Club News
June: Chairman, Tony Farrell, welcomed 20 members and guest speaker Duncan Lavin. £44 raised for Chaiman’s Charity. The raffle raised £20.
Update on Members: Bill Ainsworth has problems with his arms, James Dearlove is recovering from a knee replacement but expects to be our speaker in August. Graham Bass has moved into a care home. Raj Goel has resigned.
Outings/Events: Sanderstead & Riddlesdown Probus have a skittles event on 22nd August – enquiries to Terry Ribbens. Bourne Society are organising a heritage tour of Northumbria 24-28th Sept 2024 – enquiries to Paul Sandford apvsandford@aol.com
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.
August Meeting: We have reinstated a meeting this August at Purley Sports Club. Today’s meeting is at Coulsdon Manor Hotel because PSC is required as a voting station for the General Election – don’t forget to vote.
Speaker: Ian Payne: ‘Stolen Grandparents’
1st August: James Dearlove: ‘My career – valuation & surveying’
June Speaker: Duncan Lavin – ‘Antarctica’
Duncan based his talk on a cruise he took in the Antarctic region. Clearly this would be quite a revelation for anyone as the geology provides such a distinctive landscape not to mention the flora and fauna. Perhaps the challenge of this environment was the substantial driving force behind those who explored it in the not-so-distant past. The most readily recalled names being Scott and Shackleton, the former having just missed being the first to the south pole and tragically losing his life along with Oats, Wilson, Bowers and Evans.
Earnest Shackleton having come close to making a transantarctic crossing is well known for the 800-mile journey to a whaling station on South Georgia in the covered 23ft ship’s boat to get help for his crew he had left on Elephant Island following the loss of his ship. This being in desperate weather conditions with no site of land and only navigational equipment of the traditional type that had been in use in simpler form when Drake circumnavigated the world via the southern route in 1577. The boat is now treasured by Dulwich College which was the Explorer’s old school and can be viewed by the public on certain days.
Duncan had traced a considerable number of associations with members of these expeditions which would be interesting to visit as most of them are very much in this part of the world and freely accessible. These include stained glass windows, statutes and of course blue plaques.
His own “exploration” was aboard the M.V. Infinity with 2,800 passengers and was wider than any individual explorer. It also included the site of the famous battle of the River Plate where the German Battleship Graf Spee and to the Falkland Islands and a final farewell to Earnest Shackleton with a visit to his grave in Grytviken, South Georgia.
Our thanks go to Duncan for a view of this distant part of the world.
Something familiar? – by Vincent Fosdike
À la recherche du temps perdu
Some probus members may actually recall reading one or more of the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s famous stream of consciousness novel which is often translated as: ‘In search of Lost Time’. It does certainly take a lot of time to read but in some ways it demonstrates how memories of small commonplace events structure our awareness of the present whether we want them to or not, the most famous reference being to how the eating of a small French cake (a Madeleine) evokes far deeper emotions and thoughts than he expected.
In my favourite café I ponder if the mobile phone has replaced the Madeleine. I fear it has except for me. I am one of the 5% of the population who does not use one. None the less its electronic tentacles seek to dominate my consciousness via my wife’s mobile.
Ping! A message arrives assuming that she is me as they never consider shared usage.
Apparently, I must be available to receive a hospital communication some time in the next 4 hours failing which I will be struck off some list or another and so die prematurely, (don’t laugh it’s probably true). The sender refuses to use the landline despite being told to. Probably they feel you are always available on a mobile and so will answer it saving them their time if a ring back is needed – I must submit. The taste of the coffee recedes. The vital call may come like an air raid at any moment. Shall I go home to receive it or order a Lemon cake (Madeleine) and take my chance whilst continuing a conversation with my wife or another customer whom we often chat to.
I defy the sender and continue our social life. Halfway through the Madeleine a second Ping demands attention. Dam I must share my symptoms with the other customers. No, it is the supermarket warning that our delivery will be early, and we should therefore go home now or re-book for tomorrow.
Time is slipping by out of control but it is my time that is being appropriated not theirs!
We say farewell to our friends and start the twelve-minute walk home. Halfway along the route the hospital call comes through, so we stop to shout details over the wind and the bus engine idling where we now stand. The doctor can’t hear properly although the bus queue can hear me repeating what I think he is saying. It seems more interesting to them than what is on their own phones, so they look furtively at me wondering how serious my condition really is.
After a couple of minutes, the doctor says he will re-schedule the call, but does not know when. Ping, Ping, an advertisement arrives followed by an assurance that someone is trying to hack our bank account. A few more precious moments of my dwindling life span are used while we delete these.
The phone goes red, the battery is nearly empty, (good I think), but we must feed it or miss the call from a family member to arrange tomorrow’s visit and so have to call them. We scuttle back and plug it in!
Whilst doing this my wife opens the computer and spends another five minutes trashing the unwanted e-mails.
I recently had a conversation with a family GP who practices in a little Bavarian village close to a beautiful mountain range. She has found that the phone, especially a mobile, causes such disruption that it is more useful to drive around the village and drop in on patients when she thinks they will be there. She always receives a warm welcome for her care and usually a coffee and a traditional small cake (I think the Germans use the name Madeleine as well)!
She does not experience the constant sense of chasing after lost time that caused Proust to reflect on our lifestyles even before the mobile was developed.
To be fair the telephone was in use for the well-off during his lifetime 1871-1922. I have not read all seven volumes but no mention of its role in society was noted in the ones I have read. But gossip must have been networked even then taking large chunks of his time.