Danskcolin: Sunday April 6th 2025 "Do YOU look forward to your online zoom meetings? Well, Yours Truly doesn't !!!"

It may surprise you to be told, that for Yours Truly, a frequent "chairperson" of online 'zoom' meetings, speaking personally, there's nothing I dislike more than - you've guessed it - chairing online meetings, would you believe!

[Why do you do it then? - Ed]

Well, seeing as how you're "gagging" to know the reason for all this madness (!), it's because, "for my sins" (!) I'm the leader of two local U3A "OCGs", i.e. University of the Third Age old-codger groups, and they're two of the most contentious ones at that - the argumentative History of English Group and the quarrelsome Intermediate Danish Group, the latter being much the rowdier of the two, strangely! Could it be the subconscious Viking influence maybe?

a typical online "zoom" meeting of a local "old codgers"

Intermediate Danish group, not ours obviously - but scary, or what !!!!!

And the "naffest" part of being a chairman of one of these meetings is, without a doubt, setting them up in the first place. Next Friday the monthly meeting of our local History of English will be taking place, and today it took me almost an hour and a half to set it up, which is quite ridiculous. I really must get my daughter Alison, who lives locally to give me some "lessons" - it's total madness !!!

me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois,

sitting in front of our laptop which is ageing almost as fast as us (!),

and struggling to set up an online meeting of our U3A

"Old Codgers" Intermediate Danish group

One thing I'm always careful to do, when I'm setting up one of our meetings, is to make sure that nobody can join the meeting without my "admitting them" - after all, we don't want a bunch of Est Hampshire "Anglo-Saxon Supremacists" disrupting our Danish group, do we. Well, that's not exactly rocket science, is it - be fair !!!!

Some local 'zoom' chairpersons aren't so careful, with the result that "disrupters" appear as rather unwelcome, and often rowdy, participants in these normally serious events, as this recent story in the local East Hampshire Onion News revealed - did you notice this one?

At least there was a happy ending there, however, which is an uplifting thought to take me into the evening, which is nice. And a happy ending for me this afternoon, when after about 90 minutes of "huffing and puffing", which is quite ridiculous, I finally manage to set up Friday's meeting for the History of English group - and I don't expect anybody's going to thank me for it!

"The things we do for England!", as my dear late parents used to say! Or "just lie back and think of England" as Victorian husbands used to say to their reluctant wives and other "squeezes" (!).

[That's enough exclamation marks in quotes (!) - Ed]

Personally I'm never quite sure how to "think of England" exactly - it's a bit too vague and "woolly" for me. Can we narrow that down a bit? Your postcard suggestions welcome, as always - thoughts?

[Just get on with it! - Ed]

It's far more time-consuming than you might imagine to try to "lead" an Old Codger U3A group, and sometimes I reminisce, with some annoyance, as to how group members of two separate groups managed to "shaft" me into taking on group-leadership.

Lois and I are having a meeting this week with the leader of the local U3A Intermediate Latin group, Joe, with a view to be accepted as group members, and Lois has already issued me with several warnings (both verbal and written (!)), about "not getting 'shafted' with any leadership roles on this one, Colin!". Well, we'll see!

extract from the local U3A 'Old Codger Groups' brochure's

alphabetically arranged group listings

18:30 Finally, today, after about 90 minutes of 'huffing and puffing', I manage to set up Friday's History of English zoom meeting, just in time for 'tea' - a delicious roast lamb with potatoes and veg, which Lois has been slaving away on in the kitchen while I've been upstairs swearing at the laptop.

We've both been feeling a bit "naff" today - we had our annual spring COVID boosters, with all the other local old codgers, at our local NHS surgery in our new (since January) home-town of Liphook, Hampshire yesterday.

flashback to April 2023, queueing up behind a bunch of

other "old codgers" to get our annual spring COVID booster jab

We've both got slightly achy arms today, and are feeling less than 100%. However Lois wants very much to take part in her church's Sunday Morning Meeting today at nearby Petersfield, so we decide to go for it. However, I think both of us are dozing off soon after this week's preacher makes his opening remarks. I know he said that we don't choose Jesus, he chooses us, and he "makes his face to shine upon us", which is strangely comforting. But then, soon after all that, it's just "zzzzzzz" from her and "zzzzzz" from me - oh dear!

Luckily when we get home afterwards we can have a bite to eat and then go to bed for the afternoon, which makes us feel a bit better, to put it mildly (!).

flashback to earlier today: Lois and me (right) feeling distinctly "naff"

but trying to act bright and friendly during the usual scramble for seats, after

we enter the village hall where Lois's church holds its Sunday Morning meetings

But what madness !!!!!

20:00 We both want "something light" to watch on TV tonight, so we see some of last night's "Kenny Everett Night" look back at the career of the zany, gag-a-minute DJ-and-comic who died too young at the age of only 50, back in 1995.

Kenny was very good at persuading big stars to take part in his weird, short, sharp, "blink and you miss them" ten-second sketches. In this one, he's got singer Lulu in a starring role as a businessman's sexy wife.

Suddenly the bedroom wall gives away, perhaps predictably!

Fabulous stuff, wasn't it!

It's amazing for Lois and me to realise, as revealed tonight by his close friends such as Gloria Hunniford, that the apparently super-extrovert Kenny with his quick-fire one-liners and his bewildering sequences of 10-seconds-max zany sketches, was really a man who just wanted to spend his time quietly at home doing quiet, fun things on his own.

Poor Kenny !!!!!

Yes, join the club! Kenny was just another one of that category of "extroverts" !

And Tony Blackburn, Kenny's fellow DJ at Capital Gold Radio has some further surprise revelations. One of Kenny's main hobbies, or joys in life, was, according to Tony, doing the housework, hoovering and dusting etc.