Lunches
The lunches are held on the third Thursday of each month at 11.30 for 12.30 in the Homestead Court Hotel in Welwyn Garden City. Dress is normally smart casual with a jacket and tie for the men. Expect to get away by 3pm. The three course lunch with coffee costs £28 and includes a starter, meat main course, and a sweet and coffee. An alternative main course “chef’s selection of fish”, may be pre-booked when registering for the lunch.
On arrival for lunch members check in by the hotel reception. Those who have ordered a variant from the menu will receive an envelope containing cards which indicate a diner's choice of alternative for the 'Starter, Main Course and Desert or Cheese and Biscuits’. They should be displayed on their lunch table to help the waiting staff. A cash bar is open for drinks before, and with the meal.
Lunches must be booked no later than the Friday of the week before the lunch. The club has recently introduced an online lunch booking scheme which has made life easier for both lunch attendees, the Lunch Secretary and other committee members. Links to the online booking forms are emailed to members about one month ahead of each upcoming lunch. Details of the lunches, along with the necessary booking forms are also included in the Newsletter. The club also strongly encourages lunch payment by online bank transfer.
Any Member who is unable to attend after booking is responsible for the cost unless a cancellation is notified by the Friday previous to the booked lunch.
Some individual members reserve seats for themselves and their guests by placing cards on the tables. Whilst this has disadvantages and is less than ideal, nobody has yet come up with a more acceptable idea!
Details of the talks to be given at the next two lunches are given below. The dates and times of Lunches, outings and other upcoming events, can be found on the Google Calendar of HELC Events. This is currently set as Agenda view, but you can change to Week or Month view; you can also print a list of events over any range of dates you choose. Public Holidays are shown in green text, all HELC items are a different colour. Click on an event to see full details, including a link to a map of the meeting point or venue.
20 February 2025
The Great and the Good of Cambridge
Keith Brinded
Cambridge has an immense history around its town, colleges and libraries but equally important are the people of both “Town and Gown” – many of who have facts, myths, stories and downright lies connected to them. In this short presentation we will visit a few of the famous, the infamous and some you have probably never heard of and examine their tales – some of which are taller than others. And, of course, we will take a look a few Cambridge engineers.
From a Norfolk family but brought up in North-West London, Keith moved to Bedfordshire / North Herts over 30 years ago. He was an analytical chemist for35 years at GlaxoSmithKline with an unhealthy interest in mass spectrometry and automation. A short secondment to Cambridge University initiated an interest in facts and fairy tales about Cambridge. Now retired, and thanks to free motorcycle parking in the centre of Cambridge, Keith continues to visit the city, dragging along anyone who couldn’t think up an excuse fast enough.
20 March 2025
The Real Battle of Britain
Graham Lawrence (HELC Member)
In retirement, Graham’s main interests are steam railways, aviation history and arranging piano music. His talk this afternoon about the Battle of Britain aims to show that, in addition to the RAF’s resources and courage of their pilots, it was the Luftwaffe’s shortcomings that also determined that they were never going to achieve the air superiority required before the sea invasion could take place. His talk addresses aspects about the Battle of Britain that explain how fortunate, but also how deserved, was the RAF’s victory.
Graham became a member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers over 40 years ago and has enjoyed a varied career. He graduated from Imperial College with an honours degree in aeronautical engineering whilst undertaking a thick-sandwich apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce in Derby during the early days of the development of the RB-211 jet engine. Before leaving Derby he worked at the British Railways Railway Technical Centre on the Advanced Passenger Train & HST prototypes. Graham spent 20 years at Harwell Research Laboratory starting with Offshore Oil & Gas projects for the Department of Energy and then on nuclear transport and research reactors. This led to his moving to the JET facility at nearby Culham Laboratory to lead the development of the fusion experiment’s safety case. His final years in work were spent at GE Healthcare’s Amersham site where he prepared safety cases for the two cyclotrons and other medical isotope production equipment.
