I am Maureen Bishop and, at present, I am the LPG Group Director and member with overall responsibility for the production of the paper.  I also share responsibility for the group’s administrative affairs.

I got involved with the LPG at the beginning of this century when the then co-ordinator had to leave due to ill health.  I was invited to do what I could, and with a lot of help from my predecessor, and a lot of trial and error from me, I learned what I know and truly enjoy my involvement.   Over the years I have learned to produce articles and do so much more but I could never do shorthand and I am still unable to spell. So I thank God for 2 things; the invention of the portable tape recorder and the computer spell-check programme!

We are aware that, although there will always be a place for the paper version of the Gazette, an internet presence is rapidly becoming the way forward, and every year as a new generation of IT savvy citizens become pensioners and join our ranks, we need to stay current.  We hope that our new interactive website will allow all pensioners, both from Lewisham and farther afield, the opportunity  to do exactly what we have always striven to do;  share their thoughts, experiences and stories so that their piers can continue to be enlightened, entertained and educated.

I retired from London Fire Brigade in 2011 and was seeking retirement information when I picked up a LPG magazine in my doctors surgery. I found it so informative that I got in touch with the editor to get some back issues and ended up on the editorial staff. I help maintain the Twitter and Facebook pages and proof-read the website content. I was Born in Shoreham in 1945 and brought up in the Portsmouth area where my Dad worked in the Dockyard. I joined the Royal Navy as a boy entrant at HMS Ganges and from there joined the Fleet Air Arm. On discharge I joined the NHS in Edinburgh and worked with Professor Sir Michael Woodruff on the first kidney transplants as a Theatre Technician. In 1971 I came to London and worked as a District Resuscitation Equipment Technician at Lewisham Hospital until 1986, when I joined London Fire Brigade until my retirement. I have always been a technician with a variety of skills and I hope I can put these to good use in the coming years.

I was born in May 1951 and spent my early years in Hampstead near Swiss Cottage station before moving to Harlow in 1956. From 1964 - 67 I went to a small mixed boarding school in Oxfordshire, in the meantime my family moved to Lewisham, where apart from ten years in Bromley I have spent the majority of my life to date. I left school with just 3 ‘O’ levels but my early career included management positions in Financial Services, Vehicle Management, Estate Agency and Property Development. The birth of my first daughter in 1991 and the state of the property market prompted me to gain some formal qualifications. In 1992 I was awarded an HNC in computer studies and in 1996 gained a first class honours degree in Computing and Accounting. Post qualification I joined a big 4 style management consultancy where for the next five years working on major clients projects I further developed my skills in accountancy, systems analysis and project management, and qualified to become a Member of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers (MIAP).

In late 2001 I began working as an independent project manager and systems change consultant. Whilst working with social housing clients I learned to appreciate the value of their work to society and qualified to join the Chartered Institute of Housing as an associate member (ACIH) and served on the London Branch Committee for two years. I now work through my own company KoDOS Systems Ltd., which I founded along with two consulting colleagues. Whilst between clients I work from home which has enabled me to be involved in a number of local voluntary roles.

I am now a member of the Lewisham College Values, Beliefs and Faiths Forum, Treasurer of the Lewisham Community Police Consultative Group, Chairman of the Lewisham Humanist Group, Co-opted Humanist Member of the Lewisham Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE), Co-ordinator of the Rushey Green Assembly, Chairman of the Rushey Green Safer Neighbourhood Ward Panel.

I am, at present, Group Director and member with overall responsibility for the group’s financial affairs and I also share responsibility for the group’s administrative affairs.

One day, some twelve years ago, I was reading the Lewisham Pensioners Gazette and I noticed that they were holding their AGM. I made a point of getting there that morning and I found it quite interesting. I thought that I might make time to attend some of the fortnightly meetings and ended up attending quite regularly. I am now a member of the team though I had no idea of how to put a paper together when I joined let alone a website. Over the years I have made visits to various meetings and my resulting reports will feature as articles on this website as they did in the paper.

Until now, though I have some IT knowledge, I have not used the internet very much.  I believe that to be because I often don’t have a reason to do so, but it is becoming more important to feel at home with this medium.  My involvement with this site will give me the reason that I need to log on more often and I hope it will have a similar effect on all ‘local’ pensioners in internet land however they are introduced to the site. 

I really enjoy the part I play in the production of the Pensioners’ Gazette.

It has been some six years since I first met the members of the Lewisham Pensioners Gazette in the Riverdale centre offering copies of the paper to shoppers. I took one and decided to attend my first editorial meeting.  I have spent much of my life living abroad and, in spite of my wish to remain in Lewisham at present, current circumstances dictate that I spend the coming year or so outside the UK, but our online presence is allowing me a more immediate view of what is going on even though I am so geographically far away.  This new way to present LPG information is also giving me another very good reason to improve my IT skills.

I continue to be a Group Director and member in spite of my present physical distance from the group because of the internet.

In 2005 I first visited London in order to attend a tourism exhibition and since that visit I continue to spend lots of my time here because I have fallen in love with this place. I have always enjoyed attending events and found myself at Lewisham Peoples’ day in July 2015. I stopped at the Lewisham Pensioners’ Gazette stall where I felt that I was instantly welcomed. I am, perhaps the only member of the team with a background in the media and it has been, and is really fulfilling to find myself able to use that skill again, and in such a different way.

I am now getting involved with fundraising and I am applying my journalistic skills where they are needed.

For the past 85 years – that is from the age of nine – I have been writing bits and pieces for publication, and every journal I come across makes me itch to contribute something to it.  As well as books, articles, verses and letters to editors, I have compiled themed crossword puzzles for various publications (including the Radio Times when it contained one), and when, a decade ago, I came across the LPG for the first time, its crossword screamed at me for help.  Since then I have supplied a puzzle, with local references in the clues and solutions for every issue, as well as supplying occasional articles and doing the proof-correcting for the whole paper.

It was in my early teens that I acquired my first typewriter, and typewriters have remained my main writing tool ever since – updated only as far as a primitive word-processor, since I loathe the internet and remain obstinately computer–illiterate.  However, realising that to other people – especially the LPG editor – the internet is almost a religion, I am charitably continuing to provide crosswords and other items for the electronic version of the LPG, while hoping that funding will become available before long for the printed version of it to appear once more as well.