Welcome to our website.  Thankfully warmer weather seems to be settling in, let’s hope we can turn the heating down and try and get back to some type of financial normality.

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.

March has well and truly arrived with many relevant dates, the 1^st March is our committee meeting and St David’s Day for the Welsh among us and 17^th, St Patrick’s Day for our Irish members. The 14^th is the Ides of March, so beware if you have any Roman heritage!

For those of you still with mothers don’t forget the 19^th, which is Mothering Sunday. The 20^th is the Spring Equinox, also known as the Vernal Equinox, the official start of Spring, looking forward to all of the spring flowers and warmer weather to brighten up our lives. And of course, if out in the countryside watch out for those mad March hares! We have seen a few in the fields off Narrow Lane when walking the dogs.

Finally, don’t forget to put the clocks forward on Saturday night 25^th, as British Summer Time starts at 2.00am on Sunday 26^th. Often funny at church, as one or two families always forget and turn up at the end of the service.

Great to see so many at the February meeting, John and Christine Berrill having to put out additional cups. A big thank you to John and Chris for all their hard work every meeting.

For those renewing their membership at the meeting, I hope that you found our new card readers useful, we are hoping to make more use of them in the future to pay for our activities and reduce the amount of cash collected. Thanks to Gary our treasurer for sorting this out.

Don’t forget to buy your tickets for the Social Sub Committee’s next event, which is on 1^st April (no not an April Fools joke) ‘The Irish Night’ starring ‘Kelly’s Hero’s’, cost is only £8.00p, bring your own food and fancy dress is optional. Should be another great night. Again, special thanks to the SSC for all of their hard work and planning.

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

Melvyn Francis, Chair

We held a meeting for Group Leaders at the end of February and our committee came along too.

We have 46 groups in our u3a, which are led by 36 people and the majority of them attended the meeting. They do a great job on our behalf, and this isn’t always an easy job.

We looked at the updated u3a ‘Guidance for Group Leaders’, with input from our Chairman, Membership Secretary, Business Secretary and Treasurer. Group Leaders were given the opportunity to ask questions on Membership, our u3a administration system (Beacon), Health and Safety and the Financing of groups.

We then divided into 5 groups to look at 6 hypothetical scenarios. They were based on potential problems that might occur in a group. They certainly created some lively discussion and as there was no right or wrong answer everyone took part!!

It was good to meet, and we plan to come together again in the summer.

Sue Tedstone (Groups’ Coordinator)