News

Andrew Goddard

58 Million Penny Black Stamps Printed

This was one of the fascinating facts Probus Club members heard from their guest speaker Andrew Goddard, the Commercial Director of TNT Post, who lives in Hatch Warren, when he gave an overview of the history of the postal service in UK. Started as the Royal Mail by King Charles 1 the recipient of the letter had to pay for its delivery and this was changed by Roland Hill in 1840 by the introduction of the prepaid adhesive stamp, the famous Penny Black. In London there were up to four deliveries a day to households and businesses and it was possible within close proximity to have exchanges of several letters on the same day.

The importance of mail reaching its addressee was recognised as a moral boosting element within the British Army and in 1868 the Post Office Rifles was formed to handle the mail to the troops wherever they were in the world. The BFPO today is a much reduced operation as machinery has had such an impact on mail handling that the service has a staff of only 30 service personnel being based at RAF Northolt.

Because of traffic problems in London and the need to get mail to the various sorting offices it was decided to build the Post Office underground railway which was opened in 1927. It ran for over six miles from Whitechapel to Paddington with seven stations between. Closed in 2003, there is very recent news that this long disused line will be reopened to the tourist market.

Since the advent of the telegraph the General Post Office had seen their telephone business expand exponentially and in 1981 was separated into Royal Mail and BT with the telecoms business eventually being privatised. The government retained control of the postal business and has only very recently sold this off with a public share offering being heavily oversubscribed. Those members of the public lucky enough to be allocated shares have seen their value almost double since its flotation.

When the postal market was opened up to full competition in 2006 there were several entries and these days TNT Post is the largest competitor to Royal Mail and yet is also their largest customer. This apparent paradox is due to the fact that the Royal Mail still carries out the final mile to the delivery address. However even this is undergoing change as TNT Post now has its own delivery personnel in two centres in England and wants to grow this aspect of their service offering their business customers proof of delivery of all mail.

Even after the impact of email has been counted today there are still over 13.8 billion letters posted each year in UK. A lot of these are what is known as transactional mail, those utility and credit card bills, direct mail and of course the Christmas card market where UK is the largest sender of these personal greetings.

The President Paul Flint represented the Probus Club at the funeral of Rob Hudson held at West Berkshire Crematorium on Monday 10 February 2014. Born in Norfolk on 27 February 1930 Rob died in Basingstoke on 25 January 2014. The service had a Masonic influence with the Holybourne Lodge from Alton strongly in attendance.

Roger Busk and Paul Flint

Roger Busk, a retired junior school head teacher, who these days is chair of governors at a different school, was the speaker at the Probus Club of Basingstoke. His wide experience of teaching in different schools allowed him to cite examples of how things have changed in the educational system.

His career spanned seven prime ministers and fifteen ministers of education with each one having their own views of the educational system of their day. Schools were left to manage their own policies of what and how to teach children. Some were good and others not so good. Much depended on the leadership of each head teacher and whether they were able to inspire their staff.

Some children who had made good progress in a primary school failed to maintain this when they moved to a junior school. Roger is clear that this is due to poor leadership at the new school. His view is that parents should visit the potential new school to see for themselves how things are run and what the atmosphere is like in the classroom. If it fails to impress then parents should look elsewhere if possible.

The introduction of the national curriculum complemented by teacher training has had a significant positive effect on schooling. Inset training, brought in by Kenneth Baker with his Baker days, started to improve how things went on in the classroom and these ensured continued development.

Ofsted inspections are gradually raising the bar so what was considered a satisfactory inspection of a school previously now may require attention to certain aspects. This is not necessarily a case of falling standards but a requirement to keep advancing.

To conclude his talk Roger gave a mental arithmetic test to his audience. This was a standard examination of junior school pupils and to the great relief of the retired professional and business men they got most of the answers right.

The annual Christmas Dinner was held on Tuesday 12 December at Sandford Springs Golf Club. Attended by a total of forty six people the evening started with mulled wine followed by choices from four starters, four mains and four desserts, completed with mince pies and coffee.

Entertainment consisted of an impressive close up magician who went to every table amazing everyone with his skills. A Christmas raffle, organised by David and Bridget Tivey, had an extensive array of prizes with the proceeds going to the club’s funds. Then a music hall style entertainer had a wide variety of skits, monologues and songs.

Thanks go to Alan May, supported by his wife Liliane, who once again handled all the arrangements with the venue to ensure that each person had exactly the food and wine they had previously ordered.

John Kynoch wearing his Olympic bronze medal with Probus President Paul Flint

John Kynoch in front of running boar target

John Kynoch, himself a member of the Probus Club of Basingstoke, gave an outline of the history of the Olympic Games and how he became a member of the British team.

Living on a remote sheep farm in New Zealand there was a weekly visit from a neighbouring farmer with his son and the two young boys were taught to shoot by John’s Scottish father who had shot at Bisley, the home of British shooting.  Attending school John joined the shooting section and realised that he had a real skill and beat older boys. When he came to Scotland to work in the family woollen mill he maintained his rifle shooting interest. Eventually attending Bisley he rose to the top and represented Great Britain in several international shooting championships.

At the next Olympic Games in 1972, being held in Munich, a sporting rifle competition was being introduced. At a distance of 50 metres a running boar silhouette would cross a gap of 10 metres in 5 seconds, then 2.5 seconds.  From a standing position the shooter would have 5 shots in each section. Possibly he might be selected for the British team if the qualifying grade was reached; something that had not been achieved in this country previously.

He built a mini gallery in his garage and for the next two years he reckons he put in 2000 hours of training.  He likened this to how a golfer practices his swing without hitting the ball and that only 5% of his training involved firing a shot. At the Olympic trials he produced his best ever score and was selected for the GB team. The feeling was that he might get into the top ten but things turned out differently.

He actually won the bronze medal with a score that a year earlier had been a world record. This was the first medal for rifle shooting won by a Briton since 1924 and was rightly celebrated. However this was the games that became known as Black September as members of the Israeli team were assassinated by Arab terrorists and even after all these years John still finds himself emotionally affected.

At the lunch on Tuesday 12 November David Carwardine was presented with a framed certificate to mark his appointment as a Life Member of the club. After hearing of his business career from graduate trainee at Vauxhall Motors to main board director at Lansing Bagnell and then as Director of Regional Operations for BIM (British Institute of Management), David then spoke of his 22 years as a member of the Probus Club of Basingstoke. He served as President in 1996/97 introducing several changes to the way the committee was organised and brought in the summer ladies’ pub lunch which continues today.

David and his wife Betty will be leaving Basingstoke early in 2014 to be closer to their family in Wiltshire and Bristol and we offer them our good wishes.

Statue of the founder King Charles 11 depicted as a Roman soldier

Hearing about dining traditions

General view of the dining hall

One of the groups hearing some of the history of the hospital

One of the guides with a small group from the Probus Club

Outside the Pensioners’ Club which has just has £1,000,000 refit

A party of retired professional and business managers and their wives from the Probus Club of Basingstoke supported by members and wives from Deane Probus had a day’s outing to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the famous Chelsea Pensioners.

The visit was organised by Tony Atchison of St Gabriel’s Lea, Chineham who has been a member of Basingstoke Probus for nine years who commented “we were split into two groups each with a guide for a tour lasting over two hours. We were impressed with the size and grandeur of the hospital. The wonderful dining hall which has featured in Harry Potter films was complemented by the chapel which the architect Sir Christopher Wren insisted had clear glass windows. The statue of the founder, Charles 11, was glorious in gold leaf and the two guides were resplendent in their scarlet great coats”

“We also saw In Pensioners, as they are called, going off to the Albert Hall to rehearse their part in the televised Festival of Remembrance.”

There is an extensive refurbishment programme underway to provide enlarged berths, as each In Pensioner’s room is called, that will include a study area and an en suite wet room. There are 300 In Pensioners but only six are women. The majority are army veterans, with a few from the Marines, Royal Navy and Air Force.

Aerial view of the “Insula” excavation

Amanda Clarke (Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries)

This is one of the discoveries made at what is commonly called the Silchester dig, at the important Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, the field research project undertaken by the Archaeology department of Reading University. The director of this annual summer activity since 1997, Amanda Clarke, was the guest speaker at the latest evening meeting of the Probus Club of Basingstoke where she had an attentive audience of retired business managers.

Nearly 1100 first year archaeology students have worked more than 102 weeks on one third of one Roman “insula” or block, an area only 55 x 55 metres, on this site which most people think of as a Roman town. Excavations have shown that the Romans took over an existing large Iron Age town established around 40BC, which had clearly defined buildings in a distinct layout set on the axis of the winter and summer solstices. The Roman grid street pattern was not firmly established until the second half of the first century and the surrounding defensive stone wall, which can be seen today, built in the third century.

Because there was no running water on site both the Iron Age and Roman populations sank wells which the Romans lined with wooden wine barrels. The Iron Age town had trade links with European countries that brought in pottery, olive fruits and exotic seasonings from the Mediterranean area.

The population varied over the centuries and has been calculated that it was at least 3000 and up to several times that figure at its peak. For example the Roman amphitheatre, built outside the wall, could seat 10,000 people.

Apart from the usual physical work with a hand trowel, modern technology is used on the excavation with computer records and hand held tablets that can be read in full sunlight while a drone is used to take aerial photographs of the site. The logistics of housing, feeding and providing for the personal needs of up to two hundred people on site were graphically illustrated especially with the solar showers and fifty seven portaloos.

More information about the activities of the Probus Club of Basingstoke can be seen on their web site http://www.probusbasingstoke.wordpress.com or potential members can phone their secretary Gerry Anslow on 01256 325253.

All crew safely atop the Vickers Valetta

Mel Kent explaining further about his adventure

Group Captain Mel Kent using the actual spear that he collected from the local tribe to point at the picture.

President of Probus Basingstoke Paul Flint with Group Captain Mel Kent and John Powter (past president 1991/92) who was also in Sudan a little later

The adventure of a young RAF Flying Officer was regaled to the audience of retired professional and business men of the Probus Club of Basingstoke. Retired RAF Group Captain Mel Kent, himself a member of the club, enthralled his audience about his experience in the Sudan when disaster struck when he and three other RAF servicemen were passengers on a freight plane heading south out of Khartoum in December 1951.

The Vickers Valetta twin engined plane was designed to fly on one engine, but on this occasion when the port engine stopped the starboard engine just was not man enough to continue the flight and they had to make a forced landing with the undercarriage up. Landing in a swamp there was no real injury to anyone but the plane was damaged with bent propellers and tears to the skin of the fuselage. There were only minimal food rations on board and only a gallon of water so the situation was desperate. The radio didn’t work at ground level but after some days they were eventually spotted by a search plane and supplies were dropped to them. The RAF contacted a local tribe who arrived days later at the crash site complete with long spears. The servicemen initially feared that they were Mau Mau terrorists.

Three days walking and the crew were at the tribe’s village and from there eventually returned to Khartoum where a rescue and repair team was led by Flying Officer Kent back to the crash site. Several trucks carried two new engines, propellers and a host of mechanical aids. Six weeks of hard work later, in late February 1952, the plane being repaired and the swamp having dried out to a hard surface a makeshift runway saw a successful escape flight.

What caused the initial engine shutdown turned out to be that someone had forgotten to refuel the wing tank.

Potential members of the Probus Club of Basingstoke can find out more of its activities by looking on their web site http://www.probusbasingstoke.wordpress.com or can contact their secretary Gerry Anslow on 01256 325253 or email gerry.anslow@talktalk.net.

The annual summer pub lunch of the Probus Club was held at the Portsmouth Arms in Hatch Warren when over thirty members/wives/partners enjoyed a convivial occasion as can be seen from these photographs.

One of the highlights was the giant veggie burger enjoyed by Rama Murthy who had devoured most of it before the photograph was taken. Much to the surprise of those on the next table, he consumed the lot with hardly a crumb left on the wooden platter.

Two people were celebrating their birthday, Mike Jarvis and Jay Hudson, but neither chose to disclose their age.

Where was the President, you ask? He was behind the camera as sometimes happens to record the happy scene.