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“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.

Bill Baker – “The Lighter Side of Banking”

On the 4th of March we welcomed Bill Baker as our guest speaker. 

Bill is well known locally as a regular presenter on Tempo FM but his chosen subject for his talk reflected his long career with the Yorkshire bank and was titled “The Lighter Side of Banking”.

On leaving school in 1961 Bill joined the bank after a series of five interviews, including a visit to his family, and became a junior clerk at the Head Office in Leeds.  At that time the most sophisticated piece of equipment used was an adding machine with a paper roll.  He worked in many of the small branches in and around Leeds and he told us about some of the characters he came across, both customers and colleagues.

He was the first manager in the Yorkshire Bank to be held up at gun point and he told us about this and other botched robberies from the Bank.  Bill was promoted to open a new branch in Newcastle which he enjoyed after he had learnt the dialect and had survived a brush with the Geordie Mafia.  He moved back to Leeds as the bank’s marketing manager which was his least favourite role and was involved in the setting up of an insurance unit.

Questions from the members included the mis-selling of PPI and the takeover of the bank by the National Bank of Australia.

Our Chairman Mike Earle proposed a vote of thanks to Bill for keeping us amused on a cold morning.

Training Guide Dogs for the Blind

On the 4th of February 2015 the Forum welcomed representatives from Guide Dogs for the Blind for a presentation entitled Training Guide Dogs for the Blind.

We welcomed Belinda Hunter and Andrew Dixon accompanied by Eaton and Sam who are both Golden Retriever Labrador crosses and are guide dog puppies in training.  Belinda and Andrew are both voluntary guide dog walkers and their function is to take prospective guide dogs into their homes at seven weeks old and provide  basic training to the age of 14 months.  The dogs then go to a full time training establishment before meeting their blind owners who take over the dogs at two years of age.  They stay with their owners for six to eight years before retiring to become family pets.

Around 70% of dogs successfully complete their training, those unsuitable can become hearing dogs for the deaf, help dogs for disabled people or buddy dogs for young people with special needs.  Belinda described how dogs are selected for breeding and told us of the histories of the dogs she has had in her care.  She demonstrated with Eaton the stage of training that he has reached which involved responding to basic commands and the receipt of lots of treats.  Guide Dogs for the Blind is a charity completely funded by donations and two thirds of the dogs are funded by legacies.  After a lengthy question and answer session Colin Gaden proposed a vote of thanks and a collection was taken for the charity.

RAF Linton on Ouse – Alan Mawby

At the start of the Forum’s meeting on the 14th of January we stood for a moment’s silence in memory of member Frank McGuiness and former member Geoff Ward who had both recently passed away.

Our guest speaker was former Wing Commander Alan Mawby whose subject was “RAF Linton-on-Ouse” where he is the honorary curator of the RAF Memorial Room.  The establishing of the airfield was bound up with the lead up to the Second World War when in 1937 it was opened as a base for two bomber squadrons to combat the build-up of the Luftwaffe.  One of the first station commanders was Air Commodore Arthur Harris who went on to lead Bomber Command.

Alan related the war-time history of the station including the different types of bomber and various people who served at the station.  The first raid from Linton was a leaflet drop over Germany but many more destructive raids followed involving many fatalities to both aircrew and those on the ground.

After the war the station was handed over to Fighter Command which saw the first jets to fly locally and in 1957 it became a Flying Training School which it has remained to the present day.

Mike Cook proposed a vote of thanks for a most interesting talk.

Rex Stott – Magic Mirth and Mystery

On the 7th of January 2015 the Forum re-gathered after its winter break and we started our meeting by standing in silent tribute to one of our members, Paul Lerch, who had sadly died during the Christmas break.

Duncan Verity then introduced our guest speaker Rex Stott who had spent his career in education but whose interests now centred on British Music Hall, music and sport and he is a member of the Hull and York Magic Circles.

His talk was titled “Magic, Mirth and Mystery” in which he described his childhood in Birstall.  When a young boy he received a Rupert the Bear annual which included how to make a paper boat and this gave him an interest in origami which expanded to include magic tricks.  Along with his younger brother they devised a magic act which toured the Church Hall circuit in his home area and the Forum members were treated to a selection of his tricks, some of which he explained.  Although he abandoned magic during his working life he has recently renewed his interest principally for the benefit of his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Geoff Curd proposed a vote of thanks for a thoroughly entertaining presentation.

“Words and Music for Christmas”

On the 3rd of December the Forum held its last meeting before Christmas.

We welcomed our guest speaker Ken Humphreys for the eleventh time.  Ken is an ex-schoolteacher from York who specialises in a mixture of poetry, amusing tales and songs sung in a fine light tenor voice with piano accompaniment recorded by one of his ex-colleagues.  He titled this presentation as “Words and Music for Christmas” starting with Winter Wonderland with the Forum members joining in the chorus.

He revealed that he had written most of the poems he recited for school nativity plays and had recently been persuaded to have them published.  No presentation by Ken would be complete without a musical quiz and this one was about Oscar winning songs with the members answering all but one of his questions correctly.  John Spinner proposed a vote of thanks for a splendid entertaining talk.

 

Tales from the Charity Shop

On 19th November we welcomed our guest speaker Miss Val Howson, the manager of the Salvation Army Charity Shop at Meanwood Road Leeds.  The title of her talk was Tales from the Charity Shop in which she described how her life resulted in her current post and then related some amusing and touching stories from her work.

Val described her childhood being brought up in a terraced house in Hunslet, Leeds and regularly attending the local chapel.  At the age of 15 she left school to work in Marshall and Snelgrove’s department store and, after many varied jobs, the organisation she worked for suddenly folded leaving all its staff redundant.  At the age of 52 she had great difficulty in finding another job, being unemployed for a full year, until she talked her way into her present position.

Her shop is in a converted chapel in a socially deprived area with many foreign students and immigrants living close by.  She explained the philosophy of the charity shops which is to make money for something outside themselves.  Her shop’s policy of one price for all similar items enables her customers to shop with dignity.  Val’s talk concluded with a number of amusing anecdotes including a story of how a school in a remote part of Zambia became equipped with a pristine set of Leeds school uniforms obtained through her shop.

Mansel James proposed a vote of thanks for a very entertaining talk.