Things started to happen normally We went to the Friday afternoon concerts as before. Ken has offered our Lecture programmes & are awaiting a verdict from the new organiser Kyri, Amanda having left.

The U3A in London also restarted with a full programme. Ken gives his “European History” class as usual. However. too many members have got used to talks on Zoom, which Ken abhors & will not use, as his slides are designed for big-screen display.

There were three major events, the first an unusual one for a U3A: a failed coup d’etat that at least, got rid of the Chair, in which Ken played a significant part, as she had destroyed the café, which was such an important part of this U3A & the loss of which has also lead to a loss of members.

The second event was a party on September 11th to celebrate the 40th Birthday of our U3A & indeed, the start of the U3A in Britain, with one in Cambridge starting at the same time.
	The turnout was impressive...	...& the rations were up to scratch.

The third event was an Open Day on October 18th, aimed to recruit more members. This had been very hard work for the Sub-Committee trying to organise it with only a couple of months notice. Ken, who was a member, thought we should have had at least half a year to organise it & it took several changes of plan before we came up with something workable. In the end, a suffucient number of new members signed up & Ken’s class double in size, so he was satisfied with the outcome. We must try it again another year but give ourselves more time. There were certainly lessons to learn from this time.

The Summer Programme also restarted. Sue Kwok, the organiser, picked four talks from Ken’s much later History talks & Avis lucidly gave her Bauhaus talk, as it comes from before her memory problems.

Normally, we would have gone to many art shows. However, we no longer have to book, so we have been to one, the Sickert Show at Tate Britain. Ken trundled Avis round in one of the Tate’s wheelchairs. At least, Avis now has a Blue Badge, allowing parking in otherwise illegal places. Our first two were stolen, as these have a high value among criminals, so Ken finally got the message & printed copies of scans & displays these instead of the real thing, confined to his rucksack, in case anyone questions the cardboard ones.

All Ken & Avis' talks are available to any club in London that wants them.

Ken's reading list of books for the year

“The Secret Commonwealth” by Philip Pullman. 720 pages. Part 2 of “The Book of Dust” leaves us in mid-scene & Part 3 is not even out in hardback yet.
“Should we fall behind” by Sharon Duggal. You don’t know until the end if it is a sad tale or does it have a happy ending. It’s both. It almost makes you (Ken) cry at times.
“The Master” by Colm Toibin. Amazing. a staggering achievement, trying to get into the mind of Henry James.
“Double Blind” by Edward St.Aubyn. Lovely.
“Ulysses” by James Joyce. It was time to read this tome, now Ken was old enough to understand more of the allusions
“Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf. 20+ years ago, after 6 pages, I decided it was pretentious bollocks. It’s pretentious & derivative but not bollocks. However I did not like Mrs.D & doubt if I was meant to
“Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout. Coming of old-age novel about a US lady on the Maine coast.
“The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman. Murders solved by inhabitants of an Old-Peoples colony, shown to have wits about them & shedloads of experience (including in MI6, shades of Rosemary Davies & Marsh Dixon).
“The Magician” by Colm Tóibín. Remarkable. Doing for Thomas Mann what he had done for Henry James in “The Master”.
“Troubled Blood” by Robert Galbraith = J K Rowling. Complex cold case crime 1073pp, read a lot (9x) faster than Ulysses 965pp!
“The Mirror & the light” by Hilary Mantel. Her last Thomas Cromwell pseudo-biography, an astonishing work of the imagination.

Similar limited reading list as last year, owing to much historical research again.