Monday 3rd August saw another very suc­cess­ful get together of some 43 mem­bers via Zoom and John Abel’s blog of Tim Stephenson’s talk about the Medici family is now avail­able under recent talks.  Part 2 is due in October.

DON’T  miss NEXT TALK ON 17TH AUGUST from

BARBARA BEARD 

“A for­got­ten Antarctic explorer”

Barbara gave us an very inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing talk last February on her life in the NHS.

•  Monday 13th July was the first occa­sion that we had held a Zoom meet­ing on our own account rather than the account of the speaker. See below.

Again we had more than 40 mem­bers tune in to enjoy a mar­vel­lous talk by Prof Dave Petley  who had been to us before in October 2019 ( see the blog on that talk under talks).  This talk focused on n the Aberfan land­slide dis­aster and was as a fine follow on from his pre­vi­ous talks about land­slides around the world. The blog will be released shortly — watch this space!

The gen­eral reac­tion to the Zoom format has been very pos­it­ive and we now intend to hold vir­tual meet­ings on the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month start­ing with a talk on MONDAY 3RD AUGUST.

Members will be advised nearer the time and sent join­ing details in good time. Any issues regard­ing Zoom — please call Peter Jackson on 07801 842100.

Currently the com­mit­tee believe it will be the end of the year before we will be able to resume our normal gath­er­ings at Fulwood Church Hall.

We now have the major­ity of mem­bers signed up for Zoom meet­ings until the end of the year.

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).