25 th July 2015 –“ Message In A Bottle”.
… enjoying this, Brisbane West!
Two members related stories of genuine messages washed up on the shore. The first was written by a French mother that had lost her beloved son, aged nine. The bottle was found twenty years later on the south east coast of England: second was a message, one of many, thrown into the sea by scientists to track the currents around the Shetland Islands; it was eventually found 98 years later just nine miles from where it started out! Two of us chose to tell about messages for posterity: one told about the Planetary Society sending messages into space; the other has written the family history for her great grandchildren. Then we heard about a bottle found on the beach containing sea shells and a hermit crab. We learned how hermit crabs look for a larger shell when theirs becomes a little tight [!] if they find one that is too big, they will queue up until there are several lining up. When a large hermit crab comes along and takes possession of the large empty shell, one by one each in turn exchanges their home for a bigger one! Message – are we like the hermit crab, always on the lookout for a bigger house, a better car?
Topic for August- ' If you were born again- Who, When, Where and Why?'
Marie considered being all sorts of things such as a fly on the wall! Wondered about what advantages she might like to have had if she had been born either in an earlier century or a later one, and ended up ' Happy to be myself; happy to be living in this century.'
Anne is a great supporter of women ' s rights. She felt if she lived in any other time than the present she would struggle to find a time when a woman could be independentlyminded- she decided she would have to be either royalty or a witch. She chose to be a witch before the dawn of Christianity in England, not Europe. At that time witches were greatly respected; the word witch comes from ' Wicca ' which means to be wise, that ' s good; witches were always old, that ' s good; they dispensed medicines and cures, that ' s very good. They lived close to nature, wild animals and always had a cat! That ' s excellent! Bette wanted to be Shirley Temple: Bette has a lovely voice and sings in the Orpheus Choir; she identifies with Shirley because she could sing from such a young age; she admires her for giving up her acting career at 21 and going on to achieve a distinguished career as a diplomat. But she really envied her for her lovely long, blond, curly hair!
Rose had a fantasy of being a man! She thinks a man ' s life is much easier than a woman ' s- no giving birth, no restrictions on career, no fears about travelling alone etc. she would like to be witty, wealthy, healthy; she would like to live in Paris, speaking French, drinking champagne and travelling all over Europe. However, despite being very shy in real life and suffering very poor health she feels she was extremely lucky to find the wonderful man who she married and to be truthful, she would not want to be anybody else!
Carole loves music of all kinds and wishes she could play the piano well, like Valentina Lesitsa. However Valentina is a most outspoken woman, criticising her country, Ukraine, and is in big trouble for her tweets. So I do not want to be her! I would love to dance like Ginger Rogers, and especially dance with Fred Astaire! But Ginger was divorced five times and I do not want to be a famous actress. I envy people who can sing; I ' d like to be part of a big choir and travel all over the world; but they do not get paid. I decided I would like to be Mrs Andre Rieu, organising all the trips his orchestra makes and travelling with them to exotic places and attending all their concerts!
News from Brisbane
We now have eight paid up members and feel very proud of our fledgling group! We have twinned with Di Sankey’ s Perth group and the Bulawayo groups in Zimbabwe. So far this means sharing our programmes and quizzes. We also correspond with Mary Dodkins, in UK, who has been such a great inspiration over the last thirty years. We are determined to keep contact with the other Queensland group, Sunshine Coast. Robyn and Robynanne correspond regularly and we have arranged for our two groups to meet up at a half-way place in October. We have chosen Bribie Island this time, to share tea and discuss“ Our Favourite Cities”, followed by lunch. This is bound to be a very successful day.
Carole
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