BREAK THROUGH FOR BLOG

BLOG
This Blog is not an Official U3A Committee Publication. It is written solely by me and the opinions expressed are therefore not necessarily those of the committee, nor is it restricted solely to U3A matters. However I write it primarily to progress my job as Groups' coordinator by publicising and giving a flavour of the Swansea U3A activities, particularly this year's new groups. Keeping my readership content is a prime objective.

I like to think this Blog has been an important step change on inevitably less frequent and expensive postal mailing shots. To date I have been reliant on the Internet addresses that I have been able to collect personally, starting with about 30 obtained trawling around the conveners at the Open Day in the Dolphin to about 120 in January. I have now received the full set of email addresses held by the U3A for the purpose of passing information to members. This means that future Blog Update email messages will in future go to around 250 members, out of a total membership of 650, a proportion I am sure will increase rapidly as broadband becomes every one's communication medium of choice.

I take that release of addresses as a vote of confidence. Although I do mass mailings the email addresses of recipients does not appear on them, unless by error - just one mistake so far in over 50 mailings.

TAI CHI
This is clearly going to rival JIVE and MOTO as the best supported new Groups, since no less than twenty three members turned up for the inaugural session last Friday. I personally expect an increase in numbers as word spreads of just how successful that session was, and how suitable Tai Chi is for our age group. In addition to which 30 members signed the original list and some would undoubtedly have been put off by the snowy weather. Thanks go to Bob Hughes who received the original contact from Mike Hart and rapidly turned it into action. He has also provided the pictures.

Mike Hart demonstrated that he is a skilled teacher of the discipline but also that he conducts the sessions in the pleasant, relaxed, way which is the hallmark of the U3A Groups. He had offered to do the first six sessions for free, but being aware that teaching Tai Chi is his living and clearly wanting it to remain a U3A Group activity, we are proposing to do only the first two sessions at £1.50 but thereafter to raise the subscription to £3 a session so that we are in position to offer him payment.

Group charges are an issue because, whilst many of us can easily afford the charges, we have also to think of those who live on standard pensions. Charges mount up for active participants, a consideration I have heard expressed on several occasions. We will reassess once we have a better idea of the numbers attending on a regular basis.

ITALIAN and READING 4 will share the Craft Room at Hazel court on Monday 9 February.
The Italian class starts at 10am and would welcome additional members. We are conscious there is a difference in levels, but we are determined to make the class suitable for keen beginners, which was not done at the last session with Carolina, whilst providing an opportunity for those of us who studied the language in the past to strengthen our knowledge of the basics. The Convenor is Pat Carpenter 519997

The Reading group start at 10.30am. The books being discussed are Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks and No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. Any particularly interested should attend as a taster but we appreciate demand may be high enough to justify setting up yet another reading group. The Convenor is Dorothy Little on 511127

CREATIVE WRITING 2 also meets at Hazel Court on Monday 9 February but at 10.15 and in the Exercise Room. In future it will revert to Tuesday meeting at Hazel Court in the Craft Room.

POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP meet in the West Cross Community Centre at 2.00pm on Tuesday 10 February to follow up on their fascinating guided visits to the Jewish Synagogue and the Muslim Mosque, and to discuss the political changes to be expected in the USA now that Barack Obama has taken over as President.

CHESS
The next meeting will be the following Monday 16 February at 10am in the Craft Room in Hazel Court. I mention this today because Joan and I would welcome new members of any standard from absolute beginners to skilled players. Indeed we need increased support or we will lose our fine tutor Ken Huntley. I hope some will be forthcoming from the vastly extended circulation of this blog.

WEDNESDAY LECTURES
Esther Searle writes to remind me that the Grove is not available for the lectures on 11 Feb, 26 Feb and 11 March, all of which will be held in the ground floor Faraday Lecture Theatre in the Engineering Block.
She also informs me that Ian Masters cannot come on 18 Feb but that his colleague Miles Willis, from the Marine Energy Task Group for Wales, will substitute. There will however be a change of title and the paper will be more general in nature.

BRIDGE
Thanks to Chairman Bob for the photographs of this seemingly happy group! The regular readers will have read of my particular aversion to this game - but it certainly adds to the diversity of offerings from the Swansea U3A Groups and I welcome that above all.

ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
Last Friday Tony Searle took us round Southern Peru, featuring Macchu Picchu especially but also the Nazca Lines and the Amazon basin on the east of the Andes. The next talk will be given by Joan on our independent travel by colourful 'chicken buses' across Guatemala, though this will not be until April since the March meeting has been cancelled.

CONCERT GOERS - ELGAR VIOLIN CONCERTO
Over twenty turned up on an unpleasant afternoon for the meeting organised by Cecily last Monday in the Council Chamber of what was County Hall. We got a thorough and very enjoyable insight to this work with musical illustrations on his viola by Dr Bernard Kane from Cardiff. The remaining talks will be split between him and Clive John.

In the event the actual concert was poorly attended largely because of the weather conditions, though there was plenty of representation of the U3A. The concert itself by the National Orchestra of Wales was a big success with some wonderful violin playing by James Ehnes. I thoroughly enjoyed the work which, being musically more challenging than the Mendelssohn symphony which preceded it, held my rapt attention throughout.

JAZZLANDS the night before featured Dave Cottle's excellent house trio with Mark Bassey on trombone and Simon Savage on saxophone playing in the cool relaxed jazz style associated with the (USA) West Coast in 50's and 60's. It was an excellent evening which I enjoyed rather more than the bigger names a week earlier and it cost only £8, with a 25% reduction for members.

However I write about it now not because of the music but because of the inspiration of seeing someone overcome adversity. Thalidomide had left Mark Bassey without forearms or fingers and just one vestigial thumb. It wasn't immediately obvious as he was playing superbly, but Joan noticed first as he flicked with great precision through the pile of sheet music on his stand using his thumb and a steel hook on his right hand, which we assume he was also manipulating. Next we noticed the hook on his trombone hand which was clipped on to control the slide. Joan wondered if there was any other instrument he could have played.

For the encore he gave us an unexpected answer, the keyboards. He adjusted the hook on his right hand so that he could play chords with two notes (thumb and hook), he unscrewed the hook from his left arm, then pulled off the wooden forearm extension, which made it possible to play trombone, and proceeded to play single notes of melody with the ungainly stump. He chose Cjam Blues, the Duke Ellington tune, probably to avoid having to cope with black notes. Being a talented jazzman his timing was perfect and he wisely adopted the style of Thelonius Monk, who frequently played his strange harmonies with incredible spacing between notes. Anyone interested in the style should play his classic recording of his own tune Bags Groove made in the 50's with Miles Davies. Meanwhile Dave Cottle picked up Mark's trombone to complete the group (his party trick is to play jazz keyboard chords with his left hand and jazz trumpet with his right). I doubt that I have ever witnessed everyone on stage and audience grinning uncontrollably like Cheshire Cats. It was a truly uplifting display - and good lesson in simple modern jazz.

Incidentally this Wednesday 11 February at 8.30pm they are featuring another hugely talented five piece group called Protect the Beat, led by Derek Nash (Jools Holland's saxophonist) and the second appearance in two weeks of Jim Mullen on guitar. They are expecting a big audience with probably a greater thn usual appeal for students, so thet advise early arrival. Entrance £12.

MUMBLES MOVIES
Member Laurence Hopes writes to say he will be showing 7.45pm Friday 27 February Very Annie Mary, a humorous look at life in South Wales, at Ostreme Hall. He advertises it as an alternative to the wall to wall Rugby for St David's weekend. Starring Mumbles actress Joanna Page, alias Stacey in TV's Gavin and Stacey.

ENGINEERING
I found huge ironies in the presentation by our President Professor Richard Davies last Wednesday. In his presentation engineering headed the list of the subjects which lead to the best career prospects, both in terms of salary and vacancies. Indeed he made clear the large demand for graduates of all numerate disciplines including Mathematics, Accountancy and Economics. He rated only Law in the same category of opportunity from what we used to call the Arts subjects.

Yet if my knowledge is still current then engineering is now amongst the least demanding university courses in which to enrol because the demand from potential students is simply insufficient. I am surprised to hear that in de-industrialised Britain there is unsatified demand from the workplace. At which point I should declare that he and I both started life as engineering graduates. The irony here is that now the poorest qualified students end up on the best career paths - that portends ill for the British economy.

When I left Imperial College in the mid fifties British engineering was still world class. If I talk specifically of the electrical industry, I know best, then think of the world ranking firms which have disappeared, British Thompson Houston (BTH) in Rugby where I spent my first summer vacation, or English Electric in Stafford, Rugby and Kidsgrove where I worked before coming to Wales, Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) and Metro Vick in Manchester, General Electric Company (GEC) in Birmingham, and many other medium sized and small companies.

I went for interviews at factories around the country and found little sign the firms had thought how best to use graduates. They offered the standard £550/annum to enrol on a 2 year graduate apprenticeship. Then Canadian Westinghouse came to college to interview and offered me their standard rate, more than three times the salary, to go on a well thought out one year graduate training. Hence I emigrated to Canada. A decade later that minute trickle became a flood to the USA and was head-line news as The Brain Drain.

When I returned in the early 60's those world names were still around, but not for long. British engineering firms were not performing well and accountants were taking the senior positions in industry. In particular Arnold Weinstock of GEC was bent on consolidating and asset stripping the electrical industry. One by one those firms disappeared as separate entities and he built up a huge firm and huge cash fund. What's left of them is now largely under French control in Alstom and Alcatel. The one British engineering company of that era, Rolls Royce (aero engines not cars), to hold on to top world rating was managed throughout by engineers. Though even they had to be rescued by government due to the huge investment needed to built their revolutionary and world beating RB211 engine.

By 1966 I came to work on the automation and computer control of the steel industry, mainly at Port Talbot. I was convinced that the British trained graduate engineers of my day given the opportunity to express themselves were first class - a confidence that never failed me - and we were able to design build and program very large and reliable control and instrumentation systems across the works from large British designed and manufactured sub systems. Computers from Ferranti with every single word of software written to purpose by a small in-house team at Port Talbot, one of the world's very first colour CRT based monitors from Serck and later using colour VDUs from Microvitec, Instrument and Control interfaces from GEC 'Media' and Transmitton giving way to the first digital three term controllers from Turnbull Control Systems and then GEC PLCs. All bolted together (as the jargon has it) by racks of purpose designed serial line communication electronics units from the Swansea based firm Digitrol.

At that stage Britain was still at the forefront of so called 'real time' computing, following on the lead gained in the war at Bletchley Park with the world's first electronic computer called Collossus. Firms like Ferranti, Marconi, English Electric and AEI designed and manufactured computers and software suited to industrial applications. Two decades later all those firms had virtually disappeared swamped by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who set about designing high quality but slashed costs by selling and manufacturing in bulk. ICT and Lyons however were already dwarfed by the IBM 360 from the USA in the commercial end of computing (largely payroll at that time). Both American firms used secrecy to make their systems less approachable and more complicated than they need be, a policy pursued by MicroSoft to this day.

So what chance now to build a successful industrial economy with today's lower grade engineering graduates? Not so bad to be starting afresh so long as they concentrate on innovation and this time drive it through to really productive industry.

But it is not a question of numeracy or innovation alone, it is what that intelligence is directed towards that counts. Think who created the problems of Asset Stripping, Excessive Leverage (debt), ever more sophisticated International Tax Avoidance, Packaging Debt (including 'toxic' sub prime mortgages) so it could not be valued properly - but it could be sold across the globe. The Credit Crunch in short. These operators didn't lack numeracy.

TAI CHI PLUS

TAI CHI
Thanks to the contacts of Chairmen Bob these classes will start at 10.30am next Friday 6 February in the large ground floor room of Hazel Court. For details of the location of Hazel Court or details of the buses scroll back in this blog to the repeat entry of these details in the posting dated 11 January 2009. Wear normal comfortable loose fitting clothing. The cost will be £1.50 for the early classes which Mike Hart will lead for free.

CHESS
The next meeting will be held on Monday 2 February at 10.30am in Hazel Court (first and third Monday mornings of month). If you are interested, or would like to try what is an interesting game in a very pleasant low pressure environment, then please put in an appearance because the next few meetings will be make or break for this group. Having set up so many new groups I am loath to see the very first to meet at Hazel Court fail. We have an excellent tutor in Ken Huntley.

ITALIAN
Shares the Craft Room with Chess this Monday. This group is steadily gaining new members, a healthy sign.

CREATIVE WRITING 2
They will meet in Hazel Court on the second MONDAY, 9 February at 10.15, but in the Exercise Room to avoid a clash with Reading 4/Italian. THEREAFTER they will meet on the SECOND TUESDAY of the month in the Craft Room at Hazel Court, since the Caligraphy sessions will have finished.

ANNUAL LUNCHES OF GARDENING and TRAVEL Groups


Both were held at Olchfa House carvery,Gardening last Thursday and the Travel Group the following day. A pity they were scheduled so close together as Joan and I were not alone in belonging to both groups but willing to attend only one lunch. I can thus only talk of the Travel lunch but that was attended by 32 people who enjoyed the carvery meal with ice cream and coffee/tea, in loquacious company, for the excellent price of £5 - slightly subsidised from the float held by convenor Brian Davies. This weeks photos are of that event.



GARDENING held their monthly meeting at Singleton Park after their lunch. As a change from the usual lecture Margaret Massey had borrowed a DVD from the U3A Headquarters which was displayed via laptop and projector. This is a principle well worthy of consideration by other groups. Another possibility instead of DVD source would be say a learning program from BBC Learning or Open University. Don't forget that anything which can be displayed on a computer screen can be projected onto a much larger screen. This digital age is opening up a huge range of possibilities, arguably no group should ever fail today for lack of tutors, just for lack of imagination in using this new technology.

Convenors should approach Tony Searle to arrange to borrow the laptop and projector belonging to the Swansea U3A, or Brian Corbett for the more modern laptop used as the source of slides before the Wednesday lecture.

The DVD film was about the beautiful Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley, and the work of the RHS in research into plant disease and the presevation of seeds from a wide range of species. An approach quite contrary to the concentration on a small range of efficient high yield srains by today's comercial growers, abetted by the supermarkets and other quantity suppliers.

Do you know for instance that you can send Wisley plant specimens (say a leaf) or a bug for identification of disease or species? Suitability of a range of lessor known Delphiniums was judged by growing them together in a bed and ensuring that seeds of the best performing varieties were collected and made available for sale. An arboretum was developed
as a nursery to supply trees to the old estates which lost so much of our heritage in say the storms of 1987.

ARMCHAIR TRAVEL next meeting is Friday 6 February at 2.30pm in the Evangelical Church next to Hazel Court which has its own car park. The talk will be given by Tony Searle about his and Esther's trip to Peru.

CARDS for PLEASURE will start in the restaurant of the Taliesin. If there are sufficient numbers Lawmary is thinking of transferring to an upstairs venue in the Dragon.

POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP
Their last meeting which I thoroughly enjoyed, along with a dozen or so others, was a three in one offering. The last part being their annual lunch in the Dylan Thomas Centre which, as the committee found earlier, is a very pleasant and relaxing place to have a group lunch.

The morning was in halves, the first being a visit to the Synagogue where Norma Glass gave us a very informative insight into the rich Jewish religious tradition, their rituals and their symbolism, in a modern but ornate church, as befits the world's first religion, if excluding Hindu and the Chinese traditions. She obviously gives many such explanations to school parties but adapted her presentation and humour to a mature adult audience, providing us with coffee and traditional home made cakes before we rather prematurely moved on.

Unfortunately the once strong Jewish community in Swansea has decreased to the point where even their synagogue (built in the aftermath of the second world war as the earlier building had been destroyed in the bombing) is being handed over to an expanding evangelical church. An irony highlighted by the visit to another church which makes a point of simplicity.

In very striking contrast the second part of that morning was spent in the main Mosque on St Helen's Road. Nothing ornate except for a luxuriously thick carpet on the floor, but quite perfect for its purpose as a welcoming house of prayer. Muslims are required to pray five times a day.

Worldwide this religion has more adherents than any other and is particularly strong in Africa and Asia. The visit was arranged through Mr S Rahman, who greeted us at the door and led us to the largest of several prayer rooms, where they had gone to considerable trouble to produce a poster display for us illustrating various aspects of their religious traditions. Another member of the church, with a school age family and fluent English, told us a great deal about their traditions in a question and answer format. He emphasised the common ancestry with the Jewish and Christian religions through a common acceptance of the Old Testament and stressed the importance of Moses. Not until around 600AD did Muhammad (who they regard as the last of God's prophets) reveal from Allah (God) their distinct scripture the Qu'ran. He made surprisingly light of the distinction between Shia and Sunni and said there was some movement in Swansea between the sects.

I can only wish I had chosen to write earlier of this day when everything we heard was so much clearer in my mind.

I write now to say the group's next meeting is on Tuesday 10 February with a follow up discussion on these two contrasting visits, and also to consider the huge political changes taking place (in tone at least) in the USA's foreign relations. No doubt in part to reflect on how fortunate Americans are to have elected a leader who was during some of his most formative years brought up in a Muslim country. We too got a totally different view of Muslims during prolonged slow travel around Sumatra (Indonesia), being totally amazes by the fun loving, inquisitive, friendly schoolgirls in headscarves. In the end that Muslim background may prove more important than the fact the breakthrough of America's own colour bar.

SUNDAY LUNCH
The next lunch will be at 12.30 for 1pm at Adams in Mumbles (previously Knights) on Sunday 15 February.
Details from Barbara Brimfield 201274, or Margaret Winter 771725.

COMPUTERS
A second 'get started' Internet session was held at my house with the Joan accompanying the men upstairs to teach them a thing or two, on the desk top, whilst I struggled downstairs with two laptops, the U3A one in the trouble which led to there being no slides show before last Wednesday's lecture. These slides are the only way for those without Internet to keep up with the fast moving scene of U3A group activities.
Once again I thought it went well but the test is on to see who first comes back with stories about my blog and in particular how they got on with the key sites listed in the last posting.

Val Lawson gives me two other links of special interest to the bargain hunters in the membership. She warns not to try them if you object to being bombarded daily with emails giving details of which stores have sales and what is on special offer.

http://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk

http://vouchercodes.com

MORE PANTO

One Day in 'The Life of Brian'

5 November 2008, Barack Obama President Elect of USA
It's apt that today is named after Guy Fawkes who saw only one way to defeat the government of the day. It takes me back so vividly to early August 1957. I had just turned 22 when I set out on my first summer holiday from employment at Canadian Westinghouse. Many friends, mainly Irish from the engineering school of University College Dublin, who had emigrated en masse because there were no jobs in their own country, had chosen to spend the time in canoes and tents in Algonquin National Park. But Dave Robinson, a laid-back public school boy from Oxford who played trombone like Jimmy Edwards, had the idea that we would drive someone else's car across the USA and Joe Killian a particularly tall and dour Irishman asked to come with us. Dave had written to an organisation called the Detroit Drive Away, a body shopping organisation which supplied individuals willing to deliver cars to all parts of the USA, and volunteered our precious two weeks annual holiday for a trip to the West coast. Three days into our summer holiday we were still waiting for a car, virtually certain we had blown it. Then the offer, take a brand new Pink Cadillac to Indianapolis, like the one just delivered to Elvis Presley. We set off with only a few months driving experience between us. At the first street corner I slammed on the brakes and we all ended up on the windscreen from our front bench seat, our first experience of power brakes. (I've a difficult task for Anthony Hughes, Photoshop Guru, to unravel my only record of the event, a double exposure of me at the wheel of that Cadillac.)

Part of the saga meant we would make our own way from Indianapolis to Memphis where we would pick up a second car to drive Route 66 to Fresno, near San Fransisco.
Dave and Joe opted to travel to Memphis by train, but I, maverick already, decided to hitch hike and agreed to meet them in two days time at Memphis railway station. The first day remains etched in my mind like no other. I had a number of lifts that day, the first I remember was so normal, a farmer proud of his British stock was on his way to a day at the races and took me right to the gates of Ellis Park.

Then the real experiences began. A man with a death wish, who had just broken up with his girl friend, stopped. His penchants were for speed, overtaking, and particularly for going blind over the top of the endless undulating hills on the wrong side of the road. Thankfully he was stopped by the police before we went head first into another vehicle. We were taken to a small town, where the local judge was dragged in to sit in judgement. He let me go and I went in search of lunch. I remember being amazed by the incredibly slow slow drawl of the southerners, the ugliness of the one-hick town, and the incredible warmth of all the people I met. Probably I was the first foreigner in town that century! It always helps when travelling to be in a vulnerable minority

But the real impact was in the afternoon. I was picked up by a succession of poor white people heading south, one of whom had lost his job in Chicago and was going back to his shack in the Kentucky Hills where he intended to bed in for winter with his wife, ten kids and the chickens - this was August remember! Hard work was not his forte, contrast the 'work hard, play hard' mentality which had been drilled into me for life, during graduate training in Canada. In 1961, back to the UK, I was appalled by the lazy 'I'm all right Jack - I'm in the lifeboat ' mentality inherent in the English workforce of the day. No wonder we were then economically a failing country.

I had about three lifts that afternoon and each driver displayed the same appalling race hatred of the 'niggers'. They were supporters of the Klu Klux Klan, of lynchings, of hangings, their battle cry was 'Nigger don't let the sun come down on you in this town'. The meaning was starkly explained, if you do we will string you up on a tree on the outskirts of town. It gave a whole new depth of understanding to Billy Holiday's heart felt song 'Strange Fruits' - hanging from the trees. Beneath it all was the fear of violation of their women folk by a negro.

The last lift took me into Nashville for the night. He told me, and I still believe him, that there wasn't another coloured man in the south who would have picked me up. But he had seen the world and was on leave from his posting in Japan as an officer with the US Air Force. Brown rather than Black, intelligent, cultured, informative, liberal in his attitude to race. As he drove into Nashville he told me he didn't know the central white sector because Negroes were not welcome there (the blacks in their ghetto and the whites lived in absolute segregation). Nevertheless he went in and dropped me outside a hotel, and bid me farewell. That was the day I met my Obama, streets ahead of anyone else I met that trip.

There is no stronger reason for hitch hiking, than the experiences that are derived from local people you would otherwise never have met, insights you would never have made.

Next day we three met up at he Memphis railway station as planned and picked up the car we were to drive to the West Coast. Not this time a new Cadillac, but a run down Plymouth which had to be taken back to its rightful owner. Non the less Dave first then Brian coaxed it above 100 mph on those straight deserted prairie roads. Just as I made the ton for the first time in my life I glanced in my mirror to realise we were being overtaken by a police car, but he sped past with more urgent matters to attend to than someone doing twice the speed limit.

Encapsulated in our tin of car, quite unlike the intimate contact of hitch-hiking, we were thus out of touch with the vivid differences of culture in the south lands. We stopped in a little town, found a hotel, a few beers, a dinner and retired to bed. A couple of weeks later Little Rock burst onto the world stage. To think we had seen it as a boring sleepy town where nothing ever happened.

On September 2nd 1957 State Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas Guard to prevent black students from entering the high school. Eventually President Eisenhower sent 1,000 paratroopers and 10,000 National Guardsmen to enforce a ruling made some years earlier by The Supreme Court of America in 1954, the school was finally desegregated and the civil rights movement was born.

Of all the books we have read as a group over the past five years non registered as strongly with me as Harper Lee's, 1960 novel 'To Kill a Mocking Bird'. It depicted so well the south I saw that day, that improbable mixture of warmth of the whites and their racial hatred of the 'niggers'.

I was moved when, on tonight's TV Jesse Jackson, one of the few survivors of that struggle, was seen with tears streaming down his face, though I later learned it may have been in part a feeling of envy, and in part guilt at having opposed Obama for not being a true representative of the negro people. It was a very hard and very emotional struggle which cost Martin Luther King his life. So very many black people were experiencing today something they had never imagined possible - and not just in the USA but in Kenya and across the world - nor did I ever think to see it in my lifetime.

10 November 2008 GROUP COSTS
I am told that occasionally people are surprised by the need to contribute towards group expenses. The £12 annual fee for joining the Swansea U3A covers the Wednesday lectures, subscription to the national organisation, and subsidises some of the joint activities like the Quiz and the Pantomime and the start up and equipment costs of new groups. But all groups are expected to be be self financing thereafter, and in particular this means that the groups which meet in public halls have to finance the cost of hire, which is typically £10 to £15 per session. A charge of £1 per session or slightly more is therefore to be expected.

In earlier days when the U3A was much smaller it was common for groups to meet by rotation in member's homes. However, whilst this is still quite suitable at times, with a membership of 600 most groups need to be larger and thus have to be located in church halls or alternatives such as Hazel Court. Hiring Halls in the right locations also helps with bus access from any part of Swansea.

I have added Cecily's map of the streets around Hazel Court and my own research into bus access to the previous posting since its original release last week.

CHESS GROUP
The very first new group off the ground this session. Maxy Maxwell the convener, full of enthusiasm purchased eight M&S chess sets from his own pocket to get the group started. Nine people turned up and all thoroughly enjoyed the experience in the spacious well lit Craft Room at Hazel Court. We need a few more members to ensure sufficient continuity in the months ahead, but are already planning to meet on the First and Third Monday mornings of the month. The second meeting is thus booked for Monday 17 November with the session starting from 10am. Hire of rooms from Hazel Court is from 9 till 12.30, or even 13.00 (or alternatively AFTERNOON FROM from 1.30 till 5pm). Maxy's enthusiasm extends to teaching chess to beginners. Most of us were playing for the first time for decades and I must say Joan and I enjoyed it and found it very relaxing. I don't very often get emails from my wife but she was anxious for me to understand that she is going to beat me next time. To which my response is that I won't again miss the opportunity to take the queen that had put me in check, a move which would have spelt curtains for her! Cunning movers these knights!

READING GROUP 4
The last new group on the stocks got off to a flying start yesterday with 13 enthusiastic members, all of whom took to Hazel Court as a venue and stayed for coffee, after a two hour planning session, and some liked it so much they already have plans to stay for lunch next time. Cecily was full of enthusiasm, provided everyone with name stickers and got plenty of suggestions for this months books. Like her earlier group they decided to choose by vote two books per month, with the understanding that some will read both, others just one, with no penalty for reading neither.

That group will meet the Second Monday morning of each month at 10.30, thus the next two dates will be 8 December 2008 and 12 January 2009, which incidentally dovetails well with the plans for the Chess Group. It seems certain to be successful and thus bookings have been made for the whole session including July but with a break for April. The books for discussion on 8 December 2008 are 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry, and 'The Clothes They Wore on their Backs, by Linda Grant, a Booker prize winner.

MODERN JIVE
This looks like being the surprise new group of the year, the one I thought might be too young in outlook for the U3A. It helps that Gerwyn Thomas is a very enthusiastic leader, as well as a good teacher of dance. We met for the first time last Wednesday morning around 10.30 in the Monkey Cafe, Castle Street, in the centre of Swansea at the back of what was David Evans. They have a proper dance floor upstairs, though I'm told the whole place throbs, upstairs and down, to Salsa on Tuesdays nights.

With the help of a couple of experienced jivers from a previous class, Gerwyn soon had us moving. A few of the taller women volunteered as surrogate men and took the lead, but this group has far greater proportion of men than most U3A groups. I am continually finding more members who want to join and so this too already looks a success from the start. Gerwyn was getting the partners to rotate every few minutes, an excellent idea both to get people to mix but also because it is essential to learn the basics, of this often free form dance, in a universal style. Joan and I learned to jive together way back in university days but I have always found it difficult to find the same rapport with other partners.

All you have to do is turn up and try.

MOTO, Members On Their Own
After a slow start the numbers signing are starting to accelerate. There are significant numbers who are facing life on their own after partners have died or left. Help with building a new life with new companions is what drives Gerwyn and this group. In fact this rather than jive was the group he really wanted to run. I feed him the names as people sign on and he makes email or telephone contact as appropriate. Their first get together was at lunch time last Wednesday after the jive group had finished in the same Monkey Cafe location.

FRENCH CONVERSATION
Fifteen were present at the first meeting of a new group last Thursday at 10am in Hazel Court. It explored the aims of the members for the sessions ahead, in English to ensure clarity of discussion, and in the second half people introduced themselves in French. It seemed to me that there was a good similarity in the standards of spoken French across the group. Thanks are due to Steve Johnson for leading the group but also to ex French Teacher Beryl Edney who by questioning and prompting was able to draw out conversations. There are several people known to be interested who could not make that first meeting so it seems the group will have sufficient support. On this basis I have reserved the room for every Thursday morning until Easter with a break over Christmas/New Year.

ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
Almost thirty people attended the first meeting of this established group in the Sketty Parklands Evangelical Church (very close to Hazel Court) to hear Brian Davies, the group's convener, describe a cruise right around the smaller islands of the Caribbean to celebrate his seventieth birthday. He had prepared a DVD of the trip with musical backing, though in many ways the thought provoking spoken introduction was the best part of the presentation. Not only were the gorgeous Caribbean beaches on display but a fantastic range of flowers. He and his wife enjoyed the experience so much that they have already booked to repeat the trip next spring.

POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP
Apologies to the group of around fifteen for dashing in late this afternoon, as always, and taking the convener Margaret Hammond unawares. Gabrielle Suff was about to start introducing the chosen topic "Assisted Suicide?". I decided to visit this group on this occasion because the subject presented so many tricky dilemmas that had a special interest for me.

Gabrielle introduced the subject particularly in relation to the two recent cases, one in which a wife with Multiple Sclerosis wanted a court ruling that her husband would not be prosecuted if he took her to a 'suicide' clinic in Switzerland, after she had lost the ability to travel alone, and another in which the parents of a 23 year old professional Rugby player who had broken his neck had done just that at his request. There were over 100 cases where assisted suicide had been procured outside the UK without legal intervention when such a course would have been clearly illegal within the UK and even considered as murder.

Once thrown out to the floor the discussion broadened to thoughts not just of suicide but of adherence to a person's wish not to be resuscitated from a critical illness. But as I pointed out increasingly peoples last years would be spent with dementia, given continual advances in medicine for other easier conditions, without memory without thought. To me as an atheist such a life is worthless and I would not wish my life to be preserved in such a condition. In direct contrast my mother because of her strong religious belief that 'Life was God's to give and Take Away' would have wanted to continue to the very end. Surely the wishes of the person, which everyone accepted were different, are paramount, and surely few of us would follow suicide or wish to pre-empt death without consideration of others.

For me the real dilemma for lawmakers is to guard against death imposed or withheld by others against our clearly expressed wishes, whether their motives are selfish or evil.

The importance of discussing such matters in advance with close family and friends is clearly a lesson to those, like me, who have so far baulked at the need to broach such subjects.

Next month Larry Owen will lead the discussion on 'Accountability'.

INTRODUCTION - START HERE

Hello I'm Brian the Swansea U3A Groups Coordinator as well as the 'Oldie Backpacker'. I belong to the Swansea U3A (University of the Third Age, an inappropriate title which leaves many of us cold). You may be pleased to learn there are plenty of opportunities here for, discussion and socialising, thought and laughter, starting new interests or continuing others, making new friends, but no formal tuition and no exams! Perhaps the innuendo in the blog's title gives a better feel from one who 'intends to grow old disgracefully'. I have just been cajoled (arm twisted, in the nicest possible way, by Chairman Bob) onto the committee and now find myself in employment again.

Our U3A meets collectively on Wednesday afternoons at Swansea University for a wide ranging series of lectures, but also at regular intervals in special interest, self financing, groups. There are currently around thirty of such groups with memberships between five and fifty people, some meeting weekly others monthly, in members' homes, community halls and hotels as appropriate. One of my roles is to help new groups get started, another, which I shall enjoy, is to maintain contact by visiting group sessions. I intend to publicise these activities via this blog.

If you want to find out more than I can possibly tell you ATTEND the
U3A GROUPS OPEN DAY at the DOLPHIN HOTEL Swansea on 8 OCTOBER between 10.30am and 3.30pm
where each group will set up stall to recruit new members.

If anyone already has ideas for a new group would they please inform me on Swansea 424702 before the Groups' Day, because that would be an ideal event at which to gauge interest.

NODDY GUIDE TO USING INTERNET and BLOGS
Chairman Bob has persuaded me to give up the ego trip and use the About Me section on the page which always appears first to provide some simple instructions. Here I have the space to expand a little and to layout my thoughts easily. So here goes. Please skip to the paragraph heading GROUPS if you don't need elementary guidance.

Internet
You wouldn't have got this far without typing in the Internet address and actioning
http://muses-of-an-ageing-groupie.blogspot.com
The first thing to do is to click 'Favorites' (on the second line at the very top), then 'save this page'. In future all you have to do is to click on Favorites with the up/down arrows scroll down the list to highlight the site of today's choice and click. Thus avoiding any address typing to access your favourite sites. Use Favorites for all your favourite web sites.

Blogs
A Blog is simply a series of letters published on the Internet to which only those, like you, who know the site address can access. Pat Herbert should think of this blog as Letters from Mr Bloggie, with apologies to Alistaire Cooke. A Blog has its own web site this one is held on Google's computers. I can edit it as I am doing right now at any time. You, the reader can leave comments - please do so and leave your name, but please only to contribute to further discussion about groups. Be warned, I can cut you all off, or limit it to a select list of authorised well behaved contributors if needed.

The first page after entry is always the start of the last letter written. On the left just below a picture of me is a short set of instructions. There are several ways to move about ('navigate' in the jargon), PCs are like that there are always a hundred and one ways of doing the same thing. To get here you probably jumped on the link INTRODUCTION _ START HERE. If so there's a gold star in the post!

To read down the letter ('scroll') a line at a time use the Down Arrow cursor control on your keyboard. To move back then use UP. To move by much larger steps then use 'Page Up' and 'Page Down' keys in the same way.

More sophisticated ways of navigating a blog are to click on the 'links'. Firstly find your way about with the mouse and look for links, they are the points on the screen where the cursor changes from an arrow head to a hand. If the cursor shows as a hand and you click you will jump on the link. In a blog most of the links are simply to another part of the same document. There are two main areas of interest. the ARCHIVE at the top left of the screen which gives a list of the letter headings grouped by the month of original issue. Using these you can jump to the head of the requisite letter ('posting' in the jargon). At the end of each posting there are links on keywords. If for instance you are looking at a posting with a keyword 'read' it will include a paragraph about a reading group, if you click on the keyword 'read you get all those postings in the whole blog with the keyword 'read'.

Very importantly at the end of each posting there is a link which jumps you to another page where you can see any comments already entered and leave a comment of your own. Since for the moment I have allowed entry by anonymous subscribers do include your NAME and GROUP as part of your message. Since this is a private blog it cannot be found by search on the Internet not even by Google, therefore it's a reasonable presumption that only U3A members or their close friends will access this blog.

If you want to know more about me then click under About Me. If you want to start a blog of your own then sign up via Google for a Google Blog. It is free but you will have to open a Google Account - the same as you would do to use gmail. It provides you with a cut down set of the facilities you would find in Word. I found it a wonderful way of keeping people at home in the picture during our lengthy travels, internet cafes are never far away, as well as providing me with a diary to aid memories. You will find links to my two travel blogs under 'more about me' - sorry about the spelling in these earlier blogs, but then spell checkers in Mandarin or Spanish are not very useful!!!

Jump about by links and remember that you can always go back a step, or forward a step, by using the green highlighted arrows at the left hand end of the Internet line, three lines down on my screen.


GROUPS
I start this blog with a brief introduction to the four Swansea U3A groups I already know about from personal experience.

BOOK GROUP 1

On first joining the U3A I decided to join what was then the only Reading Group. It has been run for several years by Mo Ellard. My motivation was simply that I had not read for pleasure since my early twenties and knew I was missing out on an ideal activity for the retired. At work I read only, slowly and very carefully, or by extra high speed scanning looking for needles in haystacks, and in consequence found it difficult to memorise or maintain concentration on a complex story line. Five years on I have speeded up a bit and am beginning to enjoy reading again, but still find it hard to memorise plots.

Five years later there are three reading groups in this U3A and I am told they are all different. How they differ I intend to find out. Each summer we make an annual choice of the reading program for the next year by a semi democratic method. This year's authors are Maggie O'Farrell Blake Morrison, Ann Patchet, Sam Selvon, Donna Tarrt, Ernest Hemingway, Sarah Waters, Edith Wharton, C J Sansom and Susan Fletcher. All but three are new to me and that's after reading a novel a month for five years.

We meet monthly at the Hall attached to St. Paul's Church Sketty. At our last meeting before the summer break Mo announced that she and I had just been elected to the committee, boasting that our group was now particularly well represented.

DIGITAL MEDIA (Having Fun with Digital Photography)

Mo's boast was squashed when I went to one of their meetings only to find almost all that Group belonged to the committee. Chairman Bob, thinking I was already trying out my role of Group Coordinator, immediately plied me with coffee and scones covered in lashings of butter and strawberry jam. I will be expecting similar over the top welcomes wherever I appear!

In fact I was only trying the group out with the thought of joining and in particular of getting my wife involved in the tedious task of making sense of our lifetime backlog of film and slide photographs. I intend to return to meet group leader Anthony Hughes, guru in the dark arts of falsifying photographs to disprove the idea that 'the camera never lies'. He will be back in October to dispense me advice on more basic 'photoshopping' aimed at making the best of reality in my archive of travel photographs.

It helps if you can bring a laptop PC. They meet at the Vivian Hall Annexe at Blackpill.


ARMCHAIR TRAVEL

This group now run by Brian Davies coincides with my continuing interest in exploration of the less developed world of Asia and South America, although I am currently grounded for health reasons. It meets once a month at which there is a slide/power point/verbal presentation, usually by one of the group members. I shall be talking in the Spring about a trip to Guatemala, though wife Joan is going to muscle in on this one.

They also eat in exotic sounding restaurants. So the preliminary meeting is at China-China for lunch on Friday 3 October.

They meet at the Sketty Park Evangelical Church Hall, where there is a built in digital projector.

GEOLOGY

Not strictly a Swansea U3A activity but one carried out by the U3A Network in South Wales. The group organised by Nigel McGraw uses a variety of excellent guides, often from the universities, museums, or national parks of South Wales. There are visits to sites of geological interest across South Wales about once a month, except for the coldest weather. By happy coincidence geological interest appears to coincide with wonderful scenery, be the interest be in the stones in St David's Cathedral or a castle, to the cliffs of Gower. Glamorgan. Monmouth or Pembroke. There is lots of gazing and theorising, and, plenty of walking but scrambling is optional. They are all day visits with lunch in a pub, if there is a convenient location, or else by picnic.