Salisbury & District U3A Meetings Report
October 2008 - January 2009
| Recent meetings have been very varied. In October 2008 John
Coombes, a local amateur photographer showed photos of wild life in
Dorset. Sitting comfortably in a warm hall we were treated to a
magnificent ‘armchair’ tour of the Dorset coast from
Muddeford to beyond Swanage and could instantly enjoy images of birds
and beasts that must often have taken hours of patient observation to
capture. John added interest to his photos with information about
the local geology and archaeology and how human activity is changing
the coastline. November’s meeting was a DIY affair in which members contributed to a bring-and-share lunch followed by musical entertainment from the recorder group and poems read by the playreaders. The theme for the December meeting was historical. Bill Moore, curator of Gillingham museum, gave an illustrated talk on Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose. Bill worked for many years with the Mary Rose Trust, initially as a volunteer diver. He described the ship, how she was raised from the seabed centuries after she had sunk, not in combat but accidentally, and the restoration process. He showed slides of diving activities and some of the objects recovered. The January 2009 meeting introduced us to our local theatre, when Alan Corkill, former manager of the Salisbury Playhouse took us in imagination behind the scenes to discover what goes on behind the footlights at a major regional theatre. We were taken through the whole process, from choosing a play, to finding the actors plus all the other backstage people needed to put on a play today. We even learned some of the ploys to keeping costs down, such as trawling the local charity shops for costumes and supermarkets for donations of food when required for consumption on stage. Even local people are drawn in to lend items of furniture – they are provided with substitute furniture for the duration of the play. And finally we were reminded of the contribution of the audience for the success of any production – an enthusiastic audience is vital to enable the actors to give of their best. |
| Details of future outings can be found under Outings News. |
