U3A in London Update – 28 September 2020

This information was published on: September 28, 2020

From Gilli The Monday Talks

This week author Sarah Shaw challenges our preconceptions of office secretaries in the 70s. In ‘Secretaries of the 1970s: office wives, dolly birds or resourceful assistants? she asks us to get ready for everything we thought we knew about secretaries in the 70s to be wrong.

Next week Stephen Horne looks at Harrods -giving us the history and humour of one of the World’s greatest retail emporia. For 25 years, Stephen was surrounded by the then movers of retail, including the Chairman of Marks and Spencer, right across the retail spectrum to the Chairman of Tesco and many personalities in between. Stephen managed and administered the charitable institutions for which they were honorary chairmen. Retail was close to Stephen’s heart when he made the move to Harrods, first as a salesman and then to become one of their most senior managers.

The Autumn Timetable

Click here to see the latest timetable.

Our first week has passed with very few catastrophes and we are sending a BIG thank you to everyone who contributed to all the classes and talks – whether coordinator, Zoom manager, IT expert, office manager or participant. We thank you all for being so tolerant and for taking part in this online adventure. Did you realise that U3A in London is hosting over 80 classes, talks and events every week? We admit that we didn’t get everything right, there were some glitches which were very upsetting for those involved. – but overall for our first full Zoom programme, we consider that it generally went well. As you probably realise – there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.

(This is a note from Amalia – the BIGGEST thanks must go to Gilli herself. She has worked her socks off to support and train our coordinators and make sure there were no clashes in the Zoom programmes. Nothing has been too much trouble for her and she has endless patience, good humour and a very supportive husband. I call her our Zoom Queen – and Les is our Zoom King!).

And now – please may we ask that you take care with the ‘click here’ entries in the timetable. They are there to make life easier for you – but if you click on them outside the day and time of the class, you block someone else’s link which can cause a certain degree of chaos. Also, coordinators, do not overrun your hour by more than a few minutes if possible. You may be preventing the next class from beginning.

Recordings
Recordings of the Monday Morning Talks will be available for a week or two afterwards. If you would like to have the link to a recording – or of that of an outside speaker such as Cindy Zurias, please email the Office Recordings of some other talks may also be available. Please check with the coordinator to request a link.

Note: if you join one of these classes too early, you are recorded too, which uses up valuable recording space and takes time and effort to be deleted. NEVER attempt to record a talk yourself.

Finally, the timetable is being updated all the time and we hope to keep it up-to-date – please forgive us the occasional mishap – continue to enjoy the classes and have a wonderful week.

From Naomi

We are still quite overwhelmed by your enthusiasm to renew your membership fees and If we appear to be slow in responding, it’s because we’re trying desperately to keep up with your requests, so please be patient in waiting for your form to arrive.

Hopefully, it will not be too long before you will be able to pay online, if this is your preferred method. In the meantime, the only way for you to renew your membership is still to ask for your pre-printed form to be emailed to you (or, if you have printer problems, ask for it to be posted to you.) I am liaising with Herbie to organise this. When you have made sure everything is correct on the form, you need to sign it and post it back to a member of the committee.

If you want to pay by this method, I will send you all the necessary information about posting the form when you apply to me. If you pay by cheque, you need to include that with the form; if you pay directly into our bank, you still must post back the signed form to that member of the committee.

(From Amalia: Naomi has a nasty cold – not Covid related, you’ll be relieved to hear – and we hope she will soon be 100% fit again soon).

From Charles Goodman

Dear Cercle Français members. While circumstances are preventing our meeting in the Old Town Hall, I’ll be holding the class on Zoom on Tuesdays at the different time of 2.00 pm.

We shall start our “come-back” by reading Voltaire’s Candide which is a short book to give us time to decide on a book to follow that. It’s available free of charge from Kindle, and Amazon also sell it In paperback for around £2-3.

From Sue Kwok

Members of Susan Woodford’s Thursday Creative Writing class are in touch with each other at home and sharing their work.We will be publishing examples each week.

Have you recently come on Board?

I hear on the grape vine that some of our members have realised how much they were missing by not receiving our weekly updates. They have decided to invest in a laptop, iPad or smart phone to be able to take part in our activities – so welcome to our on line family!

Diaries 2021-22

People who would like a U3A diary for next year may like to know that it is possible to buy a pack of 5 for £15, including postage, from U3A National’s “shop”. Just go to their website www.u3a.org.uk, click on Resources and scroll down to “shop”.

To Make you smile

Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself entering a Bank, wearing a mask and asking for money.
Never thought my hands would one day consume more alcohol than my liver …. ever!
😷 – I’m starting to like this mask thing …. went to the supermarket and two people that I owe money to didn’t recognize me.
😜 – I need to socially distance myself from my fridge; I tested positive for excess weight!
😟 – We want to publicly apologize to the year 2019 for all the bad things we said about it.
🚰- My washing machine only accepts pyjamas …. I put in a pair of jeans and a message came “stay at home!” 😷🏠
💉 – After all that we have been through, the only thing missing is that the vaccine will only be available as a suppository.

Everything I needed to know, I learned from Noah’s Ark
ONE: Don’t miss the boat.
TWO: Remember that we are all in the same boat!
THREE: Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
FOUR: Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
FIVE: Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
SIX: Build your future on high ground.
SEVEN: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs.
EIGHT: Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
NINE: When you’re stressed, float awhile.
TEN: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
ELEVEN: No matter the storm, when you are with friends, there’s always a rainbow.

U3A London Logo

London Region of U3As. A repeat:
Family History Talks Friday afternoons in October 14.00-15.00
Click here for further details and registration form. Select up to four talks.
2nd October: Family History at The National Archives
9th October: Online Family History Resources at the London Metropolitan Archives
16th October: Layers of London
30th October: The Future for Family History Research
London Region website: The above information is also available via the Events page of our website. Recordings and available presentations can be found in the Talks Archive which is accessible via the Events page.