Ramsey and District U3A

UNIVERSITY OF THE THIRD AGE NEWSLETTER

A Happy New Year to All our U3A Members

Our Fantastic Festivities on Tuesday 12th December 2017.

The Community Centre was made ready for our U3A members, food was laid out on the tables, wines, soft drinks and non-alcoholic beverages were poured and ready. Fran Holland and her team were busy behind the scenes, making sure that all was ready.

By 1.30pm our first guests were arriving, they were checked in at the foyer by Sheila Gilbert-Hill, then served drinks by Andy Wingham and Mike Lewis before being ushered into the main hall to find a seat at one of the many tables.

Sylvia King was our master of ceremonies, and introduced the programme for the afternoon. The first Item was to get everyone seated and tucking into the many varieties of sandwiches, samosas, chicken dips, prawn cocktails, sausage rolls, pork pies, followed by various cakes.

The second item was the drawing of the raffle prizes, which were donated by the different interest groups within our U3A.

The main item was the telling of “Christmas over the years” by three intrepid storytellers, Enid Hubbard, Ros Wilson and Bill Thompson. The telling included a musical accompaniment by Janet Owen, the sound system was managed by Dave Cusworth and a PowerPoint presentation by David Gilbert-Hill.

The story told of festivities long gone, from the Normans to the Anglo-Saxons – and their wassail ceremonies – in which we were given warm toddy to toast the greeting “Waes hael” (be in Good Health) and the response “Drinc hael!”, through Tudor, Elizabethan and Victorian times until our present-day celebrations. We were then entertained by our choir, who sang carols, including ‘The First Noel’, ‘Good Christian Men Rejoice’, ‘Whilst Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night’ and ended with ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.

Audience participation then took place as we sang ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’, each table was handed items from a sealed envelope. These items were cut-outs of each of the 12 days, so we had Maids-a-milking, gold rings, pipers piping, turtle doves, partridge in a pear tree, and as each were sung about, the holder then stood and waved the item. We continued by singing ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Sleigh Bells’.

Our three storytellers then sang as a finale, their own composition called ‘Customs of Christmas’.

On leaving the Community Centre, members were presented with a goody-bag as a reminder of their afternoon. Each bag contained a Norman Wild Boars Head, Anglo Saxon Gold Coin, Tudor Chocolate Brussel Sprout, Elizabethan chocolate covered marzipan, Georgian chocolate Yule log, Victorian mini candy cane, Victorian Christmas cracker joke, a 1940’s White Christmas snowflake and finally a 21st century letter to Santa envelope!

A huge thank you to all who took part in this amazing production.

Future Open Meetings

Our next general meeting will take place on Tuesday 9th January 2018 at the Community Centre, when Derek Massey, artist, will be the speaker, his subject ‘Watercolours’

Our next letter for the competition is ‘V’ and will take place at this meeting.

U3A National Website

The email address to receive information about the national newsletter is:

https://u3a.org.uk/about/newsletter

And Finally

Car Parking Please remember to park your car considerately and use car sharing if you are able.

Christmas Cracker Jokes:

Q: What do Elves learn in school? A: The Elf-abet.

Q: Why does Santa go down the chimney on Christmas Eve? A: Because it soots him!

Editor: Mike Lewis