Monthly Meetings

We meet at 2 pm on the fourth Tuesday of the month at the Congregational Church, Kilwardby St, Ashby.
There is normally a guest speaker or, in December, musical entertainment.
This is followed by tea, coffee and biscuits and a chance to meet and talk with other members.

Tea Rota and Reporting Groups

22nd April - Yogi Godwin

Our very own Yogi opened his talk by telling us about the life-changing car accident he had in 1995, but started with listing some other events that happened that year.

Namely, OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his wife, Robbie Williams left Take That, Princess Diana gave her ‘There were three of us in this marriage’ interview, Barings Bank collapsed etc. And on the very day of his accident, 25th October, Cliff Richard was knighted.

Yogi then gave us the straight forward facts about his accident. He was driving home from school where he was Head of Year, late in the evening when he was involved in a head-on crash with another car. The 70mph combined speed of the crash left him with a cracked skull, broken nose, wrenched neck, punctured lung, several broken ribs, broken hip, cracked tibia and his femur pushed up into his abdomen. He was conscious throughout his extraction from the car but then remembers nothing for several days.

He was taken to 4 different hospitals in 4 days to see different specialists, spent 4 weeks in ICU and 7 weeks in hospital in total. He remembers being on self-administered morphine for many days and that he was high as a kite for much of it.

He was sent home on Dec 23rd but friends expecting to see the old Yogi, saw only a very tired man who didn’t want to party!

Yogi talked about all the people involved; his wife Janet, his family, the medical teams and the Police Sergeant dealing with the accident and how they all helped him to recover.

He then went on to tell us a parable of an uncle helping to settle a family dispute over a will with some clever maths. This was all to show how people can help one another in times of need.

This, he said, is much like the u3a. We can all help each other, whether it is being on the committee, running a group, or just helping to put out tables and chairs before a meeting and put them away afterwards or making and serving the tea. He named some of his favourite groups which he belongs to and how well they worked together and enjoyed being together.

That was a typical Yogi, and very interesting, way to show us what u3a is all about.

I could sum it up with a misquote from John F Kennedy. ‘Ask not what u3a can do for you - ask what you can do for your u3a’