I was intending to start this month by saying that after such a dreary and wet winter, hasn’t it been cheery to see the sun come out, finally, and the spring flowers suddenly bloom. However, I then saw the forecast for this coming weekend with possible snow and freezing temperatures predicted. It was this unpredictable, changeable and harsh weather in March, often feeling uncomfortable or chaotic that lead Garrison Keillor to write "March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like"!
What I did have the pleasure of attending this month was a very enjoyable talk by Lesley at the “History for Fun” group on postcards. She presented an excellent and interesting set of cards sent by her grandfather from his travels during the 1920’s – 1930’s. This presentation also led me to think more about the lost art of postcard writing. In the not-too-distant past, during the summer, hardly a week went by without the postman bringing a postcard from a friend or relative on holiday somewhere. The same happened when you went away yourself – it was almost part of a holiday ritual to seek out cards to send back home, usually either a more conventional images of famous places to parents or relatives, or something more obscure (and possibly bad taste!) to a friend.
These pieces of snail-mail were often left at the reception desk of a hotel or dropped in a backwater post box before making their arduous journey back by lorry, ship or plane, train and foot to arrive, usually, some weeks after you’d returned back home. After my last A-level exam, a friend and I set off InterRailing around Europe, with the intent of travelling down through Italy towards Greece. Our plans changed when we missed a train in Paris, so the first my parents knew of this was when, two days before I got back, they started to get postcards from Copenhagen, Oslo, and Bergen which is where we’d headed instead.
It wasn’t just choosing the picture that was important – what to write was even more critical. This was especially important when sending cards back to girlfriends knowing their parents were more likely to pick it up off the
doormat. My grandfather solved this by having the skill of being ambidextrous but also writing the mirror image with his left-hand: Quite a feat.
Lesley’s talk did what many of our u3a events have the great knack of doing – making us look back to see that although times are changing, core principles such as keeping in touch and sharing with others remain of utmost importance.
Despite postcard writing being a lost art, I do enjoy the modern ways of keeping in touch through IT developments such as WhatsApp. This has been very apparent over the past month when England have lost to India in cricket, and Scotland, Ireland and Italy in rugby. Through WhatsApp it means that within seconds of each event happening I have friends from
Mumbai, Dundee, Dublin and Milan all contacting me with their happy news!
Please enjoy catching up with the rest of the news in this edition, particularly to note the details of our Mid- Summer event to celebrate our 20th Anniversary.
Mike Freemantle,, Chair