I recently wrote about The Joy Club, an online club especially for people who are semi-retired, retired or just getting on in life and find themselves with more time. As I’ve now tried a few of their online activities … their online book club, creative writing class and a cardio workout … I thought I’d bring you a review of them so you can decide whether to try them yourself. GIVEAWAY: If you’d like to win a 6 month subscription to The Joy Club for yourself or someone you know then click on the video at the end of this post to find out how.
Before I dive into the review, let me just say they have quite a varied events calendar. There’s something going on every week day between the hours of 9am and 5pm. So there’s definitely no excuse to be bored if you’re mooching around the house all day. As well as exercise classes they have some more ‘out of the ordinary’ events coming up, such as Mindfulness with Catherine; Shopping Safely Online; and The Benefits of Swearing with Dr Richard Stephens! With my diary and pen in front of me (and a coffee to the side) I browsed their events for the coming month and selected three to get my teeth into.
Online Book Club
Book clubs have always appealed to me as I’m an avid reader, but life can sometimes get in the way and I don’t read as much as I’d like too. A book club gives you an excuse (if you really need one) to sit down and read, but also to finish that book by a certain time so you can discuss it with other people in the book club. I have been a member of book clubs before but I’m not at the moment so this looked like a good time to get involved with an online book club. At the time I booked this event I only had one week to read the set book, which was Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. The Joy Club have their own Facebook Group where normally they would ask club members what book they would like to read that month and then choose the most popular one. I missed that as I joined late in the month.
I downloaded the book to my Kindle and got to reading it. I’d heard of Where The Crawdads Sing but hadn’t actually fancied reading it. I’m not sure why, maybe it was the cover or the title that put me off. But for whatever reason I wasn’t expecting to like the story. I quickly realised I’d been wrong in my assumptions! I loved this book and couldn’t put it down. It was an excellent story with well-drawn characters and I finished it in two days.
The Joy Club’s online book club is held via a zoom call on a specific time and date. Zoom calls are something I think we all got to grips with during the recent lockdowns. This month’s online book club happened to be the first one for The Joy Club. The session was hosted by a member of The Joy Club Team, and as is the norm for a lot of new events there was only a small number of people taking part. Four of us to be precise. But the small numbers didn’t affect my enjoyment of it. The Team Member leading the discussion had some questions lined up to keep the conversation flowing, but they weren’t really needed on that session as we all seemed to be pretty talkative!
The hour went by very quickly and I really enjoyed it. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not retired, but work part-time on my own ebay reselling business and a lot of my time is spent on my own with no-one to talk to. It can get very lonely and having this event where I could actually talk to like-minded people was very motivating for me. I’m looking forward to next month’s online book club where, if you’re reading this before 18 November 2021, we’ll be discussing The Dig by John Preston.
Creative Writing with Grace
Next I thought I’d try my hand at a creative writing class. I’ve dabbled in writing short stories in the past but never got very far (I’m easily distracted). So when I saw this on the events calendar I thought it would be a good one to put in my diary. This class is a regular weekly event, where experienced teacher Grace Palmer leads you through a series of live workshops focusing on a different topic each time. The sessions are 90 minutes long, and again they take place via Zoom, and are highly interactive. The session I booked focused on dialogue. Specifically phrases, words and sayings that were common when you were a child and from your area of the world. There were five of us on the session, plus Grace, and as we were all from different parts of the country there was quite a range of interesting phrases, words and sayings shared. We were also shown some paragraphs from stories and poems so Grace could illustrate how authors used dialogue.
We were then given 30 minutes to write something ourselves. I found this difficult to start but then just got my head down and scribbled whatever came to mind! After the 30 minutes were up we got an opportunity to read out to the class what we’d written. This wasn’t compulsory, it was totally up to me whether I wanted to do it or not. As it was my first class I didn’t think I would have the bottle to read it out, but turned out I did! I’m from Gateshead, in the North East of England, if you didn’t already realise that from my blog name, so my piece was written in ‘geordie’ dialogue. The saying that stuck with me most from my childhood wasn’t so much a north-east saying but my Auntie always used to say she looked like ‘the wreck of the hesperus’ (meaning her hair looked a mess), so my writing focused around that. I’ve added it at the end of this post just in case you want to read it … if not I won’t be offended 🙂
Everyone who attended the session read out their piece of writing … all very interesting and different. Just like the online book club I found the creative writing class interesting, fun and a great opportunity to socialise. I highly recommend it.
Cardio with Jill
As I spend most of my time at home, I don’t get a lot of exercise. My Fitbit probably thinks I’m dead. So a Cardio workout class was just what I needed. This is a live 45 minute full body workout. Although it’s via Zoom you can only see Jill the instructor on screen and not the other attendees. So you don’t have to worry about everyone watching you jumping around sweating.
As The Joy Club is for people who are semi-retired or retired I was expecting it to be very gentle exercise that I wouldn’t even break into a sweat over. Again I learned that you should never assume anything. This was a workout you can do standing up, with or without hand weights. The cardio routine took you through exercises that worked all parts of the body and there were some I had to do the easier version of as I got out of breath. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an ‘all guns blazing’ exercise routine but when you’re quite unfit it was certainly challenging (but not impossible). Jill also suggests adaptations so the exercises suit everyone’s abilities.
Again this is a regular class so you have a great opportunity to build up your fitness levels. My legs were definitely stiff the following morning but it’s a class I would like to do on a regular basis.
Would I recommend The Joy Club Activities?
100% I would recommend the activities The Joy Club runs. I thoroughly enjoyed the online book club, the creative writing class and the cardio workout. I think most of all I enjoyed the social interaction of the book club. But each class has an option to join 10 minutes before it starts so you can have a chat and get to know the other attendees before you knuckle down to do the work. The Joy Club offers one month free membership so you can give the events a try and if you do decide to become a premium member after that it will only cost you £5 per month. Brilliant value for money. Click here to find out more.
Hopefully you found this post helpful and as promised you can read my creative writing masterpiece below. (Hahahahaha).
Maybe I’ll see you on one of the events soon.
Love, Karen xx
Auntie Meg says she’s going to do her ‘messages’. I guessed that because she had her head scarf on to hide her curlers. Pencil in hand she scribbled on the little betting slip.
“Can I pick a horse”, I asked.
“Wait a minute pet”, she muttered, studying the form in the newspaper.
Hopping from one leg to the other, in my childish excitment I asked “Is it a minute now?”
“Gan on then” she said, “but don’t tell ya mam!”
I closed my eyes and stabbed my finger down on the paper. “That one Auntie Meg”.
“Let’s have a look pet” she said.
She roared with laughter as her pencil scribbled the name down.
“What you laughing at Auntie Meg?” I asked.
“Your horse is called The Wreck of The Hesperus lass. Just like me hair!”.
Giveaway: Win a 6 month subscription to The Joy Club
Click on the video and either watch the whole thing or fast forward to 23.18 to find out how to enter.
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I’d like to enter the giveaway and win it for a dear friend of mine. She has lost her husband recently, and she could do with some joy in her life.