Hidden Talents
Do you have a hidden talent?
There are over seven hundred members of the Knutsford u3a, many of whom have had exciting and challenging lives. During your life, you will have enjoyed educational experiences and adventures through your occupation, hobbies, travel, sports, and holidays that might well interest our members. If so, here is the opportunity for you to entertain, amuse and educate, your u3a friends by re-living some of your interests, activities, personal contacts, contributions and the adventures that have made you who you are.
According to u3a regulations, we are not allowed to remunerate our own members for contributing to our meetings (unlike the ‘guest speakers’ invited for our regular members’ meetings) so volunteer ‘Hidden Talents’ lecturers will be providing their contribution gratis in support of our ‘self-help’ ethos.
Those members (or activity groups) who would like to contribute by delivering a ‘Hidden Talents’ presentation please email Tony Axon at info@knutsfordu3a.co.uk giving a brief description of your intended contribution and a few details about yourself or call him on 07947 741467.
Next Meetings
We intend to hold the next three Hidden Talents meetings on the fourth Thursday of November 2024, January and March 2025.
The talks are in Knutsford Methodist Church starting at 2.15pm prompt and are followed by tea and biscuits. Please aim to be seated by 2.00 pm.
| Date | Speaker | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| 28th November | Peter Sharratt | One of our members from the BBC, will tell us how Martin Bell OBE was elected MP for Tatton in 1997 and put our town of Knutsford on the political map. Peter filmed the campaign for the BBC and later made a shortened 17-minute version of it that he will show us. He thinks that some of our audience may well have been involved in the campaign and will be interested to discuss it after his introduction and the film itself has been shown. |
| 23rd January 2025 | Alan Ingram | The story behind the invention of the jet engine in a non-technical way. Starting with the propeller, their work led to the blood, sweat and tears of the scientists working on it. The only engines that proved successful resulted from pushing the boundaries of science and vercoming a myriad of teething problems that required vast fortunes to be spent. Their eventual success can only be described as a modern miracle. |
| 27th March 2025 | Adrian Long | ‘Climbing Mount McKinley in Alaska’ in 1994. McKinley is one of the world’s greatest mountains. It is 63 degrees north of the equator making it Subarctic. The glaciers on McKinley descend to sea level, by comparison the Himalayan glaciers only to around 14,000’ making McKinley some 40 degrees colder on average than mountains in the Himalayan range. It’s northern latitude not only makes it a very cold mountain but due to the thinner air pressure of high latitudes, the oxygen content is less than over 1,500 ft higher in the Himalaya making the summit at 20,320 feet equivalents to a 24,000 ft peak Himalaya. Our ascent was via the Kahiltna glacier and the West Buttress route. You will see wonderful shots of our flight into the glacier, our ascent and descent in -40-degree storms at altitude. |