Issue Six Newsletter March 2016 Welcome to our latest issue of the Kenton & District U3A Eiti Newsletter, no: 6. We are now in our second year and approaching our second AGM and it is very upli" ing to see our activities expand this year with the introduction of English Literature and History. Our existing activities are continuing to thrive and I believe that some new activity groups are in the pipeline. As our Chair, Howard Goldstein, states below, our Membership fee of £30 gives you access to many interesting activities over the year and the chance to socialise and meet and make new friends. We would like to increase our membership this coming year, so please make sure you renew your own and encourage all your friends and acquaintances to join as well. We are an extremely welcoming and friendly group. A huge “! ank You” to all our hard working Committee, under the Chairmanship of Howard Goldstein, and especially to all the Facilitators currently running our activity groups. I would also like to thank everyone who has contributed to this Issue no: 6 of our Newsletter and especially to Aime Levy for all his continuing help. ! is is your Newsletter, so please continue to send in articles, views, comments etc. Marlene Knepler - Editor Mesa r Ch According to researchers at the University of Queensland Australia, as reported in ! e Times on February 16th “being a regular member of a social group a" er retirement can help you to live longer and feel better. ! e more groups someone joins the lower the risk of premature death. Joining an extra group or two reduces that risk markedly”. So the message is clear - make greater use of what your Management Committee have organised for you and enjoy an active future together. In this context I think it might be appropriate for a timely reminder that annual subs will once again shortly fall due. Bearing in mind you can be guided through some of the world’s most cherished music, improve your cookery skills, solve international and domestic problems, improve your French conversation, explore the development of English Literature, and much much more, all for a modest fee of £30, we are, I believe, providing as Mr Kipling might say “exceedingly good value”. Howard Goldstein-Chair Cm 2015/16 Chair: Howard Goldstein Vice-Chair: Vivien Spiteri Secretary: Judith Littman Speaker Secretary: John Bishop Treasurer: Anita Maund Membership: Diana O’Reardon Activities Coordinator: Peter Rummer Editor Newsletter: Marlene Knepler Committee: Gerald Knepler Committee: Adele Setton 2 Ser Rp Our Monthly meetings have seen a variety of topics covered... In November, 2015 we were entertained by Jill Goldman, a singer/songwriter, who is also a Kenton U3A member. She played her guitar and sang songs that she had written herself. ! is was a very light hearted and amusing session, which went down very well with our membership. Jill has now moved away to Pinner, but is on our “potential return list”. December 2015 saw us taking a rest, as our venue the Century Bowls Club, is closed between Christmas and the New Year. In January 2016 Rabbi Frank Dabba-Smith talked about the Holocaust – speci# cally the heroes of the Holocaust. His talk was very well presented with many black and white slides; it was also very well attended and coincided with National Holocaust Memorial day. In February 2016 Geo! rey Ben-Nathan talked to us about “! e book that changed his life”. ! e book was entitled “" e Company Savage” by Michael Page. Geo$ rey read passages from this book, which basically compared the tribes in Africa, with their particular rituals, with the tribes and rituals which companies in the western world use to function successfully. At the end of the day the processes of the two totally di$ erent “tribes” share many similarities. ! e speakers for the next 4 months have now been almost all arranged. In March 2016 there will be a talk on tax planning to try and ensure that we all arrange our tax a$ airs to be legal, but at the same time pay the least taxation possible. In April there will be a talk on “Working in and for the John Lewis Partnership”. In May at our AGM, there will be a talk on “Spencer Percival” – the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated; # nally in June we will have a speaker talk to us on an aspect of “London Transport”. I hope you agree there should be something for everyone in the next few months! John Bishop Rabbi Dabba-Smith January 2016 Speaker Jill Goldman November 2015 Speaker Geo$ rey Ben-Nathan February 2016 Speaker 3 Glh A G Din O’Rerd Our route to the Guildhall Art Gallery, in the City of London, took us past the Museum of London where we viewed, through a window, the State Coach of the Lord Mayor of London (NOT Boris Johnson!). Next we made a quick stop to peep into the Great Hall of the City’s Town Hall, Guildhall. Both the State Coach and Guildhall featured in paintings we saw later. Before entering the Art gallery we saw, in Guildhall Yard, the outline of London’s Roman Amphitheatre which was discov- ered when the current gallery was being built. Our tour started in the Heritage Gallery which is used to display items held by the London Metropolitan Archives. Here we saw the City of London’s Magna Carta – with its original seal. ! e charter was reissued and con# rmed several times in the 13th century; the text which # nally reached the statute book was not the 1215 version, but a later one granted by Henry III in 1225, con# rmed in Parliament in 1297. Of the twenty or so surviving 13th century copies of Magna Carta, the City’s, which dates from 1297, is widely regarded as the # nest and the o* cial statute wording was taken from the City’s copy. Also displayed were items le" by the public a" er the London bombings of July 7th 2005 – very moving. From here we descended into what has been excavated of the Amphitheatre – original Roman London. ! e London Room has paintings that re+ ect aspects of both modern and old Lon- don. One of the paintings depicted the ‘Silent Ceremony’ - the annual swearing-in of the new Lord Mayor of the City of London where the only words uttered are those of the oath that the Lord Mayor takes. ! is takes place in Guildhall on a Friday in November. ! e next day (second Saturday in November) is Lord Mayor’s Show day. Another painting was of a time (1789) when the Lord Mayor travelled to Westminster by barge, along the ! ames. A painting of the 1888 Lord Mayor’s Show – this time by land – featured the State Coach we had seen earlier. ! e largest space is the Victorian Gallery where we saw the beautiful ‘La Ghirlan- data’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the original three co-founders of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood. ! e other co-founders, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, were represented by their paintings ‘! e Eve of Saint Agnes’ (Hol- man Hunt) and ‘My First Sermon’ and ‘My Second Sermon’ (Millais) which feature his small daughter, E* e, bright, tidy and alert for the # rst sermon and, by the time of the second, dishevelled and asleep. Another highlight was ‘! e Music Lesson’ by Frederic Leighton, which shows an older girl teaching a younger one to play a ‘saz’ (Turkish stringed instrument). Of the 4000+ works of art the Guildhall Art Gallery has, about 125 are on display here and we saw almost every one! Diana O’Reardon 4 Cea in Gr Members of the CREATIVE WRTING GROUP have the choice of working on their own projects or on a set assignment. Most of the following story was written in thirty minutes as an assignment during one of our meetings. " e task was to produce a piece of writing, not necessarily a story, based on the discovery of a tin hidden under # oorboards. One of the things I like about Rosemary’s writ- ing is the way she lets her imagination run freely. " e group is still open to new members. Contact Paul Burns at [email protected] or telephone: 020 8385 2900 for more information. THE TIN DREAM By Rosemary Wolfson ! e creaking + oorboard seemed to howl and shriek and snarl and groan. We heard it from the snow-covered moors, and entered the house, which was unlocked. I imagined we would # nd a wild lady in distress. She would be slim and tallish with wild black hair, a red dress, and be swirling and whirling about in a devilish pattern. But no, we entered the house and the howling came from beneath the + oorboards. My companion, a young girl, was a weak willed waif, or so I then thought, who would always support me in all my endeavours. So we li" ed up this + oorboard and what did we # nd? A boulder-sized tin, what we then thought was pre-historic. Tales of Shackleton or some such # gure came to mind, of tinned food being preserved in the Polar Regions because of the air-tightness of the packaging. Anyhow, we both went down on our knees, and I, being the master, allowed my so-called servant to do the labour. She managed to crawl under this giant tin; it was on a sort of contraption that you # nd in hotel bedrooms to put your case on, and astoundingly she held it alo" above her head, with her thin little arms! ! e walls of the house were dark.