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Family History

For the Forum’s meeting on the 17th of February the Deputy Chairman Colin Gaden took the chair.

The guest speaker for the meeting was Mike Greatorex from Harrogate who has devoted a large proportion of his retirement to researching his family history and this formed the subject of his talk entitled “Family History: The Trials and Tribulations”.

Mike gave us guidance into the procedures to be followed if we wanted to delve into our own families’ backgrounds such as obtaining birth and marriage certificates, how to access census and other useful records and the importance of speaking to other family members.  Mike then described some of his research into his own family.  His father had mentioned that his own father had been born in Philadelphia but knew no more details and this spurred Mike into deeper research.  Mike made a number of contacts in the USA who revealed Greatorex  relatives in New York state and Alabama including a lady who had married four times (once bigamously) and a soldier who had sold his kit.  Mike invited questions from the members and it was obvious that many of us were very interested in his subject from the number of questions raised.  Colin Gaden drew the meeting to a close by proposing a vote of thanks which was well supported.

Chile North to South

On the 3rd of February we welcome, for her second visit, Pat Alker from Denby Dale.  Pat and her husband support the running of a school in rural Ethiopia which was the subject of the talk on her previous visit.

This time, however, she entertained us with a description of an exotic holiday she enjoyed with her husband, the talk being titled Chile North to South.  She established the fact that no members of the Forum had ever visited Chile and we quickly realised what an unusual country it is, being over 2000 miles in length but an average of just over 100 miles width.  After landing in the capital Santiago her tour group moved to the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth where rainfall has never been recorded.  What little moisture the area receives is from a morning mist fed by the nearby Pacific Ocean which is enough to support some scrub and a few birds.

They then moved to the central Lake District which is an unpassable barrier to motor transport such that anyone wishing to travel by road to the south must divert into Argentina.  The final part of the journey took them to Punto Arenas in the far south where the attractions included glaciers and penguins.

The talk was illustrated with pictures of the spectacular scenery and unusual birds and animals but the local population were reluctant to be photographed.

The Forum Chairman, Mike Earle, thanked Pat for a fascinating talk.

The History of Meccano

Before the start of the Forum’s meeting on the 20th of January the members stood in silent memory of Albert Storey who recently passed away.

Our guest speaker was David Dalton from Bedale whose talk was titled The History of Meccano.  Since inheriting his father’s old Meccano set as a boy David has been an enthusiastic collector of Meccano model kits and literature dealing with them.

The system was invented by Frank Hornby in his garden shed in Liverpool to amuse his sons.  He patented the system in 1901 with the name Mechanics Made Easy and it gained great commercial success, eventually being renamed Meccano in 1907.  David related the history of the company which continuously produced Meccano at its factory in Liverpool until the factory closed in 1979 except for during World War II.

Meccano is still available although its production has been owned by a number of organisations over the years since 1979.  David had brought with him examples of the various model kits and loose parts, most obtained from car boot sales and auctions and refurbished by him if necessary.  He also brought examples of models he has made, many to his own design.

At the end of the talk members showed great interest in David’s hobby, particularly in how he manages his large collection of construction kits and spares.  Forum Chairman Mike Earle proposed a vote of thanks for a most interesting talk.

Death Row in Florida

At the Forum’s meeting on the 13th of January we welcomed as our guest speaker Rosemary Cheshire from Collingham.

Rosemary became interested in the US justice system after reading an advertisement for an organisation called Lifeline which arranged pen friends for prisoners on Death Row. Through Lifeline she became the pen friend to a prisoner called Mark who has been on Death Row in a prison in Florida since 2004 and this relationship formed the basis of her talk entitled Death Row in Florida.

Rosemary began her talk with a string of statistics which highlighted the nature of the US justice system particularly where it related to the use of the death penalty – the US being the only country in the industrialised west which retains the death penalty.

She also referred to the racial bias within the system which results in a black man being six times more likely to be in prison than a white man.

Rosemary and her husband arranged to visit Mark during a holiday in Florida and we learnt of the complicated security measures involved before the meeting, which lasted six hours!
She completed her talk by quoting from a poignant letter she received from Mark after the visit.

During questioning at the end of the talk Rosemary revealed that she had no reason to believe that Mark was innocent of the crimes involved but her opposition to the death penalty and the inhumane conditions imposed by the justice system are the motives behind her actions.

Mike Earle thanked Rosemary for raising interesting ethical issues in her serious presentation.

1000 miles around England on a pony!!

On the sixth of January the Forum resumed its meetings after the Christmas break.

Our first speaker of the New Year was Janet Neipokojczcka who had travelled from Hemsworth.  Janet previously lived in Kendal where she became a tourist guide specialising in walking tours in both the Lake District and Scotland and had undertaken a number of long distance walks around the Lake District.

In 1991 she decided to walk 1,000 miles around England accompanied by a pack horse in aid of the Winged Fellowship, a charity which organises holidays for the physically handicapped.

Her talk entitled Beyond the Far Fells described this journey.  Accompanied by a Lakeland pony called Roy she started out from Kendal and in ten weeks visited, among many places, Nottingham, Cambridge, London and Snowdonia using, where possible, ancient bridleways and pack horse trails.  Janet’s talk was illustrated by some excellent colour slides showing places and people of interest and the varied conditions which she and Roy experienced.  The Forum members were delighted to hear that Roy, at 28 years old is still going strong living at Addingham near Ilkley.  Mike Earle proposed a vote of thanks which the members supported with warm applause.

The Life of a Jockey

During our meeting on the 11th of November the proceedings were interrupted at 11 am for the members to take part in the Remembrance Day two minutes silence.

Our guest speaker, introduced by Duncan Verity, was Dale Gibson, a retired professional jockey, who titled his talk The Life of a Jockey.

During a career spanning 23 years Dale rode 529 winners with at least one winner at each flat racing course in Britain.  He had his first and also his last ride at York and was interviewed on Channel 4 TV on each occasion.   He divided his talk into three sections, how he started, the day-to-day life of a jockey and his present day career as the Executive Director of Racing at the Professional Jockeys’ Association.  Dale passed round three items from his equipment, a whip, a pair of plastic riding boots and a protective vest.  He credits a vest with saving his life during a dangerous fall at Beverley.

The statistics of the life of a jockey brought it home to the Forum members the dedication necessary to succeed – starting the day at 6am, two hours riding out and a typical 400 miles each day driving to and from meetings.

All this for an average annual income comparable to the average professional footballer’s weekly income. A lively Question and Answer session brought up the subjects of horse doping, weight control and the differing personalities of flat and jump jockeys.

“It Shouldn’t Happen to an Engineer”

On 21st  October 2015, 45 members attended at the Church Centre to meet our guest speaker Richard Gibbon OBE who was introduced by John Spinner.

Richard had enjoyed a varied career in engineering,  culminating in the much envied post of Chief Engineer at the York Railway Museum.

He started by posing an engineering problem to the members involving a tumbling box which none of us managed to solve.  His talk was titled “It Shouldn’t Happen to an Engineer” and covered various amusing incidents he encountered at the museum.

As a civil servant Richard was expected to answer letters from the general public within three days and he shared some of the more unusual with us although some were spoofs sent by members of his staff. His duties at the museum included acting as duty officer to deal with visitors’ problems and these supplied a fund of anecdotes.  Questions from Forum members at the end of the session revealed how the Japanese Bullet Train and the giant Chinese locomotive reached the museum.

Forum Chairman Mike Earle thanked Richard for his amusing and informative talk.  Richard donated his speaker’s fee to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Life’s a Hoot!

At the Forum’s meeting for the 7th October 2015 John Spinner introduced our guest speaker Pat Smith from Upper Poppleton who titled her talk “Life’s a Hoot”.  The title was inspired by her membership of the Owl’s Trust but the content was drawn from Pat’s experiences of life in general.

She spent her working life as a school teacher in Wakefield and York, her specialist subjects being mathematics and science.  In addition she was a store detective at a well-known supermarket for a short time, a member of Weight Watchers and an active member of the Women’s Institute.  All these interests have provided her with a rich fund of embarrassing incidents, malapropisms and cute children’s exploits for her talk.

Our Chairman Mike Earle proposed a vote of thanks saying that Pat had brought a ray of sunshine into our lives on a miserable rainy morning.

Ethiopia – The Historic Route

On the 17th of September we welcomed our speaker Pat Alkern from Denby Dale.  Her talk was titled ‘Ethiopia – The Historic Route’ and described two trips to the country taken by Pat, one as a member of a group from the Huddersfield Geographic Society and one accompanied only by her husband Philip.

They are members of a charity supporting a school in the town of Dukem 25 miles from the capital Addis Ababa and from Pat’s pictures we saw the difference the support has made.  However the bulk of the talk described the locations on the Historic Route which is a pilgrim’s trail in Tigre province in the north of the country.  Ethiopia is a Christian society, one of the oldest in the world, and Pat described the very different rituals and customs in the churches there.  We also gained an insight into the day-to-day life of the villages of the region such as what constitutes a home and how the population survives.  We learnt of the courting rituals of the young men and girls (who may marry as young as ten years of age).  Robin Jarrett proposed a vote of thanks for an amazing talk about such a different culture.

Duncan Verity – “The Murder of John Speed”

On the 18th of March the speaker who had been booked to talk to the Forum was unable to attend.  Speaker Finder Duncan Verity keeps a number of video presentations in reserve for these occasions and he produced one for this meeting.  It was entitled “The Murder of John Speed”.

The video was put together by the BBC Crimewatch programme and used actors and real policemen to reconstruct the crime of the shooting of a Police Sergeant in Leeds in 1984 and the subsequent enquiries which resulted in the arrest of the murderer.  A colleague of Sergeant Speed, PC John Thorpe, was also badly injured in the incident but he recovered to provide vital information to the crime investigators.

The investigation followed a number of false leads in a two and a half year period which resulted in the arrest of 224 criminals and the solution of a number of unconnected crimes.  Eventually the murderer David Griceworth, a career criminal from Middleborough, was involved in a police chase when he accidently shot himself in the stomach and died shortly afterwards.  His girlfriend admitted that he had killed Sergeant Speed and the police were able to arrest his accomplice.

The Forum members were stunned into silence by this excellent video and left in a reflective mood.