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IN THE PINK

These berries are to be found among an assortment of the wild and the cultivated that can be seen in Groups.

FLAMING SKY

What's producing all this coloured smoke? Find out in Picture Gallery.

CHAT LINE

Chit-Chat needs readers to keep sending in pictures, anecdotes, funny stuff etc. You can send it to me via the message bird, or post it on the ERU3A page in Facebook.

MAKE CONTACT

Use the link incorporated in the Chit-Chat heading to access our website, and the various message birds to contact group facilitators, as well as the Chairman, Secretary, Groups Coordinator - and me. Safe links to other websites may also appear.

Jim Hamilton

THE BIZ

MONTHLY MEETING

Given the new regulations announced by both the UK and Scottish Governments it looks as though our monthly meetings will be on Zoom for quite a while. This year's AGM and the two Zoom-enabled monthly meetings we've had so far have been very successful and such virtual meetings are becoming more popular.

Our next meeting on Zoom will be on Wednesday 21st October and members will again be asked to register their intention to take part. Guest speaker Vicky Blackmore's talk is entitled Dogs for Good.

Sign up to attend in future. Anyone needing help with downloading and using Zoom should contact June Weston (jweston1952@gmail.com or 07876 315981).

FEATURES

THE BIZ 1

THE BUZZ 2

GROUPS 3

DID YOU KNOW ...? 8

FUN AND GAMES 9

WHIMSY 10

PICTURE GALLERY 12

EVENTS 18

PUZZLE SOLUTIONS 18

CONTACTS 18

CHIT-CHAT

THE NEWSLETTER OF

EAST RENFREWSHIRE U3A

SCOTTISH CHARITY NO. SCO44004

No. 87 September 2020

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HEALTH RESEARCH PROJECT

Sandra Cairncross, Research Ambassador Scotland and member of Pitlochry & District U3A, is seeking volunteers to take part in a new shared learning project funded by the Welcome Trust. Addressing Health will examine the health of postal workers across the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries and will feed into a blog series A New U3A Shared Learning Project: "Our 1901 Postal Pensioners"

This project would be of great interest to anyone who has researched their own family history, has a relative who was employed by the Post Office or anyone interested in social or medical history.

If you’d like to take part, contact Sandra on

smcairnx@hotmail.com.

DIARIES

Next year's U3A diaries, priced at £3 each, are only available in packs of five. As indicated in her recent email to all members, June Weston may be able to

place orders in multiples of five and then distribute the diaries singly to individual members who have expressed an interest. If you'd like one, contact June using one of the contact options shown in The Biz.

THE BUZZ

SEPTEMBER MEETING

The Committee

There were 57 attendees at our latest virtual meeting. In his opening comments Douglas Yates announced that 103

members hadn't renewed their memberships as at 31 August and eight had sadly died, leaving the current membership of 467. He also mentioned John Rankin's new Sing with John Group before he and all the other Committee members introduced themselves and spoke briefly about their roles.

Guest speaker Philip Caine from Barrow in Furness is the author of the Jack Castle series of adventure novels. After working in the hotel business he got involved in the oil industry and worked in various roles in far-flung places, including Algeria, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Russia. From 2003 he spent 7 years in post war

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Baghdad working with the American coalition, then a further 3 years running oil service companies in Dubai. Since retiring in 2015, Philip has become the successful author of eight Jack Castle novels and has spoken at over 400 venues.

His talk comprised a string of amusing anecdotes about a life that was incredibly full until 2015, when his wife Sandra suggested he should take up writing to give himself something to do. In response to the rejection of his first novel he simply established his own publishing company.

Philip Caine

GROUPS

CYCLING

This month a small party of our cyclists travelled to Bute by train and ferry, suitably masked and socially-distanced.

After hearing facilitator Alan Melville read out the U3A Risk Assessment, the riders headed south on the Mount Stuart Road, alongside the water's edge.

They reached the small rural hamlet Kerrycroy, which was designed by Maria North, wife of the second Marquis of Bute, as a model English village, complete with Mock Tudor architecture and village green. From there the road turned inland and, on a long slow climb up a seemingly endless hill, they passed the main entrance to Mount Stuart, the rebuilt 19th century Georgian mansion, the design of which was inspired by astrology, art and mythology. No access was permitted, even to the grounds, behind padlocked wrought iron gates.

Against a strong headwind they finally reached the summit and freewheeled down through farmland to their pre-booked lunch stop at the Kingarth Hotel. Since cyclists are banned from entering the building, they lunched outside on a breezy balcony, while a heavy rain shower soaked their bikes.

Continuing southward, they passed a Henge (stone circle) and the Iron Age hill fort of Dunagoil, located on a dramatic headland. Artefacts found at these sites are now displayed in Rothesay Museum.

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Further south they reached the day's highlight. Abandoning their bikes at the end of the public road, they took a pleasant climb up a grassy track towards the well preserved extensive remains of St Blane's Church, which looked splendid in the sunshine.

Founded as a monastery in AD500, St Blane's became a very rural parish church in the 1100s. A fine arch divides the nave and chancel, protected by walled enclosures which circle around the upper and lower churchyards.

Weather conditions persuaded the group to retrace the route, benefitting from the wind on their backs. 20 miles were covered, with over 1,000ft of climbing.

After the ferry back to Wemyss Bay and connecting train to Glasgow, there were some additional miles to cycle through traffic to homes.

ENJOY THE ARTS

Facilitator Lilias Dunlop has again produced a hefty catalogue of exhibitions and performances that can be enjoyed by members of her Enjoy the Arts Group, or anyone else.

Glasgow Concert Halls now has a wide range of concerts scheduled for 2021, with tickets available now.

National Galleries of Scotland has tickets on sale for the Ray Harryausen: Titan of the Cinema exhibition, which runs from 24th October to 5th September 2021.

The Academicians' Gallery at the Royal Scottish Academy re-opened on 10th September. Booking is essential to ensure entry.

The National Trust for Scotland now has more than 40 properties that have re-opened with even more places opening. Visit the web site for more information.

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Exhibition on Screen is back. The new season begins in October with the highly acclaimed Frida Kahlo. Screenings in Scotland over the past couple of years have been very limited but it's worth checking cinema listings.

The Hunterian Art Gallery reopened on 22nd September. There is no entry charge but booking is required online. Various collections, including The Hunterian Poems can be viewed online.

The BBC SSO: Autumn 2020 season of free live broadcasts from the City Halls opened on 24th September. Concerts are available either hear on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds, or to watch online.

The Royal Opera House Stream Friday Premieres series restarted with Bizet’s Carmen, which is available to watch until 18th October for £3.

The Royal Ballet will broadcast a night of live ballet on 9th October from 7.30. It costs £16 and will be available on-demand for 30 days.

The Manet Portraying Life exhibition is available to either download, stream or buy as a DVD from Seventh Art Productions.

NATURE WATCH

This month’s theme of Fruits, Nuts and Seeds brought in bumper crop of photos. Apples seem to have enjoyed a particularly good harvest, as have the many wild fruits and seeds that will help our birds and other wildlife through the winter.

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QUIZ

Last month Allison and Ian Kershaw won the quiz with a score of 79, which you'd already have known if someone hadn't forgotten to include the announcement in Chit-Chat.

This month the prize went to Jim Robertson and Neil Lisle, whose excellent score of 88 placed them just ahead of Jim Docherty and Findlay Corfield on 87. Jim Hamilton and Allen Walker came third with a respectable 84. The plethora of Jims in the top three teams got facilitator Brenda Mason wondering if there's something about that name.

READING

This month Mearns 1 are reading The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry, the pen name for the husband and wife team Chris Brookmyre (known mostly for his crime novels) and Dr Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist who has an interest in medical history. The story, set in the 19th century, focuses on a female serial killer.

Mearns 2 read The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri, which was enjoyed by all. It gave a greater knowledge and understanding of the many issues asylum seekers face.

Mearns 3 read John Grisham's The Guardians, a legal thriller set in America about a group whose mission is to overturn wrongful convictions of innocent

prisoners on death row. Despite the intense subject matter the style is easy, making it suitable for holiday or lockdown reading.

Mearns 4 read the 1960's classic To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. They had all read it at school, but felt that the current Black Lives Matter movement gives it a renewed topicality. Addressing as it does the issues of racial, sexual and educational equality, it is little wonder that this book remains on the school curriculum today. It is the first to achieve scores of 9 and 9.5 from this group. The members have unanimously agreed to expand their reading scope with a yearly plan covering 12 different genres.

Mearns 5 is the latest of our reading groups to tackle Educated by Tara Westover. Described as 'a deeply personal coming of age memoir that chronicles a young woman’s effort to study

her way out of a tough and cruel family life in rural Idaho,' it generated lots of discussion. All recommended it highly and one described it as an outstanding memoir - one of the best he’d ever read.

The Spoken Word Group read The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. In a real Agatha Christie style situation a group of university friends at their annual New Year reunion are cut off by a blizzard in a remote Highland Lodge. No-one in the group guessed the outcome in this page-turning,

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psychological thriller. While it's not Mann Booker material, the main characters were well drawn and everyone enjoyed it.

WALKING

Our walkers, now in bubbles of two, are still enjoying their outings. The sun shone for both socially-distanced groups on the four- mile walk from Mugdock towards Carbeth, returning via Craugallen Loch.

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DID YOU KNOW …?

TAX TIP

Tax Help for Older People's tip for September is entitled Tax and the Pandemic.

Employees who have been furloughed under the Job Retention Scheme still have their pay, tax and National Insurance processed by their employer under PAYE.

Employers can, but are not required to, make non-taxable payments of up to £6 per week in recognition of additional expenses incurred by employees working from home. Employees who don't receive such payments can claim a tax allowance to the same amount, which gives a real benefit of just £1.20 per week in terms of tax saved by a basic rate (20%) taxpayer.

The first £30,000 of most redundancy payments will be tax free and some or all of PAYE tax deducted prior to leaving may be refundable, particularly if the individual does not expect further work-related income in the rest of the tax year. Tax form P50 enables a refund application to be made before the end of the tax year if appropriate. Job Seekers Allowance counts as taxable income.

There has been no extension of the usual deadlines for Self-Assessment tax returns 31st October 2020 for paper returns and 31st January 2021 on-line. Penalties for being late are automatic, but to ease potential financial pressures, the government decided to postpone any payments on account due on 31st July 2020. These typically involve Self-

Assessment taxpayers with a bill of over £1,000pa who need to make early tax payments on 31st January and 31 July. As a consequence the required balancing payment on 31st January 2021 may be higher than usual.

The self-employed need to have in mind the Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) set up by government as an alternative to the Job Retention Scheme for employees. SEISS payments count as taxable income and must be included on the tax return for 2020/21.

Although written reminders continue, HMRC has largely suspended personal visits to pursue tax debt, such being considered inappropriate during a pandemic, but anyone with tax debt who doesn’t respond to correspondence can expect HMRC to revive other methods.

Since government will need to decide how to address the additional expense arising from the pandemic, there are likely to be implications for our tax regime, potentially quite soon.

This article is by Tax Help for Older People (Scottish charity No. SC045819), which offers free tax advice to older people on low incomes who cannot afford professional help. Their helpline number is 01308 488066. The full article can be accessed at September Tax Tips in Word , September Tax Tips in pdf or via the charity's website (www.taxvol.org.uk/faq-category/taxtips/).

LIFE SCIENCE

In his 2003 book A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson included a chapter on DNA. On average, he explains, everyone's genes are 99.9% the same as everyone else's, and the 0.1% variation is what endows us with our individuality.

The nucleus of each of our cells contains 23 each of paternal and 23 maternal chromosomes, which are made of long strands of deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA. In each of the ten thousand trillion cells of which each of us is comprised there are two yards of densely compacted DNA. However,

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despite being essential for life, DNA is 'among the most non-reactive, chemically inert molecules in the living world,' according to geneticist Richard Lewontin.

It was discovered in 1869 by Swiss scientist Johann Friedrich Miescher, but its significance wouldn't begin to become apparent until 1904, when Thomas Hunt Morgan set out to study genetic variations in fruit flies at Columbia University in New York and found correlations between particular characteristics and individual chromosomes. In 1944 a team at

Manhattan's Rockefeller Institute, led by Oswald Avery, proved that DNA was almost certainly the active agent in heredity.

English Scientists Maurice Watkins, Rosalind Franklin and Francis Crick, and the American James Watson, assumed correctly that by determining the shape of a DNA molecule they could see how it did what it did. While Wilkins and Franklin initially were far ahead in the research, it was Crick and Watson who enjoyed nearly all the credit for solving the DNA mystery.

FUN AND GAMES

QUIZES

Marbe McNeill sent in all of this month's quizes.

Can you identify these past PMs?

TV ANAGRAM

These are some more of Madeley U3A's

TV Programme anagrams.

1. NOTES I’M QUIET (8,4)

2. SOLVED NAIL (4,6)

3. TIDY ON FLUE (4,2,4)

4. OUR BIG HENS (10)

5. RIPE CHEAP TENT (3, 10)

6. NODS DANGER (7, 3)

7. FOIL CENTURY (11)

8. HIT COFFEE (3,6)

9. BETTER BEAT OFF A HIGH RISK

(3,5,7,4,3)

10. HE SPINS MOST (3, 8)

Note: the answer to No.1 does not have

an apostrophe.

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ON THE MONEY

Can you remember the previous currencies of these Eurozone countries?

Andorra Austria Belgium Cyprus Estonia

Finland Greece Italy Latvia Lithuania

Malta Netherlands Portugal Slovakia Slovenia

WHIMSY

MORE COVID 19 BLUES

Here is a collection of covid-related funnies posted or sent in by Heather Cutler, Tom Smith, Rosalind Holmes and Marbe McNeill.

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OTHER STUFF

June Weston shared this post.

And Rosalind Holmes posted this one.

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PICTURE GALLERY

THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL?

Willie Dyer posted this picture of what he thinks may be the prettiest station in

Britain - unless you know better. If you've got a station picture that tops Dunrobin Castle, please send it in.

AIRBORNE

Willie Dyer posted this picture he took from the Glennifer Braes of a Spitfire flying in tribute to all hospitals in the Greater Glasgow area. The flight took

place on 15th September, now remembered annually as Battle of Britain Day - the day in 1940 when Reichsmarschall Goring is supposed to have said 'keys'.

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Last month Claire Heyes photographed this fantastic Red Arrows aerial display over Edinburgh Castle.

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AUTUMN BUTTERFLY

Myra Dyer posted this

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A WALK IN THE PARK

Susan Smith posted these shots of her dog Tutti, and the baby moorhens growing at Rouken Glen.

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Graham Dunn walked in Pollok Park, where he photographed these cattle.

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DISTANT HILLS

Allison Kershaw sent in this panoramic view.

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EVENTS

DAY DATE EVENT

Wednesday 21st October

Monthly Meeting Vicky Blackmore - Dogs for Good

Wednesday 18th November

Monthly Meeting Dr Tom Preston - Great Lancashire Comedians

For information on regular group meetings see the Groups feature.

PUZZLE SOLUTIONS

BRITISH PRIME MINISTERS

1. James Callaghan 2. Harold Wilson 3. Edward Heath 4. Alec Douglas –Hume

5. Harold Macmillan 6. Anthony Eden 7. Clement Atlee 8. Nevil leChamberland

9. Stanley Baldwin 10. Ramsay McDonald

TV ANAGRAM

1. NOTES I’M QUIET (8,4) QUESTION TIME 2. SOLVED NAIL (4,6) LOVE ISLAND 3. TIDY ON FLUE (4,2,4) LINE OF DUTY 4. OUR BIG HENS (10) NEIGHBOURS 5. RIPE CHEAP TENT (3, 10) THE APPRENTICE

6. NODS DANGER (7, 3) DRAGONS DEN 7. FOIL CENTURY (11) COUNTRYFILE 8. HIT COFFEE (3,6) THE OFFICE 9. BETTER BEAT OFF A HIGH RISK (3,5,7,4,3) THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF 10. HE SPINS MOST (3, 8) THE SIMPSONS

ON THE MONEY

Andorra: French Franc Austria: Schilling Belgium: Belgian Franc Cyprus: Cypriot pound Estonia: Kroon

Finland: Markka Greece: Drachma Italy: Lira Latvia: Lats Lithuania: Litas

Malta: Maltese Lira Netherlands: Guilder Portugal: Escudo Slovakia: Koruna Slovenia: Tolar

CONTACTS

Mobile enquires call/text 07758 344 252 www.u3asites.org.uk/eastrenfrewshire Chairman: Douglas Yates Vice Chair: Marbe McNeill Group Secretary: June Weston Treasurer: Graham Greenhalgh Membership Secretary: Brenda Mason Groups Co-ordinator: Rosalind Holmes Webmaster: Rosalind Holmes