Takes me back, just 21, winter in Canada, Rugby on ice, no wonder their season was split in two by a lengthy winter break. Minus 20C in the UK - I could hardly believe it for that's colder than I ever experienced during five years in southern Ontario - my record was in northern Quebec, just once outside in minus 40 (F or C which ever you prefer), pee holes in the deep snow we have a little way to go. But except for the relatively infrequent snow storms the cold was invariably accompanied by clear blue skies, just like we had been having. The other day I caught Joan tilt and turn window wide open sitting on the sill and stretching out as though cleaning the outside of the windows - but no, camera in hand, she was trying to capture the sunlight glinting on the snow of Clyne Common. I hope between us we have got some impression of the magic, pale blue and white make a fine pair. Then back again to dismal cloud from the south west, which even though it is a few degrees warmer has broken the spell. No wonder I am now depressed from SAD (Seasonal Affected Disorder)
Today when people ask 'am I sorry to have left Canada, would I go back'? The answer is a clear 'no' because I could not face the long cold winters where snow comes in December and never thaws until March (four days rather than four months is already awakening the same vulnerability). It was great fun to learn to ice skate by playing ice-hockey on the frozen Lake Ontario (well we did buy boots and sticks, which acted as a support to disguise the lack of skill), and on the areas of flat parkland which were flooded for the winter so as to form huge ice rinks. I remember snow too cold to form snow balls.
One of the world's great spectacles is the heaving and breaking of thawing ice confined by river banks. New arrival, Joan, shared the sight with me in early April at Valleyfield, Quebec, following a tributary along the road which would cross the soon to be opened Saint Lawrence Seaway. In summer Cunard sailed to Quebec City but at this time of year it ended at at Halifax Nova Scotia where she was met by my best Irish friend who was commissioning an Ice Breaker whilst I battled the cold with the new Seaway lift bridges in Montreal and Valleyfield. The Seaway was another case of too little too late, a great idea whose time had passed - a few years later 100,000 ton ore bulk carriers were docking at the new tidal Port Talbot harbour. An attempt to automate the new unloaders was my first failure in the Steel Industry - but an unforgettable insight into 'simple' harmonic motion, think of the swing when accelerating the pivot point of a mannerly pendulum whilst drastically changing its length so as to haul iron ore out of a boat by grab crane and deposit it in a fixed hopper on shore.
TAKING STOCK
For the past couple of years Swansea U3A has been characterised by steadily increasing numbers of members but high turnover from year to year and my belief is that we never involved those who left after a single year. So far that trend seems to be even worse this year, which seems surprising given the large increase in new activity groups formed during the year all bar one of which are well and truly launched. But read further and learn how much of the dynamism needed to run new groups is coming from new members
Is the real problem one of communication and getting the bulk of new members to take their first step? I meet a lot of people who are delighted with the friendship and interests they find here. but in this blog I am almost certainly preaching to the converted. However the take up by this year's new members is disappointingly low, one hopes it is balanced by increased reliance on the website as the prime source of electronic information. The future for communication is electronic for any 700+ member organisation.
If you want to find out more about a group then phone the contact given with you membership card, voice contact is best for initial contact, or email the same person via the website just quoting the group's name in the subject of the email, or phone me the Groups' Coordinator Brian Corbett on 424702 or Mo Ellard 363465 who is deputising.
In the old days everything revolved around the Wednesday afternoon lectures at the University, they still exist and are if any thing improving in quality and diverse interest but the numbers attending have dropped off a bit - perhaps as a result of the alternatives within our organisation, perhaps as a result of the tendency away from thought provoking activities towards the comfortably social. A major obstacle is undoubtedly car parking and the answer is greater reliance on buses for the university is excellently served by the new metro-line from the north, the orange 82 bus university service and many more from the new Quadrant and points west. Park and ride is perhaps the best option from the east of the city.
GROUP NEWS
PHYSICAL FITNESS, includes three new groups
We are well served here by a variety of very popular groups from the long standing Walking Group which meet at 10.30am on alternate Thursday mornings and has rambles often in the Gower followed by a Pub Lunch.
Now in its third year the Jive Group meets at 11am every Wednesday in the Monkey Cafe in the centre of Swansea. Both of these are excellent places for new members to start if only because they are fairly large diverse groups and by their very nature it is easy to make informal contact, with other members and find out about many of the other happenings.
Tai Chi, two years old, restarts 7 Jan 2011 with the usual three one hour classes, 9am, 10.30 and 12 on Friday mornings at Hazel Court. They help improve control of body movement and practise memorising lengthy complex routines - also true, in a more vigorous style, of Jive.
Yoga has been introduced this year for the first time and we are lucky to have two excellent class leaders who are members of the U3A, which keeps the cost down. Choose between two classes on Wednesday morning at 9.30 and 11am with Edna Jones, and a class on 10am Thursday morning with Chris Bryan.
I did a years Tai Chi last year with Mike Hart but have now homed in on Yoga, neither of which I had previously tried. Exercises I have done all my life but always vigorously and with multiple repetitions with the goal of keeping fit and strong. Yoga has been an eye opener as practised here it is well suited to our age group, the emphasis is on retaining flexibility by gentle deep breathing, persistent rather than vigorous stretching and twisting, and, the regain of a balance which was once second nature. I started with Chris in the summer and have continued with her since (there will be an extra vacant spot at the start of 2011 during my winter in India). She is delaying restart until Thursday 27 January to give herself a well deserved break.
Last week, the end for 2010, I was surprised by how effective virtually the same movements were without floor exercises, just standing or sitting in an upright chair. The thought occurred to me that such an approach would open the sessions to those who for various reasons find it almost impossible to get on and off the floor, like for instance my wife Joan who has two artificial knees and can no longer kneel. I am sure Chris would be prepared to cater for such members within a more fully able class, or if the demand was high enough as a second session on Thursday mornings. Call Chris to discuss it on 301938.
As far as sport is concerned we have added this term two hour sessions of Short Tennis on Thursday mornings at the Leisure Centre (LC2). This is played on a badminton court with a soft ball which is hard to hit hard and therefore is a game without service aces but continual retrieval can be quite vigorous. Contact David or Judy Jones on 410484 who are keen to reproduce what they brought from Maidenhead. Given that there are six badminton courts available of which only three are currently used this group could be doubled in size. The two existing Indoor Bowls groups n have been nearer to capacity for some years but there is some turnover so the persistent eventually get their turn. Contact Angela re the Monday pm session, or Dudley re the Tuesday morning sessions - both at the West Cross Community Centre
Pat Herbert has now undertaken to give a trial run to a Fitness Class on Tuesday 18 January, watch the website or Wednesday lecture slides for more information.
CREATIVE GROUPS
In this category I count the writing classes run by Jill Govier on Mondays at 10am and John Barber on Tuesdays at 10.15 both at Hazel Court. These courses are the source of many articles which are published in our annual magazine The Chronicle.
Then there are the three painting groups, Mary Lane's well established group meets every Tuesday afternoon in Mumbles, Val Day's Art/Painting group which meets on the 3rd Monday of each month in Fforestfach, and the newest a Beginners Watercolour group run weekly on Thursday afternoon by Brenda Sweet, though she tells me she does not intend to remain restricted to Watercolours which is often thought of as the easy option but which in many ways is the most difficult technique.
READING, one new group
Literature group run by Lawmary Champion studies the chosen books more thoroughly spending longer on each and meeting on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday afternoons of the month at Newton Village Hall.
There is variety in the approach of the other five Reading groups. I now understand that Vicky Wood, who is already involved with the Gardening group, has taken over as convenor of Reading 5.
READING 1
READING 4
LANGUAGE, one new group with two more probables
There is a very strong French Group which divides into two parts, those wanting to gain confidence with French grammar who work in one half of the room with convenor Gilly Jordan, and the other more advanced half who are led by ex teacher Beryl Edney, with new member Jean Cunniffe (a graduate in French) taking sessions to allow Beryl some time off. Not until the morning of their Christmas Dinner did I realise our Membership card gives my phone number by error against the name of convenor Gilly Jordan, it should of course have been 01269 824876
Italian used to be my biggest headache but has truly found a niche under Italian born ex DACE teacher Carolina Rosati-Jones and enthusiastic convenor Patricia Morgan. Last week we men (a badminton player, a bee-keeper, a blogger, a bridge player, and an ever young squash player outnumbered the ladies 5:2. Is this a record for a U3A group? Perhaps this accounts for the recent run of 'complaints' from next door that they cannot concentrate on their painting for all the laughter coming from the Italian class, and it's us who are in the Dry side of the Craft Room! More likely it derives from Carolina an award winning creative writer with a penchant for stories and humour and, as she demonstrated last week, with a fine singing voice and a deep love of sound of the Italian language.
SPANISH
Alison Burns, new this year - better known for work with Amnesty International, was keen to start a conversation group and is succeeding, they are currently trying out free venues so be sure to contact her on 290260 if interested in attending. She keeps contact with the group via email alisoneburns@yahoo.co.uk There were around 10 of us on the awful winter day well down on the previous session. I am sure they would welcome the leadership of someone really secure in the grammar and the spoken language, a feature we have in 'spades' in the other two language groups. Anyone out there willing and able to contribute?
One of my other local interests as a frequent travellor in Latin America is via ALAS (Asociacion Latinoamerica de Swansea) which over the past decade has held annual festivals at The Dylan Thomas Centre. Memorable ones include the early Latin American film only festivals which started in a decade ago in the Dylan Thomas Theatre, one with a top Salsa Band from London, a memorable weekend including a book drawn from Welsh oral history of the Spanish Civil War. More recently there was one on the Cuban revolution including its modern political history and response to the crisis caused there by the disintegration of its great supporter the USSR, under Yeltsin two decades ago. Interposed with which there have always been documentaries on the political oppression of socialists in South America, which presumably brought many of the ALAS founders to Swansea. I remember my eldest Jim recounting the arrival of Chilean girl to his form in Bishop Gore 35 or so years ago.
In the New Year from 6pm Friday 18 Feb 2011 it starts with a Madrid theatre performance of a play for voices Tejas Verdes (with English sub titles) recording one woman's fate in the military overthrow of the Allende government of Chile in 1973; through dinners, films, dances, to a piano concert and reading from Pablo Neruda's poetry to 7pm Sunday 20 Feb.
Their website is www.alas.org.uk but this does not currently appear to provide a link to the detailed program which is available by email on request to alas_wales@hotmail.com
BRITISH FILM
The new British Film study group run by Anthea Symonds (206479) meet at 2pm Ground floor Hazel Court on the First Thursdays, next one 3 February will start a term exploring wartime films from the 1940's. Joan relayed to me what an well presented, amusing. topic it was. So I accompanied her to the last session on a dreadful winter day, she still drew an audience of 18, to a study of Proud Valley with Paul Robeson set in the Welsh valleys and what she described as the best documentary ever made the night train with sorters on board and snatched pick up of mail bags in the old days of mechanical automation, featuring a poem of W H Auden to the rhythm of a train.
Night Train by W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973), first verse only
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Then Anthea goes on to amuse us by quoting a modern 'spoof version' she found on the Internet - I think it was this one
The Modern Mail by Jeff Green (after W D Auden)
Second class mail is getting much slower
Standards of service now even lower,
Most of it junk mail heading for landfill,
Or charity mailshots trading on goodwill.
The van's slowing down fry-up is calling
Delays to the mails are something appalling
Stamps cost a fortune come in a book
Is this the right one where can I look?
Packages, parcels, low business rate
All in one post van and all of it late
Card from your Mother, "Best Wishes" son
Just has you guessing "Now what have I done?"
Postie is dawdling, stops for a fag
Chats to a neighbour, has a good drag
Clatter of envelopes crash to the mat
Most are for next-door, he's scared of their cat
Catalogue filled with ladies undressing,
Study that later, I don't mind confessing!
Bill for some services I haven't had
The late Birthday Present I bought for my Dad.
All that I'm waiting for hasn't arrived;
Of toys and amusements I'm sadly deprived.
The train doesn't bring them it's all done by van;
Delays and diversions where-ever they can.
Somewhere in his grave I can hear Auden spinning
And no-one can doubt why it's email that's winning!!!
Plenty of room though visibility of large but low TV screen could be a problem, Anthea (new this year) merits a big audience.
PRE-CONCERT TALKS
Cecily Hughes (363875) has arranged five such lectures by Chris Weekes (lecturer in music for DACE) on Monday afternoons in the Council Chamber at the Civic Centre starting on 31 January with an introduction of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
Space in this wonderful venue is virtually unlimited and the talks are only 2 pounds, but if you decide to attend you will need to buy your own tickets for the concert in the Brangwyn Hall
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
They have had to change venue and have decided to go to the large ground floor room at Hazel Court. The very first there at 2.30 on the Friday 7 January will be by Brian Davies, the current convenor, presenting the La Loire, the beautiful French river famed for its Chateaux. Here's hoping he will do as well for France as he did for Swansea and Gower as a short notice replacement for the final Wednesday lecture of last term.
The room has been booked through to December 2011, but remember Brian Davies is finishing as convenor this summer, after several years in charge. Group members should think about a replacement for this well attended group.
POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP GROUP
Another excellent group thriving under the new leadership of Gabrielle Suff. Her last coup was to persuade Peter Black, AM and Swansea Councillor, to talk to us on Coalition Government.
The groups interest was clearly evident from the extensive questioning. I would certainly go along with his view that the Liberals had no option but except to join a coalition with the Conservatives in order to provide the stable government which the country so obviously needed. We should be grateful they have stuck to their task, think of the chaos when Ireland was forced into an early General Election by dissolution of their weak coalition. Clearly they have been able to strengthen the liberal wing of the Tories notably Ken Clarke, who ironically like the Liberals must be thanking the day we stayed out of the Euro and preserved the freedom to devalue by 25%, or depreciate as Peter Black would have preferred to say - though it seems little more than a semantic distinction to me.
The one area where the Liberals have not gained noticeable moderation of Tory policies is in the area non of the parties dare discus in their electioneering, the Economy. We have so far avoided a double dip recession but as he admitted on answer to another question any cuts to date have been those put in place by the outgoing Labour Government. The end of the financial year 2011/12 will for me be the very earliest time to evaluate if we have escaped unscathed from their current single track emphasis on reducing spending, in a doomsday scenario we could end up increasing our debt under collapsing paid employment.
This will make the current furore about Tuition Fees look like the minor feature it is. I, a long supporter of the merits of some contribution for university education coming from the students themselves, because I believed they needed to value and not enter lightly into such education. No I am simply horrified by the huge increase in scale of student debt implied by the current proposals. It was excessive debt that got us here in the first place, now we are ingraining it into the next generation. Bear a thought for those students who achieve full time employment above the median wage, 25,000 pounds a year in 2010, by the time they are thirty and wanting to start family life. (If 50% of the population go to university then many graduates will, almost by definition, end up under the median full time wage, though many more will end up as well paid bankers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, scientists and engineers whose costs will have been refunded by their parents or employers - 'it's fair' - pull the other leg.)
If there is one factor which to me is even more disturbing which seemed to have disappeared from the political landscape and that is for incoming governments to dismantle the policies of their predecessors. One day a new Aneurin Bevan will see fit to restore public services. Why dispense with regulatory control, of drugs by NICE, of schools by publicly accountable authorities, hand food safety issues to manufacturers.
In the meantime if 20:1 is an appropriate salary range from very top to bottom for public employees (David Cameron's figure not mine) why not in the private sector too?
ANYTHING GOES
A new venture by Pat Herbert (405920), Barbara Ellis, Marion Harris and Joy Gillard to encourage support for events at local clubs and businesses. Joan and I joined them for their first get-together at the so called Vanilla Restaurant run at Gower College in Tycoch by trainees. Excellent value for a well cooked meal, though being last to order I just missed out on the most popular dish, Plaice.
They are starting the New Year at 11am on 18 January with coffee/wine in the Grape and Vine restaurant on the top floor of our skyscraper.
Already there are a few new faces at Jazzlands, although there were a number of regulars in ones and twos. Why not become members at the beginning of January £25 with two stand-out events Mornington Locket (tenor sax) on Wednesday the 5th and then Jim Mullen (guitar) with Stan Sulzmann (reeds and flute) on the 12th.
CHRISTMAS PARTY AT SWANSEA JAZZLAND
This was held on 15 December as previously advertised and what an event, never before have so many talented jazz musicians appeared together in Swansea. The evening started with a hour by a band of teenagers now calling themselves The Gents (previously The Tourists) and led by fabulously talented fourteen year old Sam Vine on keyboards, a name to watch. His brother Tom is on bass guitar, Tom Duggan played alto sax and Tom Goldring drums, with the somewhat older James Duggan (tenor sax) guesting later on. You can hear them any Monday from 8.30 till 11pm at Noah's Yard in Uplands.
But the real feast was to come the inaugural performance of Dave Cottle's 16 piece Big Band. They started with Grandstand as though we were in for an evening of Premiership football, everything was clearer on noticing the music stands were from grandstands.com . All but two played solos of whom the pick were top British jazz stars Steve Waterman on trumpet and Simon Allen on tenor sax, though two of the the biggest cheers of the night went to Tom Harris on Baritone and Tom White and Sarah Morrow with their trombone duet.
The majority of the rest hailed from South Wales. Oliver Nezhati from Llandeilo was not too long ago being praised at Jazzland by top UK trumpeter Bruce Adams for being unfairly good for someone so young, he set the night off with a barnstorming solo on tenor. I was impressed by young Nick Mead on trumpet who read as accurately and played as confidently as Steve Waterman at the opposite end of the trumpet line up when some were at sea on a complicated piece by Mendoza and Dave Cottle had to give up piano and conduct. Nick, a new face to me, was said to come from Gower.
THEATRE
Please support Peter Richards director of the Ffluellen Theatre who gave a well attended 'Theatre in the Round' production of Hamlet in the Arts Wing of the Grand Theatre in November. He also ran three day long 'Discovering Shakespeare Workshops' at the Dylan Thomas Centre on, Macbeth, Henry the 5th, and Twelfth Night. Joan and I enjoyed all three which got better and better, if only because there was a more complete study of the plays, despite a dismal turnout. We can safely assert that we gained a deeper insight into those plays in a day than good language teachers conveyed at school in a term - the reason coming from his life time as actor and the last 10 years as director of Shakespeare and other plays. To call them workshops was perhaps misleading, since they were essentially theatrical monologues drawn from a lifetimes thought and experience.
He intends to run three more workshops in the Dylan Thomas Centre in the spring followed by a Ffluellen Theatre production of Cymbeline in the autumn.
SHAKESPEARE AT THE TOBACCO FACTORY
Another recommendation on a similar theme Richard 2nd and then The Comedy of Errors at The Tobacco Factory, Bristol, every night except Sunday from 10 Feb to the 30 April. Theatre in the Round performances under director Andrew Hilton which regularly rate supportive revues in the national press. Matinees are held on Saturdays and some Thursdays and can be incorporated in a day-trip by rail or National Express. This is the 12th annual season of Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory www.sattf.org.uk
