I am now in my 80s, so highlights in my life are few and far between.
One such highlight is every other Wednesday – it is both bins out for collection, recyclables as well.
Recently, however, I found a new event for my social calendar – the monthly chat group of Probus members discussing topics of current interest.
“Isn’t that just a group of boring old frts having a chat?,” asked my wife. “Old?”, definitely, as they appear to be in the senior age bracket; “frts?” no; “Boring?”, definitely not.
I started going to these meetings several months ago, held on the first Wednesday of the month in the Cleveland RSL.
A group of over a dozen assembled. There were a couple of ladies who attended but the majority were blokes.
Although most would be considered older by the rest of the community, as soon as discussion started on the topics of today, all I could hear were products of keen minds.
Initially, I kept my mouth shut – in the presence of such collective wisdom, what did I have to contribute?
Then someone made a comment that I disagreed with and hey, I was part of the discussion. Group courtesy ensured my opinion was listened to.
Over the weeks I have heard the views of people who have wide life experiences – working in Nigeria, PNG, Europe, jobs involving electrical distribution engineering (essential for discussions on transition to zero), farming, public service, teaching, extensive knowledge of the convoluted workings of Redland City Council and much more.
I thought I was pretty well informed (after all when I’m waiting to have my haircut, I read back copies of the Women’s Weekly), but this crowd leave me for dead.
This week, for example, we covered Artificial Intelligence (those present displaying only genuine intelligence), a cashless society (not much change there), the future of the Commonwealth/Olympic games (all the politicians desperately vying for gold), the Voice and many others.
I left the meeting uplifted by the spirited, in-depth comments of those in our community who have a life-time of knowledge and experience, those with the skills to sift the facts from the chaff relating to a variety of today’s problems and come up with sensible viable solutions – knowing all the time that we will be ignored, as we are just a bunch of boring old …
