Gardening Group

by Lynda SmeathersGardening GroupPosted on Comments are Disabled

Our next meeting is a trip to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens on the 3rd March.

We are having our plant swap a month earlier this year, at our April meeting, so if you are starting to plan your growing for this year, or indeed have already started, and you have more than you need, please bring some along to exchange with others.

Patricia Rayner is coming to that meeting on 7th April at the JGC, to talk about Japanese Gardening, she was snowed in when she was due to come in 2024, so we look forward to her talk this year.

History Group

by Lynda SmeathersHistory GroupPosted on Comments are Disabled

The History Group meet at Central Methodist Church at 2pm to about 4pm.  The price is £2 to cover the cost of the room, a speaker and refreshments.  Please note: next month we are back to our normal meeting of the third Wednesday in the month, 19th March when Denis Hill is coming to tell us all about Kirkby Castle.  I have become a little fed up with people telling me there wasn’t a castle at Kirkby – “Oh yes there was” and Denis will explain.

Last month Stephen Walker came to tell us about a Study of Migration of Millworkers to Darley Abbey.  It was interesting to see the original census returns and other records used in his work as he checked out where the millworkers had come from.  The Evans family who owned the mill very close to the river Derwent seemed to be decent employers at the time.

Some time ago I said the u3a magazine was talking about family sayings and Christine Faithful has taken on a project to record them.  She has written the next paragraph to explain.  An example of one of my mum’s is “We need to get that mess or room ‘firked’ up”.  She said it when the room was untidy and we had left toys all over.  

“Hucknall u3a History Group is trying to get together the materials for a project to celebrate the sayings, that families in everyday life use among themselves, to describe things such as the weather e.g. Its black over Bill’s mother’s; when its about to rain.  This is used by many people. We believe there may be many more (not just about the weather!) which are not so well known.  Some maybe even completely personal to one family but passed down the generations.  It would be of great interest, we think, not just to the History Group, if enough words of wisdom could be collected to make a booklet.  Members of the group have already been provided with a slip on which to write their favourite sayings and we would like to expand this project to the whole of our u3a.  There will be slips available at the next full u3a meeting for anyone who might wish to contribute.  Sayings from where ever they originate in the country will be very welcome.”

See you on the 19th March.

Maureen

Medium Walks

by Lynda SmeathersMedium WalksPosted on Comments are Disabled

In the spirit of the University of the Third Age, our Medium Walks group set off recently from the University tram stop for our first ramble of 2025.

We followed a route through the newish Science Park, round the much older Dunkirk pond, then over the main railway line using the Stewart Adams bridge, named after the inventor of Ibuprofen. After a pause to watch cars being very quickly reduced to bits in the cruncher at the Sims Metals recycling site, we carried on to the canal towpath at Thane Road. The old footbridge over the canal which we had planned to use is currently closed for renovation, so we carried on around the new road at the perimeter of the Boots site. A large amount of housing is currently being built, and we wondered about the future of the part of the site still in use by Boots.

We then reached the western end of the University campus, and decided to try out the facilities of the Student Union at the top of the hill – these were found to be ideal, both inside and outside, and the weather was as good as can be expected for mid-February.

Our March walk will be another local walk, at Bestwood Country Park. We always welcome new members, just use the tab on the homepage of our website to get in touch.

John Tedstone

Pub Lunch and Quiz

by Lynda SmeathersPub Quiz with LunchPosted on Comments are Disabled

A couple of photos from the Pub Lunch and Quiz.

We had a good selection of raffle prizes and  there’s a photo of some of the quizzers deep  in thought.

A few teams didn’t think they’d done too well, but there wasn’t that much of a gap in the scores.

The winning team score was 20, followed by 19 in 2nd place.

25 members came along today.

Everyone is welcome.