Coronavirus (Covid-19) Update

AFTER the suc­cess of our first vir­tual meet­ing by Zoom — more than 40 mem­bers ‘tuned in’ to watch Professor Alan Zinober’s fas­cin­at­ing present­a­tion on Yorkshire cler­gy­man and nat­ural philo­sopher John Michell  — the club’s com­mit­tee has taken the decision to hold a reg­u­lar pro­gramme of such talks until we are able to return to normal gath­er­ings.

We anti­cip­ate that this will not be before the end of the year, so we are plan­ning a second vir­tual talk for 13th July and then a target of two talks per month for the rest of the year – per­haps ten in all.

Members wish­ing to take part in these must declare their interest in advance, and will then be sent details of the speaker and the sub­ject with a link to join in on the appro­pri­ate Monday morn­ing either on their com­puter, tablet or mobile phone.

As the club cur­rently has no income, because we have not asked for 2020–21 sub­scrip­tions which were tech­nic­ally due in May, mem­bers will be asked to pay a fee of £15 to cover the cost of our Zoom Pro sub­scrip­tion and speak­ers’ fees where applic­able. This will cover the whole period to the end of the year.

The com­mit­tee will then re-assess the situ­ation, as far as our fin­ances and the Covid-19 situ­ation are con­cerned, and if we are able to resume our normal gath­er­ings at Fulwood Church Hall we will cal­cu­late a pro-rata sub­scrip­tion which mem­bers will be asked to pay to cover the period from 1st January to our next AGM sched­uled for Mon 10th May 2021.

We recog­nise that we might be regarded as a vul­ner­able group, with an aver­age age of 77 and some mem­bers with under­ly­ing health issues. Our return to ‘full work­ing’ will not be so much when cur­rent gov­ern­ment restric­tions allow us to gather, but when our mem­bers them­selves feel it is safe to do so.

The club’s ten-strong com­mit­tee has been active behind the scenes since day one of lock­down. We recently held our quarterly com­mit­tee meet­ing by video link, and every club member receives a tele­phone call at least once a fort­night to ascer­tain that they and their part­ners are in good health phys­ic­ally and men­tally, that they are coping with isol­a­tion, and that they are receiv­ing reg­u­lar sup­plies of food, medi­cines and other essen­tials via friends, neigh­bours, carers or family. Hopefully, the isol­a­tion issue is being min­im­ised by the planned pro­gramme of vir­tual talks.

 

* Sheffield City Council is oper­at­ing a Community Helpline during the Coronavirus (Covid-19) out­break. If you, or someone you know, are vul­ner­able, shield­ing or self-isolating and have no friends or family you can call on, you are invited to con­tact the Helpline either at sheffield.gov.uk/coronavirus or on 0114 273 4567 (lines open 8.45am to 4.45pm).