West Wolds U3A

Today’s speakers were from Lincolnshire Police’s Cybercrime Unit who gave a brief overview of the potential areas where we can be scammed and how to avoid it. They also provided a helpful guide for members to take away to read at leisure. I have a few spare so if you missed the meeting, come and find me at November’s meeting to collect one.

Committee will look at taking up the offer from the Police to run a hands-on event whereby members can bring their devices and be shown how to set up their Privacy settings and gain helpful tips.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video the Police recommend: Six Actions to Improve Your Cyber Security

The list of catering helpers for the next two meetings are :-

Please contact Rachel Telfer if you can offer to help.

Dawn Stopper would like to let all of her Keep Fitters (also known as Dawn’s Supple Seniors) know that she will not be running the Thursday Keep Fit Group on the 21st and 28th October.

The Committee extend a warm invitation to all members to attend a Committee Meeting to see ‘behind the scenes’ of what we do to keep your u3a running. You are welcome to come along and observe, and you might find being a committee member is not as daunting as you imagine, and more fun.

The ethos of the u3a is ‘by the members, for the members’ and we work together to keep our u3a going and offering all the events, activities, meetings etc that we do. The u3a is key in our local area at combating loneliness and isolation for older people but we need our members to take part to help run our u3a. Without volunteers, we will not exist so please think about what you could do to help, in any role no matter how small.

Contact any committee member for more information on how you could help.

JOHN NOWELL –  A DAY ABOVE LINCOLNSHIRE

John Nowell served for 20 years in the Royal Air Force, and then flew as a personal pilot to His Majesty, the late Sultan Qaboos of Oman. He published his first photographic book at the Sultan’s request ‘A Day Above Oman’. Since retiring from commercial flying, John has continued to publish his ‘A Day Above’ series and today presented us with an aerial guide of Lincolnshire, starting at dawn and running up the coast and inland from top to bottom, regaling us with tales and history from the various locations, completing the day at sunset where the farmer is still harvesting well into the early hours.

The 2022 u3a Diaries are now available to order for £3.50. Please see me at this Thursday’s General Meeting to order and pay.

Thank you

Sharon Rupp

Scunthope U3A invite us to their last Zoom Speaker this Friday August 27th at 1.45pm, and the subject is Jack The Ripper presented by Paul Robbins.

Paul returns to the East End of  his childhood to talk about the World’s greatest “criminal who done it” in history. He paints a vivid and moving picture of the East End of London in the late summer and autumn of 1888 as he reviews the crimes, the main suspects and offers his own suggestion as to the identity of the Whitechapel murderer AKA Jack the Ripper. In examining the case, Paul discounts many of the names put forward as to who the Ripper was and asks the question of why there was cover up to shield the Ripper from justice. The talk paints a picture of the East End in the late C19th as it was and the daily struggle for life that drove the Ripper’s victims into a life of Prostitution, drawing on his childhood memories of someone who after 45 years away from the area still regards the East End as his home.

Log in Friday 27th August, 2021 from 1.45 with the meeting starting at 2pm.

Meeting ID: 868 8920 8256 Passcode: 639682

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86889208256?pwd=ckZxYWtCbG9lY21rR29zNlhFNTBkZz09 

The 2022 u3a Diaries are now available to order for £3.50. Payment must be in advance please, and the last date to order is September 30th.

Please see Sharon Rupp at the September General Meeting.

Today, at our first meeting with a speaker since March 2020, we welcomed Nigel MacKnight, a successful technical author.

Coming from ordinary back ground, Nigel found an aptitude for writing technical books in layman’s speak about anything that moved –  rockets, spacecraft, aircraft, formula 1 and so on, and made a successful career from it.  Starting by writing short articles for aircraft magazines as a teenager helped him obtain a press pass enabling access behind the scenes to meet and interview all the sporting greats as well as some well-known showbiz personalities and to fly with the Red Arrows. All this was done without realising, until a few years ago, that he had Dyslexia.

Nigel’s determination and ambition pushed him through any difficulties he had with his writing and these days he brings the same attitude to challenges by leading a team striving to bring the water speed record back to Britain inspired by his hero, Donald Campbell. His new boat ‘Quicksilver’ is currently being built after 20 years of designing and modifying, initially with the help of one of the original Bluebird designers  Ken Norris.

Nigel gave us an interesting presentation not only of his background, but of the progress and testing of the scale model of the boat, and invited members to speak to him about helping to support the project which is run mainly by volunteers and goodwill from universities, engineering and marine experts and the MOD.

If you missed this talk, you will never know why Red Arrows pilots have piles!