Club News
February Meeting: Chairman, Roger Gourd, welcomed 31 members and also the speaker Mike Bunn. £62 was raised for the Chairman’s charity and £31 from the raffle.
News of Members: We have just heard the sad news that Sir Bernard Ingham died on 24th February. We will carry an obituary in our April Newsletter. Dave Garner is back home from hospital. Keith Brooham and John Pendleton are both in hospital. Gerry Thompson now using a walking frame – is anyone able to give him lifts from Eden Road, Croydon?
Annual General Meeting
Reports from Chairmen, Treasurers and Secretaries.
Agreement on new Coulsdon and Purley Handbook.
Election of Committee for 2023/2024.
Nominations received are:
| Chairman: Tony Farrell | Treasurer: Michael Southwell |
| Vice Chair: Andrew Carver | Luncheon Sec: Chris Moniz |
| Secretary: Ian Payne | Speakers Sec: Bob Witham |
| Outings Sec: Terry Ribbens | Welfare Sec: Vacant |
| W/out Portfolio: Bill Ainsworth |
Outings/Events
Denbies wine estate 19th April: contact Terry Ribbens T: 020 8647 1401, E: tribbs42@gmail.com
Probus Quiz 24th November: contact Ian Payne T: 01737 554449. E: secretary@coulsdonprobus.co.uk
Please notify lunch changes by 10.30am the prior Tuesday for Thursday 6th April meeting to chris@moniz.co.uk T: 020 8660 6063. Member News please to Secretary, Ian Payne T: 01737 554449.
Please email editor@coulsdonprobus.co.uk with articles/news for the Newsletter.
Today: Chairman Roger Gourd: his charity Macmillan Cancer Support
Speaker: 6th April: Jackie Lucas: ‘LPA Made Simple’
Write for Probus? – Your Editor Needs You – Vincent Fosdike
As old (sorry I mean original), members will know and new ones will have discovered our newsletter carries stories and accounts submitted by members. These are very welcome and I would like to encourage everyone to send in contributions. All of us have lived interesting lives and must have many memories and current experiences which would entertain or stimulate thought amongst the group. We never have enough of these items but they are appreciated.
Please can you send into the editor anything you feel inclined to write about.
Suggested guidelines: Topics as wide as you like; Word count (use computer count for ease of checking) maximum 1500 words; Generally humorous if possible but thoughtful or reflective is fine. Don’t worry too much about un-noticed errors or repetition, hopefully the editor will excise these. You’d be surprised how quickly you hit the word limit when you start. Everyone writes more than they expect.
Give it a go. You have nothing to lose! (anonymity is allowed).
February Speaker: Mike Bunn – High Speed Rail in France
The 1960s in France saw a serious commitment to modernising the French railway system. Almost without cost constraints the plan was to link major cities throughout France with trains running at speeds which would take about 2 hours off the long distance north south route to the Mediterranean coast. To do this, lines would be radically engineered as straight as possible and high powered (25,000 volts) to tackle gradients directly and not bypassed. There was no great environmental resistance at the time, much of the land needed was not highly expensive and developments in engineering meant that the new trains were lighter than the old ones and due to the bogie design (one between two coaches) they were more stable and smoother. In the 1970’s the building costs per mile were about £8.5 million, compared to HS 1 in the UK at £400 million per mile! In later line expansion the payments moved away from State funding towards Public Private partnerships with contributions being required from local rail networks.
Some degree of comparison may be drawn with the UK’s expectations of our HS system which has hopes of a north south “levelling up” which was expected to occur in France. In fact the reverse happened, with the economic centre of gravity being further intensified in Paris and surrounding areas. However, the line usage in general has risen to the point of justifying the use of double decked trains which will be fully standard on all lines from now onwards.
Comparison with internal air routes shows the train to have journey time advantages where the flying time is one to two hours and a match at three hours. With increasing concern over the environment, the train may well prove to be more attractive.
There are plans to offer fares as low as fifteen Euros between Paris and Lyon in a bid to produce more economy class travel and there are already special rates in winter to ski resorts when the stock might otherwise be under used.
Our thanks go to Mr Bunn for a very informative and thought provoking talk of which the above is only a very brief summery.
Bygone Toys – Thoughts from a retired teacher (Anon)
To our surprise one of our grandchildren aged just below four has just shown an interest in what toys her father was given and even what we had in the 1940s and 50s. It does take a bit of effort to recall what we gave our children although our own toys have perhaps have deeper roots in memory. Has the essence of the toy and the nature of play changed in three generations?
The model railway seems to have stayed the course, bubble mixture and even cuddly toys are still there and their history is acceptable to the grandchildren. The nature of the toy: the materials have changed but electronics are now standard wherever there is an application. So model trains are programable! Animatronics give life to cuddly toys. Our grandchildren cannot envisage the passive versions of our childhood. Manufacturers have used great ingenuity. Yet in doing so have they limited the child’s ability to free run their own imagination? By the time they have reached the limits of the electronics, are they unknowingly fenced in? Are they being prepared for the age of the self-driving car and the self-diagnosing medical screen replacing their G.P.? If true perhaps there is no harm in this. But what happens when they become designers themselves, will they be shorn of wider imagination simply accepting and adapting the programmes of their toy makers. An apocryphal story, of the child who takes greater joy in playing with the box than the present it contained, is well established in parental conversation.
Of course by the stage of computer games, technical presents and applications being on the toy list, the picture is vastly more complex and the play universe seems one of unlimited scope and creativity where even the concept of reality is fluid – so perhaps the child is better off than we were with our simple toys. Are we really making the best progress for our grandchildren, should we relax and let commerce and the allure of the microchip take its course? Or should we give them a piece of canvas, some tent pegs and rope and ask them to try to build a shelter before it rains – help can be rationed out as needed? Better still, if this is undertaken with real and not virtual three-D images who may seem like real people on screens but are all too easy to switch off when disagreements arise. Ultimately a child must be prepared to socialise with sentient humans not just a clever heartless silicone based facsimile.