The Shaw family


Introduction

Geoffrey and Valerie live in St Davids and Buckingham - they are both now retired but Geoff still oversees the ICF (see below). Barry is a computer wizard specialising in main-frame systems but he has recently been forced to find alternative work. Although what he has to do is probably well below his abilities, he is pleased that his new firm has now given him a permanent appointment (see below). Alan lives with Tamara in Leeds: he works for the Department of Work and Pensions in their main office there (called the "Kremlin"). Colin is a lay clerk in the cathedral in Norwich. He is married to Gillian with two children, Barnaby and Emily.

Valerie

Valerie seems to take on more and more administration. She has just retired from a long stint as the local secretary for the University of the Third Age. She is a member of five language groups, play-reading, square-dancing and walking – eight in all! Buckingham boasts over 400 U3A members of whom 150 turn up for a monthly Wednesday afternoon meeting – some achievement for a small market town. She has replaced this secretarial role with one with the Trefoil Guild, an organisation for older guiders. She continues to be very involved (as secretary also!) in the local twinning association with our twin-town in Mouvaux near Lille. We make regular private visits to France and we much enjoy the more relaxed and civilkised life-style. We are looking forward to our their next civil visit to us in June. If you are not involved in a twinning arrangement, do look one out – it is a very invigorating and liberating experience for all concerned.





Colin and Gillian



The Norwich Shaws continue to lead a most hectic life. Barnaby still talks and talks and has recently started school and still has that gorgeous smile. Their daughter, Emily, is growing up fast. Colin sings as ever with the Cathedral and drums both in a teaching and a playing gig mode. Colin ended up on the front of the FCM Christmas card a year or so ago. Gillian teaches woodwind in local schools and is now training to be a priest in the Church of England. All this makes their baby-sitting arrangements very complicated. They have now moved to Mulbarton, a delightful village to the SW of Norwich. It is certainly a much better place to bring-up young children.





Alan and Tamara

Alan and Tamara continue with their animal harem in Leeds. They have gained two new dogs recently, which certainly require plenty of attention. Their original long-term plan was to move to Australia (probably near Brisbane) but they have now decided to leave their very large house in Middleton and they hope to move west in Yorkshire so Australia has been put "on hold". Alan is now a senior bloke in the Department of Work & Pensions but he has found out that this does not qualify him for entry into Australia. He is very much the handymnan, which is not a Shaw trait and in his leisure time walks the dogs and leads historical walks in the local Middleton Park, where his group of "Friends" have just landed a lottery grant.

Restlessness and a wish to have a qualification for Australia led Tamara to take the brave step to learn to be an electrician, which as a trade is acceptable for immigration purposes there. She has now qualified. However she and we were amazed to find that, after the course she did, she is now qualified to go into any home and handle the electrics! Being Tamara, she sensibly decided she needed some supervised experience before embarking out on her own. At the moment it is perhaps a sign of the times that she was not able to find any paid position. Is it age or gender or both? She has recently taken on a job back in her old line, this time in the Ambulance Service.



Barry

Barry continues to sing, hash, walk and youth hostel both here and abroad. He has been to Mali and he is now talking about going to the Antarctic. Beer and folk festivals seem to feature quite a lot in his life so he needs the hashing to reduce the size of the belly. For some years he has worked in the large data management company, Experian, in Nottingham but on a recent take-over he lost his job, as they, foolishly in his opinion, sacked his whole team abandoning main frame in favour of the more virus vulnerable software system over the internet. After a period of "gardening leave", which did not seem to involve much work in the garden, he now works for a dala-base company in the insurance industry. He still spents a considerable amount of time producing very impressive CDs of his songs and is now looking to use his talents in this directrion to earn a few pence.









Geoffrey

People keep on asking me what I do in retirement. I did play more bowls last summer but I have now replaced the winter variety by line-dancing. This is a very female dominated activity but in spite of this I still enjoy it a lot and I am getting better at it. I continue to surf on Whitesands beach whilst I am still able and I am now in my winter break - its just TOO cold!. We have suffered over the last two year from long periods of either high pressure and flat seas or constant wind and rain producing very muixed up surf so I look forward to better times nesxt Spring. I am spending more time in St Davids using our old Renault Laguna down there to enable the in-between journey to be done by bus and train. We now have a Citroen Picasso (French of course!), which has the most ludicrously complicated computer system. Computers and me do not mix happily so I fear for the future. Valerie's Dell gave up the ghost under the strain of her secretarial activities and of course my nearby presence so we now have a new computer and are now on the dreaded broadband both in Buckingham and St Davids.

I have always been jealous of Barry and Colin's skills in music. They have both had so much fun from their musical activities. I have therefore been trying to play the trombone again but I regret that I am only making slow progress. We are still very fond of choral liturgical music so are strong supporters of the Friends of Cathedral Music (see the links page). I have been helping out as a tenor in a church choir and to my surprise I quite enjoyed it - though I am not sure about those around me! This has led to participation in the Lenborough Singers, with whom I have been singing over the last year or so. I am looking forward to our forthcoming performance of the "Armed Man", a piece which I have always wanted to sing. They are a fun group to be with.

However I am still registered as a conference training agency - COURTENAY CONFERENCES. I only do a little now but I keep my hand in by keeping in touch with the trade and assisting enterprises when asked, particularly in my specialism - using a business game to teach the basics of business to students and existing managers. For a long time I ran the Industrial Careers Foundation and I am passionately interested in bringing to students the excitement of management decision-making to help them in their future lives in an age when our education system is badly letting them down in this respect. We are still trying to find ways to overcome the extraordinarily low standard of enterprise education offered to them by government agencies. Contact me, if you want to help.

The ICF now has a strong link with the Arkwright Scholarships Trust, where I now sit on their Advisory Board. Over the last two yeards we have mentored 20 ICF Arkwright scholars.








Geoff Shaw
09.02.11