work, and I apologised that it was taking me longer than I'd expected. His reply was that it was fine for me to show him half finished work, and to discuss ideas with him. What a nice helpful supervisor I hear you saying... Well yes, except that I tried exactly that with this same piece of work a couple of weeks ago. I emailed him a rough draft and booked a meeting a few days later to discuss it - not only had he not read the draft (and still hasn't), he used the whole meeting to discuss a different piece of work, only giving me a solitary piece of advise about the original work - "make sure it's focused". Well, yes, thanks, the focus was really what i was hoping to discuss..

13-23 April

2007-04-13T15:51:00.001+01:00

17 Apr 2007
Herbie lives again

Bizarre accident happened on the street below my office today. Was just contemplating whether I'd done enough work to justify eating lunch (answer: no, but I ate it anyway) when I heard a skid and loud bang outside. It's a noisy road anyway, but this sounded a bit louder than normal so I went to the window to have a look. I was just in time to see a red car reverse at speed across the road into the side of a parked car, then drive forward into a driveway and reverse again into the same car. I was thinking road rage, or, given that I work in a hospital, sudden death or something at the wheel. It looked like something out of Herbie. But apparently not, because the car then stopped in the middle of the road and the female driver got out, looking v much alive. A few minutes later 2 police vans, a police car and an ambulance arrrived with their sirens going, stood around for a bit, then went away again. So no idea what happened there... any suggestions to Hammersmith police!

16 Apr 2007
Careers advice

Tonight I was given some unsolicited careers advice. My response to questions about careers have always been vague, I don't have any great plans for the rest of my life, or any ambitions to a high flying career. Something reasonably interesting that pays the bills is good enough as far as I'm concerned. The answer to 'what will you do with your phd' is also a bit tricky. Have another certificate is the real answer, but I can usually fob people off by saying I want to use the research skills in the NHS or charity sector. Tonight that answer didn't suffice. The man in question was determined that I should have An Ambition and enthusiastically suggested possibilities. He pursued the idea of being A Surgeon with some enthusiasm, not even put off by my admission that I'm extremely squeamish and would pass out, not to mention the problem of funding medical school. His next suggestion was a Director of Public Health, ignoring the lack of a medical degree and ambition to be a director of anything, and we finished up eith being a Researcher for Glaxo Smith Kline (no chance, I'd rather eat my own arms than work for big pharma). Fortunately he ran out of steam at this point, but not before telling me that just doing whatever comes along is Very Unsatisfactory. O well....
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13 Apr 2007
remote control crises

My grandma has bought a new tv. I spent 2 hours earlier this week setting it up and teaching her how to use the remote control (i.e. volume and going up and down the channels). I heard today that she hasn't used the tv since, because I "didn't spend enough time showing her how to use it." Should've known it'd be my fault! I wouldn't mind, but she successfully used a remote control with her old tv for the last 10 years. And even though I've taught people with learning disabilities (including a *long* 2 hours a week for 12 weeks teaching someone to mop a floor - he needed reminding every 3 minutes to actually mop and not just lean on his mop sighing loudly at the injustice of life) somehow I just can't quite find the patience to go round there tonight...

16 - 22 March

2007-03-16T14:53:00.000Z

22 Mar 2007
Migration
Was sitting on the train on the way back from Southampton this week, when I saw an interesting letter in the newspaper about migration. It was from an academic (who's the subject of a petition to his university calling for him to be removed) defending his views on migration, and explaining how his membership of the Galton Institute and Migration Watch had nothing to do with his teaching. All quite interesting... but it got v interesting when I looked at the name and realised he was one of my undergraduate tutors.

He did teach us demography, but I don't remember any objectionable views. The only thing I can remember in relation to migration was that for our finals he sent us some recent papers about the EU decision to encourage mass-migration to address the ageing population structure. He may have suggested it was a bad idea, I can't remember. But the academic I remember and the one in the paper really don't correspond. He was the most traditionally 'academic' tutor we had, and barely seemed to function in the real world. He was late to our first meeting because he'd just got off the plane from somewhere important and exotic, and turned up wearing cycle clips and a cycle helmet (had he cycled from the important/exotic place we wondered?). He gave us references for our essays at top speed off the top of his head, and his office was so messy that a pile of papers in braille (very thick pile, A3 pages) were lost in there for a whole term. He seemed entirely inoffensive, except for the excessively fat text book that he'd written and which he expected us to have read and absorbed in its entirety.

So when do political views become so offensive that they shouldn't be allowed? Are political views relevant to your job? And when both sides of a political argument say they have evidence on their side, how do you judge between them? I have no idea whether this guy is racist or not, but I do know that he'll have evidence (good or otherwise) to back up his case.
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2341342.ece
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17 Mar 2007
no disaster

Pleased to report that the 666 birthmark on my back wasn't revealed to the group today. It was actually good to renew my acquaintance with someone I knew when we were undergraduates, and we both politely refrained from mentioning the ex-friend. It left quite a gap in the conversation though, bit of an 'ignore the elephant in the room' situation. On the plus side, she said 'yes I was a bit surprised to see you here, I remembered you being with the jesus army. You always were a bit of a heretic though." I may not be that keen on being thought evil, but am always pleased to be called a heretic - I like to keep people on their toes! And to be fair, I may have been with the jesus army last time we met, but she was going off to be a nun. So we're probably about equal in the oddness stakes.
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16 Mar 2007
Evil edna

I'm going to a church related workshop tomorrow. Quite looking forward to it, except that I've found out I slightly know one of the other people going. This would usually be quite a good thing, but the context in which I know this person is a bit... complicated... She's the friend of an ex-friend. A very ex-friend. And will therefore have heard exactly how evil I am. When meeting a group of new people it's always good to know that one of them thinks you're the anti-christ - adds a little extra adrenaline to the procedings. I'll let you know how it goes - I'm planning to develop selective amnesia if necessary.
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Strange...

My head of department just wandered into my office "just to see if I was allright"... this is v strange. Am usually lucky to see him once a month and he doesn't generally even speak if I bump into him in the corridor. Kept expecting him to get to the point and ask me to do something/give me a deadline/tell me my last article was rubbish but he didn't... He didn't even seem to have much to say. V odd. And leaves me a bit paranoid, thinking, what was all that about? Suppose it's just about plausible that he was just being nice...!
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09-15 March

2007-03-09T16:00:00.000Z

15 Mar 2007
communication skills

Had 'communication skills' training yesterday. Personally I think it was misnamed (this is becoming a regular theme) and should have been called something like 'making me feel even worse about presentations than I already do' training. Normally on the kind of things you have to introduce yourself to the room, sometimes the trainer thinks they're being radical and unusual by getting you to introduce someone else. Yesterday we had to introduce someone else by standing at the front and giving a presentation about them. Each presentation was followed by a discussion and the dreaded 'feedback' about your presentation. We were also asked what we would do differently next time (book into a different course?). This exercise was quite unique in that it managed to turn something I can usually manage quite calmly and happily into something that had me in a cold sweat hyperventilating in the corner as I waited anxiously for my turn.

We were also told things like 'if you're nervous make sure you prepare well, are confident in your subject, and check out the venue'. This helpful advice was followed up by making us do an ad hoc presentation about cot death, a subject we knew little about, with no time to prepare, and an overhead projector (guaranteed to bring me out in a panic because I know from experience that everyone can see the transparency shaking as you desperately try to get it lined up). We were running short on time, so we didn't get any real feedback about this presentation, except to make the point that you give a different presentation to different audiences. Well, yes.... but I think I could have grasped that point just as well without the accompanying anxiety.
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14 Mar 2007
Update on the world's biggest boy

Ok it's not an update on the boy himself (except to say that they never really worked out why he was so big but were very suspicious of the mum), but an interesting fact... There are sumo wrestling clubs in Russia. Enough of them apparently for one to be described as 'one of the best Russian clubs'. (Though I suppose technically just 2 clubs would be enough to give one of them that title.) Am I the only one that finds Russian sumo wrestlers a weird thought?
And continuing the tv theme (I did my reading in front of the telly) a quote from 10 things I hate about you.
"I know you can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but can you just be, whelmed?" "I think you can in Europe."
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13 Mar 2007
the biggest boy in the world Current mood: geeky

I have a confession... instead of reading about the philosophy of education (don't ask...) I'm watching the documentary "the world's biggest boy". It's about a 7 year old boy who weighs 16 stone. Now obviously that's v large, but I disagree with their title. I bet there are 14 year old boys who weigh more than that... and is 'biggest' really the same as 'heaviest'? What's their evidence? Moments like these make me realise I really should get out more and think less.
Now back to the philosophy of education... when is schooling education and when is it indoctrination? Answers on a postcard...
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10 Mar 2007
house hunting Current mood: restless

Spent most of today snooping round other people's houses. Mrs Defying Gravity Senior (henceforth known for reasons of brevity as mum) has decided to move house, so I joined her for a spot of peering into under stairs cupboards and garages to judge 'the storage space'. Mum find it especially annoying when people on TV home decoration programmes walk in and say things like 'I don't like the carpets' - apparently one shouldn't be that shallow and should instead inspect the quality of the plaster - so we were both trying really hard to find positive things to say. Not knowing much about plaster, after 'mmm it's a nice space' I pretty much ran out, possibly leaving more than one estate agent wondering why my mum was dragging her sulking adult daughter around houses with her. Actually I was kind of wondering that myself...
My mum isn't making it any easier by refusing to tell anyone other than me and my sister that she's moving - she says it's 'private'. Have tried to point out that some things you can't keep private, and that people are going to notice at some point (large boxes and a removal van might be a bit of a giveaway, as will a new address), however she's adamant that it's no-one else's business. Has to be said that my mum has a somewhat extreme idea of what's 'private' - she's virtually the embodiment of a net curtain - and I suppose it's progress that she's told me and my sister. When I was a teenager I came home one day and answered the phone to an estate agent - my parents had neglected to tell me that they were selling the house and moving to a different area to live with my grandma. I'm not sure when they would have told me if I hadn't answered the phone - I'm assuming it would have been before they actually moved...
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09 Mar 2007
Mission accomplished
Phone marathon successfully accomplished, although I'm certain that I've missed the one person who actually read the notice and was able to attend, and will have to grovel apologetically on Sunday. Can't be bothered to go to the church just in case tomorrow, grovelling will have to suffice. Mission was made significantly more difficult by 3 things:
1. I was trying to text and watch celebrity fame academy at the same time as phoning round - multi-tasking has never been a particularly strong point of mine, although as a child I occasionally managed to eat dinner, read a book and watch tv at the same time...
2. I hate telephones. Don't know what it is, but am slightly phobic. Frequently give thanks for email and text - a couple of decades previously I really wouldn't have had any friends due to my inability to phone people unless I feel like I've got a good reason. Good as in 'serious misfortune is going to befall someone unless I talk to you and no other type of communication will do.' As pretty much anyone who's had the misfortune to receive an email (or read a blog entry) from me will attest, I don't feel the same compulsion about other communication technologies and happily blather on about nothing.
3. Numbers 1 and 4 on our landline phone don't really work. You have to push really hard several times with a fingernail, and invariably it thens presses it twice and you have to start all over again. So if you have a 1 or 4 in your number there's even less chance you'll get a call from me. You also have to get the speed of button pressing just right - too fast and it gets confused, too slow and it forgets what you were doing. As you can guess, it's not a v high tech phone and we're not really land line users. Last month our line rental and broadband came to £28 and our call costs were 36p. Tonight's saga has at least convinced me to go out tomorrow and buy a phone that works - and who knows, it might even convince me to use it.
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Friday night excitement
OK, so it's Friday night finally. What excitement do I have in store this evening? Yes, that's right, I'm phoning every person on the welcoming team at church to tell them not to turn up tomorrow to the non-existent meeting that was accidentally publicised in the parish magazine. I foresee that none of them will have noticed it in the magazine, and telling them about it will lead to great confusion and protracted phone conversations about what the meeting would have been if it had ever been going to happen. I don't know how I cope with the excitement of my life sometimes...
Currently reading : Struggling to Be Holy By Judy Hirst Release date: 26 June, 2006
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22 Feb -3 MArch

2007-02-22T16:01:00.001Z

Generation gap

Quite sweet and ever so slightly scary example of the generation gap. Older lady from church says to me "When you go home after church on sundays, has your friend [i.e. flatmate] got your sunday lunch ready for you?" Yeah, right.... Even seeing each other between thursday and sunday evenings is pretty rare, and if we wanted to do a roast I think we might have to do it in a wok or something. Clearly she thinks we drift around at home in domestic goddess mode, without pesky children or husbands to get in the way. She'd be seriously disappointed by the reality...

28 Feb 2007
random thoughts Current mood: hyper

Costa del Solihull was better than expected. I haven't really been to that part of the world very often, but I knew I was out of London when the person next to me on the train was friendly. Had to make an effort to be friendly in return, instead of fixing her with a 'why are you disturbing me I'm listening to my mp3 player you freaky over-friendly commuter' stare.

Also had the interesting experience of realising I've been talking at cross purposes with someone for almost an entire year. What I thought I meant wasn't what he thought I meant. This surely ought to be some kind of record? Hope it doesn't happen in anything important - on my death bed, saying to partner "I never wanted 13 children but I'm glad I had them to make you happy", partner replies "I thought you were the one that wanted 13 children, I would have been happy with a stick insect."...

27 Feb 2007
grumpy old woman alert Current mood: grumpy

Been having a bit of a sense of humour failure lately. More GBH than GSOH. For various reasons this start of an article from the weekend Guardian sums up my mood:
There's an intangible something that radiates from couples still conscious of their coupleness. When it's new enough for each person to be constantly aware of their special, entwined state, yet old enough for them to be entirely comfortable with it, the pair emits a kind of glow that, as I'm sure you know, is really quite tiresome. You sit across the kitchen table, feeling the warmth of them on your face, and think, "One more little arm squeeze or smile at a shared secret, and I'll have to reach over and pour wood varnish into their hair."

Basically very, very grouchy! Reached critical proportions tonight when I found myself, at 10.30pm, simultaneously attempting to write a child protection policy, (yes, really, welcome to my life), proof read a review of the year, hang up laundry, and ponder how I can make someone I'm meeting tomorrow believe I'm actually competent and worth working with when I haven't had time tonight to read any of the stuff I wanted to read due to child protection policy and so on. And in the morning I'm off to costa del solihull... How do I stand the excitement???
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22 Feb 2007
defying gravity Current mood: tired

Someone asked if there's a defying gravity story... Well, it's an obvious choice for me: my hobby is free-running, I do zero gravity research, and I'm a great believer in a secret natural therapy that undoes the effect of gravity on the body.

Truth compels me to add at this point that anyone who knows me would cry with laughter at the thought of me running up walls, my research is on the internet and health, and don't even get me started on alternative medicine. So actually the truth is that I was listening to the song 'defying gravity' when I set up my myspace account. The song's from the musical Wicked, as always the book was better, but the musical is pretty good too.

Defying gravity

Something has changed within me, something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing, too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!
It's time to try defying gravity
I think I'll try defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!
I'm through accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change but till I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love it comes at much too high a cost!
I'd sooner buy defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down...

14- 20 Feb

2007-02-14T16:03:00.001Z

19 Feb 2007
The mayor and the skirt

The Skirt made another appearance yesterday. The mayor of our borough came to church, which precipitated the same type of comments as the bishop's visit - i.e. "what are you going to wear?" Not sure if I mentioned this in the post about the bishop's visits, but my role in the church means that when the bishop visits I have to walk in front of him into and out of the church. Even worse, I have to do this carrying a large stick - not only do I feel like a bit of a prat, it's also quite a feat for someone as uncoordinated as I am. I have visions of accidentally tripping over the stick, falling backwards and knocking the bishop unconscious, and then in the kerfuffle standing on the hem of my skirt which would fall down and/or rip from bottom to top - resulting in me standing half naked over an unconscious bishop, in the manner of a dodgy french farce. Unfortunately I have to do the same thing for the mayor, but I'm pleased to say I remained fully clothed and the mayor remained fully conscious (as far as I could tell).

The visit of the mayor reminded me slightly of what I imagine a visit by the Queen might be like. She sails serenely through the event, while everyone else is running around panicking and painting things so she doesn't have to see plebian scuffed paintwork. We didn't quite go as far as re-painting, though I wouldn't really have been surprised if someone had suggested it. We even sang the national anthem, during which I was standing at the front of the church, next to the mayor, with the stick. Being on display at this point created something of a dilemma - I don't normally join in with the national anthem, but stand with my eyes shut, in an attempt to look respectful without actually having to sing the words. Didn't think that would work this time, and since I'd capitulated on the skirt figured I might as well sing along with gusto... Don't think my expression could possibly have been construed as anything other than 'I'll tolerate this but don't expect me to like it", though I was impressed to note the person standing opposite me knew all 3 verses by heart. Not sure I even knew there were 3 verses... although I can still do you a passable rendition of my school song, which we learnt from cards so old they still had god save the king printed on them.

Am not exactly a republican, but my politics started out so left wing they were practically communist, so even now I've mellowed a bit politically, singing the praises of a hereditary aristocrat is never going to be comfortable. The 'eyes respectfully shut' number has been used in various situations incl churches of wildly differing styles when I've been expected to sing along with praises of (amongst others) St Mary and the jesus army.
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17 Feb 2007
harley street

Another quasi philosophical thought... (as an aside, my philosophy tutor had the habit of replying to what I thought were interesting and deep thoughts with "yes, that's trivially true". Possibly the same could be said for most of what's written on the internet?)

Abortion rights have been in the papers the last couple of days, because the owners of Harley Street (you can own a street???) are trying to stop what they call 'lifestyle abortions' (compared to 'medical abortions') happening there. I have complicated feelings about abortion, but clearly in this country there is a legal right to abortion. Officially the abortion has to be for 'medical' reasons - usually the mental or physical health of the woman, but also if the baby will be 'seriously' disabled - but as it stands now, in the 1st 3 months of pregnancy it's always more medically risky to carry on with the pregnancy than to have a termination. So any early pregnancy can be terminated on medical grounds. People have been saying there's a right to abortion, and (in a trivial sense?) that's true in this country- there's a legal right. But can there really be a fundamental human right to have an unwanted pregnancy terminated, in the same way that there might be a fundamental human right not to be killed? I can't really see it - the most I could imagine would be a right not to be prevented from obtaining a termination if one was possible. That would amount to the right to do what one liked with one's own body, assuming that the fetus didn't have rights. Surely there can't actually be a (fundamental) right to be supplied with an abortion that would apply in every culture, every human circumstance? What if there was no-one who could do a termination, how would the 'right to abortion' work then? And this is without even starting on the question of whether the fetus should be given rights...
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It is not only right...
This comes from a discussion I had with some friends the other night. We were talking about making choices, and got on to whether there's a difference between right/wrong and good/bad. They're often conflated, but are they really just the same thing? If you do something that's 'right' but for the wrong reasons, does that make it the wrong thing to do? Or a less good thing to do? And when people make the 'wrong' choice, could they really (given their background, personality, brain chemistry etc) have made the alternative choice? And if they couldn't, then how could it be the wrong choice? And following on from that, when we say something is right and/or good, what do we mean? How are we defining right and good? Is it good because it's fundamentally good in some way, or because god says/made it good, or because it has good consequences? If we go for 'because god says it is', doesn't that make goodness arbitrary? But if it's not arbitrary and there is some fundamental state of goodness, doesn't that take god a bit out of the equation? All getting a bit too philosophical....
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16 Feb 2007
procrastination, that's what you need

The phd process seems to have unleashed my inner procrastinator. Without the restraints of imminent deadlines, immediate colleagues, or any sense of what the heck I'm doing, the inner procrastinator is thriving. Pretty soon she's going to be demanding a name, passport and blog of her own, or at least she would if she wasn't too busy 'checking' on important things. Current preoccupations include email (of course), website updates, the goldfish to check for gill movements (don't want him to die on my shift), my touch typing speed (abysmal but at least I no longer look at the keyboard), and the current favourite, tracking the progress of an e-bay purchase that's being delivered from the States via DHL (news flash- it's now reached the east midlands).
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14 Feb 2007
Presentation

The presentation was fine in the end, the audience came to a grand total of 4, which I'm not sure even counts as a presentation. No sobbing in the toilets required. It was, however, without a doubt the most boring presentation I've ever given. The previous holder of that title was my heroic 50 minute attempt on "the mental health impact of the draft wandsworth borough strategy". I was only doing it because my manager didn't want to, and I think the organisers thought we might have some special insider knowledge. In fact I didn't, and my learning point from that presentation was if you don't know what you're talking about, boring the audience to tears with a blow by blow account of a local government strategy is a really good way to ensure you don't get asked to do it again.

I was, however, surprised to be introduced as 'an eminent speaker'. The 3 other audience members just looked blankly at me, I could virtually see them thinking 'but we thought she was just a phd student, maybe she did something interesting before...' Have no idea why he chose that introduction, and this is not false modesty or british self-deprecation. Am genuinely not eminent in any plausible sense of the word - perhaps he meant to say 'emigrant' (am not that either, but it's more likely), or 'ignorant' (closer to the truth, but less likely he would chose that as an introduction)??
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Postscripts
Couple of postscripts needed on yesterday's posts.

1) The reason the fish is still in the tank is that he's still alive. Seriously worried about my observational skills (animate? inanimate? apparently I can't tell the difference), but at least I haven't been reprising the feeding a dead fish scenario.
2) The presentation is in 20 minutes, I've read it through and then read it through again, and I've checked that the projector works. Now I'm in that 'I've got nothing to do except worry' zone. Reasons to worry are that it's the most boring presentation I've ever given, closely followed by the fact that it's the first one I've done in front of my supervisor. I might post an update later, depends on whether I'm crying in the toilets...

02 - 13 Feb

2007-02-02T16:05:00.001Z

13 Feb 2007
evidence

2 posts in one day, this has to be some kind of record. This is a brief thought. I'm currently doing one of my less favourite tasks, preparing to give a presentation. I'm presenting at an evidence based journal club, on the topic 'what is an evidence based journal club?' Unfortunately, using my skills in evidence based healthcare, I've discovered that there's almost no evidence that journal clubs work. So, I'm presenting at an evidence based journal club about the evidence base for evidence based journal clubs when there is no evidence that evidence based journal clubs are effective. Nicely ironic I think... and I've just discovered that evidence is one of those words that starts to look funny if you write it too much.
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Fish

Got home yesterday and noticed 2 things. Firstly my flatmate is stilll alive, despite the fact that I haven't actually seen her since last Thursday. Things in the flat had been moved, so I can be fairly confident that she hasn't died/been abducted by aliens, unless we have a very selective poltergeist. The second thing I noticed was that our house-goldfish was not still alive. This has been coming for quite some time. First he swam on his side for a while, and just when we'd given up hope he recovered enough to spend most of his time sitting on the bottom of the tank looking resentfully at us. (Or he may have been looking resentfully at the bright pink gravel he was sitting on, a kind present from a former housemate.) Recently he's been alternating periods of sitting on the bottom with swimming manically round the tank - do goldfish get dementia?
The fact that the goldfish was no more was brought to my attention by the fact that the pump and his plants had been removed from the tank. It took me longer to notice (ok, til this morning) that the fish himself hadn't been removed from the tank and was in fact still sitting on the bottom looking out resentfully. This made me wonder if I spent the weekend feeding a dead fish, not the first time that this has happened. I once spent a week cycling over to feed my sister's guinea pig and fish while she and my parents were on holiday. The guinea pig was fine (the neighbours got used to hearing me in the garden saying entreatingly 'come on piggy-wiggy, you know you want to come here now, come on guinea-winny, don't make me come in and get you' as the guinea pig cowered in the far end of her run). The fish were less fine, and at some point in the week I must have made the transition from feeding live fish to throwing food in on top of dead fish. Unfortunately I didn't notice...

08 Feb 2007
Teeth

Have been back again to my dentist to have a temporary filling put back in to a wisdom tooth. By now it would have been easier and cheaper just to put in a normal filling, not to mention the fact that v soon I'm going to be noticeably lopsided due to only using the muscles on one side of my jaw. I'm waiting to have the whole tooth taken out, but as my dentist indignantly said this morning "the hospitals give priority to life saving surgery". Couldn't work out whether she was joking, or was genuinely annoyed that troublesome wisdom teeth aren't up there with coronary by-passes.

Clearly I couldn't possibly stagger in to the office through the snow with a dodgy wisdom tooth, so am working at home today. This is proving to be a mistake - having thought 'ah, I can work til 7pm and still get to my evening meeting on time', have so far failed to make much of an impact on my to-do list. Back to it....
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05 Feb 2007
Neighbours Current mood: sleepy

I am engaged in a long-term war of attrition with our neighbours over whether the windows in the communal staircase should be open or closed. Every time I come in or go out I close the windows and within approximately 30 seconds a person or persons unknown opens them. I thought I was the only one petty enough to be bothered, but I recently discovered my flatmate (R) does exactly the same thing.

Personally I think my reasons for closing the windows are entirely reasonable: it's winter, when the stairway is cold all your heating escapes every time you open the flat door, and when it rains the carpet gets wet. Also we live on a main road and everything gets covered in a layer of black dust when the windows are open. Other neighbour disputes in this block have resulted in hand-written notices being blu-tacked to the suspects' front doors, and then to the main door when the culprits denied all knowledge. I've always considered those kind of notices to be the last resort of the desperate, but I'm seriously considering sticking one on the windows. The fact that we only rent the flat is irrelevant, and my motivation for wanting them closed is nothing to do with pettily wanting to win an argument, no, definitely not. Ahem...

This isn't the first time we've had neighbour issues. Our last (ground floor) flat was damp, oddly decorated, and required extensive net curtains because someone parking their car and walking to the front door had a perfect view into every room in the flat. These things we could cope with. Our neighbours in that block were helpful, chatty and cared about the flats - this we could not cope with. I eventually demanded we move after Neighbour A informed me that the piece of hardboard which had mysteriously appeared next to my scooter had been left there by Neighbour B who had been inspecting the tarmac and noticed that the stand of my bike was leaving dents. I was apparently supposed to have understood the need for the hardboard by some process of mind-reading/extra sensory perception, though if he'd just asked me to do it I wouldn't have minded... much...

02 Feb 2007
Distractions Current mood: blah

I have that Friday feeling... one of those days where I find myself fitting work in between checking emails, doing internet searches and reading the BBC news instead of the other way round. It's not as though I don't have anything to do, it's just that I don't have any imminent deadlines. I finally managed to submit a project proposal yesterday - only a month late, oops - and it feels as though by rights I should be celebrating, not starting work on an update that's needed because the proposal was out of date before it was even submitted. Groan....

I can report that the major crisis of this week had nothing to do with my phd or personal life, or in fact anything very important. Unintentionally this week I've had 2 separate meetings with 2 separate bishops - one during a church service and one at dinner before a meeting. Other people worried about what to call them (Your Grace? Your most importantness?) or what the bishop might think about the service or church. My concerns were less spiritual... WHAT do you wear to meet a bishop? This was made worse by the fact that I'm known (and occasionally disapproved of) for wearing jeans to church...

Briefly considered and rejected the possibility of wearing a big wedding hat (haven't got one), a bishop fancy dress costume (to make them feel at home and make a political protest), or my 'winter' interview suit. Finally decided on my latest wedding skirt for the service and normal work clothes for the dinner. The dinner was ok, but the skirt attracted approximately 746 comments, ranging from the friendly commiseration to the 'oh you look lovely in a skirt, you should wear one more often' (subtext: you look really manky usually).
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30 Jan 2007
Neuro diverse Current mood: curious
A friend of mine has just solved the parallel universe problem for me. I'm not unusual or out of step, I'm 'neuro diverse'. Quite like that idea, who wants to be neuro-typical anyway?!

When does the real world start?

Having been involved with different churches for a long time now, I can say with certainty (or what passes for certainty in my life) that they're all WEIRD. Often weird in a good way, but I frequently feel as if I've entered some kind of parallel universe that looks the same as the normal one but doesn't behave in quite the same way. In some ways it's supposed to be like that - the church community is meant to be a reflection of the kingdom of god, which does have different values - but the weirdness is rarely confined to that. And now I'm working in academia, I've found that here's yet another parallel universe, with its own jargon, hierarchies and way of doing things. It's quite disorientating coming in as someone who isn't familiar with all that, and has slightly different values to the institution - I'm not planning a high flying career in academia, I want to get back out to the 'real world'.

To boldly go...

2007-01-30T16:07:00.000Z

30 Jan 2007
To boldly go...

Decided to finally enter the age of the blog. As I'm currently doing internet research for a living it's probably about time. The first crisis was what to call it - after going through several normal potential names I settled on this one (random_randomer_randomest) because apparently it's a word I over use. Can't see it myself, but at least with a blog there'll be written evidence of my use of the offending word. I could even do a content analysis... Unfortunately it's taken so long to choose a name that I'm falling asleep at the laptop so my great words of wisdom will have to wait til another day. At least I'll have something to think about when I'm jammed into a commuter's armpit on the tube tomorrow. (I don't travel in the rush hour, I just like armpits... my fellow travellers don't seem to mind too much).