Nicholas Jones' Blog |
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Friday, July 16, 2004
Wednesday
Cartmel College graduated on wednesday so quite a few people from chaplaincy graduated. Abbs, Rachel Jackson, Daffy and Melissa all came up into Chaplaincy and had a cup of tea. Abi and Cath Jordan came up as well, who were in Grizedale and graduated on thursday. Thursday Grizedale and Lonsdale graduated, so as well as Abi and Catherine, Steph and Matt arrived. Steve Hoyland was preparing food for friday and saturday night so Melissa, Matt and later Rachel Jackson and I were helping to prepare it in the kitchen in the catholic flat. After a while the conversation got quite deep and theological. There was nobody in one bedroom in the Anglican flat that night, so I got to sleep in a bed. Friday All the graduation ceremonies today are for Edge hill college which is miles away in Ormskirk so nobody I know or who comes to Chaplaincy is graduating today. Matt and Steph have been getting stuff ready for the wedding; the barrel of beer is in central lounge and has been tapped, the fridge here in Gills office is full of wine, the vodka is in the freezer. Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Graduation
Today I got up at 8am so that we (me and mum and dad) could set off for my graduation. Dad went and picked up my sister from her house down the road in Wakefield. My brother couldn't come because he started his new job yesterday, so we went to Woodlands near Doncaster to pick up grandma Jones. She got in the car and we drove on to Lancaster, and the only traffic jam we encountered was on the A6 coming up to the university, presumably all the other people coming to the graduation ceremony. We parked near County marquee but found that we were early the lunch but that we couldn't actually get in to the marquee that side. We walked round and then I went to the toilets in Chaplaincy to change into my suit. When I got back they were sat down ready to get some food, so we went to the buffet, and I just had some chicken curry and rice. We stayed there until twenty to two when I went and got my robes from Chaplaincy, and then we went to the great hall, but the doors weren't open, so we stood around for a while and Faith took a photo of me. The doors opened at 2pm exactly and Mum, Dad, Faith and Grandma went into the great hall to be seated with the guests, and I went up into the nuffield theatre to line up with the other Bowland Bsc students. The ceremony took 35 minutes, and I've left it so long to complete this entry I can't remember what the speech was about, but my parents have bought the DVD, so I will hear it again. The Graduands were ushered up on to the stage one at a time, and had their names read out before shaking hands with the Chancellor, Princess Alexandra. Afterwards we went back outside and I saw Kevin Hugget and he introduced himself to my family. We then went and had the college photograph, which took a while because they called people up in height order, so 5 foot 2 or less, then 5 foot for or less, etc. up to 6 feet or more, so I went up with the last lot. The area around where they were taking the photos (outside) was only cordened off with tape, so peoples family (including my dad) stood around taking their own pictures of the college photograph. After that I ducked under the tape and joined my family drinking tea at a table outside the marquee, before showing them the way to the conference centre to have my photograph taken. After much debate about which pack to get, I went and got photographed in my robes holding a fake scroll. After that Mum, Grandma Faith and I went back to the chaplaincy centre to return my robes and Dad drove the car round to the centre so I could get my sleeping bag and bag out of it. I then waited for Kevin to get back so I could blag somewhere to sleep until Matt and Stephs wedding. I ended up in what was Gills office, and still has a computer in it which is connected to the network (a Pentium II 400 running windows NT4) which I have duly upgraded to Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2(from Netscape communicator) and am typing this now. Sunday, July 11, 2004
This morning I got up at 8:30 for the 9:30 service at St.Helens in Sandal Magna. It's on Barnsley road so it's just around the corner and only 10 or 15 minutes walk. I walked round the corner and saw on their board outside that the service actually started at 10am every sunday. So I went for a walk around the church.
It is an old church building which was 'restored' in the 19th century and most of the stained glass windows are 19th century. By about 9:30 some people had arrived to set up the fairtrade stall. As I walked in I was met by a fairly large (but probably friendly) dog called Guinness and had to wait for its owner to call it away. Plenty of people said hello and good morning and introduced themselves. The vicar, Rupert, introduced himself, told me that there is a housegroup and apologised for the website being wrong. His sermons were following a theme of the things people spend most of their time doing, and they had already done eating and sleeping so this week it was television. He talked about the good points and the bad points, then he moved onto what the bible has to say about television. Unsurprisingly as he said, 'television' was not in his concordance but there was plenty about vision, seeing etc. The readings were Genesis 3:1 - 7 and Matthew 6:19-24. Afterwards I went and had tea and met a few more people. Monday, June 28, 2004
Saturday
My dad came up to 2A Langley road in his car to collect my stuff (TV, computer, clothes,...). It took hours to pack it all into the car, and when we had finished we found there was no room for my (rather large quantity of) leftover food. In the end we had to unpack the front seat of the car, I had to get in so that I could show dad where they were collecting food for the homeless on campus and pack the bags of food in around me. We dropped it off, went back to the house, and repacked the front seat. I had to go home by train because the car was full and I needed to take my bicycle back. Unfortunately I found out when dad called rail enquiries at about 1900 that the last train was at about 1925, so I didn't have time to finish vacuuming my room. When we got back to Wakefield, I showed mum & dad my photos of Time Away, the Christian Aid bar crawl, Waving goodbye etc. I hope to use their scanner to put some of them on the web. Sunday Was spent unpacking all the stuff we'd put in the car yesterday, and putting most of it in the attic. We went to the local pub to have lunch, as my parents normally take me out for a meal each time I get back for the holidays, but they had stopped doing food. We walked over to the local indian restaurant and found that they didn't open at lunchtime, so we had to go back to the house and get the car to get lunch at a pub somewhere else. We had asunday lunch at another pub and Faith came and joined us. Monday Today I phoned the jobcentre to arrange an appointment to sign on. I went in to town to find my way around, look at the vacancies in the jobcentre, look around the shops and ask Natwest about my graduate account. In Wakefield town centre they are recladding some 60s brown brick tower blocks in rather tasteless yellow plastic, I'm not yet convinced it's really an improvement but it isn't finished yet. All the charity shops that I saw open were asking for volunteers, so I might do that until I can find a job. The jobcentre had vacancies for factory workers, van drivers, other jobs for people with cars, secrataries and various other jobs which I don't think I'm suitable for. The information desk at Natwest told me my Graduate account stuff was in the post, so I needn't have worried. Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Last night was Lonsdale college party. It rained for nearly all of it, and some of the bands were quite poor since they decided to make the event cheaper (£3.50 instead of about £10) this year. Lots of people from chaplaincy came, Laura Barber showed me her photos of time away (they were good - I will link to them if they get put on the web). I stayed until the end at 3am, spending a lot of the time with Sally and some people from Hiking club (Rich and Andy if I'm remembering their names right).
I got my degree result at 10am this morning. I got a pass degree as expected. They gave me a mug with 'Congratulations from the Department of Mathematics & Statistics'. I sent as many people as I could think of text messages telling them my result and stayed around on campus until 3pm for the department photo. Also, I've been watching the England matches, and here's a good link for Euro 2004. Friday, June 11, 2004
Friday, May 28, 2004
Thursday, May 20, 2004
My exam this afternoon was Likelihood Inference (statistics) and it was probably the least bad so far. Section A was quite sketchy, but the bits I could do overall were enough to keep me occupied for most of the exam. I don't know that I necessarily did much better in this exam, I expected long before I started my exams it was one I might fail, especially since I got the lowest coursework mark in the group (34%). However, it at least felt like a proper exam and not at total washout.
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