Kung Hei Fat Choi!

This week marks the beginning of the new year in the Chinese calendar. Traditionally the event is celebrated with dragon dances, fire crackers and family gatherings. Sadly this year the celebrations will be more muted, even in Newcastle’s celebrated China Town where the many fabulous…

Anyone can draw? Yes, even you!

The ever popular Wellbeing for Life group meets again this week. Hosted jointly by the Elders’ Council for Newcastle and the Friends of Jesmond Library, the group currently meets online. Speed drawing your way through lockdown The next event on Wednesday 3rd February at 10.30am…

Erm… what day is it?

How many of us have a 2021 diary which, because of the ongoing restrictions and repeated exhortations to stay home, is still pristine and unused? This third lockdown means our normal routines have been disrupted. I wonder if you too find yourself unable to work…

‘The Beatles’ – one by one

Anyone visiting Liverpool in the early 1960’s would have found the epitome of ‘the dark satanic mills’. The city’s civic buildings were soot blackened, there were gaps where buildings had been, evidence of the intensive bombing the city had experienced in wartime. Two cathedrals, one…

Book Group

When we read a good book, something magical can happen. Locked down and in our own home we lose ourselves inside a fictional world, created by the imagination of the author but transformed into a virtual reality by our emotional response to the written word….