Lentune Probus Club

Our speaker this month was Steve Roberts who gave us a talk on "The Duffers Guide to History".  

Steve put the likes of Donald Campbell to shame by traveling with us through history at 12,000 years per hour during his remarkable talk at our March luncheon. Starting in pre-history we sped through empires, civil wars, world wars, industrial revolutions, dynasties, beheadings, inventions and murders. Such is the reality of history.

It was a talk lightened by Steve’s humorous and dramatic presentation and illustrated by a continuous array of facts and pictures, some locally relevant. We must have touched on several hundred dates and no doubt now have a new perspective on history. 

The talk was followed as usual with Lunch. 

Lentune Probus Ladies' Club

At their meeting on 1st March, Lentune Ladies Probus had a fascinating talk by Gaynor Tinsdale, entitled "Working with Visually Impaired Children, part 2". 

She started by asking us to read a short paragraph which had altered spelling of many words, but we could all read it fluently. A child using braille would be unable to do this as they read letter by letter. This means it is a slow process. She then explained that each letter has a pattern of dots, but as the child improves, there are patterns of dots representing words and further still to represent contractions of words. 

Once proficient, many visually impaired children move on to using computers, voice recognition, and links to both standard printers and braille printers. She described well known people such as David Blunkett and Peter White as being shining examples of the use of braille and having successful careers and lives. It was a talk that gave us all pause to consider how lucky we are. 

The talk was followed by the usual good lunch and a chance to chat with friends. There were a number of guests who were made very welcome.

Visit to St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery

For our social event this month, 24 members and their guests visited the St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery to view the "Scene Through Wood"  exhibition celebrating wood engraving, one of the most astonishingly skillful and richly creative forms of visual art. Curator Steve Marshall introduced the works and explained how it was done and the significance of this unique exhibition of original engraved prints. Members marvelled at the level of detail and intricacy in the works by several famous artists.

The exhibition offers a visual feast of some of the finest wood engravings of the last 100 years and celebrates the extraordinary artists who made them. It showed the amazing diversity of wood engraved prints in Britain over the last century, while also highlighting artist-engravers from Europe, Russia, Canada, USA, China, Japan and Australia, whose work has influenced British engravers past and present.

After the St Barbe visit members enjoyed a convivial lunch at Prezzo. This was well organised by the friendly Prezzo team.