Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Invicta is the adopted name of the Maidstone Area branch of the Aviva Fellowship, an association for the pensioners of Aviva and over 600 Heritage companies.

We welcome other Aviva pensioners who may be visiting this web site for the first time since reading about it in In touch. It is hoped that you enjoy looking through its pages and find something of interest to you. Perhaps you can be tempted to join in one of the online activities.

Members' Pages may be found particularly worthy of a look. Here you will find Darryl Helliwell's expertise available to help you with arranging suitable travel insurance. The display of the late John Middleton's versatile artistic talent in drawing, watercolour and verse is impressive and everyone will enjoy a nostalgic trip down Memory Lane with the archive of the late Ted Shrimpton's photographs. There are also some extremely useful tax guides provided by Croydon Area member Chris Garrett.

Why don't you join in, or at least bookmark our web site so that you can look in on us now and then.

Richard Haynes
Chairman

Did you know?

Not many members of the Aviva Fellowship have more than half a million followers on social media - however Croydon Area member, and former website manager, Ian Rae has. For more information please click here.

Click here to see all of our forthcoming events,
and here to see all of the planned Regional events,
which are also available to you.
Here is a letter from the regional chairmen about this arrangement.
(The password for the national website is fellow.)

Ten Pin Bowling

Next session date awaited.

The regulars would welcome some new faces for a couple of hours of enjoyable activity followed by lunch at the Black Horse pub nearby in Pembury.

Be there promptly before 10.30 a.m. so that the requisite number of lanes can be booked for the 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. session.

The address, with a map to give directions, is:-

Bowlplex
Knights Park
Longfield Road
Tunbridge Wells
TN2 3UW

Your Post Code

Notices

The Invicta website welcomes notices for all events being organised by members for members, be they for a specific group from a legacy company, for a wider membership across the Aviva group, or for special interest groups such as, for example, ten pin bowling or photography. To take advantage of this facility, please send your notice to notices@invictamaid.org.

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Reading the latest Invicta Newsletter prompts me to write to you as follows:
I take up the post of non-stipendiary Choirmaster at Maidstone Parish Church (All Saints) in mid-March, and would like to issue an invitation to retired colleagues in the area who might welcome the opportunity to sing with us, either regularly or on special occasions. For example: we are inviting nearby choirs to take part in Choral Evensong on Easter Day mid-afternoon.
Maidstone Parish Church is a Collegiate Church, affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music, that adheres to the worship pattern and musical tradition of English cathedrals.
Anyone interested and/or wanting to know more can contact me via the e-mail choirmaster.allsaintsmaidstone@gmail.com.
Thank you,
Andrew
Andrew M. Williamson BA DipCMus
Choirmaster, Maidstone Parish Church.

This week's computer help

(This week's tip/answer, as well as previous ones, may be found in the Computing section of the website.)

If you have a question, or a PC problem, send it to computing@invictamaid.org

Q. I use a MacBook Air, which works well at home using wi-fi. However, I can't get online when I try to use it in places like pubs, hotels and coffee shops. Why?

A. Many public wi-fi spaces have their router hardware tucked away, and so may not be providing a strong enough signal. Plus, the more people who use such a service, the the worse the service will be. However, I suspect that the problem might lie elsewhere and be simple to deal with. If you are seeing a signal strength of at least two to three bars/lines, then it is probably just that you need to sign in to the service: a lot of public wi-fi services require you to sign in before you can use their service. To sign in, when you can see the network signal strength bars, just open your browser (presumably Safari). After a few seconds, you should see a registration screen. Complete that, and you should be "good to go". Next time that you're in the same place, Safari should remember your registration details for you, but you will still need to open Safari to get connected.

Travel Insurance

We, in Invicta, are fortunate to have Darryl Helliwell as a fellow member. Darryl left Travellers Insurance in 1996 and set up his own travel insurance underwriting company, which has grown to employ 50 people. He has offered to give us the benefit of his expertise in travel insurance and a discount on policies arranged with his company

All the details are here on Darryl's Members' Page Travel Insurance

Aviva Multi-Product Discount

Aviva policyholders wishing to be sure that they have the best discounts available may find assistance from the message from Staff Personal Assurances here

Equity Release

Homeowners contemplating Equity Release need to know where to go for good advice and can start here

Other Fellowship Websites

Here are links to other known Fellowship web sites

Bristol
Cardiff/Swansea
Croydon
Norwich
and Aviva's site for the Aviva Fellowship

The Invicta Newsletter

The March edition is now available on the site. Click here to read it.

Your Milestone Wedding Anniversaries

You can arrange for a message to be sent from the Queen on these anniversaries.

Find out how at this Government web site Anniversaries.

Volunteers Required

Area Representatives are required for Whitstable and Thanet.

Any member who would like to offer his or her services for this important role should go the Area Reps page here where the duties of Area Representatives are detailed plus an email contact.