Another excellent meeting, lively and thoroughly enjoyable with the usual wide ranging discussions and some important poetry.

We began, however, on a sad note as we marked the passing of Christine Hornsby a much valued founder member of the group. Christine had a great knowlege of poetry and wrote her own books. She always had a clear point of view and was very happy to give me a run for my money when it came to our opinions!!!! One example was the entertaining debate we had concerning Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke. Christine always put her point of view calmly and confidently and in the end we agreed to differ. She was a lovely person, intelligent and well read. We knew she was very ill and that she had left U3A altogether., so it had been quite some time since we last met with her but she is very bright in our memory. As it happened, her daughter and son-in-law were at Prego on the moring of this meeting, so I was able to pass on our condolences and share some memories of Christine which they both appreciated.

Vicky, Nancy and Felicity were unable to come along to the meeting but we were delighted to welcome Jane back. A nasty injury to her shoulder had prevented her being with us for a while. Although she isn't out of the woods yet, she was with us again and of course, Pam Ayers rejoined the group!

I got the ball rolling with Dream Job by Caroline Bird. It comes from her latest collection Ambush At Still Lake. Bird is a poet who doesn't concern herself with the lyrical mainstream of English poetry but looks at everyday moments and pushes them hard to a logical extreme. She is more concerned with ideas and abstraction than she is with images and this can have very funny results (like this poem) or darker conclusions, all faintly surreal.

Carol read Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

Lynn read The Hard by Simon Armitage

Jane read Sat Nav by Pam Ayers

Catherine read The Uncertainty Of The Poet by Wendy Cope

Sue read The Marie Lloyd Song by Adrian Mitchell. The song is of course 'My Old Man Said Follow The Van' and Catherine led the group in song!

Irene read a poem by Kahil Gibran from his book The Prophet

Ralph read My Symphony by William Henry Channing, an American poet (and clergyman) of the nineteenth century.

Chris read I Dream A World by Langstone Hughes

As we now have a two person waiting list, which isn't ideal for a U3A group, it was agreed I should invite Nora and Harry to join us.

The next meeting is on the 15th of July and I will be away on holiday. After a bit of chat, everyone agreed that they would meet and sort it out between themselves. The meeting after that is August 19th and I will be able to make that one.

As ever, my thanks to you all.