Open Meeting - 25th April 2024
Our last open meeting for the 2023-24 season took place on Thursday 25th April. This meeting included our AGM and we are delighted to welcome to the committee Wendy Monk, who is taking over as Treasurer from Victor Hawker.
After the AGM we had a most interesting talk from Bill Buchan who told us all about “Hunting the King” - herring fishing in the North East 1900-1960.
Bill was brought up in Peterhead, a fishing community. All his family were fishermen. But this was not for him, he served his apprenticeship as an engineer, before becoming a Methodist minister, had a spell in industry as a Personnel Director before moving to the Church of Scotland and becoming the minister at Kilwinning Abbey until his retirement in 2001. Bill came to Biggar in 2018.
It was fascinating to hear about how Bill's Grandfather's boat was sunk by the German navy during Word War II (the Germans did kindly allow the crew to get into a life raft before sinking the vessel). Also, who would want to be a fisherman's wife in Peterhead in the 1930s? - you were expected to carry your husband out to his fishing boat so that he could keep his feet dry! Some of the fishermen's superstitions were also amusing - for instance salmon was not to be mentioned and if anyone inadvertently brought it aboard, then the boat would not set sail that day.
To read about previous meetings and other news, please click on the links below:
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March Open Meeting - Michael Shannon from Damn Delicious
We had another good turn out for our March open meeting. The speaker was Thankerton beef farmer and butchery shop owner, Michael Shannon. Born in Ulster, Michael comes from a long line of medical doctors, but he decided early on that farming was for him. Starting as a seed salesman, which let him travel widely,
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February open meeting - Jim Ness - the History of Biggar High Street
We had a full house for the speaker at our 29th February meeting, who was well-known local historian Jim Ness. Jim, now retired, was a geography teacher at Biggar High School and Sanquhar Academy. He is now a volunteer archivist with Biggar Museum, a digger with the Biggar Archaeology Group, creator of the photographic archive
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January open meeting - Burns afternoon
25th January 2023: There was a great turn out for our special Burns Afternoon with music, speakers and delicious bannocks with cheese. Former Biggar u3a Chairman Stewart Houston entertained us all with his brilliant recitals of several poems (and didn’t he look smart in his kilt?) and members also enjoyed singing along to a number
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November Open Meeting - St Andrew's Day
30th November 2023: We had a lovely convivial afternoon to celebrate St Andrew’s Day with accordionist, Charlie Todd (Thankerton), & fiddler, Judith Linton (Muirkirk), to give us a flavour of Scottish Dance Music and to explain why it used to be so popular on the radio for many years after WW2. Charlie is also one
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October open meeting - Stuart MacKay - Biggar Men's Shed
26th October 2023 Men’s Shed is an organisation that was started in Australia some 20 years ago in an effort to address the imbalance in health outcomes between men and women. In particular the movement sought to stem the tide of male suicide in remote communities. Such was the success of the Sheds that the
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September Open meeting - Phylip de la Maziere - the role of Town Crier
28th September 2023: Our first open meeting of the 2023-24 season was well attended and all those present enjoyed a very interesting talk from Phylip de la Maziere, who is the Town Crier for Lanark. Phylip explained that although people often think of town criers as English, rather than Scottish, in fact there used to
Click on the link below to read archived reports from open meetings. There is also a link to the Scottish Older People's Assembly website, which you may find interesting.
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