Membership
In November, we have 312 members.
About 30% of our membership are men - a slight increase from our last headcount!
Attendance at our monthly meetings now regularly tops a hundred which the Civic Hall is quite able to accommodate.
Recruitment is from word of mouth. This is probably the best form of recommendation.
Pat Dix
Membership secretary
FULL CIRCLE by Ann Taylor
The year is 1958 and the occasion is Freshers' Day and I am a rather bewildered fresher. All around are stalls where the various societies are competing to attract new members. They seem to believe that the more noise they make the more successful they will be. In actual fact they are all selling the same thing, that is, the prospect of new friendships and a distraction from the boredom of studying and lectures.
A rather nice young man came and introduced himself as the editor of the Student Newspaper. He had the smooth talk and persuasive manner of the politician he would later become. Within a few minutes he had extracted a promise from me of an article for the next edition. Within a few weeks I had become a regular contributor to the paper and also took the minutes at editorial meetings. This last job was rather boring but I did make a useful discovery, namely that the word committee has more than its fair share of double letters. I also learned a lot about the pre-publication panic of finding enough column inches, something our editor Alan Wren knows all about. Apart from the newspaper my other distractions were climbing mountains and playing table tennis .
Fast forward nearly 50 years and it is my first visit to Neston U3A. I am bewildered by the number of interest groups which I could apparently join. Before long I am in the walking and the table tennis groups. I also take minutes at meetings and write the odd article.
So what has changed? I have of course, and so have my companions. I have to admit that much of the bright optimism and vitality of youth is missing but there is a lot of experience and expertise. We have, after all done a lot of living! The more U3A members I talk to the more aware I become of the interesting lives they have led. Thank goodness the U3A, despite its name, attracts such a diverse group of people.
I was lucky in that the interest groups I chose had spaces. If you have a particular interest I can strongly recommend starting your own group. There is something very satisfying about sharing your interest with others and seeing them enjoy it as much as you do. I speak from experience when I say that our members are very forgiving of mistakes and have an excellent sense of humour.