The August meeting was also the occasion of the Annual General Meeting and the election of the officers and committee members for the next year. We welcome Alysan Pender as our new president, taking up this position while maintaining her involvement with the courses and groups.

We say farewell to David Thompson and Mary-Lou Brown, both stepping down from the committee after their years of splendid service and they were well thanked for their contributions over the years. We also welcome Fiona Duggan back to the committee for another term, which with the re-election of the current members, still leaves us with one committee member vacancy which the committee will look to fill with a casual appointment.

Following morning tea Joe Manahan entertained us with a recitation of Banjo Patterson’s story of ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ and Fiona Duggan told us all about fungi with many interesting facts about the many varied forms that can be found, supplementing her talk with great slides of some of the usual and unusual forms that occur on her Grafton acreage. It was eye-opening to see several different forms of the one species where photographs were taken at different times in the one day showing how it changed in form throughout the day and to the casual observer, would appear to be several different species when seen at different times.

The winner of the lucky door prize was Val Layton who took home a beautiful timber clock, another creation from the Men’s Shed.

Looking ahead, the September Jabberfest will see Alysan and Mary-Lou bring to us recitations of poems, and Kevin Dixon will again challenge us with a Heads and Tails quiz while our guest speaker will be from the Stroke Foundation, bringing us up to date on this subject which should be of great interest to us all.

Looking further ahead, the September committee meeting will also be an occasion when all of our course co-ordinators will meet with the committee members, to look at our many and varied courses that are currently on offer. It is proposed that in these monthly roundups we will occasionally select one or two of these courses just to highlight what is on offer so as to let you all be aware, especially as the core subjects will change from time to time when any such subject will have run it’s course and a new one is in the pipeline.

We hope to see another great roll up to the New Life Church in Arthur Street on Monday September 9 for the Jabberfest, commencing at 10am.

Brian Carter