Club News
October: Vice Chairman, Andrew Carver (in the Chair), welcomed 17 Members and guest speaker, Peter Woolhouse.
Update on Members: Tony Farrell is almost walking unaided but his eyesight has taken a step backwards. He’s now having prehab physio twice a week which appears to be working.
Graham Bass is now using a Zimmer frame and can’t independently drive. He’d love a visit.
Dennis Evans is in hospital with digestive issues.
Covid appears to be with us again.
Handbook: Revised issue now includes ‘previous occupation’ and ‘main interests’.
Outings/Events
Terry Ribbons looking for suggestion for future outings.
Ian Payne: Quiz 24th Nov: friends, family welcome – twos to eights welcome. Contact: T: 01737 554449, E: ian@payne42.co.uk
Lunch changes by 10.30am the prior Tuesday to chris@moniz.co.uk T: 020 8660 6063.
Member News to Welfare Sec., Bill Ainsworth T: 020 8660 0399.
Please email vincent@fosdike.com with articles/news for the Newsletter.
Speaker today: Reverend Malcolm Newman ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII’
7th December Christmas Lunch: Eleanor Redshaw ‘My Grandmother was a Suffragette’
October Speaker: Peter Woolhouse
‘Royal National Lifeboat Institution’
Peter is an active member of the RNLI and gave a highly informative talk about the service, and certainly had to leave out many interesting areas due to pressure of time. However, the following account did make for absorbing listening and chimed well with the current T.V. series “Saving lives at sea”, which many members have been watching.
The history goes back to 1824 and records the saving of 144,000 lives. Last year in the course of its 24/7 coveragethere were 9,312 launches with a daily average of 25 calls. The call system is via a 999 call to the coastguard who asks whether the lifeboat is needed and if so contacts the operations manager to scramble the crew. They are now reached by pager or mobile phone. Four classes of all-weather seagoing boats are available with hovercraft in some areas. These combine with faster inshore rescue types which are open decked and better suited to shallow water but with lesser range. The larger boats which cost upwards of £300,000 are built by the RNLI and may expect a service life of about 25 years.
Increasingly the work is now of leisure casualties “inshore” or on rivers or lakes which has encouraged the use of the Shannon class which is propelled by water tube only thus dispensing with the vulnerable propeller and allowing in water recovery on a special floatable carriage.
The Tower lifeboat station in London has a full-time crew roster in order to maintain a 90 second launch time round thePage 3 of 6 clock and is the busiest station in the U.K. with 500 callouts per year and the fastest boat at 40 knots (water jet propelled) to avoid propellor damage from debris and injury to survivors.
Crews are increasingly of non-marine background with 10% female membership. They train twice a week. The vast majority are volunteers with a few full-time salaried specialists who are often concerned with ongoing maintenance particularly as equipment becomes more sophisticated. In some areas there is a problem in finding sufficient numbers of crew due to local people having to live too far away to make the call out requirement as property prices exceed local earnings. Launch times generally target four minutes so local crews are essential.
The overall cost is £515,000 per day, of which 60% comes from legacies. It must be hoped that we are all mindful of this as with all voluntary organisations finance is less predictable than state funded ones, some of which exist in Europe.
Our thanks go to Peter for a truly worthwhile and thought- provoking talk.
Derek Arthur Lea: 1941–2023
by his daughter Daphne
Derek grew up in Altrincham in Cheshire where he attended Altrincham Grammar School and then to Oxford University where he studied Physics. He had a very keen interest in Astronomy and set up Oxford University’s Astronomy Club where he hosted Sir Patrick Moore amongst others. He did his PhD in the newly opened Sussex University where he met Deirdre. They married in 1965.
After his PhD, Derek worked for IBM as a Systems Engineer where he stayed for the majority of his career. He and Deirdre settled in Purley. Being a technophile, he loved all sorts of gadgets – he would take lots of cine films on holiday. The family loved watching old clips of holidays and their growing up. Later with video cameras he entertained (occasional groan) the family with their visits to Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Namibia and the Galapagos watching birds and wildlife. He loved birdwatching and was on the RSPB Croydon Committee.
Derek’s interests included cricket, badminton and golf. Many a winners cup or tankard had to be found room for. Later he took up lawn bowls and table tennis. He loved classical music, and played the clarinet and piano. Derek was on the committee of the London Mozart Players and then became Chairman of the Friends. LMP provided live music at his funeral.
Derek joined Purley Probus in 2019 where members were agog at his many interests. He ran the Purley website page.
Derek was a lifelong vegetarian – which has been passed down to his three daughters Daphne, Melanie and Angela and to his six grandchildren who he loved spending time with. He will be missed by all.
‘The Diplomatic Corps (for beginners)’ by Vincent Fosdike
One’s C.V. is meant to show how a future employer must see you as a strong candidate for the wonderful job he needs filling. It often consists of showing a careful set of successful steps up a ladder leading inevitably to this ultra-desirable position.
It is understood that it will omit things that might seem inconsistent. When applying for a job in the diplomatic corps, it is considered sensible to privately review one’s psychological profile and honestly ask if it really fits the job – since the two-day selection process (as it then was) will look for aspects of the candidate’s personality which may otherwise be concealed, even undesirable. So, a kind of amateur Freudian self-analysis is advisable to enable the “bodies to be buried a little deeper”.
It occurred to me that I should review my response to testing situations and perhaps a driving test could teach me about my qualities under stress.
My doctor had generously given me his B.S.A. motorbike. I think because he had an open mind about risk as he had been a Fleet Air Arm flyer on Swordfish Biplanes of the type that attacked the Bismarck. I had never ridden a motorcycle but was interested. So I guessed how it worked (no lessons ever), and booked a test on spec.
Examiners then just set you off on a circular road system and observed you in traffic from the side of the road until they jumped in front for the emergency stop! At the pre-test briefing, I had him marked down as a real curmudgeon with a touch of Hitler for good measure. So probably not a man to talk back to. After a couple of circuits, he pulled me in to ask why I was doing hand signals when there wasn’t a car behind me. I said, “just to demonstrate I could do them”. His reply was “do you talk to yourself in an empty room – some of us are ex TT riders we don’t mess about sonny go round again!”. So, I did and got pulled in for unnecessary use of the horn at an accident black spot crossroads “Suppose everyone did that”. It was not going well. What does a diplomat do when he seems to have a losing hand but must maintain the dignity of his country? Presumably not surrender and apology is often seen as weakness. I opted for a wordless insouciant expression.
Now for the emergency stop! I had decided that he was due for some accidental passive aggression as he had criticised me for not looking behind enough. He stepped out and I looked behind to see him looking shaken on the pavement. Pulled in again. I decided this was not the time for appeasement as we gazed at each other in silence. Another attempt was made – I’ll get him this time. We had gone from Munich to a declaration of hostilities. I saw him and allowed the back wheel to catch a small patch of oil and slide towards him. He was back on the pavement. I just pointed to the oil. Last chance sonny, one more lap!!! He nearly had me but for the oil. Dam the bike had jammed in gear. Starting was a problem. He got in with “providing a vehicle unfit for test” just as I freed it and got moving. One lap and it was highway code time. “He got in with dismissing my answer that double white lines meant no overtaking”. I had not said what happens when behind a bicycle etc.
Do I sign the unconditional surrender now? He was going for total defeat. “Do you know how many lads we have to pick up from the road here”? As Morecambe and Wise used to there was no answer to that. I was just about to abandon my bike and put away my provisional licence which he had demanded probably so that he could tear it up when matters came to a halt. I had chosen the pose of honourable defeat, bloody but unbowed helmet tucked under one arm. There was a silence which felt like the last post was playing. “Who gave you that?” he said looking at the page showing my car licence. Again, Morecambe and Wise came to mind as he wrote me my Pink Pass Slip!!
Perhaps we were both right.
Four years later I sat the diplomatic exams for real.