At this month’s U3A meeting we were lucky to have not one but two speakers on Monday 2nd November at Callington Town Hall.
Doreen Johnson spoke to us about her recent visit to Oxford attending the U3A Philosophy Network Group Leaders Conference and how much she had learned and enjoyed the experience of listening and discussing the subject with the other members of the wider U3A, coming as they did as far afield as Edinburgh to us in Cornwall. She described the beauty of Oxford and felt she knew the area, although it was only her second visit, because it was so familiar to us all through the television programmes about the exploits of Inspector Morse and the recent series about his deputy Lewis.
The next speaker was the regional trustee for the South West U3A Diana Holdsworth who covers Wiltshire, Gloucester, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, She looks after and promotes our area with the National Executive Committee. She referred back to Doreen’s talk because she remembered being in the same pub in Oxford as Morse at the same time as the writer of the books, Colin Dexter.
Diana looks after a large area and she told us all about her experiences driving around the area and her visits to London and the NEC every two months and spoke about the joys of relying on a Sat Nav to navigate around. Once it took her through a very narrow road with a wall on one side and a ditch on the other and coming in the other direction a very large lorry. Not the greatest at turning a car in a very narrow space “like a lot of ladies ” ( which drew a whoop from the audience ) the lorry driver turned the vehicle for her and gave her directions only to find after following the said directions coming face to face with the same driver in an equally narrow place, he patiently decided to be late to his next job and led her back to the right road.
Bodmin history group had recently contacted her about an invitation to join them, more details to follow. Diana also encouraged members of the baking group to take part in the Great British Bake Off, so watch this space! She lives in Paignton where she is part of the history group, and she gave us a potted history about a famous past resident of the area but kept us guessing about who. Born in 1811 in the USA, marries very young has 2 children, works at various jobs but longs to be an actor. Eventually at 21 leaves to pursue his dream but finds that he is not very good at acting but very good at having affairs and producing children (18 of them) and inventing. The penny dropped after various guesses when she told us he invented a sewing machine. Mr Singer moved to Paignton where he was a generous benefactor and longed to be accepted into the “posh” society but never was. He died in 1875 and had a spectacular funeral.
Diana finished by thanking us all for the very warm welcome she had received and complimenting us on the variety of groups on offer. A vote of thanks was given from the members.