My joyful events – Lindsey’s March round-up

I’m happy to say March has, so far, been a quieter and far less stressful time than the start of this year was. In order to relax and reset I managed to get away for a week with my best friend, dog sitting in Manchester and the lovely surrounding areas. We visited historic towns like Hebden Bridge and Sandbach and took lots of long walks through parks, woods and along canal towpaths, really enjoying the quiet, the fresh air and walking in nature.

Unfortunately, while away, I wasn’t able to log in to my usual exercise classes and despite doubling my usual step count, once home I found I still struggled a little with Erin’s dance and Jill’s cardio classes. This really has made me realise that on a personal level, I clearly need to keep up a variety of different exercise classes to help me keep fitter. Thank goodness The Joy Club offer such a great range of options.

I’m loving the new search bar on The Joy Club website and feel it’s a great addition to the way you can now filter events by category, day of the week etc. Plus, I like the newer events page layout, enabling members to scroll down and easily see everything that is taking place throughout the month. I’m finding the bar very useful to search for absolutely anything around the same subject just by typing in one or two key words. All so nice and easy!

There have been some amazing expert talks, blog articles and classes on offer over the last month or so. Towards the end of February, I joined Isabell Dahms talk on ‘Gay rights, sexology and queer selves: Lessons from 20th century Germany’, covering the origins of gay rights movements in Europe. Despite the excellent delivery of the presentation it was nevertheless difficult listening at times due to the issues of discrimination covered, but some really interesting questions were asked at the end and Isabell answered everything so well, so professionally and I finished the call feeling that I’d learned a great deal.

I also joined Luke Wilkinson’s talk ‘Nothing but my Genius’ about the life and works of Oscar Wilde. This was a very eloquent, interesting and passionate talk about one of my favourite figures from literary history. While using the new search bar to look for anything else that might be available on Oscar Wilde, I found a wonderfully moving and sensitive read by member Jane Ricot entitled the ‘The act of 1967‘. All in all, some excellent content from The Joy Club for LGBT+ History Month.

There was another super space presentation from Colin Stuart entitled ‘How to weigh the universe‘. I couldn’t make the live call but didn’t want to miss this as Colin’s talks fascinate me, even though I don’t really understand too much of the technical stuff! but Colin uses non-scientific language and intersperses his presentations with fun facts, making them very enjoyable. I watched the recording and it didn’t disappoint. I may not have fully learned how to weigh a planet but do nevertheless feel much more informed!

Another presenter I will always enjoy listening to is Valentina and this month she gave us two classes, on ‘Optimising immunity‘ and ‘Skin health‘. Checking back through my notes it appears I’ve now attended 14 of this lovely lady’s classes and I always strive to have at least one take-away each time from the information given. These include adding chia seeds to my diet, grasping the difference between probiotic and prebiotic, no blue light before bedtime, using a water filter jug, walking in nature and embracing the wonders of cinnamon and turmeric – to name but a few!

Even though I feel fairly competent with Windows I booked onto ‘An introduction to Microsoft Windows‘, ironically being unable to log in from my laptop and so watched the presentation on my phone. I was delighted to gain several hints and tips about things that I wasn’t aware of – things the IT training sessions at work didn’t cover. This is well worth watching from the recording whether you’re a novice or whether you feel you may just have some gaps in your knowledge.

My last expert talk was ‘The hyena in petticoats: Mary Wollstonecraft’ by Jennie Batchelor. I really enjoyed this talk about the life and works of Mary Wollstonecraft, such an influential woman regarding feminism. The presentation was very interesting, I’d known that she was Mary Shelley’s mother but by the end I felt I really should have known much more before now about this fascinating woman. I wasn’t able to join Jennie’s previous talk on  ‘Celebrating Jane Austen‘ but will now watch it from the recording as I’m sure it will be equally as interesting.

So, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, where else could I find this sort of content for the cost of The Joy Club membership? All in all I’m feeling pretty well-educated right now!

Want to see what’s coming up next month? See our full events calendar here.