Hello everyone, I hope you are enjoying the warmer summer weather. I especially like the weeks around the summer equinox on 21st June when dawn starts really early and the evenings are so light. So, while still being extra Covid variants careful, I hope you are enjoying the warmth, the great outdoors, the garden flowers and the displays of wild ones around many of the local footpaths and grass verges.
Several of our groups, many of them the sports/outdoor groups, have re-started which is great news and we hope to support more activity over the coming months. I know that many members are looking forward to meeting up again soon with the friends made in our various u3a groups to enjoy our shared interests in person.
We are pleased to have a new group ‘Indoor Short Mat Bowls’ starting on Monday July 5th, 2pm to 4pm at a new venue, The United Reform Church Hall on Farleys Lane.
Since it is also the holiday season I have found a postcard from about 100 years ago which shows a comic seaside scene.
Many were produced by James Bamforth from West Yorkshire and one of the most celebrated graphic artists was Donald Fraser Gould McGill whose name has become synonymous with the genre of saucy postcards, particularly associated with the seaside. The cards mostly feature an array of attractive young women, fat old ladies, drunken middle-aged men, honeymoon couples and vicars. He has been called ‘the king of the saucy postcard’, and his work is collected and appreciated for his artistic skill, its power of social observation and earthy sense of humour. They were always a source of innocent blushes in those days and I remember being pulled away by concerned parents from the racks outside the novelty shops in Skegness.
The caption seems relevant as it looks like it will be a UK coastal holiday for most of us to enjoy this year –just like the couple on the card.
David Rose, Chairman