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Pembury u3a sends condolences

Our Condolences

We, the members of Pembury u3a, in Kent, wish to pay our respects to Queen Elizabeth II and to send our sincere condolences to her family and those close to her, at this sad time.

We acknowledge with gratitude her integrity, strength, public spirit and belief in the unifying force of living and working together.

u3a November Holiday

Pembury u3a Holiday to Warners Hotel at Cricket St Thomas, Somerset
Date 13th – 17th November 2023

This holiday has proved so popular that the organisers have secured more rooms and ordered another coach! There are still places available so if you are interested return the attached form to Angela Cartwright as soon as possible.

Our winter break this year is to Warners Hotel at Cricket St Thomas,
Somerset, for a “Martini and Mistletoe” event. The hotel has an enormous amount of history from visitors such as Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton to the famous TV comedy “To the Manor Born”

With beautiful lakes, woodlands and gardens, designed by Capability Brown. It has all the usual activities including an indoor pool, spa and Nordic Walking, Rifle Shooting and Putting. Live nightly entertainment and excellent dining.

We currently have room for 42 people
5 Single rooms in the Walled Gardens are £399 these rooms require a short outside walk to the main hotel. 5 Double rooms as a Single in the Courtyard Hotel are £519pp (Unfortunately, they do not have single rooms in the Courtyard Hotel itself)
5 Signature double/twin rooms at £439 pp in the Courtyard Hotel
11 Standard double/twin rooms at £409 in the Courtyard Hotel

Further details are available from Angela Cartwright or Valerie Marianni

Ostlagie

by Chris Rock

I brush away the dust masking my memories of the DDR and East Berlin to reveal a city for which, thirty years after the Wall was torn down, I have an undeniable sense of nostalgia and loss.The metaphors that come to mind are to do with contrast. Magdeburg, just thirty miles from the West German border, with its twin hemispheres joining the two Germanys at the hip, while their limbs pulled in opposite directions. The brashness and vibrancy of West Berlin, which in 1989 flooded the drab austerity of the East. And not just one but two paradises: the Workers’ Paradise, which is how Westerners typically characterised the DDR; counterbalanced by a tapestry of individual paradises across the country that, together, gave East Germany the highest concentration of allotments and dachas in the world and the East Germans, a means to escape. Dig further into “paradise” and you arrive at Old Persian, where it signified a walled enclosure or garden. In East Germany the enclosure was the Berlin Wall, which was monolithic and real. The garden one, made up of the multiple paradises, was notional but, I like to think, rather more benign and no less effective. For life in the DDR, like the rest of Eastern Europe, was conducted externally and internally. External meant a heavy-handed, intrusive state requiring compliance and uniformity, compensated with jobs for life, free education and child-care, and a seven-year wait for a new Trabant. Meanwhile, real life went on behind the symbolic wall, in cramped flats and bucolic gardens, among groups of trusted friends and family.
The implosion when it came was inevitable. All the same there was much to regret. It is the solidarity of shared hardship that today’s older East Germans miss most. They must surely miss, too, the post-war, 1950s feel of East Berlin’s streets, the unmistakable smell of Trabis and Wartburgs spewing out their low-octane petrol fumes, and the charmingly below-par goods in the shops. I was once asked to compare the two Berlins. West Berlin, I said spontaneously, was bunte – colourful. But then I remember a more intensely evocative November evening in the East, on a deserted Unter den Linden, accompanied by the wind and fallen lime leaves. Voltaire tells us at the end of Candide to cultivate our own garden, without saying whether the garden is metaphorical or real. For East Berliners, it was surely both.

Review Your Internet Security

Time to Review Your Internet Security

The current trend for more and more organisations to operate mainly (or even exclusively) online means that we are forced to share some of our information via internet websites. Cyber criminals are keen to take advantage of this and we all need to be aware of the risks and how to avoid them.

By observing a few fairly simple rules we can very much decrease our chance of being ‘hacked’ and bring us some peace of mind while operating online.

In addition to the information below, the website at https://getsafeonline.org has very comprehensive advice to help you review and secure your system. Continue reading “Review Your Internet Security”