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Cards to be sent. Sounds easy, especially since I have a Cunning Plan wherein I keep last year's cards safely tucked away as a clue for this year's list, but it doesn't work. I started with forty or so on my list and duly completed and mailed them in time, I have had over sixty in response, so if any of my readers are feeling grumpy, sorry, I shall do better next time. Food. Do you ever get that ticklish feeling on your shoulder blades around New Year's Day? It's the feathers growing, after days of finishing up the turkey, bought larger than first estimate, 'just in case'. Thank goodness, this year my brother invited me over to Dublin so it was his turkey that had to be spread round the family, Christmas pudding, mince pies and the like seem a welcome continuing addition to the menu, but turkey somehow seems to pall. Presents. I'm sure this is a wifely thing, more than anything else on the list. I have to admit that a cheque goes to each of my offspring and their offspring, just because I can never think of what they want and it seems silly to buy something that will never be used. Church 'n' things. The whole proper point of it all, despite moves by the Politically Correct to avoid offending a minority. It is also someone else's duty to organise, which is nice. My duties here are to ensure that the church heating is on for the dozens of services and meetings and the Lord help me if the Choral Society freeze and to ensure the altar candles have been filled with oil. Nativity play. The best and happiest of all, which I ensure being asked to by offering lifts to the Old Folk. The children are gorgeous in their innocence, the camels are funny and something dreadful usually happens on stage, like this year when the Jesus doll was tipped out of its manger and then dumped unceremonially back in place by a well-meaning, but male, shepherd. Huh!, we said. The second time, a gentle female angel replaced Him with care. Aaaaahhh!, we all went. We can hardly call Serge Pachnine a Speaker, but an entertainer, yes. Having overwhelmingly voted for a 'proper* luncheon at our December meeting, rather than the turkey we would all have later in the month (and probably well into January), we did mark the occasion with something quite different to our usual well-chosen post- prandial speaker. With a name like that, Serge was unlikely to be English and so it turned out: he was Russian, moved here some ten years ago and has been entertaining everyone from schools to ancients like ourselves with songs accompanied on his accordion, songs from Russia, the Ukraine and countries of eastern Europe, all in the style of the wild Russian steppes and gypsy encampments round the campfires of Hungary. Serge has a great sense of humour, too and put your Editor on his side immediately when, before lunch he told an anti-politician joke I shall use again: Politician says to comedian: "Tell me something funny, then." His ability to be extremely funny during his act in a language he never learned before coming here, is remarkable. More so, though, he played the accordion with zest, getting us to sing along with him in Russian, for goodness sakes, which has to be a first ever. A good guy with a great act, it was a suitable start to Christmas revelry which we all enjoyed hugely.
Phil Munson has given us a list of speakers right through to July (Ahf Summer!), but as has occasionally happened in the past when one has had to be changed and the Newsletter being a publication of record, we shall not record them all now, Coming up to Christmas and looking for presents, I went to the bookshop and asked for the 'Self Help' section and she said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. You may have noticed that this edition of the Newsletters well spaced out, a bit like I felt at 1 a.m. New Year's morning. ("Honestly, constable, my car is outside my home; I walked to the club party just in case".) What with Christmas and the build-up - which starts around Guy Fawkes day now -I have barely thought of collating and writing news about our Club. Tony Simpson has been busy in the carpentry workshop again and as a result the entrance to Puriey Sports Club has a spanking new wooden board announcing that we meet here every month. Also, if you are quick, you can catch a series of short stories by Helen Simpson on Radio 4's Book at Bedtime this week, 10.45 p.m. Hugh Roberts (telephone 020 8660 7537) asks if anyone is interested in joining a chess club that has been going for fifty years. Monthly meetings or two or three games, coffee & sandwiches. Next meeting on January 11 that 67 Hartley Hill. Phil Munson's Trade & Services list is bginning to pay off, with members At our December meeting it was suggested that we appoint someone with the specific task of keeping in touch with and offering help to the widows of our membership. It is not with a view to extending our Committee with yet another Officer, but it is something really worth while. Practical assistance on occasion may be what's needed. Think on and if you feel this work is for you, speak to Jim Mulvey, or his successor in the Chair, Malcolm Ruscoe-Pond. Dennis Evans has been collecting information about a special 40th. anniversary meeting of the Caterham Probus Club on January 10th. Caterham, which started the whole worid-wide Probus movement, has invited a speaker, Roger Deayton to tell the history of the movement and their own Club in particular. Dennis will give us more details today of what should be a most interesting meeting, to which we are invited as paying guests if there is room for us. What is it with the English and weather? Dear gods, with our climate we must be well used to coping with a little bit of snow. But we aren't, as the last week or two has shown. I recall my embarrassment some thirty years ago while I was in the newsroom of an agency in Helsinki at this time of the year. Two meters of neatly piled snow lined the spanking-clear footpaths and roads outside the window, when the teleprinter reporting news from London announced that Heathrow was closed by snow. A Finnish journalist read the report and burst out laughing: One centimetre of the wretched stuff had stopped the busiest international airport in the world. I made some excuse about it being the wrong kind of snow - all wet and slushy, not at all like their dry feathery stuff - and they kindly let me get away with it. "Oh, yes" said one Finn, "I remember that here once and it was dreadful." Decent of him. In the last edition of the Newsletter I neglected to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. My apologies and I now wish you the same for the remaining 1/12th. as of today. Or, of course, wish you and yours a Happy New Year, which I do. Harry Cundell took time and effort out to send us a list of reasons of how lucky we are to have lived so long without the help of Nanny Government. Read it, and be astonished that we survived being born of a mother who smoked and drank while they carried us; who took aspirin, ate blue cheese and didn't attend antenatal classes, taking advice only from their own mothers. Our cots were covered with lead-based paints, we had no childproof lids on medicine bottles and were probably held on Mother's lap while being driven by a never-tested father in a car with neither seatbelts nor airbags. Around the home and garden, we drank water from the hosepipe, we shared soft drinks with friends and no one died; the drink was made pleasant with sugar and salt, as were the sponge cakes Mother made in her never-officially tested kitchen. White bread was the rule, eaten with quantities of real butter from the cow, but we weren't overweight because we were always playing outside, leaving home in the morning, roaming round the countryside or parks, never worried about, even though wecarried no mobile phone, just so long as were back before sunset. We fell out of trees, our cuts were cured by licking them, we broke the occasional tooth and ate worms which did not live forever in our guts. Wood scraps and wobbly pram wheels were turned into go-carts, ridden down steep paths leading to main roads and it was only then that we found out we had forgotten to fit brakes, but many times we stopped by running into hedges, thus solving the problem. Nobody died. Without Playstations, video games, TV, mobiles and the like, we made up our own games with sticks and tennis balls; catapults were fashioned from Y-shaped sticks and rubber strips from old tyres. We were warned that we could lose an eye, but it didn't happen. We chose football teams from amongst our many friends and those who were not selected had to learn to live with the disappointment. Gosh! Our pushbikes probably lacked working brakes and we certainly never wore helmets. We rode round to friends' houses, knocked on the door or just walked in to a welcome and no questions about whether Mother knew we were there. Hitch hiking with strangers was the generally approved way to get a free ride. The local policeman - policeman - was a friend to be treated with respect, but, with his own memories of childhood he understood and only limited our play when really necessary. He knew our names and probably our parents, too. The Law was sensible and if we did break it, it was dealt with there and then with a clip over the ear. If further action was needed, the idea of a parent taking our side was unheard of. Accidents happened of course, but no lawsuits resulted. We grew up to a successful, responsible manhood, many even fought wars for our country, but most of all, we survived our terrible upbringing.
Produced and edited monthly by Ian Scales (01737 553704)
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