Category: Announcements

I trust you have all now fully recovered from your Christmas and New Year’s celebration.
Quite a lot of coughs and bad chests doing the rounds at the moment, please ensure you wrap up warm both indoors and outdoors. The increased energy costs are not helping people’s heath at the moment, what with the many ‘cold snaps’ we are experiencing. Thankfully covid, although still present, seems to be on the wane, helped by both the jabs and natural immunity. As I have said, please try and keep warm.

A few of us went to the Chinese New Year Celebration meal at the Springwater Cantonese Restaurant in Calverton, organised by Terry Hardman of Sutton u3a for the Notts Network. It was a very good evening and the ‘eat as much as you want ‘ menu proved very popular. Ordering five selections from the menu for the table at a time, after a couple of rounds of starters and mains, we soon had to loosen our belts.

We were then entertained by a traditional Chinese dragon/lion dance with music accompaniment which had everyone reaching for their cameras. The evening ended with an outdoor firework display with all the normal oohhs and aahhs.

Well organised Terry, if repeated next year, I would strongly recommend it to you.

Our next monthly meeting will be a week later than normal on the third Wednesday of the month – Wednesday 15th February, 2023.
This later meeting is due to the John Godber Centre holding CAMRA’s Hucknall Beer and Cider Festival on 10th to the 12th of February and having to set up the main hall during the week beforehand. Again, this is a good event, well worth visiting as I am sure our Real Ale Group are aware.

After our successful individuals fund raising for Hucknall’s Food Bank (£320 plus much food) several folks have asked if they can still bring food to the monthly meeting, please do and we will make sure that it is delivered to the food bank.

As always, please book in at the desk on arrival and as importantly for Health and Safety, ensure you sign yourselves out if leaving early. Please try and wear your name badges and turn off or silence your mobiles during the meeting.

I have been asked by a couple of our members to relay a thanks to the organisers of the Singalong Group for a very enjoyable Tuesday meeting in January, well done Phil & Liz.

Look forward as always to meeting you all at February’s meeting.

Melvyn Francis, Chair

Parcel Redelivery
The Parcel Redelivery scam has reappeared. You receive an email from either a delivery company, often called IPS, impersonating UPS, but also the post office, both appear to be genuine, stating that your parcel or package couldn’t be delivered and therefore there is a very modest charge, often £2.99p to cover the cost of the redelivery.

The email asks that you click on the link, which then asks for your bank details to enable payment of the charge. Obviously once these are given, then any amount can be taken out of your bank account.

ALWAYS BEWARE, CRIMINALS LURK EVERYWHERE.

A very warm welcome to 2023, how the time passes and the years flash by.

Our next monthly meeting is on Wednesday, 11th January, and I look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible, please ensure that you enter the building from the car park rear entrance and book in at the desk.

As always please try to remember to wear your name badges so that folks (especially new members) know who you are, if a group leader or committee member, again pleased wear your ID so that others know who they are talking to. Our committee members should all be wearing a lanyard with their name and function shown.

Please remember to either silence or turn off your mobile phones. We are reserving some front row seats for those who have a hearing problem, please use them if you need to.

Well, another Christmas has passed and we must now welcome a new year, 2023, it didn’t seem possible that we could imagine seeing in 2023 when we were young. I really hope that Christmas was a joyous occasion for all of you, with visits to and from family members and shared gifts and meals to think about during the coming cold months. I do of course know that for some it is a time if sadness and recollections of happier times.

I was so thankful when the mid December freezing weather ended and we returned to the relatively warmer 5 degrees, who would have thought we would welcome back the rain and slightly warmer climes.

I would like to offer tremendous thanks to all who were able to donate to the Hucknall Food Bank, we collected the magnificent sum of £320, along with a quite few bags of food, all of which have been gratefully received. This will be a tremendous help as so many more families now have to rely on the food bank for provisions in these difficult times. Many, many thanks to you all.

A great big thank you to our Social Sub Committee for organising our Christmas Social on 4th December along with the String Quartet and the Ukulele Group for their entertainment, it was a really good and enjoyable event. We look forward to 2023 events.

Likewise, many thanks for the film show “The Bishop’s Wife” on the 14th December organised by our own David Rose, with the accompanying sausage rolls, mince pies, cakes, biscuits and drinks supplied as always by Christine and John Berrill.

Also, thanks to Kim and her staff of the John Godber Centre, who look after us very well, we would struggle without their support.

Hoping we will all have an active and fun 2023.

Melvyn Francis, Chair

Welcome.
Our next monthly meeting is on Wednesday, 14th December, 2022, and I look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.

Please ensure that you enter the building from the car park rear entrance and book in at the desk. As always please try to remember to wear your name badges so that folks (especially new members) know who you are, if a group leader or committee member, again pleased wear your ID so that others know who they are talking to. Our committee members should all be wearing a lanyard with their name and function shown.

Please remember to either silence or turn off your mobile phones. We are reserving some front row seats for those who have a hearing problem, please use them if you need to.

Christmas is almost upon us and we have bought most of our Christmas presents, buying a few at a time to spread out the cost. Whist Christmas is a joyous time for most of us, meeting and spending time with family and friends, there are sadly still a lot of folk who for one reason or another Christmas is not a time of celebrating – loneliness, sadness, depression, there are many reasons. If you know anyone who is lonely then please try and reach out to them in some little way.

If you are on your own then please try and speak to someone for support or company, many folks are only too happy to share with you if only they are aware. I would encourage you if you are able to try and donate some items to a local foodbank, there are a lot of struggling families out there. We will have a donation bucket at our December social and film activities for any cash you feel able to give, or tins and packets if you prefer.

Please note that we will not be having a formal monthly meeting in December, however, we are planning to have a ‘Film Afternoon’ for those who want to come and watch, there will be a small charge of £2 to help cover costs and refreshments, these have been popular in the past.

Melvyn Francis, Chair

These texts tell you that you’ve been identified as being eligible for the government’s Energy Bills Support Scheme. They invite you to click on a link to claim your payment. The websites detailed in these texts were all created recently, before being swiftly taken down and replaced by new pages.

The fraudulent site invites you to click on a link titled ‘Start Now’, which takes you to a page asking you to select your energy provider. This then leads to another page where you are asked to enter your bank details.