TAI CHI
Following the Wednesday lecture on The Pubs of Mumbles the audience were obviously elated in spite of the fact that Brian Davies had no free samples, just his best selling book to nourish us.
I say that because there was an unprecedented rush to sign lists and I now have the names of no less than 30 members interested in Tai Chi. Chairman Bob (following Chairman Mao) has decided we are going on this Long March, and will therefore thrash out some of the details with coach Mike Hart. Expect more news at Wednesday's lecture.
I am sorry that some of you thought I was being sexist from my initial headline question in Mandarin 'Women you Tai Chi ma' and its answer 'you'. I had thought I had given enough clues to allow the sentence in Mandarin to be deciphered, the five words translated in the order they appear are 'We have Tai Chi?' and the answer is 'have' implying yes. You may think that Chinese is written in strange characters, not our alphabet, and you would be right, but they also use our phonetics to write their language.This phonetic version of Mandarin is called Pinyin. It is used not just by foreigners learning the language but increasingly as a way of teaching their schoolchildren their own language and as a jumping off point for learning English and other languages using largely the same alphabet.
LITERATURE
As promised I attended this group last Tuesday pm and was duly amazed. There were eight of us and we each took a part and read through the last act of An Inspector Calls. At the end of the meeting I was duly chastised for my Wednesday slide saying the group needed someone to read for them, when what they really wanted was a new leader. In spite of the fact that one of the number has Macular Degeneration of her eyes and another has reached the fine age of 90 they all read fluently and expressively to rub in my transgression. I cannot overemphasise how enjoyable this reading was. I have heard the play many times and forgotten it soon afterwards, but this time the plot and the fine characterisation has really sunk in.
However insensitive the Wednesday Slide worked, and Lawmary Champion, our actor, offered to help out and is now enthusiastically running the group. She did not herself read a part but underlined the positions taken by the characters involved. I think the group devoted four meetings (two months) to this play, one preliminary discussion and then to read the three acts of the play.
The next book selected is Mary Webb's 'Gone to Earth', but thereafter Lawmary will be directing them towards more modern choices and obviously hopes the subsequent book will be 'St. Agnes Stand' by American author Thomas Eidson, or Paul Ferris's book 'Infidelity' about a real murder not a million miles from here. Later reverting to more traditional works like Ibsen's play 'A Dolls House', and novels by Trollope, 'The Warden' and Thackeray, 'Vanity Fair'.
From the outset in this groups' coordinator role I had a gut feeling that this group had an important place in the U3A, and this single meeting confirmed it. They need an increase in numbers and in Lawmary, Collette Robinson and Jenny Levin they have a nucleus to give this group expansion and a new lease of life. I can't be the only one who wants something beyond Richard and Judy.
MOTO (Members On Their Own)
Gerwyn is obviously doing a good job of running this group. At Jive last Wednesday he told me that 16 of them were going out for dinner in the Pump House, and another who shall be nameless said she shouldn't really be going as she had a husband at home!
A few days later Rosemary Brangwyn told me she had had an excellent evening, though she didn't normally go out at night - perhaps even that is a question of regaining confidence. She was full of praise for Gerwyn's approach which separated the men and enforced changing seats to ensure everyone had the chance of speaking to all the others. A technique he practices also at the jive lessons.
TASTE OF CELTIC
Haggis, kipper pate and whisky from Scotland to celebrate Burn's Night, colcannon from Ireland, laverbread from you know where (England), Breton fish soup from Brittany and mulled wine from the Elisabethans. You name it Lyn Holt cooks it and I nearly cooked my goose for drinking whisky like wine! Good job Joan can and will drive!
Fifty tickets sold, the most successful event yet. Watch out for touts selling on tickets for the next event, Asian food. If anyone has photos please email them to me for this blog.
CONCERT GOERS
Their first meeting this year is at the Civic Centre at 2.30 pm on 2 February. The topic is the Elgar Violin Concerto which is to be performed in the Brangwyn Hall by NOW on Thursday 5 February. Buy tickets yourselves for the actual concert. I know Cecily Hughes 363875 is hoping for a large audience for her new speaker, Dr Bernard Kane, who is coming from Cardiff.
COMPUTERS
Don Foster emailed me to say he had just saved his computer from a fate worse than death by using a clean up and repair tool called 'Advanced System Care', this program can be downloaded free from the site http://www.iobit.com though it will take a while to download if you haven't got broadband.
I was nervous about passing this news on untried. So I tried it out first on this computer which seemed reasonably healthy but it claimed to have fixed many problems not least with the program Registry. It has made some noticeable little improvements like eliminating a couple of error messages which pop up from time to time to warn for instance that .dll files are missing. The important thing was it did no harm .
So I tried it out on the U3A laptop which was showing considerable sign of trouble, for instance the Internet browser Microsoft Explorer would no longer run. Luckily I had previously downloaded another free alternative browser Mozilla Firefox so I could still surf the Net and download Advanced System Care. Running this tool in fact got rid of all but one of the the errors and I can now once more surf the Web using either Explorer or Firefox. That demonstrated that it can be very useful to cure a computer in trouble and I would recommend that you download Advanced System Care immediately for use when you do run into trouble. Now I have only to reload a copy of PowerPoint which can crash the entire computer so that it has to be switched off directly at the mains
OTHER DOWNLOADS
There are many other very useful FREE software downloads available from the Internet , including
'Mozilla Firefox', which many of us prefer in use to MS Explorer and is less prone to letting in virus problems
'AVG' an excellent anti-virus which automatically updates as new virus threats are discovered and takes corrective action against those discovered.
'Zone Alarm' which is a good firewall, though is probably confusing for beginners as its alarm messages will stop other programs running until the alarm is acknowledged. When downloading this do watch carefully to ensure you are asking for the free version rather than a short free trial of their saleable version, they deliberately don't make the free one easy to find.
'Adobe Acrobat Reader' which is essential for reading documents, eg insurance policies.
ESSENTIAL MINIMUM OF FAVORITE SITES
I have advised many to store the blog Internet address on Favorites (Bookmarks, if using Firefox) so it is easy to access. I do carry out minor mods between notifying the posting of updates and the next major update, often to correct errors in the original posting, eg an incorrect date. But everyone's Favorites should include
http://muses-of-an-ageing-groupie.blogspot.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.skyscanner.net/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/242450
http://www.moneysupermarket.com
http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/
http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/
http://www.energylinx.co.uk/
http://www.theaa.co.uk/
http://info.cwlfly.com/en/
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
http://www.nationalexpress.com/
http://www.tripadvisor.com/
http://www.wotif.com/
http://www.wales.nhs.uk/
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/
Google to find other Internet addresses such as, your bank, your favorite stores, and in general store the address (http://www......) of each sites 'Home' page because from here you should be able to easily jump (link) around the whole of their website.
That's enough to be going on with. Happy Surfing. I adjudge last last Monday afternoon at my house a success and am inviting a few others this Monday for a single 'get you started session'. These sessions are not for those who already feel confident with the basics. From that point on you're better to prod, experiment and try. No need to be nervous until your asked for your credit card number - after that its serious business you're doing.
JAZZLANDS
On Wednesday 28 January at Jazzlands(originally the Liberal Club) in St James Crescent, an extremely good group will be performing at 8.30pm. They have recently toured most of the top venues in England. Jim Mullen and Stan Sulzmann are amongst the very best UK musicians on guitar and saxophone respectively and this group includes the organ of Mike Gorman with Matt Skelton on drums, which should set the joint jumping. The admission is £12, but only £8 for members and you can join at the door.
Jazzland claims with good reason to be 'The Premier Jazz Club' in Wales. It deserves to be , and usually is, well supported.
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