When Ali met Sally

I've been quiet here for a while - but the first two weeks of term have been hectic! I've been mostly trying to write an essay on the book of Judges, but other stuff kept getting in the way. Ridley has a habit of doing that - there are just some days when you have to accept that you aren't going to achieve anything progress-wise...I've had two of those already.

We had double rations of New Testament lectures this term, which needed a LOT of preparation, meaning little progress on writing assignments, but now that course is finished, and we're down to five hours of lectures for the next couple of weeks. Meaning that I can finally put my foot to the pedal and get some serious writing done.

Today I had a good day - the essay is now written and is in that 'simmering' state, where it's been printed, waiting for Mrs Didley to proof read it and for me to have a brainwave about a very important point that I've left out. But to be honest she's never corrected anything other than grammar, punctuation and half deleted sentences, and I've never had a major rethink at the last minute. So it's now 99.9% complete, and I have another 2.5 essays to write in the next 2 weeks. That will be fun, as for two of them I haven't started the reading for them yet. There might be a few late nights coming up, and I'm not counting election night, which will be far too exciting in TV to be able to read anything.

Having completed one essay there's a quick lull, and time to reward myself with a bit of blogging, time to try to remember what else happened since term began. I know there's something I want to blog about but it's fallen out of mind...but there's something I haven't forgotten - Incumbent's Day.

For the non-technically minded, my 'training incumbent' means my boss-to-be, Rev Sally Wheeler. She's the vicar of Lacock, I'll be her curate/apprentice/Padawan learner. Last Tuesday about half of our incumbents came up to Ridley for a day, where they heard about what Ridley has been trying to teach us and had a meeting with our tutors (hence the title!). Both Ali and Sally promise me that they didn't discuss anything that I hadn't already discussed with Ali previously - nevertheless it's a bit wierd knowing that somebody is meeting and talking about you. Obviously, 30 minutes was insufficient time to talk about my many talents and skills - I don't know how they crammed it all in.

After that, all students and incumbents were encouraged to spend time together talking about our hopes and fears for the curacy, our working relationship etc. We had a good chat - we seemed to spend all afternoon sitting on a bench by the croquet lawn - all very civilised!

Sally was bowled over by the stunning setting and the peacefulness of Ridley - I guess we don't necessarily appreciate what a special place it is until somebody points it out. But there's not much of it left - it's now less than 6 weeks until we leave.