In this newsletter:
Announcements
- Monthly meetings
- Events
- Your committee needs you
- News from the groups
- u3a Trust activities
- Havant Talking News
- A short story
- Feedback
Announcements
Helping others
We will collect tins and dried foodstuffs for both "Hayling Holiday Lunches" and "Community Pantry" food banks. The collection will be at each Hayling u3a monthly meeting (put food donations on the stage). In addition, a collection bucket will be available at the meeting if you prefer to give a cash donation. Please ensure that any food products you donate are within the sell-by date.
Volunteers Required
We are always looking for volunteers to help run our various activities. Currently we need:
- Additional tea monitors for making the tea/coffee at the monthly meetings. We run a rota so that you would only have to cover once or twice a year.
- A couple of people to help set up the projector and audio system at our monthly meetings. Full instructions will be provided, and no experience is necessary.
Monthly meetings
August meeting
Wonderful world of beekeeping: Mike Cotton has been a beekeeper for 20 years and has chaired Portsmouth beekeeper's association - which has 144 members - for 12 years. He has travelled a lot and is a member of the Ontario Beekeepers Association in Canada with beekeeper friends in New Zealand and South Africa. He trains new beekeepers and carries out shows during the year.
He told the audience all about beekeeping and brought a hive to the talk.
Next meeting
Our Annual General Meeting. After all the usual audience voting, we'll be entertained by the Ukulele Thursday group. There will also be displays of some of our group activities.
Events
Next HIU3A visit
The visit to Wakehurst is going ahead. Click/tap here to find out more and make a booking - less than 10 places available!
The Hayling bridges
The first bridge between Hayling and the mainline opened 200 years ago on 8th September, 1824.There will be a talk about the history of the bridges on Sunday, 8th September at 3.00 pm at HICCA. Admission is free. The Havant Local History Group is responsible for the talk as part of its Heritage Festival Week.
Seniors Christmas party
The Hayling Island Businessmens' Club has resurrected its annual Seniors Christmas Party at Sinah Warren on the 30th October at 2.00. The event is kindly hosted by Sinah Warren and is free of charge. There will be tea, coffee and cakes plus a Panto. If you would like tickets contact Brian Smith on thesmiths@pennyandbrian.co.uk.
Your committee needs you
There are vacancies on the Hayling Island u3a committee. Applications are invited. Being a committee member is not scary! Committee ‘visitors’ are welcome so you can see what goes on. It’s an opportunity for you to influence the way that Hayling u3a is going.
Bob Hornby has agreed to stand as Vice-Chair. Elaine Picton will come to our September Committee meeting with the view to shadowing Bridget Docwra if she feels able.
What’s it like to be a Committee Member in Hayling u3a?
As a member of a supportive and enthusiastic team you are always made to feel welcome and valued. Each member of the committee has specific responsibilities but help and advice are always available from your fellow officers to ensure that no individual has too many things to do. Team working is essential to provide support to all. Our committee meetings are held monthly, last no more than 1½ hours, are very informal and most of all fun. Tea, coffee and biscuits are always available, an essential part of making decisions to continue to develop Hayling u3a and be successful going forward.
Why not come and see the work of the committee at one of our monthly meetings? We meet at Wimborne Care Home at 10.30am on the third Thursday of each month. Please contact Julie if you want further information.
News from the groups
The Solent Forts cruise
The day before the Solent Forts cruise, the organisers received this message from one of the passengers:
Having sailed a lot on the Solent waters, I am keeping an eye on the weather for tomorrow, if I don't appear at the right time I will have opted out, don't worry about my payment.
The words evoked a distant memory of a famous poem:
It is an ancient mariner And he stoppeth one of three…. He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he…
The day of the visit dawned fair and 45 of us (but not the previous day’s correspondent) met up at Portsmouth Hard to take the short crossing to Gosport where we boarded a spare ferry for the trip. We followed a Brittany Ferries vessel out into the Solent and observed some of the old buildings on the Gosport shore as far as Fort Gilicker before heading for No Mans Land Fort. The captain circled it twice, once clockwise and once anti-clockwise, so everybody on board got a good view. This proved to be the biggest of the three forts we visited, and quite the commercial enterprise by all accounts.
We then moved on to visit the forts of Horse Sand and Spitbank before returning to Portsmouth Harbour viewing the Southsea shore and Spice Island. We still had an hour left before the advertised landing time and we wondered how the time would be spent. The answer was that we were taken on a very enjoyable tour of Portsmouth Harbour. Both aircraft carriers were in port and a close view of both vessels was the highlight of the day for many of us.
We docked at Gosport on schedule, caught the next ferry back to Portsmouth and dispersed, having been careful to not endanger any passing seabird!
Art Group 3
The group now has two free spaces. We meet on the first Thursday of each month from 2-4 pm at The Age Concern hall, Webb Lane. It is a very relaxed class using whichever medium you prefer. We generally suggest a topic for the following month but often prefer to simply do our own thing. The first attendance is free, then a charge of £10 goes into the pot, which lasts quite a few months.
For further information contact Linda MacDonald.
Creative Writing
The creative writing group met at Wimborne care home recently and had a very successful morning. We have a full house at the moment so anyone wishing to join will have to go on a waiting list or start a new group. Fiona Barlett
The Photography Group
Which one Captain?
Photo taken by Vanessa Dove at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard onboard HMS Warrior.
The Island Shanty group
It has been a busy summer for the Island Shanty group who enjoyed another fun afternoon in the sun with a performance at Sam's Sun Flowers over the August bank holiday weekend. This gave the Group the opportunity of inviting representatives of its chosen charities: the RNLI and Hayling Island Donkey Sanctuary, to receive generous donations raised by u3a member Jennifer Phelps and her husband Stuart's recent wedding celebration party at which Island Shanty performed.
In addition to supporting numerous events over the year to help other local fund raising causes, Jenny and Stuart's donation has enabled Island Shanty to contribute over £1,200 so far this year to its own chosen charities.
u3a Trust activities
u3a online events
The u3a Trust conducts a national learning programme month by month. For details tap or click here for details.
u3a Friends and Friends Extra
u3a Friends is a new initiative to bring together stories and interests from across the u3a movement. Tap or click here for more details. Friends Extra is a new benefits website exclusively for u3a Friends. Tap or click here for more details of Friends Extra.
Havant Talking News
If you have a friend or relative whose eyesight is failing then Havant Talking News may be able to help.
Blindness can mean a life of isolation for those who can’t see. Those who suffer from poor eyesight can also feel cut off from the details of life. But it doesn’t have to be like this.
Havant Talking News does its best to help with these problems by providing free audio recordings of what’s going on in the local area. News stories are taken from the Portsmouth News, the Hayling Herald and other local newspapers.
How does it work? Put simply, a team of volunteers start by picking out the best stories from the local press and editing them to cut out any unnecessary detail or repetition. The best ‘running order’ for these stories is determined and finally another team, those with good speaking voices, read out the chosen stories, which are recorded onto a USB stick. The USB sticks are then posted out to the listeners, who have a simple listening device which can be operated without having to see it. The USB sticks are then posted back to us and the whole process starts again.
As an organisation it wants to reach out to as many people as possible who might need its service. So, if you know of anyone who might benefit from the service, or if you would like to volunteer to be part of its friendly team, please contact Havant Talking News, either through the website www.hbtn.org.uk, or by calling the office on 023 9248 0101, or just contact me, I’m an Editor for HTN.
A short story
Consequences
The train was making good time considering the late start. It was speeding along the track and the train driver and his mate were enjoying the thoughts of a long cool beer when they reached the terminus. As it entered the tunnel which was carved straight through the side of the mountain, the bright sunshine from outside was abruptly cut off, plunging the carriages into relative darkness by contrast. One of the other effects of the tunnel was to cut off any signal from all mobile phones, which meant, as a consequence, that the text message saying “There is a killer on board” stayed in the phone queueing system. The passengers of course were unaware of the urgency of this message and carried on chatting and listening on their earphones to downloaded music or podcasts, and discussing the length of the tunnel. There was as always, a know all who claimed to have travelled so many times on this line that he could say to the nearest second how long they would be in the gloom.
The killer could not believe his luck. He knew this was a long tunnel and so he had plenty of time. He carefully felt his way along the carriages, counting them off as he went, till he came within two rows of his victim, who was conveniently sitting alone on the row of seats. Without hesitating, he unscrewed the nearest light fitting and using a small device from his pocket, he quickly and neatly shorted the light system. The carriage was then plunged into darkness and the killer was able to dispense his lethal action unobserved, joining in afterwards with the general hubbub of concern over the lights. Nobody appeared to have noticed that the passenger in row H had fallen sideways, or if they did, they assumed that he had fallen asleep.
The killer was able to make his way back to his own carriage and continue on his way as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t long before the tunnel opened out and the destination came into view. The train sighed into its allotted platform, where all the passengers but one, disembarked and went on their various ways. The killer disembarked also, feeling rather pleased with himself. Job done, the body wouldn’t be discovered till the cleaners came on board and by then, well, it could have been anyone. He stopped at a station stall and bought himself a paper and some fruit, then found an empty bench seat and sat down to eat and enjoy his read and his snack. After a few moments, he became aware that he had company in the form of a young lady, a rather attractive young lady. He smiled at her and offered her a grape from his bag, which she accepted with a dazzling smile. Distracted by this, he didn’t notice her drop her glove till she uttered a small exclamation of irritation, as she had a grape in each hand, and was unable to immediately bend down to pick it up. The killer immediately bent down to retrieve the glove at the same time as the young woman, and their heads briefly were very close together. Breathing effusive thanks, she stood up and, blowing him a kiss with her ungloved hand, she planted it near his cheek, just below the jawline. She smiled her dazzling smile once more and disappeared into the station crowds. The killer smiled back, putting his own hand on his neck where he felt a tiny bump, just before the darkness overcame him, sending him into oblivion, where, slumped sideways on the bench, people assumed he had fallen asleep. The consequence of a dangerous profession.
© Fiona Bartlett
Feedback
This is the final Newsletter with me as editor. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, I know I have.
It remains only for me to say: Goodbye...
Any comments would be welcome. Please send any feedback to editor@haylingu3a.org.
Robert Bull