Issue 102 Summer 2020 by Melbourn Magazine

We are a warm, friendly, family run home conveniently situated close to the station and town centre of Royston. If you would like to find out more about St Georgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, please call us for a brochure or drop in for a chat. 42 Kneesworth Street, Royston, Herts. SG8 5AQ Telephone: 01763 242243 web site: www.stgeorgescare.com

www.melbourncambridge.co.uk

...editorial Welcome to the 102nd edition of Melbourn Magazine – it’s amazing to think that only a short time ago we celebrated our 100 edition and 25 years of continuous production of the magazine. But unfortunately now, due to Coronavirus and the issues it has presented, we find ourselves unable to print and deliver our next edition. However, we have been fortunate to have received plenty of articles and photographs to produce Issue 102, although it will only be available to read online at www.issuu.com/ melbourn and to download to a computer, mobile or tablet. The download file is available at www.melbourncambridge.org. Please help us by sharing these details with anyone you feel would like to read the latest issue of the magazine. When conditions are appropriate we will be printing a few copies to go in the libraries. People are being very kind and helping those who are in lockdown. Local shops are offering a delivery service and The Hub has the Melbourn Coronavirus Community Response up and running so no one need go without essentials. Telephone 01763 263303 option 1. Royston Community Transport are helping with essential travel, e.g. doctors and hospital appointments and will also help with prescriptions and food deliveries where possible, including collection of ‘Click and Collect’ orders. Telephone 01763 245228, between 9am-3pm Monday – Friday. Thank you very much to all the volunteers. We are also fortunate to live in rural surroundings and to be able to get out into the fresh air to exercise and catch up on the gardening! Our new care home Melbourn Springs is up and running; it is a beautiful place and will become part of the community in the very near future. See page 19. Obviously, at the moment schools and clubs are closed, but we have received several articles from those that were able to get together before the crises. We have another interesting article with excellent photographs, reporting on Fowlmere RSBP Nature Reserve, see page 34; and you can travel to the Himalayas again, taking your mind temporarily off the pandemic problems which are affecting all of us globally, see page 24. There are also book reviews on page 44 and pieces written by people in lockdown, see page 51. So until we meet again, keep cheerful and keep safe and take exercise to keep fit. (See page 66 for exercise suggestions).

Contents Village news Travelogue

5 24

Travelling the Himalayas

Education Profile

29 32

Tom Sparke

Nature

Fowlmere RSPB Nature Reserve

Bin collection Review

38 44

No One is too Small to Make a Difference Days Without End: A Novel The Invention of Nature

Churches Together feature

49 51

Melbourn and the Middle East Conflict

Sports & Clubs feature

55 63

Cautionary tales from the lockdown The magazine is available to read online at www.issuu.com/melbourn and to download to a computer, mobile or tablet. The download file is available at www.melbourncambridge.org.

Melbourn Magazine is Independent of the Parish Council NO public money is used.

We would like to thank TTP for their continued sponsorship of the magazine. Melbourn Magazine is printed quarterly and delivered free to every household and business in the village. All work on the Melbourn Magazine, including layout and design is produced by volunteers. The cost of printing comes entirely from advertising and sponsorship.

If you would like to advertise in the Melbourn Magazine see inside back cover for details

Front cover: Melbourn Fete by Kay Morland. melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Melbourn’s Luxury New Care Home OPEN THIS MONTH With beautiful interiors and a wide range of facilities, Melbourn Springs Care Home in Melbourn is designed with residents in mind, offering: • Bespoke residential, dementia and respite care • Daily life-enrichment programme • Choice of nutritious meals • Multi-sensory environment for residents living with dementia We’re here to support you and your loved ones, call us anytime for friendly advice or further information.

Call: 01763 722 734 Hyacinth Drive, SG8 6FY • www.barchester.com/MelbournSprings

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www.melbourncambridge.co.uk

Village news Village News Rosemary Gatward 1937 to 2020

Royston Community Transport

Melbourn Hub

Melbourn Community Meals

Don’t throw away your old computers and TVs!

Cycling – calls for safe space

Strava Challenge

Buy a Coffee and Save Home-Start

Home-Start’s Giving Tuesday Campaign for Lockdown

Arthur Rank Hospice Charity issues SOS!!

Melbourn Fete 2020

District and County Councillor Report

Cambridge Open Studios

The Hall For All

Luxury new care home opens in Melbourn

CPSL Mind’s Good Life

Library – LAP (Local Access Point) Library opening times Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

2.30 to 4.30 pm 2.30 to 4.30 pm 2.30 to 4.30 pm 2.30 to 6.30 pm 2.30 to 4.30 pm 10.00 to 12.00 am

Rosemary Gatward 1937 to 2020 Many people in Melbourn and surrounding villages will remember Rosemary, who sadly died in February and whose funeral was held at All Saints’ Church, on February 19th, conducted by Rev Mary Price, with the eulogy delivered by Rev Andrew O’Brien, the former Vicar of All Saints’ and Holy Trinity. Rosemary lived in Meldreth with her parents and younger sister Helena. She met Douglas at Bennetts Motor Works in Baldock where they were both working. They married in All Saints’ and had three children, Jane, Richard and Rebecca. In 1966 Rosemary started the All Saints’ Playgroup, remembered fondly by many children, now grown up, and by their children. Rosemary served for many years on the Parish Council, and was Chairman herself. She was also a Governor of Melbourn Primary School for 30 years, and a Churchwarden for 20. She was involved with the building of the new All Saints’ Community Hall and the Hub for the Parish Council. She also ran the Christmas Bazaar and, with Rebecca the Flower Festival. Rosemary and Doug were a great team and supported and looked after each other. Our deepest sympathy goes to her family Rosemary will be sadly missed, not only by her family, but by all of us who knew her. She will not be forgotten.

Royston Community Transport We would like to reassure the residents of Melbourn and surrounding villages that we are still open and able to provide transport. We are doing essential travel only, e.g. to doctor and hospital appointments. Please ring 01763 245228, lines are open 9am–3pm Monday – Friday, giving as much notice as possible. We will also help with prescription deliveries and food deliveries where possible, including collection of ‘Click and Collect’ orders. melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Melbourn Hub Supporting the Community during the Coronavirus Like other venues, Melbourn Hub had to sadly close its doors to the public in March due to the Coronavirus pandemic. However since the lockdown, The Hub has been proud to continue supporting the community by utilising the building as a control centre, offering various voluntary support services for the community during this difficult time. Here are some of the initiatives that have been supporting you, operating out of Melbourn Hub.

• Delivered – 677 prescriptions • Provided – 216 hearing aid batteries • Fulfilled – 150 shopping requests • Hand delivered – 2 flyers to every Melbourn

household • Written to – 760 clinically vulnerable people directly to offer the services

All of the community is encouraged to use the MCCR for their prescription collection to prevent numerous different people visiting the Well pharmacy and the Orchard Surgery, thereby limiting footfall in those locations to a small nominated MCCR task force. This both minimises unnecessary exposure in the Melbourn Coronavirus wider community and assists the busy pharmacy and Community Response team (MCCR) surgery, as an established system has been put in place at Melbourn Hub between Well, Orchard Surgery and the MCCR. The The MCCR is a volunteer group based at Melbourn Hub, MCCR has a ‘Just Giving’ page to raise funds to help run run by Cath Sharman, Melbourn Timebank coordinator, the centre and to support the community during this and supported closely by District Councillor and Hub difficult time. To donate see https://www.justgiving. director Jose Hales. It came about after Melbourn Hub’s com/campaign/MelbournCovid19. The MCCR can be management group approached Cath and the Parish contacted on 01763 263303 option 1. Council, to set up a community support centre for those needing help during the pandemic and to secure Chef’s meals for local families resources for the initiative. Thanks to the swift action The MCCR and the MCCS (Meldreth Coronavirus of all involved, the MCCR was set up and funded ready Community Support) are collaborating with Liz Young, to support the community before the lockdown was a professional chef who now runs catering company declared on 23rd March. Numerous volunteers have ‘The Modern Table’, to help feed those in difficulty stepped forward, and either man the 7 day a week MCCR due to the coronavirus pandemic. The idea came control centre or deliver supplies to those in need. It about with help and offers of support from the local is estimated that in excess of 1500 hours have been hospitality industry including Rosie Sykes, chef, author volunteered for the MCCR effort since 16 March 2020; and writer who is setting up a charity in the near future this has helped achieve the following: called ‘The Food Collective’ focusing on like for like funding, getting big corporations to engage with their local community by helping to fund community food support. Also behind the current initiative are Jack van Praag, chef and owner of Jack’s Gelato, Tom Morgan chef Marcus Edwards, owner of Albany Vinters and Leo Riethoff, chef and founder of Steak and Honour. The MCCR and Melbourn Hub was identified by South Cambs District Council as a venue able to rapidly distribute the free meals to Melbourn and Meldreth residents. The scheme was quickly set up, with the meals prepared in Steak and Honour’s commercial kitchen in Cambridge, where they are portioned into the right size packs and cold-transported to Melbourn Community Hub. From here a team of volunteers delivers them to family doorsteps. The ingredients for the meals are provided by donations from Cambridge Organic Food Company (COFco); Meadows, a small Newnham shop and supplier; and local wholesaler Fieldgate Nurseries. Financial contributions have been made from the MCCR and MCCS.

www.melbourncambridge.co.uk

Melbourn Community Meals

Liz Young, professional chef

Food Bank Thanks to some kind donations from across the village, the MCCR will be opening a trial food bank at The Hub on Thursday mornings from 10am-12pm. Items will be on a first come, first served basis, and you will need to bring your own bags. Social distancing rules will be observed and The Hub will operate a one-in-one-out system. If you are unable to come to The Hub or if you are self-isolating, please call 01763 263303 and we can arrange a delivery.

Cambridge caterers work with volunteers to feed families during lockdown Hundreds of prepared, nutritious meals have been delivered to residents in Melbourn and Meldreth thanks to local chefs and hospitality partners, the Melbourn Coronavirus Community Response, and the Council – and the Council is offering to support others to do the same. Across the district people’s circumstances have changed enormously from house to house. Liz Young, a professional chef who now runs catering company The Modern Table, was offered funding to put her skills to work to help feed those who may be in difficulty due to the coronavirus pandemic. The idea came about with help and offers of support from many members of the local hospitality industry including Rosie Sykes, chef, author and writer; Jack van Praag, chef and owner of Jack’s Gelato; Tom Morgan, chef; Marcus Edwards, owner of Albany Vinters; and Leo Riethoff, chef and founder of Steak and Honour. Liz needed to work out the details around who to provide meals for, and how to distribute them. She was put in touch with South Cambridgeshire District Council, which was able to use existing networks and local knowledge to identify Melbourn Coronavirus Rosie Sykes, chef, author and writer

The Hub – keeping in touch with you Finally, all of us at Melbourn Hub looks forward to seeing you again in the near future, but until then, we are keeping the spirit of the Hub going through our website and the Facebook page: @The Hub Melbourn. We have provided an exciting colouring initiative featuring our very own ‘Hubby Bear’, a now familiar character originally created at the Hub. The current colouring initiative, aimed at supporting children in our local community, has been designed by Bec Barnes Illustration, a local illustrator who also volunteers for us. This is alongside signposting important services such as; health and wellbeing through ‘Everyone Health’, dementia support from ‘Community Support for Dementia’ and adult mental health and wellbeing via Mind CPSL Cambridgeshire’s ‘Qwell’ service, as well as taking our hub gallery online so that we can continue to support our local artists and share their amazing artwork to lift people’s spirits. Melbourn Hub www.melbournhub.co.uk melbournmagazine@gmail.com

s ur ge nth Yo tga o or m m or 6 f id

Welcome to Kingley Grove

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Connect with Care Network! During these challenging times our Community Navigators can help you find local support. This includes access to our Help at Home essential shopping and our Wellbeing Phoneline services Speak to your local South Cambs Coordinator today on 01954 212100 To learn more or donate to our Covid-19 response services please visit www.care-network.org.uk/ or call 01954 211 919

www.melbourncambridge.co.uk

Community Response as a community group that would be able to rapidly distribute the meals to residents in Melbourn and Meldreth. The scheme was quickly set up, with the meals prepared in Steak and Honour’s commercial kitchen in Cambridge, where they are portioned into the right size packs for the families who will receive them, cooled, and cold-transported to the Melbourn Community Hub kitchen. From here the team of Melbourn Coronavirus Community Response volunteers deliver them to families’ doorsteps. To ensure food safety is paramount throughout this process, the Council’s Environmental Health team advised the group as they established the way the project would work. Along with one of the volunteer chefs Rosie Sykes – who is also working towards setting up a charitable community food project to support local people – Liz sources the ingredients and designs a varied menu that offers nutritious meals. The ingredients for the meals are provided by donations from Cambridge Organic Food Company (COFco); Meadows, a small Newnham shop and supplier; and local wholesaler Fieldgate Nurseries. These are topped up using the generous funding Liz was originally offered, alongside support from the Melbourn Hub and Meldreth Coronavirus Community Support. The Council is encouraging other groups considering setting up similar projects to apply to existing funding schemes e.g. the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation Coronavirus Fund or the National Lottery’s Awards for All fund. Liz said: “Melbourn Hub is so well set up that working with them was going to benefit as many people as possible because of the network system they had already created.” Cllr Jose Hales, District Councillor for Melbourn, said: “I feel really fortunate that this idea was brought to life in my village. The fact that our Hub’s catering facilities have previously been approved by Environmental Health meant that we could offer to help without any delay, and our Coronavirus Community Response volunteers were eager to join this fantastic group of individuals from the catering industry to support our residents. “All credit to this group for having the idea and the get up and go to make it happen, and to Council colleagues and Cath Sharman, who heads up our Melbourn Coronavirus Community Response, for bringing all the pieces of the puzzle together. The pandemic is putting pressure on families in so many ways and I’m pleased our residents are benefitting from these nutritious meals. If other chefs or community groups are wondering what they can do to help, get in touch and Council staff will be happy to help.”

To contact the Council to discuss setting up something similar – whether you are a chef, someone who has food to donate, or a community group that can help to get meals to families – email duty. communities@scambs.gov.uk Susan van de Ven

Don’t throw away your old computers and TVs! Recycling centres are reopening – but please DON’T throw away any unwanted computers, laptops, screens, mice and keyboards! Meldreth Coronavirus Community Support is building new computers out of second-hand donations, to supply Melbourn Village College students who are on home study due to Covid-19 restrictions but lacking home computers. We’d also like to make them available to elderly isolated residents who’d like to get set up on the internet for the first time. The computers are rebuilt by Andy Thomas at home in Meldreth on his kitchen table. They are then PAT tested by David Coton. The first lot of new computers was delivered to Melbourn Village College last week, to the delight of Headteacher Simon Holmes: “We’re extremely grateful for this equipment as it will make a significant difference to those children and families who receive it. Home schooling is not something any of our parents expected to be doing and for those children who have been trying to access their work on a phone or sharing a tablet or family computer, this is a huge step forwards. Our thanks go to all who have donated.” MVC principal Simon Holmes and Susan van de Ven with donated equipment. Pictures MVC

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Melbourn Mobile Warden Scheme Can we help you? Can we help a relative? Can we help a neighbour? Who does the Scheme help? The scheme is open to the mobility impaired in Melbourn, Meldreth and Shepreth including those who live alone or with their families, but need the extra support offered by our services. Couples too are most welcome. Andy Thomas and David Coton

More computers are in the process of rebuilding but more monitors, keyboards and mice are needed. Several old laptops have also been donated to the scheme – these are especially useful. Whatever might seem too old or unworkable can be stripped for spare parts – everything is useful. Some history nuggets lie within: Award-winning children’s author Frances Hardinge has provided a monitor and a laptop: “This was my laptop while I was writing A Face Like Glass and the first half of Cuckoo Song. It’s helped me conjure underground labyrinths, exploding cheeses, screaming dolls and supernatural secrets. I hope it will be of use to somebody else now!” Another children’s author, Rhiannon Lassiter, has donated her old ibook G4, which will be sold to raise funds to pay for spare parts. Computer gaming guru Alistair Halsby has donated the smallest and largest computers so far. Andy says that “Both have about the same power – time shrinks things! The large computer was in its day an example of the best money could buy.” So – if you have any old computers or components lying around, and would consider donating them, please let us know! Cllrs Susan van de Ven and Philippa Hart Meldreth Coronavirus Community Support Susanvandeven5@gmail.com and philippajoyhart@gmail.com

Cycling – calls for safe space With the advice to stay away from public transport, and an intensified focus on cycling as a means of safe local transport, a new conversation is happening about practical and achievable measures that could be quickly implemented. Please do write to the County Council and to the Mayor if you’re concerned – and thanks to everyone who has done so already. You can also sign the ‘Spaces to Breathe’ open letter from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign, which is working with cycle campaigns all around Cambridgeshire – see here for details: https://www.camcycle.org.uk/campaigning/issues/spaces-to-breathe/ Susan van de Ven

www.melbourncambridge.co.uk

It is also open to those in sheltered housing, as the scheme offers different, but complementary services. Note: The scheme also offers its services for short periods to cover the temporary absence of relatives who otherwise provide this support.

We offer help with: • Friendship and support via twice weekly visits and daily phone calls • Ordering and collection of prescriptions • Basic shopping • Collection of pensions • Setting up Lifeline service • Bereavement support • Going to the Post Office to pay your bills • Just coming round for a chat

What will it cost? We do have to make a small weekly charge for the warden’s services. The fee is only £7.50 per week (a little more for couples).

Jeannie Seers (Mobile Warden) 07808 735066 email: jeanseers13@gmail.com

Jane Cage (Deputy) 07592 821976 email: janec55@virginmedia.com

Melbourn Warden Scheme is a registered charity

Strava Challenge Do you like to keep fit? Maybe you’re keen to expand your exercise as part of your lockdown routine? Maybe you already use Strava, the activity tracker? This app, if you aren’t already using it, allows you to track the routes you take when you exercise, share your activities with your friends and colleagues and even compete with them, even when you can’t socialise. Home-Start’s own Strava club, HSRBSC Giving Tuesdays, has been set up to help our friends, volunteers, supporters and families come together in a virtual way, to get fit together and raise funds for Home-Start’s work in the local area. If you’re already on Strava, why not come and join the HSRBSC club? It’s called “Giving Tuesdays” as it’s part of our lockdown campaign, Giving Tuesdays. Every Tuesday between 7th April and 1st December, we’ll be posting new activities for everyone to take part in on our Home-Start website. The Strava Club is part of this campaign. We’re hoping to see lots of activity from our supporters on the page, so come along and join in! If you’re not already a Strava user, why not sign up? It’s free to use and a really great way to track your fitness, make new friends among our supporters, and connect with other people in the area.

You can create virtual challenges for yourself – and others – and all we’re asking is that you donate to Home-Start every time you achieve a personal goal. What could be simpler? If you’d like to know more, you can hop, skip and jump along to our website and click on the Fitness Challenge link: https://www.hsrsc.org.uk/week4-fitness-challenge/ Or, if you’d like to join the Home-Start club on Strava, head over to our club page: https://www.strava. com/clubs/637391 Hopefully, we’ll see you there! The Home-Start Team

Buy a Coffee and Save Home‑Start One of the things that COVID-19 has really made me take notice of is my ‘usual habits’ – the things I do daily that are simply part of my routine. Things like buying myself a posh cup of coffee on the way to work. I’m a massive fan of a coconut milk latte – extra-large, extra hot – it’s a small luxury that makes my day better. I’m sure many of you have a similar activity. And we’ve had to stop. It turns out it’s the loss of small luxuries that have really made me think about the current situation, and how much I take for granted. Here at Home-Start we work with families who are finding every day a struggle: mental, emotional and physical problems that make life hard. During the lockdown, we are asking local people to donate the cost of one of those luxurious coffees to help keep Home-Start’s services running, so that we can be there for the people who need us most. To donate the cost of a cup of coffee, text HOMESTARTCUPPA to 70085 for a one-off £3 donation. Or, you can set up a monthly donation of £3 by texting SAVEHOMESTART to 70085 And you can email us: admin@hsrsc.org.uk for more information. If you do sign up to donate via text message, you will automatically be added to our mailing list for future newsletters. If you would prefer not to receive further information from Home-Start, please use the code HOMESTARTCUPPANOINFO to 70085 or SAVEHOMESTARTNOINFO to 70085. Your contact preferences can be changed at any time – just let us know! Thank you so much The Home-Start Team

melbournmagazine@gmail.com

The appearance of the next article in our series ‘Walks In or Around Melbourn’ has been deferred. In present COVID-19 conditions, and with the closure of all National Trust properties, it was thought inappropriate to go ahead with an article featuring the several walks available at the Trust’s nearby Wimpole Estate. Hugh Pollock

Home‑Start’s Giving Tuesday Campaign for Lockdown Here at Home-Start, we recognise the pressure that the COVID-19 situation puts on everyone: it’s hard sharing limited physical space with people, even the ones you love, and the emotional and psychological effects of the lockdown will be felt for a long time to come. And so, we have launched our ‘Giving Tuesdays’ campaign: every Tuesday between 7th April and 1st December we’ll be offering a new activity for you to try. Some will be free to access – our gift to you! Others will be paid-for activities, which will form part of our fundraising effort. We’ll use your donations to keep HomeStart running, so that we can continue to offer support to local families who are finding life a struggle. There are lots of different activities coming up, some aimed at children, some at adults, and some at the whole family. Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages – you’ll find lots of information about the activities there, as well as on our website. Maybe you’d like to try your hand at some of our Easter recipes, which went out this week? Russian Kulich bread, for example, or sugared primroses from the garden. Please send us pictures of anything you make – we’d love to know how you get on! Find out more at: https://www.hsrsc.org.uk/ Check out our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hsrsc.org.uk/ On our Twitter Feed https://twitter.com/HomeStartRSC Week 3 – Scavenger Hunt

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Arthur Rank Hospice Charity issues SOS!! Cambridgeshire’s only adult Hospice has issued an urgent ‘SOS!! Support Our Services’ appeal in response to the devastating impact COVID-19 has had on the Charity’s ability to fundraise for its vital services this year. The Hospice provides care and support services to patients with an advanced serious illness or a life-limiting condition, and provides end-of-life care, typically to people who are in the last two weeks of their life. In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, the Hospice has had to reduce many of its services to protect the safety of its patients whilst simultaneously refocusing on the core healthcare needs of the County. In just one month (from February to March 2020), demand for the care that the Charity provides within people’s homes (observing strict infection control procedures) has increased, as seen in the 61% increase in the number of referrals to the Hospice at Home night service. Calls to the Hospice have also increased, as demonstrated in the 27.5% increase in the length of time spent on triage calls by the Arthur Rank Community Team. Despite the difficult circumstances, in March the Inpatient Unit still provided care to 27 patients with complex end of life needs, alongside 19 patients in nurse-led beds. Strict restrictions have had to be introduced for visitors to the Inpatient Unit and care staff across all services are struggling with the harsh reality of not being able to offer a comforting hug, or a hand to hold, to family members and their loved ones, at moments of heart-breaking loss.

Some of the Hospice’s front-line care team, from the Inpatient Unit at Shelford

The Hospice’s Voluntary Services team’s newly launched ‘Caring Communities’ scheme has moved to offering their services over the phone, and have additionally introduced a new telephone befriender role to support Arthur Rank Hospice patients at risk of loneliness and isolation. Retired staff, GPs and student Doctors have volunteered for clinical roles and administrative and fundraising staff have been redeployed to further support clinical teams. Local businesses have rallied around the Hospice, donating essential items such as PPE for clinical colleagues and Vital 24-hour care is still being delivered from the Cambridge Hospice, the Alan Hudson Day Treatment Centre in Wisbech and in people’s own homes across the County by the Arthur Rank Community Team.

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iPads for patients enabling them to communicate with loved ones. The clinical team are working closely with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Commissioning Group (CCG), Addenbrooke’s Hospital and social care networks to ensure the Hospice is doing everything it can to support the healthcare needs of the wider Cambridgeshire population. None of what is happening now would be possible without the dedication, commitment and generosity of the local community, who passionately support the Hospice to fundraise £3.98 million each year, which together with the contracted funding from the CCG enables it to deliver its full range of services. Initial financial forecasts have identified that the Hospice will lose at least £700,000 of potential income over the next six months. This is due to scores of fundraising events and personal challenges having to be cancelled; the closure of the Hospice’s charity shops and Bistro; and the cancellation of training and conference events which were due to take place in its Education and Conference Centre. Sharon Allen, CEO adds: “The adverse circumstances in which we find ourselves seem to change hour by hour, whilst the admiration I have for each of my colleagues grows every day, as they constantly adjust, evolve and innovate. We need to ensure that we can carry on delivering essential care and services now, whilst also ensuring that services remain sustainable into the future. We truly hope that the people of Cambridgeshire will answer our SOS!! To find out more about, or donate to, Arthur Rank Hospice Charity’s ‘SOS!! Support Our Services’ appeal, please visit arhc.org.uk/sos

Melbourn Fete 2020 It is with great regret that this year’s fete has been postponed. The committee had to make a decision at the early stage of the lockdown to minimise the financial impact of cancellation, as we were becoming liable to increasing upfront costs. We have been very fortunate that many of our sponsors have generously not asked for a refund; this means that all of our committed expenses are covered, with some funds left to help with possible events later on in the year. The provisional plan is to delay the fete until June 2021; the date has yet to be confirmed. It was a very sad decision to take and we look forward to a very special fete next year. On alternative years with the fete, ‘Open Gardens’ is organised by the fete committee. The event is held in September; if circumstances allow and restrictions are

www.melbourncambridge.co.uk

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We hope to see our dinosaur suits in action during our fete next year.

lifted, we might be holding Open Gardens this year. It is likely the event will be organised at short notice as restrictions are amended, so please keep an eye out on social media for details. In addition, we also organise ‘Turn on to Christmas’ in conjunction with the Hub in early December, when we switch on the festive lights. Again, this event could still be affected by the continuing Covid 19 restrictions so we will keep you updated. To the volunteers, sponsors and participants of the fete, we thank you for your continued support. If you would like to help us with any of our events then please contact us through Facebook or our recently changed website: www.melbournfete.com The dinosaur suits in the photo were going to be a key part in a new and fun arena activity this year. They will return in 2021, in the meantime we wish you all a continued safe and healthy 2020. Finally, the stunning artwork on the cover is from Kay Morland who is one of the Fete committee members. The Fete Committee

District and County Councillor Report Like everyone, our councils are immersed in responding to the pandemic and trying to gauge the future: finding support for residents and local businesses, lobbying for further government support, and exploring how to

reintroduce paused services and how to cope with the universally predicted recession. Like so many people, council officers have been working at home, often juggling home schooling and child care. Government Covid-19 grant to local government: Specific allocations to County and District Councils have now been published. The principle of allocation is two-thirds to counties and one-third to districts. There’s concern that sums fall short of what’s needed to compensate for Covid-19 costs and losses, but discussions and lobbying are ongoing. Business Support: South Cambs District Council has been very active receiving applications for and dispensing the Government’s business support grants. At the time of writing, over 80% of South Cambs businesses eligible to receive applicable government aid had been paid out by SCDC – this compares very favourably with neighbouring councils and national performance. Your district councillors have been active in contacting those businesses in the Melbourn Ward which had not yet made an application, to encourage them to apply. Please do contact Philippa or Jose with any queries or concerns. Green Bins: Our Waste Service has reintroduced green bin collections, with Meldreth’s green bins collected on May 5. The service is still affected by staff being off work due to self-isolation but it is hoped that green bins will be collected at least monthly from now on. The council will publish on its website guaranteed green bin collection dates. Recycling centres: These reopened in the week of May 11, on social distancing protocols and with a request to restrict visits to ‘if absolutely necessary’. Care homes and care settings: Our area has a number of care homes and at-home care schemes which serve the wider community. We’ve been keeping in contact with them all to find out what, if anything, our local support groups can do to for them. We’re also in regular contact with our County Adult Social Care and Public Health officers and our District Housing officers, who are directly involved in organizing support. The national picture of concern around PPE and testing in care home settings has not escaped Cambridgeshire. The County Council publishes a series of ‘County Covid-19 Emergency Reports’ every Monday, which provide an insight into how all aspects of the council’s work is impacted by and responding to the pandemic. The link is hard to find – search Meetings, Committees, Agendas, General Purposes Committee – but please contact Susan if you’d like her to send it directly! https://cambridgeshire.cmis.uk.com/ ccc_live/Committees/tabid/62/ctl/ViewCMIS_ CommitteeDetails/mid/381/id/60/Default.aspx melbournmagazine@gmail.com

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us at any time, with any question or concern. Philippa Hart and Jose Hales, District Councillors Susan van de Ven, County Councillor

Cambridge Open Studios Cambridge Open Studios take part in nationwide #OpenWindows2020 to share their #COSart2020 this July. Although the dreaded Covid-19 virus has seen an end to this year’s annual art extravaganza we’ve grown to love, all is not lost. A group of budding members have stepped up to the mark and are in the middle of organising a treasure trail of art for the public to enjoy whilst out on their daily walks. #Openwindows2020 is a national campaign that is celebrating art in its many forms, displayed in as the name would suggest, a window or perhaps front garden. For all 4 weekends of July, artists will display their artwork for local residents to enjoy. WHY? – As chief organiser Kate Green explains, “It’s a way that we as a group of artists can invest into our community at this extraordinary time. We hope it will help to keep Cambridge Open Studios on people’s radar, whilst promoting creativity and the art businesses, as well as giving the artists something positive to work towards.” WHEN? – the original COS weekends: July 4th/5th, 11th/12th, 18th/19th, 25th/26th inclusively.

HOW? A treasure trail map will be created with spots to indicate the location of participating artists. The map will be available to download from the Cambridge Open Studios website at the beginning of June here camopenstudios.co.uk/open-windows Usually, the details of each artist and their work is available in advance. However, participating artists will decorate their houses with the Cambridge Open Studios yellow flag and it will become an art treasure hunt for the local neighbourhood. Each participating artist will display their name and the Cambridge Open Studios website address alongside their art in their window (each artist has their own page on this website) so people can find out more about each artist they have visited. If the lockdown is still in place, we will encourage people to adhere to social distancing rules and remind them to only travel locally as part of their daily exercise. There are actually a handful of artist members who have already been doing this independently, to various degrees, since the lockdown began. We now have 100+ artists signed up to take part in this initiative during the month of July. We look forward to bringing you #COSart2020 this July. More information can be found at: camopenstudios. co.uk/open-windows from 1st June. Jo Riches Mob. 07854 210837

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The Hall For All All Saints Community Hall News Well, of course, there isn’t any really. Poor old Hall, standing there empty it must wonder what it has done to offend us! But we have taken the opportunity of this enforced break to ask our wonderful team of cleaners to give the Hall a good, Deep Clean. As you may have read, the interior was redecorated just after Christmas (already that seems aeons away) but Gay and her team have now cleaned the oven, defrosted the refrigerators, sanitised every possible surface and cleaned windows etc so that when we are able to bring it out of mothballs, so to speak, the Hall will be squeaky clean for us. Also, we are pursuing the installation of hand sanitisers although of course that, along with our plans to install a defibrillator, will be on hold for the time being.

After consultation, it was agreed that Gay should dispose of various items of food left in the cupboards so when we do finally restart Coffee Stop and Melbourn Pop Up Cinema and all the lovely activities which take place in the Hall everything will start again from scratch. We have also disposed of the items of lost property which had not been claimed – it is amazing how often a child’s jacket would hang around in the cloakroom for weeks and nobody come to look for it, and water flasks were abandoned almost every day! Needless to say, the Hall is closed until further notice but the regular users may rest assured that their fixed days and times will be honoured. The cleaners are going in twice a week to flush loos and check that everything is OK. We are so looking forward to getting back to ‘normal’. Best wishes from Kimmi, Brenda, Cyndy, Jacey, Gaynor and all the team. Keep safe and well, everyone. Mavis Howard

Changing attitudes by education

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What makes an advanced driver/ rider? A simple question but the answer has many facets. The ability to honestly self-assess their own driving/ riding performance accurately and learn from experience is the most important skill of all. In order to drive safely you have to gain information about what is happening, or likely to happen, around you. An advanced driver/rider is proactive rather than reactive. The primary source of information is from observation which requires the driver/rider to be constantly scanning, assessing the risks attached to what is seen (or not seen) and forming a plan to manage that risk. As the risk changes so does the plan. When a driver/rider starts to work with a Tutor it can all seem rather daunting but as the tutoring progresses it becomes easier and more natural. An experienced advanced driver will be forming and revising plans in fractions of a second whereas a less experienced driver/rider may take seconds or not see the risk at all. A well-known ex-police driving instructor and examiner has nine other (main) principles of advanced driving:

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amount of assertiveness; • An ability to remove emotion from driving; • An active (but not overactive) imagination; • Sustained concentration; • Planning; • Smoothness with the controls; • Accuracy; • Mechanical sympathy; • Feel. However, with all the above in mind, driving should be an enjoyable experience for the driver and passengers. Advanced driving has this image of promoting safe, serious and sensible driving but it can also be enjoyable, challenging and spirited especially if you have acquired the necessary skills. An advanced driver will also adjust their driving style to the type of vehicle being driven and the type of journey being undertaken. For a very low annual membership fee and no tuition charges, RoADARC’s Tutors will help you improve your existing skills and learn new ones, if that is required. Visit our website at www.roadarc.org.uk for further information.

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Luxury new care home opens in Melbourn Melbourn Springs, Barchester Healthcare’s luxury new care home in Melbourn, has officially opened, and staff raised a glass to celebrate the occasion. It took 130,000 bricks and 45,000 concrete blocks to create the three-storey home, which is part of the new housing development on Hyacinth Drive. Preparations are already under way to welcome the first 10 residents, with Melbourn Springs playing a key role in supporting the health care needs of the region at this time. Staff are trained to deliver a premium caring experience, offering personalised residential, dementia, and respite care, in a beautiful and comfortable setting. Designed with our residents in mind, and fitted by Barchester’s expert interior designers, the home is finished with contemporary decoration and state of the art facilities. It features a café, cinema, spa bathrooms, a choice of lounges and dining rooms, with garden access or terraces, Wi-Fi throughout, and an in-house hair and beauty salon. Bedrooms come fitted with smart TV’s and en-suite bathrooms as standard, and ground floor rooms have direct access to our landscaped gardens. The home also has 338 solar panels, making it one of the greenest energy-efficient buildings in the local area. In light of the current situation, whilst Barchester homes are temporarily closed to visitors to keep staff and

residents safe, our varied life-enrichment programme includes ways for our residents to stay in contact with relatives digitally, such as Skype calls. We are making sure that all our efforts are focused on creating an enjoyable environment, guaranteeing that there will be plenty of daily activities on offer for all tastes and abilities, whilst ensuring that the group activities are smaller, adhering to social distancing advice. In every aspect of daily life at Melbourn Springs, we aim to offer independence, dignity and choice. Residents can enjoy a varied daily menu of nutritious home-cooked meals, and freshly baked cakes and goods from the café. Alternative menus are also on offer and our chefs are happy to cater for all allergies and intolerances. The home is also complete with dedicated facilities

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for those living with dementia. These include a life-skills kitchen, to help maintain activities of daily living, and a ‘Magic Table’, an interactive, multi-sensory projector, which increases physical and social interaction, as well as, most importantly, allowing residents to have a bit of fun. The team have been overwhelmed by the positive response from all the neighbours and local businesses, and are looking forward to hosting regular events once restrictions for visitors are lifted. General Manager Karen Allen said, “What a very special moment for all of us here at Melbourn Springs –the home is absolutely stunning! I feel very privileged to be have been part of this amazing project, and look forward to being able to throw the doors open for everyone to see as soon as it is safe to do so.” Home Services Advisor Dan Amis, who has been working hard to establish the home as a key part of the local community, said: “I really can’t believe that we have reached this milestone, and our beautiful home is now open. It really doesn’t matter that we couldn’t have a big event – the most important thing is being able to support our vulnerable loved ones who are struggling at home, and looking to us for support and care during these unprecedented times!” We are playing our part in the wider care sector and supporting the NHS where possible. We are currently still taking admissions into our care home for those that need care in the next 4 weeks, so please do give us a call on 01763 722732 if you are looking for care or need any further help. The expert team at Melbourn Springs Care Home is here to support you and your loved ones – call us anytime for friendly advice, to discuss care options and the services available, or to arrange a tour of the home by video call. To find out more please check out their website: barchester.com/MelbournSprings For more information please contact Dan Amis, Home Services Advisor at Melbourn Springs Care Home on Daniel.Amis@barchester.com or call 07435 692018.

An Apple a Day at new Melbourn Care Home Prior to the opening of the new Care Home, Melbourn Springs ran a competition to find four names for its four living communities. The successful winner was Lynn Travis of Cambridge Road and in February, Lynn was presented with a £250 cheque for the local charity of her choice. There were a high number of entries to

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choose the community names but Lynn based her choices very much on local history and tradition. She said, “As Melbourn was famous for all its fruit picking and beautiful orchards there could only be one choice for me – apples. The communities are named Ashmead, Bramley, Crispin, Elstar and Braeburn.” Melbourn Springs General Manager, Karen Allen said, “We have been overwhelmed by the support from the local community since we arrived in Hyacinth Drive. As the home is named after the springs at the Bury and there is a nod to Duxford in the home design it seemed the perfect fit to select Lynn’s choice as we honour Melbourn’s agricultural history in our beautiful new home.” As her prize Lynn received a £250 cheque that she will donate to Melbourn Area Youth Development. This organisation offers Youth Club Services as a unique collaborative project between Melbourn, Meldreth, Fowlmere and Shepreth Parish Councils, providing young people with life skills, counselling and fun activities that support independence and well-being. The home’s marketing suite had become a community meeting point with many groups and organisations from Melbourn and surrounding villages being welcomed there for events and regular meetings. Home Services Advisor Dan Amis said: “Community engagement is an essential part of how we integrate our residents into their new home and help them get to know the neighbours around them as well as keep in touch with the people they have always known. Our doors will be open to all – Melbourn Springs will be a home just like any other in the village and everyone is welcome.” Charity cheque presentation at Melbourn Springs General Manager – Karen Allen, Lynn Travis and Home Services Advisor – Dan Amis

CPSL Mind’s Good Life Sipping on a cup of tea, John Willcock is chatting candidly about his experiences of mental health challenges, grief and suicidal thoughts – “I didn’t talk about it for years,” he says. The irony is that talkng has now helped transform John’s life, and he does a lot of it here at the Good Mood Cafe in Wisbech – one of many cafe sessions across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough run by local mental health charity, CPSL Mind. These weekly, 90-minute community cafes are a fantastic place for individuals to connect with other like-minded people. “When I first heard about the cafes I thought, ‘Hmm… I might pop along,’ but I decided to give it a go,” John recounts. “The first week I came I was really quiet, sussing people out, but it’s great.’’ “It’s a safe space with good company, where everyone can discuss whatever’s on their mind without fear of judgement. A lot of us share the same sort of mental health issues, so we can all find common ground, but it’s also nice to come and chat about things that are nothing to do with mental health.”

Despite living over 15 miles away from the Good Mood Cafe he attends in Wisbech, John is now a regular. “A few of us actually see each other outside of the cafe, but I love popping along,” he smiles. “Talking is so important. I wish I’d opened up about my issues sooner.” Tracey O’Donoghue, the cafe’s facilitator at CPSL Mind, highlights the importance of the cafes. “Isolation is big factor in affecting someone’s mental health. Getting people to the cafe to connect is a big thing – we know that feeling part of a community can really help wellbeing.” Stuart Stretch is another regular here – although by his own admission, it took him a while to pluck up the courage to come along. “After I heard about the Good Mood Cafes, for the first few weeks I just walked past and scoped it out – I didn’t even come in!” he laughs. “But I’m really glad I did. It’s great to get out and talk to people.” The Good Mood Cafes are just part of CPSL Mind’s Good Life Service, which offers community-based wellbeing support for adults living in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The charity’s Open Door calm spaces offer people both tranquillity and self-help techniques, while Peer Support Groups are run to bring together individuals with others who also have lived experience to share advice and support. There’s little doubt that all three services offer a vital link to the outside world for those who need it.

Weekly meet-ups across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

Come along to connect with like-minded people in your community supporting wellbeing and sharing interests and skills. Find your local Good Mood Cafe today: cpslmind.org.uk/goodlife/good-mood-cafes 0300 303 4363

Reg Charity Number 265087

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“For some people, a Good Mood Cafe might be the only time they get out of the house all week,” says Tracey, “but we don’t just focus on mental health. It’s all general chit-chat, and for a lot of people, the start of them getting back on the road to being well. We’ve had people at the cafes who’ve told us that after coming here, they’ve plucked up the courage to chat to the person behind the till in the supermarket, or talked to their neighbour for the first time in years. These things can be a massive step.” John and Stuart are proof that it works and now John’s also got his eye on becoming a CPSL Mind facilitator just like Tracey. “I’ve been in a good place for a few years, and now I just want to help people wherever I can,” he says, taking another sip of tea. “Talking is so important. I wish I’d opened up sooner.” For more information about CPSL Mind’s Good Life Service, visit www.cpslmind.org.uk/goodlife Your nearest Good Mood Café is held at the Bookmark Café at The Hub, 30 High Street, Melbourn, SG8 6DZ on Fridays 2-2.30pm weekly. The Open Door Calm Space is also held at The Hub on Tuesdays 2–2.30pm weekly. If you are experiencing an emotional or mental health crisis, there are people who can help you. People living in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough can access mental health support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year via the NHS First Response Service by calling 111 and selecting option 2. People outside of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough are encouraged to call the Samaritans on 116 123. This is also a 24 hours a day, 365 days a year helpline. Further support can be found here: www.cpslmind.org. uk/need-help-now/

RIVER River oh river how quiet you flow, down to the waterfalls, where little birds go, onto the trees where they nest, they go to the river to drink from the flow. by Lila aged 7

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Travelogue

Travelling the Himalayas Travelling the Chinese stretch of the silk road: saddling up in Xi’an Over a number of articles I have introduced you to the societies living on the Southern borders of China along the Himalayas. Now I’m going to describe my trips North of the Tibetan plateau: the ancient “silk” roads. From very ancient times these linked travellers and merchants between China and Persia, stretching for 6,400 km and eventually reaching Europe. There was not one road but a series of trails across very difficult terrain which were used mainly by caravans of camels, although horses were also used. It got its name from the silk traded in significant quantities starting around 207 BCE. As well as trade, it was an important conduit for ideas, religions and technologies (e.g. paper making and gunpowder). Marco Polo used it in the 13th century and it continued to be used until the 18th century. Some of the routes are now followed by modern roads, but not through the most inaccessible desert stretches. It has now been reinvigorated by the Chinese

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Famen Buddah Relic Monument

government ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, which has become a slogan encompassing a wide range of activities and the title of several conferences I have attended. These East West routes linked into North South routes and enabled trade to flow to the Himalayan societies that I have previously described. I was lucky to have an excellent Uighur guide. He was expert at showing me unusual archaeological and religious sites and finding restaurants with excellent local cuisine. Despite being a strict Muslim, often not eating with me because the restaurant was not strict enough in its food preparation, he enjoyed a beer and a chat back at the hotel. Uighurs are a Turkic people living in this region that became Islamised starting in the 10th century CE. The men are clearly identified by their long beards and distinctive white caps. I am distressed to hear about their recent oppression by the Chinese government and hope that the situation will ease in the near future. I started from the ancient capital of China: Xi’an. This would also have been the starting point for the most eastern merchants, where they would have acquired their animals and guides and planned their journey.

There is evidence of human habitation in this area from very ancient times. The Lantian Man, which dates back to at least 500,000 years BCE, was discovered nearby and a 6,500-year-old Neolithic village was also excavated in the vicinity. Xi’an was the Chinese capital from the 11th century BCE to 770 BCE and then from 202 BCE to 904 CE. In 200 BCE, the Weiyang Palace was built, reputed to be the largest palace ever built on Earth. In the late 6th century CE Xi’an is said to have been the largest city in the world. The famous, and very impressive, terracotta warrior grave site, three vast pits full of individually sculpted warrior figures and horses with chariots, is located nearby (2nd century BCE). We also visited the Famen Temple site, about 120 kilometres west of Xi’an. This has an ancient pagoda (the first possibly dating back to the second century BCE) but also a massive modern stupa (the height of a 35-storey building – 148 metres) indicating the significant sponsorship of Buddhism by rich Chinese even in a ‘socialist’ state. It is claimed that there are Buddha relics in the stupa. Interestingly the city was captured by the Tibetans in 763 CE and held for several years. Obviously, this does not appear in official Chinese history accounts in China! It was also home to Nestorian Christians as recorded on the stele erected in 781 CE that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. My next stop was Yinchuan, which was the capital of the Tangut (Western Xia) empire and where their impressive tombs are situated. The Tanguts controlled an empire of 310,000 sq. miles from 1038 to 1227

CE, stretching into Mongolia along the Hexi (Gansu) corridor, an eastern stretch of the silk road. This fertile corridor is essentially a stretch of oases between Tibet to the South and the Gobi Desert to the North and where the first cultivated grain appeared in China. The Tanguts established their empire through effective military power, even using cannon on the backs of camels! They were a culturally rich civilisation producing some of the early Tibetan style block printing. Their lifestyle is depicted in the important Buddhist religious caves at Dunhuang (which I will deal with in more detail in a later article). Yinchuan was the capital until it was destroyed by the Genghis Khan Mongols on their passage west (eventually reaching Europe) in 1227. The city was totally destroyed and the imperial tombs looted, leaving very little evidence of the Tangut empire. Nearby are the Mt. Helan rock carvings, several tens of thousands, possibly dating back 10,000 years, along a possible forerunner of the silk road between the nomadic northern inhabitants and the agriculturalists to the South. Animal depictions include deer, sheep, tigers and birds. Some pictograms may have been astronomical. Later the area became important for shamanic rituals. To the south, small sections of the Great Wall are still visible. On a separate trip, I visited the second most important city of the Tanguts, also destroyed by the Mongols and then inhabited by them and then the Ming: KharaKhoto, founded in 1032 CE. Possibly because of a water shortage it was abandoned, so the boundary of the site is in a good state and the floor is scattered with ancient

Main routes of the Silk Road

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pottery fragments. The original archaeological investigation discovered about 3,500 paintings and other objects including documents which are in Russia (where I have seen them at the Hermitage museum). This was not directly on the silk road and involved a day long train ride from the capital of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot, across grasslands and then a largely desert landscape inhabited by horses and camels. There is an account of a visit to this town (then Edzina) by Marco Polo in the 13th century when under the control of the Mongols. When I went to buy bus tickets for my journey to Tibet I was surprised to find myself escorted to the police station and sat, rather worried, in front of the cell bars while the policemen watched Chinese soap operas on the TV. This was until the international affairs representative arrived on her motorcycle a couple of hours later. Unfortunately, the students who were my guides had failed to get the necessary permits. After some negotiation, we were allowed to stay, but on the payment of a “fine” (probably a bribe). However, the story had a positive ending as later that evening I was introduced to the local cultural affairs officer, who was horrified at the behaviour of the international affairs representative and made some phone calls to senior officials and the idea of the “fine” disappeared. The near arrest was well worthwhile as the archaeological site ancient city was stunning. We approached across the desert (it is some distance from the modern town, Edjina) and gradually the stark white Buddhist stupas surrounding the remains emerged out of the desert dust. There was also an impressive, bio-diverse, lake area nearby. Possibly this was the result of the river being diverted to cut off the water supply when the Mongol city was captured by the Ming dynasty (Han) Chinese in 1372. When I took the overnight bus South to Xining we realised the reason for the official’s concern. The route goes straight through the main Chinese missile testing area! From Xining, I went onto Langzhou; our next stop on the silk road. So, I have now reached the limit for this article and we have hardly started on the journey. Just like the actual silk road travellers, I will traverse varied landscapes and cultures and possibly take the duration of a medieval round trip (two years) before we reach our final destination. Bruce Huett melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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MVC EDUCATION

Little Hands Karen

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Melbourn Playgroup and Out of School Club It is all change for us at Melbourn Playgroup and Out of School Club. We (Claire Armstrong and Jennie Riggs) were delighted to be appointed as Joint Managers of the Playgroup, whilst Nikki Cross and Natalie Youdan were appointed as Joint Managers of MOOS (our After-School Club). We are pleased that Gill Collingbourne remains as our Business Manager. We also have a growing, amazing team of staff who support and help us. It has been a busy start to the year settling into our new positions. We have spent time getting to know our roles and making plans to improve the setting. On January 10th we had an Ofsted inspection and we were extremely pleased to receive an outstanding rating in all areas. This has supported our feeling that we are moving in the right direction, although we are still striving to make sure the children get the best care we can provide. This couldn’t be achieved without the fantastic team we have working for us, so we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of them for their hard work and dedication. Our report is available to read here: https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50144148 We are pleased to announce that we have a new website and logo too. We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to Kieron Baker at ‘Colossal Motion’ for creating these for us. We are really pleased with them, so please go and have a look! www.melbournplaygroup.co.uk/ We have been improving our outside area and it is looking fab. We have recently purchased some all-in-one waterproofs, courtesy of the Parish Council, so we can now learn and play in all weathers. We have some new planters in which we are hoping to give the children the opportunity to grow their own vegetables and flowers. We have already filled one with a variety of herbs such as rosemary, thyme and sage so that the children can explore the different scents and smells. We have enjoyed lots of activities this year including a visit from Wiggles the dog, a Chinese workshop where melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, sg8 6dx - 01763 261000 - www.ESSE.uk.com

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club is open to children at Melbourn Primary School and Playgroup and also to children from outside of Melbourn. If you are interested in booking a place at our holiday clubs or want further info please contact us – moos@melbournplaygroup.org.uk or telephone us on 01763 223459.

Bumpkins Nursery Supporting all Local Key Workers – doing our bit for the community we learned about Chinese New Year and learnt some Mandarin words and we sang our Christmas songs to the lunch club at The Hub.

We love people coming to visit us. If you feel that you have an interesting job or hobby or something you would like to share with the children please contact us. MOOS continues to be a busy and fun environment for the children aged between 4 and 11 to come to. They enjoy lots of freely chosen, self-directed play along with various craft and creative work. They particularly enjoy loom bands and junk modelling. We use our outside space whenever the weather allows, enjoying team games as well as dance routines and imaginative play. It is always a lovely experience to see children socialising, playing and growing during their time with us at MOOS. We are so grateful to our fantastic, caring and engaging team who work with us to ensure the club is the best it can be. We will be running our holiday club during school holidays. Dates can be seen on our website. The holiday

Whilst we may have had a lot less children during lockdown, Bumpkins Nursery has been open all the way through for local key-working parents who need childcare. We have missed seeing so many of our little ones during this time, but are keeping in touch with the families by email, Facebook and Instagram. We have enjoyed sharing activities and ideas to keep the little ones entertained and are full of admiration for all our families who have been juggling working from home alongside caring for their children. Feel free to take a look at our website to get some useful ideas on activities you can be doing from home: www.bumpkinsnursery.co.uk At nursery, we have enjoyed our normal Bumpkins days and taken full advantage of this glorious weather to enjoy days out in our garden, walks down the field and picnics in the sunshine. Our rabbits and chickens have also been well cared for during this time by all the children. We have been supported by our local food suppliers who have ensured we have had lots of fresh food for the children in our care. So, a huge thank you to the butchery department at Bury Lane and Hill View Farm Shop for keeping us fed! To support the parents who were in lockdown we took the decision to not charge anyone during this time if they were not using our services at Bumpkins. We believe that we are all in this together and have to do everything we can to support all our local families, many of whom are facing financial difficulties. Looking to getting back to normal times we can’t wait to see everyone again, and as Bumpkins was 20 years old at the beginning of April a celebration party is high on our To Do list, just as soon as we are able! If you need our help we are open 7.30 am – 6.30 pm, caring for babies and pre-school children on a working farm and at our pre-school in Whaddon. www.bumpkinsnursery.co.uk 01223 208777

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Profile Tom Sparke

Alias Captain Fishbeard Anyone reading this who has children at the Primary School will probably know immediately who Captain Fishbeard is! Others may know him as Tom Sparke, respectable Investment Manager for GDIM in Cambridge. Either way, he is quite a character. I was alerted to the presence of Captain Fishbeard in our village by a small article in the Royston Crow. This outlined how the cartoon character was using the internet to amuse children cooped up at home during the Corona Virus Lockdown. Intrigued, I asked my friend Jacey who has young children if she had heard of him. Not only heard of him, but he is a near neighbour she replied. Bingo. So duly appraised of his details I made contact and arranged to do a telephone profile for this extraordinary edition of the magazine. I have done dozens of these profiles over the years, but none so difficult as one where you could not meet and study your subject! Anyway, here goes. Tom was born in 1981 in Cambridge, a young brother for his sister Sammi, who is now a photographer. He spent his early years in St. Neots with his businessman father and probation officer mother. Studying Psychology in Bradford he met his wife Lucy and they got married in 2010; by this time they were living in Haslingfield, then in 2014 they moved into Melbourn. They have two daughters aged 7 and 5 – Alana, who had the distinction of being amongst the first babies to be born in the new Rosie suite, and Etta. They both attend Melbourn Primary School and are keen

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members of the Brownies and Rainbows. Both girls have very fertile imaginations and frequently give him advice on his storylines. So yes, Captain Fishbeard. I was surprised when I went on to Youtube to see that Tom does, in fact, have a beard himself so perhaps the character is autobiographical? From early childhood Tom was always drawing, never happier than when he had pencil and paper in his hands. Growing up he dabbled in watercolours and oils but always returned to a simple pencil or pen and paper. He has published numerous books including Captain Fishbeard volumes 1 and 2 and Brollo (predictably about an umbrella) beautifully illustrated in full colour and available online. When the schools closed before Easter he realised that there was an urgent need to keep young minds focused and he has been turning out Youtube drawing tutorials for young children at a ferocious rate. Having spent many hours drawing with his own children and encouraging them to pick up a pencil and draw, he wanted to reach out to other children stranded at home without access to their friends. He releases a new video every Tuesday and Friday and they must be a Godsend to young mothers coping with cooped up children. We all know how much young children enjoy drawing; give a child crayons and paper (don’t let them get near a wall!) and off they go. Thousands of grandmothers like me have tea towels printed with little William’s rendition of himself or Mummy and Daddy and we proudly look at the stick arms and legs and hedgehog hair. Christmas cards also frequently feature children’s drawings so why is it that so many of us lose the urge to express ourselves on paper as we grow older? Do we become overcritical about our skill? Certainly Alana and Etta will never stop drawing. They have both inherited their father’s fascination with pen and paper and their fertile imaginations

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constantly lead them to suggest outrageous story lines for Tom’s characters. If you have young children, or grandchildren, I urge you to look at Tom’s videos – they are short and sweet and vary from comic strips to pencil and paper games and learning tutorials. Does anyone have an entry into the BBC because I am jolly sure that CBeebies would snap him up. What a treasure. With his job, a house and garden to maintain, his flow of creative drawing and two small children to amuse, Tom does not have much time for hobbies, but he does enjoy running and of course, whilst he runs, he is thinking up new ideas for his rotund, bearded character. I so enjoyed talking to him, though I would much have preferred being in his studio and poking through his sketchbooks – but these are odd times and we have had to make do with a socially distanced interview. I hope it has given you a peep into his cartoon world. Mavis Howard

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Nature Fowlmere RSPB Nature Reserve With continued rain at the start of 2020 the mere and water all around the reserve were back to normal levels, which has brought in numerous birds and wildlife. In this article, local birder Ade Cooper sets out his diary for the months of January, February, andÂ March.

January 2020 The year began with mild, settled weather which meant few birds were in evidence. Herring Gulls were seen flying over and Mallards, Teals displaying and a male Shoveler were on the mere. Over the month the waterfowl on the mere gradually increased, with Little Grebes, Coots and Greylag Geese arriving and a female Shoveler coming to join the male, giving hope that we might have a nesting pair this year. Highlights of the early part of the month were a sighting of a Gadwall and a fine-looking drake Wigeon. We only had one record of Wigeon last year, so pleased to see that so early on! Teal at the front, Gadwall rear left and Wigeon rear right

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Tufted Ducks on the mere

The Barn Owls were also seen flying at dusk one day, and several sightings of one, sometimes two, Woodcock flying overhead. Later in the month we saw the first Tufted Ducks of the year on the mere (3 birds), and a pair of Wigeons, the latter asleep alongside the pair of Shovelers. Another Coot had returned, making 4 birds in all. Singles of Woodcock and Snipe were seen on the 20th. Not many species were using the reserve to roost, but 68 Fieldfares noted on the 24th was the

Female Mallard

Goldfinch

highest count this month. Also roosting on the same day were 31 Magpies. A surprising sight was a Kingfisher flying off up the Shep. These are normally seen earlier in January but the species has not been spending much time on the reserve recently. At the end of the month a survey recorded

38Â species altogether. Small numbers of many common species: Blue Tits, Great Tits, Robins, Blackbirds, Wrens, Goldcrests, Song Thrushes, Goldfinches, Chaffinches, Bullfinches and Moorhens were noted. There were also 2 Mistle Thrushes and 1 Redwing. Long-Tailed Tits fared better with 26 in three flocks, and Fieldfares, Jackdaws, Rooks, Magpies and Woodpigeons were all seen in large numbers. The male and female Shovelers were still on the mere, and the 2 Woodcocks were still in evidence.

Below: Nesting Coots. Bottom: Gold and Chaffinch feeding on the path

Bullfinches

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Egyptian Goose heading south east

The early part of the month gave a few beautiful days for walking around the reserve, and a repeat of the survey at this time showed an increase in the total number of species seen to 51. The early morning birdsong was strong enough to be considered the first proper dawn chorus of the year, with Thrushes and Robins in particular making a point and Greenfinches and Corn Buntings being heard for the first time this season. A male Blackbird courtship-displaying to a female was fascinating to watch – an early sign of Spring! The Shovelers were still on the mere, together with Mallards and Teals. The Barn Owl was out early hunting the reedbed, and Woodcock and Snipe were flushed out from the cattle paddock. Two Cormorants and a Red Kite were seen flying through, but the highlight was three Egyptian Geese heading south east. This was only the third time I had seen the

species at Fowlmere and only the sixth record ever, so a real delight! The remainder of the month was dominated first by storms Ciara and Dennis and then by the continuing strong winds and frequent rain, which made conditions very challenging. Common Gulls, Herring Gulls and Lesser Black Backed Gulls were all seen flying through at different times, with one or two sightings of the Barn Owls, and there were 76 Greylag Geese on the mere, which was the highest count this year. On one dry day, an early morning sighting of two Egrets in the field of sheep raised hope that they might be the reserve’s first Cattle Egrets, but sadly they proved to be just Little Egrets. Also in the sheep field were 60 Fieldfares, but more interestingly a count of 37 Meadow Pipits, an unusually high number this winter. They may have been birds disrupted from fields nearby, or sheltering from the strong winds, or possibly an early passage flock; a welcome sight anyway. There was luckily little damage to the reserve from the storms: small branches littered the paths but no sizeable trees came down, and even at

Shoveler pair on the mere

Two Egrets in the sheep field

Long-Tailed Tit nest building

February

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Female Bullfinch Top: Iceland with Herring left and Lesser on the right. Above Iceland Gull

40 years old the Reedbed hide stood solid as a rock! On the 20th we were pleased to discover that the juvenile Iceland Gull that had been wintering in the arable fields around south Cambs had crossed the village boundary and become the first ever record of the species in Melbourn parish! The bird was seen at close range along New Road, between the village and the A505, with a flock of Lesser Black-Backed and Herring Gulls. The following weekend a male Gadwall was seen on the mere; Teals were also around but were keeping to the channels as the mere was too deep for them. A few Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-Backed Gulls flew through, and the Iceland Gull was still in the area. A flock of 6 Bullfinches and 60+ Fieldfares were notable. The Cettis Warbler was singing more frequently near the Reedbed hide, and the first Marsh Harrier of the year was reported in the early afternoon on the 22nd.

There was some interesting debate on the identification of the Newts in the pool along the boardwalk – they turned out to be Smooth Newts; also a visitor suggested that there were Turkish Crayfish in the Shep, but this could not be confirmed: only American Signal Crayfish were seen on checking. 85 Fallow Deer were out in the south east fields, the most seen for a long time. On the final weekend of the month the wind began to drop and the weather was sunny and warmer. Below: Smooth Newt. Bottom American Signal Crayfish

Gadwall-Male on the mere

continued on page 40 melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Village information Orchard Surgery & Dispensary Melbourn Health Visiting Team Monday to Friday 8:30–1pm and 3pm–6pm Phone 01763 260220 Repeat prescriptions can be made either, in person or by registering to use the online NHS service. www.orchardsurgerymelbourn.co.uk Prescriptions can still be collected from: Surgery Co-op Tesco in Royston Prescription Home Delivery The surgery offers home delivery service for prescriptions, on a Tuesday & Thursday. For more information on any of the above, please see their website or contact the surgery.

BIN COLLECTION MELBOURN Bin collection day – TUESDAY Bins must be out by 6am at the latest on collection day

2 9 16 23 30 7 14 21 28 4 11 18 25 2 8 15 22 29

June June June June June July July July July August August August August September September September September September

Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black WEDNESDAY Blue & Green Black Blue & Green Black

Due to the uncertainty of the duration of the government’s CoVid-19 measures, SCDC guarantee to empty your green bin every four weeks, but put it out every fortnight and they’ll empty it if they can. For an update on collections visit: www.scambs.gov.uk/bins/find-your-householdbin-collection-day/

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Drop in clinics for parents and babies are held as follows: Melbourn clinic every Wednesday between 9.30am and 11.00am at: 35 Orchard Road, Melbourn. Telephone 01763 262861

Cambridgeshire Hearing Help is a charity for people with hearing loss. Our mission is to reduce the impact of hearing loss on daily lives. We hold a drop-in Hearing Help session in MELBOURN on the fourth Thursday of every month, from 2.00pm to 4.00pm, for maintenance of NHS hearing aids, including cleaning and re-tubing of hearing aids, supplying free replacement batteries and free advice on using a hearing aid. No appointment is necessary. Find us at Vicarage Close Community Room, Melbourn, SG8 6DY For more information: www.cambridgeshirehearinghelp.org.uk 01223 416141 Text: 07852 699196 enquiries@cambridgeshirehearinghelp.org.uk

Cam Sight’s Rural Support Group meet in Melbourn to provide help, friendship and ongoing support to local people with sight loss. The group enjoys speakers, music, information, advice and a chance to try out low vision equipment. They meet on the 1st Wednesday of each month, 2 – 4pm at Vicarage Close. For further information please call 01223 420033 or info@camsight.org.uk

MELBOURN PARISH COUNCIL 30 High Street Melbourn SG8 6DZ Telephone: 01763 263303 ext. 3 Parish Office opening hours Monday and Tuesday : 09:00 – 13:00 (except when a meeting is scheduled for a Monday evening) Wednesday to Friday : 09:00 – 16:00 (closed 13:00 – 14:00) www.melbournpc.co.uk

Melbourn Parish Clerk Simon Crocker parishclerk@melbournpc.co.uk

Assistant Parish Clerk Claire Littlewood assistantclerk@melbournpc.co.uk

Responsible Financial Officer Gabrielle van Poortvliet rfo@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk

IMPORTANT NUMBERS

Meldreth Local History Kathryn Betts 268428

Orchard Surgery Appointments & Dispensary 260220

Mothers’ Union Pauline Hay 260649

Hospitals

Avril Mellor

Addenbrooke’s Royston

01223 245151 01763 242134

NHS111 – Urgent Care 24hr helpline Medical help when not a 999 emergency

111

Police Non Emergency number Help when not a 999 emergency

101

Fire & Rescue Service Crimestoppers

Vice Chair Ian Cowley cllr.cowley@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk

Councillors Rebecca Barnes cllr.barnes@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Richenda Buxton cllr.buxton@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Graham Clark cllr.clark@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Ian Cowley cllr.cowley@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Sally Ann Hart cllr.hart@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Claire Kent cllr.kent@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Steve Kilmurray cllr.kilmurray@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk John Travis cllr.travis@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Richard Wilson cllr.wilson@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk

Timebank Coordinator Catherine Sharman timebank@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk Village Wardens Keith Rudge Dennis Bartle

220463

avril.mellor@ntlworld.com Photographic Club

melbournphotoclub@hotmail.com

Ramblers Dave Allard 242677 Royal British Legion Women Elizabeth Murphy 220841

01223 376201 0800 555111

Royal National Lifeboat Institution Jean Emes 245958 Royston and District Local History Society David Allard

242677

Royston Family History Society Pam Wright

frierley@ntlworld.com

Neighbourhood Watch debbieclapham@icloud.com

Royston Lions Chris Cawdell

Telephone Preference Service www.tsponline.org.uk

Women’s Group Pat Smith 260103

448236

SOAS (Supporters of All Saints’) Colin Limming 260072

0345 070 0707

PLACES OF WORSHIP

Chair Graham Clark cllr.clark@melbournparishcouncil.co.uk

Royston and Saffron Walden Nation Trust Association

EDUCATION

All Saints’ Church Revd. Elizabeth Shipp

Melbourn Playgroup 223459 or 07842 151512 Library LAP Jane Stevens johnjane.stevens@tiscali.co.uk

Little Hands Nursery School

260964

220626

vicar.melbournmeldreth@gmail.com

Churchwardens Roger Mellor 220463 David Farr 221022

Out of school times 01223 503972

Baptist Church Rev. Stuart Clarke

Notre Ecole Janet Whitton 261231

Secretary Brian Orrell

Primary School Headteacher Stephanie Wilcox 223457

United Reformed Church

U3A (Univ. of Third Age) Chairman Tony Garrick

Hall booking Beryl and Barry Monk 246458

Secretary Rosaline Van de Weyer 01223 510201

261650 07568 376027 01223 870869

Hon Sec Hilary Docwra 222486 Mem Sec Chris Davison

264189

Village College Principal Simon Holmes 223400

HEALTH Age UK Cambridgeshire Blood Donors

01223 221921 0300 123 23 23

SPORT Badminton Steve Jackson 248774 Bowls Arthur Andrews

261990

Croquet Janet Pope

248239

Jazzercise Maxine Rustem

07963 161246

Judo Iain Reid (Chief Instructor) or Lesley Reid

241830

Chiropodist

263260

email melbournjudoclub@gmail.com

Dentist

262034

Melbourn Dynamos FC Gordon Atalker 07770533249

District Nurses (Primary Care Trust)

01223 846122

Home-Start

262262

S. Cambs PCT 35 Orchard Road Child & Family Nurses Car Scheme

262861 245228

Blake Carrington

07974 445710 07730488743

Melbourn Football Club Simon Gascoyne 261703 Melbourn Sports Centre Graham Johnson-Mack 263313

LOCAL CLUBS

Meldreth Tennis Club Tracy Aggett

243376

Swimming Club Jenny Brackley 244593

COMMUNITY SERVICES

Air Cadets 2484 (Bassingbourn) Squadron

249156

Community Hall

Tony Kelly Mon & Wed evenings 7 – 9.30 p.m.

bookings@communityhallmelbourn.com 07821 656033

Susan van de Ven, 95 North End, Meldreth – 01763 261833 susanvandeven5@gmail.com

Bellringers Barbara Mitchell 261518

Dial-A-Ride

Bridge Club Howard Waller 261693

Home Start Tracy Aggett 262262

1st Melbourn Rainbows Abigail Roberts 261505

Melbourn Community Hub

District Councillors

Brownies 1st Melbourn Stephanie Clifford 220272

Melbourn Springs Care Home

01763 722734

Jose Hales, 23 Elm Way, SG8 6UH 01763 221058 jose@josehales.me.uk

Guides 1st Melbourn Hilary Marsh 261443

Mobile Warden Scheme Jeannie Seers

07808 735066

Luncheon Club at Melbourn Hub (Wednesdays) 263303 op1

Moorlands Denise Taylor

260564

MADS (Melbourn Amateur Dramatics Society)

Southwell Court Telephone

750006

Vicarage Close Warden Eileen Allan

263389

County Councillor

Phillipa Hart, 24 Fenny Lane, Meldreth, SG8 6NN – 01763 261255 cllr.hart@scambs.gov.uk

South Cambs M.P. Anthony Browne – 01954 211444 anthony.browne.mp@parliament.uk

Donna Sleight

232622

01223 506335 263303

Melbourn History Group Ann Dekkers 261144

Lead Sheltered Housing Officer – Monday to Friday 9–1.30

Melbourn Mushroom Club John Holden

Vicarage Close, John Impey Way & Elin Way

email: frog.end@virgin.net Melbourn Pottery Club Maggie 01223 207307

Eileen Allan

Mobile 07876 791419 / 245402

Every other week. 9–5 Monday to Friday

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Barn Owl struggling in the wind

The Coots had increased to possibly 8: a definite 3 pairs, with one pair from the Drewer’s hide seen mating and nest building. A third Little Grebe had arrived on the mere and the male Gadwall was still there. The Barn Owl was out in the daytime hunting over the reeds, and there were 70+ Fieldfares and 4 Redwings around the site. Flyovers included Red Kites, Little Egrets and Golden Plovers. The highlight of the weekend was a male Merlin that briefly flew around the reserve at dusk on the 29th.

March 130 Reed Buntings were counted coming into roost on March 2nd. An early morning walk around the reserve on the following weekend showed only that Coot numbers were up to 10, but gave some nice photos of a Canada Goose from Drewer’s hide. Another regular visitor had seen and photographed a female Kingfisher that looked grubby around the head; hopefully this was from excavating a nest hole. The first Chiffchaff was heard singing around the Reed Buntings

Chiffchaff

Cress hut area on the 7th, and the following week saw an increase to 4 birds singing around the reserve. Another sign of passage was a group of 50 Redwing that passed straight through on the 12th. The male Gadwall and 4 Teals were still on the mere. A first winter Cormorant was seen to circle the mere a few times but did not land. One highlight was a Water Rail ‘singing’ on the 13th. This is heard less often than the usual ‘pig squeal’ calls but does sometimes occur in Spring. As the month progressed, we began to see more signs of the Spring migrations beginning. Chiffchaff numbers continued to increase, with 17 males heard singing on the 17th: there was no place on the reserve where they couldn’t be heard! Midway through the month, a singing male Blackcap around the loop at the centenary end was the first of the year, but was thought likely to be a British wintering bird passing through rather than a south European migrant: these generally arrive towards the end of March. A few days later, however, there were 3 males singing, adding to what was becoming a glorious dawn chorus. Blackcap

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A pair of mating Toads

Goldfinch

A surprising first sight of the year at this time was 3 Siskins, seen with 25 Goldfinches in the alders. This species is usually a regular during the winter, but not seen so far this year. 4 Snipes were put up from the mere edge by a small herd of deer, and the sighting of 2 Barn Owls at the nest box in front of the Reedbed hide confirmed that a pair is still in there. 52 Fieldfares were counted by the Guilden brook. Notable flyovers were Red Kites, 7 Cormorants, a flock of 40 Redwings heading north and a group of Gulls: 25 Black-Headed, 5 Herring and 8 Lesser Gulls, all heading south. Some other wildlife was also making itself evident. The first sighting of a Brimstone butterfly was recorded on the 15th, and a pair of mating Toads and the Smooth Newts were seen in the pond dipping pool along the boardwalk. By the third weekend Spring was well and truly on the way. The first Sand Martins passed through, with 3 birds on the 17th and 2 more on the 18th. Small groups

of Redwings were stopping to feed and a flock of 60 Fieldfares was seen flying up from the sheep field by the reserve entrance, to head high north east on the 19th at dusk â&#x20AC;&#x201C; next stop the Yorkshire coast? An extra Little Grebe appeared on the mere, making a total of 5. The new bird was not welcomed by the 2 pairs already present. Also feeling unwelcome was a Barn Owl that thought it would have a look in the nest box in front of the Reedbed hide. The Barn Owl pair in the box were soon out calling aggressively, the single bird quickly got the message and made its exit! This third Barn Owl was a bird that is often seen hunting around the Guilden brook/Golf Course area. The birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pale buff, plainly marked flight feathers make it quite recognisable. Treecreeper

Brimstone butterfly

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Peacock butterfly

Comma butterfly

The final records of the month were made over the 22nd â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 24th March. On the 22nd a Marsh Harrier was seen flying over and then, very exciting, an otter was seen in the channel in front of the Reedbed hide â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the first seen at the reserve for over a year. A pair of Shovelers arrived on the 23rd and a male Gadwall joined them on the 24th, with 5 Teals also on the mere. A single Cormorant flew over, as did a Red Kite, 3 Grey Herons, 2 Herring Gulls and 1 Siskin. Small groups of migrating Chaffinches were moving Northeast, 31 in total. There were still 60 Fieldfares and 10+ Redwings present. A new Cettis Warbler had started singing near the west gate (that looks towards the golf course) and the Cettis Warbler by the Reedbed hide had started to show quite well at times, but still too briefly for a photo! The first Long-Tailed Tit nest of the season, almost complete, was found, and many Brimstone butterflies were on the wing, plus one each of Peacock and Comma. The Coots were being their usual tolerant self. This is what happens when the line is crossed! Not pin sharp photos due to early morning light but enough to get the idea.

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Squabbling Coots

Whooper Swans (page 41) were seen at the very end of March, a significant sighting as this was the first reserve record of the species. They were seen using the mere to bathe at the end of March, becoming the 193rd species recorded at the site.

Reserve closed

Following instructions from the Government to help limit the spread of Coronavirus, the RSPB has made the difficult decision to close all their nature reserves until further notice.

This article is a synopsis of the months of January, February, March at Fowlmere Bird Reserve taken from the website produced by Ade Cooper and Caroline Scott. To see the full version and other interesting visits Ade and Caroline have undertaken in the UK and abroad, visit: www.cooperandscott.wordpress.com melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Review No One is too Small to Make a Difference Greta Thunberg

As the world currently faces uncertainty in the form of a virus, people are now faced undeniably with the level of impact humans have on the environment which has been highlighted following the need for self-isolation and social distancing. Rivers running cleaner and CO2 emissions down, we’ve proven to ourselves that we can in fact make a difference, it’s just unfortunate that it took an imminent crisis to spell it out. With the rise of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, school strikes and protests the younger generation are refusing to accept the potential fate that they could be left with. One of the strongest voices comes from Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, at 17-years old she’s already led and participated in several global protests as well as addressing numerous international audiences. The book No One is too Small to Make a Difference documents Thunberg’s public addresses from September 2018 at a climate march in Stockholm to her address at the Houses of Parliament in April 2019. A small book with a huge message, this collection of Thunberg’s own words reinforces our need for immediate change and drastic action from governments, corporations and individuals. Essentially, the kids are not alright, they’re angry and fed up. The Swedish activist speaks for thousands when she states “you need to listen to us, we who cannot vote. You need to vote for us, your children and grandchildren.” Children are pleading for us to look into the future and to vote Author Greta Thunberg

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for a future that they can thrive in rather than just survive. As a source and driver of hope, education and urgency this short collection is perfect for those looking to educate themselves on the stance of thousands of people around the world, what they’re fighting for and what needs to be done to ensure the survival of our planet and future generations. This book does the opposite of escapism and thrusts readers into the very real future that may await us if we don’t make drastic changes now. Being a collection of speeches, many of Thunberg’s key statements are repeated throughout, which you’d expect and which makes this perfect to read across multiple sittings although it may be tempting to read it in one go, each chapter certainly benefits from contemplation before moving onto the next. What readers will be left with is an empowering call to action from this planet’s future. April McIntyre

Days Without End: A Novel Sebastian Barry

Sebastian Barry, born in Dublin in 1955, writes like an angel or some other such higher being. An award-winning novelist, playwright and poet, he has written more than a dozen plays, eight or nine novels and two collections of poetry. Throughout this huge body of work his point of entry or, perhaps, more accurately, his point of departure into the creative mine he explores and excavates so well is almost always a person or half-remembered story or partial memory from his own family history. It is almost as if he listens with his mind’s eye across the ages to an early family member, someone who, perhaps, emigrated from Ireland long ago to live and move across the then world’s stage, bringing only their memories with them for comfort. He listens, hears their story and embellishes and enriches it with his own voice, experience and great gifts of insight as a writer. Such is his gift and skill he is always authentic, even when he has turned his gaze and thought to longdeparted (or yet to depart!) family members, who are themselves greatly dissimilar. He exquisitely recounts and reveals in The Secret Scripture, for example, the voice and female life experience of Roseanne Mc Nulty

Author Sebastian Barry

– someone who stayed in Ireland and lived a life across the decades of Ireland’s troubled social, economic and political history – whom we find approaching her one hundredth birthday in an Irish psychiatric hospital. With this technique of recovery in a process of uncovering and revealing, he delivers a novel as rich, unsettling and as unforgiving as the novel here under review, which he has created with the same technique. As a reader, no matter your age, status, or worldwiseness, with the opening pages of Days Without End Sebastian Barry will capture you heart and soul and effortlessly hold you fast until release comes reluctantly with the final sentence. Astonishingly, as a novelist he again achieves this outcome through the creation of a single, powerful, narrative voice which defies any and all prior expectation a reader might have of it. The flawless and highly original voice of this novel is that of a Union soldier in “Mr Lincoln’s” army during the Genocide of the local native populations and the ensuing Civil War between the Northern and Southern states which gave birth to the United States of America that we know today. His wonderful creation is the voice and character of a boy emigrant from Ireland, Thomas Mc Nulty, who at age 17 years joined the Union Army. The novel is substantially Thomas Mc Nulty’s recounting of the totality of his life experiences as a soldier, until the final page when, having earlier settled in Tennessee, he leaves the army aged forty “or thereabouts” in the summer if 1872 and sets out to journey home to Tennessee: “The whole way sparkles with the beauty of woods and fields. I had wrote I was coming and soon I would be there. That’s how it was. It were only a short stretch of walking down through the pleasing states of Missouri and Tennessee.” (p.300) Published in 2016, the writing throughout is lyrical with sentences that are simple, short, but deeply moving. The realism of a life that is hard and brutal, in a natural environment also hard and brutal – but continued on page 46 melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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with a peace and beauty that can shine through to shock and stun – is also rendered faithfully. The words, syntax, speech pattern and interior reflections of this uneducated but wise and thoughtful human being, Thomas Mc Nulty, as he endures great hardship and finds love, rise up from the page such that one can really hear him speak as if directly from across the room. The novel’s themes are huge and Sebastian Barry, through Thomas Mc Nulty’s voice, gives us much to reflect upon: war; peace; truth; justice; love; the power and beauty of nature and the natural world; but above all tolerance and hope during great adversity. The events set forth are truly credible. Nothing that is recounted jars and ne’er a wrong note is struck. The telling of this essentially autobiographical story by Thomas Mc Nulty is transformative if as a reader you permit the many passages of remarkable brilliance to sink into your consciousness. This novel will not only tell you much about this period of recent history and the landscape in which it was enacted – which truly shaped the world we live in today – it will surprise and tell you much about yourself. Read and wonder at the marvel that is Sebastian Barry and the thing of beauty he has fashioned. Hugh Pollock

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Andrea Wulf

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after him than anybody else. I wondered why we in Britain have heard so little of him and discovered that, probably influenced by the anti-Prussian feeling at that time, few of his books were published in English. His life is absolutely fascinating and Andrea Wulf so beautifully tells the story. It grabbed me from the first word and never let go. I sometimes stopped reading just because I needed to put the book down and reflect on all the amazing and wonderful facts and tales I had just read about. Humboldt was born in 1769 (the same year as Napoleon) into a wealthy Prussian family, but did not fit the mould expected of him. To please his mother, he enrolled at a prestigious mining academy in Freiburg and completed in 8 months a study programme which normally took 3 years. This led to him being engaged as a mining inspector, and this in itself gave him the opportunity of travelling to evaluate soils, shafts and ore from Brandenburg to Silesia to the Fichtel Mountains and the salt mines in Poland. From this stemmed the enquiring man he became. He was an explorer, a scientist and a writer and artist. He knew well Simón Bolívar, the liberator and first President of Gran Colombia (what is now Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama), and encouraged him to return to his native country to return it to democracy. He inspired England’s Charles Darwin, who took the complete works of Humboldt with him on the Beagle and described him as the greatest scientific explorer who had ever lived. He was also the first person to warn of global warming. He was a visionary, a thinker far ahead of his time. He had an incredible memory for the smallest detail and could recall years later the shape of a leaf, the colour of soil, a temperature reading or the layering of a rock. His friendship with the great German writer Goethe lasted all his life and he influenced the likes of America’s Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe and the English Romantics. He was a friend of the German poet Schiller and met American President Thomas Jefferson. They

shared many interests but did not agree on slavery to which Humboldt was totally opposed. During his life he wrote some 50,000 letters, receiving at least twice as many. If all of this makes you feel that this book is dull, a list of achievements, plants, and so on, you could not be more wrong. It is lively, interesting and totally engaging and wonderfully written. There are three chapters towards the end about three significant people greatly influenced by Humboldt. I confess I had heard of none of them but they were all simply fascinating to read about. George Perkins March particularly took up Humboldt’s warning about humans destroying the earth. He travelled widely and saw the destruction the human race had wrought, and in his book “Man and Nature” wrote of deforestation and destruction along with human avarice which was destroying the earth. Ernst Haeckel was a zoologist and 25 years old when he heard of Humboldt’s death. He was studying sea urchins at the time but, inspired partly by the life of Humboldt, went on to study minute organisms, called radiolarians. I had never heard of them but the enlarged drawings that Haeckel made are stunning and went on to influence many artists giving Art Nouveau its particular style and influencing architects such as Gaudi and Louis Sullivan, known as the ‘father of skyscrapers’. They also inspired the designer of Binet’s gate at the World Fair in Paris in 1900, and the illustrations of that are lovely. The third is John Muir who succeeded in creating the great ‘National Parks’ of America with the help and influence of Teddy Roosevelt, who spent 3 days with him in Yosemite. I heartily recommend this book, a truly wonderful read, well written and inspiring. The distances Humboldt travelled and in particular walked, the mountains he climbed, the unknown areas he explored and the countries he visited and mostly trekked through, South America, North America, Russia, China, and the discomfort he tolerated, all go to make this an amazing tale. Unsurprisingly, the book won author Andrea Wulf numerous international awards – to add to those she already held. It was the winner of the COSTA Biography Award, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, picked as Book of the Year fifteen times by writers in a range of national and international publications, a New York Times best seller and a finalist for both a Carnegie Medal and the Kirkus Book Review Prize. What a book this is and what a writer is Andrea Wulf! Moira Gamon

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Churches Together Baptist church Well this seems strange, writing a piece for this magazine knowing there won’t be a normal one printed! But we just wanted to say hi to you all at this difficult time. As we go through lockdown the Baptist church, like many others, has had to think on its feet so to speak, getting something out there and on-line for you and others seeking, plus ourselves. You can find us on our web-page – https://www.melbourn-baptist.org.uk/events.php On our Face Book page and on YouTube. Our first week on-line some verses of scripture were read out, followed by an explanation of those verses; thank you Laurie for that. In closing our time “together” Stuart said the Grace. By Easter Sunday 12th April one or two more of our people had offered to help from home. Those “whizz kids” made a great difference: we could now see singular people take their turn as part of the service. It is certainly a new way of doing/being church together. Our Minister Stuart Clarke’s details are on our church notice board, should you wish to speak to him about anything, please do so, after all he is – Still working for Jesus !!!!!

Melbourn United Reformed Church Church Lunch We held our last annual church lunch on Sunday 15th March after morning worship. The service was led by

Rev’d Derek Newton which was his last service with us as he retires from preaching in the wider community. We thanked Derek for all the services he had led over many years and were pleased that Derek and Hazel joined us for the church lunch. It was a fitting way to say goodbye. We enjoyed a three course Sunday roast with all the trimmings. Beryl and Barry Monk had organised these lunches for many years and we gave them a card and bouquet of flowers to say thank you for all they had done over the years. The lunch was a lovely social occasion spending time together as little did we know that would be our final gathering for a while; a couple of days later the elders had to take the decision to suspend all church services and social activities because of the coronavirus.

World Day of Prayer Our ecumenical service was held in All Saints on Friday 6th March, and turned out to be our last ecumenical worship for a while as we all socially distance ourselves. The Christian women of Zimbabwe took the theme ‘Rise! Take Your Mat and Walk’. The service was based on the account in John’s gospel of Jesus’s meeting with a sick man by the Pool of Bethesda, with the focus on healing, reconciliation, love and peace. We enjoyed refreshments and a social time after the service. The collection amounted to £122 and goes to give grants to projects run by Christian charities around the world.

Easter Easter is a special time for Christians when we remember the sacrifice our saviour Jesus made for us by his death on the cross. We celebrate his resurrection on the third day when he gave us the hope of eternal life. Although continued on page 50 melbournmagazine@gmail.com

we were unable to worship in our church building this year, we are still the church and were able to remember the events of Holy Week in our own homes: Palm Sunday: The Sunday before Easter when we remember Jesusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; glorious entry to Jerusalem at the start of the Holy Week. Good Friday: We reflect on Christâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ultimate sacrifice for us, his death on the cross. Easter Sunday: We celebrate Christ risen from the grave. Easter Tree: During the time of Easter the Christian church has for centuries used the egg as a symbol of re-birth. We usually decorate a tree in our church grounds with painted eggs and look forward to doing this again. At present, it is a bit like living in a cocoon for our own protection, but one day we will be able to spread our wings and head towards a future filled with light.

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feature Melbourn and the Middle East Conflict

This article describes information given at a meeting held recently in Melbourn by Melbourn’s Churches Together group which raised a lot of questions for those present. It has been included in the magazine because it was a local meeting and it was felt the subject matter deserved a wider audience. We, at the Magazine emphasise that we have not, and cannot, verify the information given on the night, or reported here by Melbourn Resident Hugh Pollock. No inference should be taken that the Magazine holds any view on the issues described. Editor I recently attended an evening of ‘information & discussion’ on ‘Understanding Violence Between Israelis and Palestinians’ at Melbourn’s United Reformed Church (URC). The advertised speaker was Richard Lewney, a URC Eastern Synod Representative, who had attended a 10 day October 2019 educational visit to Israel and Palestine organised for 22 church members following a 2016 Resolution of the URC’s General Assembly. Although not a church attender, I was curious to attend this Churches Together public meeting. The talk was delivered quietly, using overhead slides, by Richard Lewney, a thoughtful, middle-aged, practising Christian, who is a URC lay-preacher from Cambridge. Here are just some of the points presented during the evening. • The State of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust in Europe, to provide a place of safety and security for the Jewish people. Sadly, the people who were already living in that land, known as Palestine, were displaced from their homes through violence or local land purchase from landlords and so displaced from the land they had lived in for generations. As a result, around 50 per cent of that 1948 population of Palestinians became refugees. On Israel’s foundation, the United Kingdom’s direct responsibility for Palestine’s good government (undertaken in 1917) ended as the United Kingdom withdrew. Conflict continued and more and more of this contested land was occupied and claimed by Israel. • Today the remaining Palestinian Territories – principally the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – exist in a state of military occupation by Israel. The West

Bank is surrounded by Israel’s 25 foot high “Separation Barrier”, a wall that stretches for 440 miles ignoring the official Green Line boundary (the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements) between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The Israeli Government does not permit its own citizens to enter the Palestinian Territories and cites the wall and its associated checkpoints as a necessary security measure. Both the wall and the checkpoints are controlled by the Israeli military. Palestinians may only pass through a checkpoint with a valid permit, held by about 1.5 per cent of Palestinians, who work on the Israeli side.

• Israel

has established over 132 Settlements in the West Bank; all are illegal under international law. Some are economic industrial zones, comprising manufacturing, assembly or other production units, producing goods for export. The Settlements are exclusively for Jews and some are full-scale towns, or even cities, with hospitals and universities (subsidised principally by the Israeli Government) all connected by a system of roads, with access forbidden to Palestinians. The Settlements provide housing for around 428,000 Israeli Jews. The Settlements, the wall, and the road system are built not only on disputed land but, in part, on land that is privately-owned by individual named Palestinians. Also, water supply to the Settlements is a major contentious issue. The border controls enforced by the Israeli Government impact widely on all imports and exports, and taxation. They affect every aspect of the economic and social life of all Palestinians living in the Palestinian Territories. • During their 10 day visit the 22 URC members, as international visitors, saw much. They also met and spoke with local people about the conditions and the need for peace and justice. Mentioned often was the Israeli Government’s discrimination, whether in its water supply policy or in its July 2018 Nation State Bill which specifies, amongst other things, the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people only. The following stories of two Palestinian Christians served as further illustration of its effects. We in the audience were assured that their experiences were representative of the suffering of many under Israeli Government control – not only Christians, Muslims, Arabs and others, but also Israeli Jews opposed to the policy of the Israeli Government. continued on page 53 melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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to the visiting Richard Lewney and his 22 URC members in October 2019 on YouTube at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=1p2VfosGSds. Harassment, restriction of movement and fear of arrest are seemingly daily realities for Palestinians in the West Bank. Richard Lewney stated that one week after the URC educational trip had concluded in October 2019 the whole of the West Bank was closed off over the Jewish New Year meaning that Palestinians were trapped within their towns. He pointed out that these experiences of deep and widespread discrimination were happening because people like us – living in comfortable Melbourn and attending our Christian Churches – chose to remain indifferent and so we have become complicit. Israeli West Bank wall near Mount Zion

Conclusion

Jack Giaccaman, a Palestinian Christian, who lives with his wife and two teenage daughters in Bethlehem, illustrated a typical problem. The family own an olive wood shop with a small factory attached, where they carve the products they sell. They also own, for generations past, olive groves outside Bethlehem which they harvest, providing employment and making olive oil to sell. Olive harvesting is accepted as being of great importance in Palestinian history, culture and life. The problem is, although Bethlehem is governed by the Palestinian Authority, it is also under Israeli occupation, and is now surrounded by the Separation Barrier built in early 2000. The wall separates the family’s home and shop from the olive groves outside the town. He needs a permit to pass through the checkpoint, and is required to have the gates to his own fields unlocked for him by Israeli soldiers. Olives, impossible to harvest, rot on the trees. Long grass in the olive groves poses a fire risk. His teenage daughters are the first generation of his family who do not know what it is like to go out and pick the olive harvest. Rev’d Dr. Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian. He is Pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and is Academic Dean of Bethlehem’s Bible College. His brother-in-law holds an Israeli passport, yet he cannot obtain documents to naturalise his Palestinian wife. His Israeli documents show that he is a single father! His wife cannot obtain citizenship, is not permitted to drive, cannot get healthcare, all things that would be possible if she was married to a Jewish Israeli passport holder. More than 20,000 Palestinians have foreign spouses and the Israeli Government does not grant them visas so these couples are effectively forced to leave Palestine. The College Faculty which Rev’d Dr. Isaac leads has itself lost two staff members who have foreign spouses. You can see and hear Rev’d Dr Isaac’s 30 minute talk

Antisemitism, being condemnation of a person because he or she is a Jew, of Jews collectively, or of the Jewish religion, is both morally wrong and illegal. It should not occur in conversation or in actions, in public or in private, nor be practiced by individuals or institutions. It is, of course, not ‘antisemitic’ to highlight, condemn and oppose the policy and actions of the Israeli Government – particularly policy and actions that are unjust, discriminatory or in breach of international law. To identify and label critics of the Israeli Government and its policies as “antisemitic” is deeply offensive, made worse when it is deliberately intended to defame and silence critics and prevent legitimate criticism. Indeed, it serves only to strengthen antisemitism and those misguided persons and organisations who hold and practice such hateful beliefs, while enabling the consolidation and expansion of policies and actions that are unjust, discriminatory and in breach of international law. My evening with Melbourn’s Churches Together group left me reflecting on two other questions: Was the testimony – first-hand witness experience from October 2019 delivered by local man Richard Lewney and his account of the everyday lived experience of real Palestinian Christians, Muslims and others – representative, accurate and truthful beyond dispute?; Are these policies and actions of the Irsraeli Government, conducted in the name of its Jewish citizens and their religious leaders, actually in accordance with the principles and practices of the Jewish faith to which its citizens and religious leaders profess belief? These matters having been raised in Melbourn with them, are surely entitled to answers. Hopefully we will have a further evening of “Information and discussion” in Melbourn’s URC with various speakers present to clarify these issues. Hugh Pollock melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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Sports & Clubs Bowls Arthur Andrews 261990 Bridge Club Howard Waller 261693 1st Melbourn Rainbows Abigail Roberts 261505 Brownies – 1st Melbourn Stephanie Clifford 220272 Croquet Janet Pope 248342 Football Club Andrew Edwards 223109 Dynamos Football Club Les Morley 07739 593771 Guides – Ist Melbourn Hilary Marsh 261443 Melbourn Judo Club Iain Reid 241830 Melbourn Karate Club Peter Khera 07866 374674 Melbourn Sports Centre Graham Johnson-Mack 263313 Melbourn and Meldreth Women’s Group Pat Smith 262575 Sue Toule 260955 Anne Harrison 261775 Photographic Club Bruce Huett 232855 Ramblers Dave Allard 242677 Royston and District Round Table Michael Seymour 221398 Swimming Club Jenny Brackley 244593 Tennis (Melbourn) Dave Liddiard 07508 995 781 Tennis (Meldreth) Tracy Aggett 243376

1st Melbourn Rainbows The Spring term started as any other: tales of Christmas, the presents, the food, the visits to family. We always start back with a ‘Get to know you’ session and some games to introduce the new Rainbows to the meeting. This term we had 9 new girls over the 2 different groups. One of the first activities of the term was the very exciting trip to the Panto! We went to see ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ at King James Academy in Royston. The performance was fantastic and the girls thoroughly enjoyed the day. This term we have been working on our ‘For my future’ and ‘Take Action’ badges. It has involved a lot of DIY skills! The Rainbows have identified different tools and their uses, learned how to use cable ties, how to attach a new drawer handle, used a paint roller and practised using screwdrivers and Allen keys. Who knew it could be so much fun! They learned how to count coins and their values, then used 20p each to buy some delicious fruit to make a fruit kebab. Every girl’s was different as they all bought different choices. Some stacked theirs in a pattern, some in order. They all ate them very fast though. The girls had a go at decision making by choosing 4 songs and 4 games and then voting on which ones to do in the session. Tough decisions were made that night. We decided to decorate plant pots for Mother’s day this year and fill them with a flowering bulb. The girls used decoupage paper and glue to decorate the outside of their pots. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet as a unit after this week so Buttercup and her daughters potted them up at home and delivered them to the Rainbows’ doorsteps in time for the big day. The end of this term has been different to say the least! We had no end of term session for our older Rainbows going up to Brownies (although we will try to slot something in once we return) and our last couple melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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of sessions to complete badge work were not able to go ahead. We instead have set up ‘Virtual Rainbows’! We are keeping in contact with a weekly newsletter and if the girls complete any badge work at home we organise a video call so they can show us what they have done. It’s working well and the girls seem to be enjoying it. We will continue with our virtual Rainbows until we return to normal and can get back to our weekly meetings.

1st Melbourn Guides Skills Builders to Shipwreck; it was a term of two halves for the Guides. In January, February and early March we enjoyed a varied Guide programme including swimming at Royston pool, celebrating Chinese New Year, and starting the Skills Builder ‘Innovate’ badge. One Saturday twelve of our girls joined 1000 others from across Cambridgeshire at a Girlguiding STEM day (science, technology, engineering and maths)

at Ely college. The following Saturday we ran Coffee Stop, and had a cake stall which raised £50 for Shepreth hedgehog hospital.

Then our programme was rudely interrupted by Coronavirus lockdown, so the girls’ Guide challenges were emailed out daily for a month. The scenario was that a mystery virus had struck the cruise ship on which they were holidaying with their families, and they had to steal a life raft (make a paper boat) and escape to a remote island. Every day they had a new challenge: first to build a shelter, then light a fire, hunt, forage, fish, explore, and grow vegetables. Then there were challenges to keep busy, including outdoor cooking, making toys and doing Guide badges: Confectioner, Fixing and Fitness.

The summer term started with no end to lockdown in sight, so we leaders decided to embrace the new technology and invited the girls to a Zoom meeting. Almost every girl joined in the meeting, first sharing their experiences of isolation, then taking part in a craft activity. These Zoom meetings will continue every week, comprising a badge activity, some fun and games, and something to do on their own in between meetings. If you would like to know more about joining our waiting list or becoming a leader, or if you have any skills, charities or interests which you would like to share with us, please contact me on: 01763 261443 or email: melbournguides@gmail.com Hilary Marsh melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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Melbourn Football Club Firstly, on behalf of Melbourn Football Club, I would like to pass on our gratitude and best wishes to all of our Essential Workers who have been working so hard during these very troubled times to make our lives as functional as possible. The work that the NHS frontline workers are doing is amazing and the response from the public shows what a wonderful country this is. Going forward, I am sure we will see even greater community spirit all over as a result of this. Secondly, I would like to apologise for missing the deadline for the Spring edition of this magazine but as you will have seen on page 5 of the Spring edition, as a club we were active over the winter, both on and off the pitch, and were very pleased with the Mind Awareness Day, which raised over £1,000 for the CPSL Mind charity. In addition to this, over the season the club has donated 25% of any funds we have raised through social events, raffles and other fund raising competitions. In February, we held our annual Quiz Night and to say that this was a success would be an understatement, as the club raised a magnificent £848.64 of which a further £212.16 will be donated to CPSL Mind, bringing the total for the season to £617.66. When this is added to the monies raised from the Awareness day, we have raised a total of £1,619.97 for this vital charity.

‘Will this be the season that never was?’ As a result of COVID 19 the decision has been taken by the Football Association to ask clubs from the Kershaw Senior A league and below how they would like the season to be concluded; we are still awaiting the result of the vote that was taken. However, as a club we voted for the option to null and void all results for the 2019/20 season, meaning that we will start again in the summer, subject to the government rules allowing us to recommence local football. The only other option was to use an average points per game, which would have been a great disadvantage to a number of teams. If the vote is to null and void the season then all teams within Kershaw Senior A, Kershaw Senior B and the Mead Plant and Grab leagues will stay in their current division with no teams being promoted or relegated. However, it is unlikely that this would have affected us as a club, as we were sitting mid-table within our league and either option would have resulted us staying in Division 2. What it does mean is that we will be able to look forward to renewing some great rivalries against other local teams such as Barrington, Foxton Reserves and Litlington Athletic, to name just three!

‘Onwards and Upwards’ As with all sports, change is something that will continue to take place and it is with sadness that I have to advise that after two seasons at the helm, in which he led the club to promotion to Division 2 of the Mead Plant and Grab leagues, Ben Fox our manager is standing down due to work commitments (he is a Fireman and one of the Essential Workers we owe so much to). Ben took the Manager’s role at a time when the club needed strong leadership and new players within the club, and I am proud to say that he achieved both in his spell in charge. The committee, players and supporters would like me to pass on their sincere gratitude for the work that Ben has done for the club and the new ideas that he has introduced. It was Ben who proposed that we should donate 25% of our fund-raising to a charity chosen by the Players’ ‘Player of the season’, and you can see what a success this has been. The good news is that Ben will be staying with Melbourn Football club as a committee member and player and has promised to commit as much time as he can to continuing the development of the club. In fact, as he knew that he would need to step down as Manager, he wanted to make sure that we were not left without a replacement of equal standing and it is with great excitement that I can announce that our new manager will be Chay Wilson.

About Chay At 27 years old with a family of 3, Chay is a local lad who works in construction management. As an allround enthusiast of sport Chay has a particular interest in Football and has played within the Cambridgeshire County Leagues since he was 16 years old. Due to injuries disrupting his playing career, however, he has now found a new love for the game in managing teams and the players. In his debut season as a manager Chay secured silverware and he firmly believes that he can build on Melbourn’s success in recent times. As a club we are very pleased to secure the services of such an enthusiastic young manager and all members of the club look forward to supporting him in his drive to bring further success to Melbourn Football Club.

Training in preparation for the 2020/21 Season Subject to the rules allowing it, the club are looking to start casual pre-season training on the 3rd June, leading to more structured training at the end of June, and would welcome new as well as existing players to come along to these sessions. These proposed training sessions will be held at The Moor in Melbourn from 7.00 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. I would reiterate, however, melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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As I have mentioned in my previous reports, we have been supported well byfor a number of of local businesses from the Fishing tackle all types fishing village, with generous donations allowing us to purchase new kits and training equipment, and on behalf of the club Wide variety of baits from maggots boilies and pike bait I would once againtolike to thank: Shire Tree Surgery; T J Plastering; P J Deards Plumbing; MJF Construction ; Conquerer Open 6 days a Industries week In addition to these sponsors, we have also been supported by the Dolphin House have provided food for Agents forPublic Eternit ACwho Season the players after games as well as fund raising support. andthe Day tickets

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Unit 7, Whitecroft Road, Meldreth, SG8 6ND Finally, 07966 having268486 mentioned the success of our Quiz night / 07773488585 Find us Ion Facebook in February would like to@JKLTackle personally thank Stuart Smith

for his excellent work in putting together the questions JJGis Angling for the quiz. This the third time that he has researched Angling Tution and written the questions for these excellent evenings and Please call James quote being a ‘quizzer’ myself Ifor canavouch thaton the questions are 07773488585 pitched at a fair level for all to feel that they are involved. Each quiz we have run as a club has seen more and more teams entering (and returning), culminating in 19 teams taking part in February, many joining us from outside of Melbourn. Unfortunately for me I couldn’t take part as I was needed to assist Stuart on the evening as Scorer and Adjudicator, which in itself was very tiring but enjoyable …. I think! Joining us and providing technical support was Ash Cooper, who had the questions on a big screen, which was also extremely helpful, however, lessons have also been learned and we will be using a microphone for future quizzes as with increasing numbers of teams it is difficult to be heard. There were others that also helped but Stuart certainly deserves a mention and I would urge anyone reading this that you book early for the next one as numbers will need to be limited if we continue to attract more teams.

Contact Details If you are interested in joining Melbourn Football Club as a player, committee member or even as a supporter then please contact the Team Manager, Chay Wilson on 07966 573008 or our Club Secretary, Simon Gascoyne on 07732 613555 or you can e-mail him on simon_gascoyne@ hotmail.com You can also find us on social media and can follow us on Twitter @Melbourn_FC, Facebook www.facebook.com/ MelbournFC, Instagram @melbourn_fc and our website www.melbournfc.com melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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feature

Who would have thought that when we finished the last issue of the magazine that the words ‘Social-distancing’ and ‘Lockdown’ would become a major part of our everyday diction? In fact, there’s a whole new vocabulary in use – especially on social media – to describe the collective experience we are all going through. Some descriptions are quite apt for the situation. For example, Coronacoaster: a way to describe the fact that Lockdown hasn’t been easy for any of us. Coronadose: An overdose of doom and gloom from consuming the constant barrage of news reports. But in typical British ‘pick-yourself-up, brush-yourself-down-andget-on-with-it’ style we tend to make fun of a bad situation. A sense of humour about life’s challenges is a great distraction in these troubled times and again social media comes to the rescue with a plethora of jokes and quips to cheer your day, many of which we can relate to. One such quip described the sensibility of a section of the population quite succinctly. When the sun comes out, people still flock to the coast in their thousands – “The spread of the Corona virus is based on two factors. 1 How dense the population is. 2 How dense the population is.” And so apt – a light-hearted explanation of how the virus spreads quite rapidly... “Have you ever come into contact with glitter... like hugged or shaken hands with someone who was wearing or using it? ... And how for the next two weeks it hangs around forever and ends up on surfaces you can’t recall touching, and places you can’t imagine it ever getting, and seems to still be there even after showering and washing? Think of COVID-19 as glitter!” Joking apart though, how fortunate we are that we now live in a communications era where Skype, Zoom and What’s app have also become everyday terms and essential aids to many whose families are having to isolate apart, or are living in various parts of the country and unable to meet. On the plus side, has anyone noticed how people are talking more and greeting strangers they meet? It’s like a ‘communal camaraderie’ a sort of ... ‘Well, we are all in this together!’ attitude. The virus has also taught us how little we actually need to survive, a lesson in less consumerism, in recycling and make do. And it has also reminded us of what is really important in life, in fact – life itself Long may these lessons stay with us when the virus has gone! There has been greater recognition of how critically important the ‘essential workers’ are now, because our health, safety, and survival depend on them. ‘Heroes’ – a term regularly used to describe these essential workers – is very appropriate, because they perform work that can bring harm upon themselves and potentially their families. Let us hope that hero worshipping and recognition continues too, when this is all over. We asked residents if they would like to tell us how isolation has affected them, the following pages contain stories we have received and offer an interesting view.

Cautionary Tales From The Lockdown The Cabbage At the start of the lockdown we were faced with the challenge of organising supplies of fresh produce as were so many of us in isolation. We are longstanding customers of a doorstep milk delivery service, which offers a surprisingly wide range of goods, but we had to turn to a local farm shop for our fruit and vegetables. The only item they could not supply was broccoli, which they said was being offered by their wholesaler at ridiculously high prices, could we accept a cabbage instead? No problem Liz thought, it will make a change from our usual fare.

What we received was a cabbage nearly as large as a football and weighing considerably more! Undaunted, Liz set about cutting and shredding the ‘beast’ which was extremely hard work and of course, being almost solid, its bulk increased the more she chopped. Eventually we finished up filling a fair amount of our freezer’s capacity with shredded cabbage, and that was despite having cabbage with nearly every evening meal for a week.

For want of a tin of paint My days in lockdown have been similarly enlivened by a question, ‘Where has all the paint gone? With the weather slowly improving I decided that the time had come to melbournmagazine@gmail.com

re-decorate my office. Over recent years it has suffered from re-routing of pipes and removal of now redundant telephone cabling in addition to acquiring a rather tired look. The only materials I needed to order were replacement carpet tiles, emulsion paint for the walls and a tube of Polyfilla; the paint for the ceiling and woodwork was available from my stock. The Polyfilla was duly ordered from the on-line company that sells everything and after much searching on the internet I found that the carpet tiles and paint could be ordered from a national DIY retailer (hereinafter referred to as ‘HB’ so as to retain their anonymity). I should point out that in my research I discovered that for some reason much of the paint listed on various web-sites was not actually available to order. With hindsight, I realise that half of those on lockdown are almost certainly being instructed by their spouses to ‘get on with the decorating’. Even the paint manufacturers were quoting up to three weeks’ delivery. I was quoted a definite delivery date for the tiles which arrived two days late and given the demands on all the companies in the supply chain I was very

satisfied. Despite emailing HB I could get no response to my enquiry regarding delivery of the paint. One day I found myself on ‘Trustpilot’ and having scrolled through numerous postings I realised that the retailer appeared to be having major issues with delivery but was (eventually) replying to customers’ complaints only through that channel. I immediately posted a message asking for an update on the delivery of my paint and was most surprised to receive a reply the following morning apologising for the delay and assuring me that I would have my purchase delivered on the 22nd May. I excitedly passed this information onto Liz whilst praising HB for at least trying to keep their customers informed. I decided to post a further review giving five stars for effort but it was only after I had pressed the ‘Post Review’ button that I once again scrolled down the recent posts. There were nine posts saying that they had an email quoting 22nd May for delivery of their paint! I can think of two possibilities; either HB are being a little devious or, Saturday 23rd May will see an army of happy customers up their ladders at the crack of dawn painting merrily away. Of course, if you have yet to order your paint you

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may wish to inform your spouse that there is a national shortage of that material and you know it’s true because you read it on the internet. David Sansom and Liz Chapman

Happenings during my Coronavirus lockdown 1 Female wasps emerge from hibernation. There are hundreds of them all over the house and the pest control man has to be summoned! 2 The kitchen sink totally blocks and a new system is fitted. 3 The phone system is misbehaving 4 No plants are delivered for my pots and garden. Soon it will be too late to bother! 5 I have no access to my Bank account – so cannot pay bills etc. Trying to rectify this is still keeping me busy ! 6 The cleaners (sensibly) are not working and the house is a mess. 7 At least the gardener comes as usual and the garden looks fine! Ann Dekkers

Life in lockdown Like most people the wrong side of 70, I imagine, the prospect of lockdown did not initially give me any particular worries: no children to home school or keep entertained, no need to attempt working at home, and trips out for socialising purposes were few and far between anyway. All I would miss would be visits to my Home Library service clients and seeing my family. As a 95 year old friend put it: “Just more of the same but with no visitors”! I thought I was quite well-prepared, having stocked up with library books and identified where food supplies could be obtained in the event that online deliveries became problematic (which they were already beginning to be). What I was not expecting, however, was the arrival on the doormat of a letter telling me I was classed as “extremely vulnerable” and advising me not to go out at all for at least 12 weeks. Not so much lockdown as solitary confinement! So, how to keep busy? Not really a problem as I leave a trail behind me of jobs put off and projects unfinished, so now was the time to get going on catching up. First task: clear out and tidy up the garage, a job which had been waiting to be done since November,

when the cavity wall insulation installer asked for the wall adjoining the house to be cleared for him, resulting in a huge pile of assorted garden furniture, tools, cardboard boxes (and junk) heaped against the opposite wall. Heaving boxes about and throwing things out was very therapeutic, and in the process turned up a number of items not seen in a long while. One find was a bag of seed and cutting compost, bought 10 years before and never used, now with a nice hole in the bottom and leaking. I was on the brink of emptying it into the garden when I also found a packet of tomato seeds, free with a bottle of ketchup 5 or 6 years ago, and stowed with the intention of one day using them. With sudden enthusiasm I planted 4 seeds into individual plug cells (left from a delivery of primrose plugs earlier in the year), improvised a propagator with an egg box and a plastic bag, and put them on a sunny windowsill. Two grew and two didn’t – 50% success rate, not bad for my first ever attempt, and using seeds 4 years past their expiry date! While I was on a roll, I also tried planting 2 runner bean seeds, harvested from my own crop in 2016 and similarly forgotten. These went into small pots, with the propagator this time made up of a large saucer and an old shower cap. Result – nothing at all. I think this was more due to my lack of horticultural skill in harvesting the beans than my Heath Robinson propagator; still it was fun to try. Next was the Spring cleaning. I plunged into it with enthusiasm and over the next few days managed three rooms plus cleaning all the windows before running out of steam. At this point it seemed a good idea to make a “To do” list, and I was shocked to find it filled a whole page of my note pad. At the time of writing I have crossed just three things off the list of more than a dozen, but my excuse has to be that getting shopping began to dominate everything else. Online delivery slots became scarce to non-existent, with no guarantee of when the next one would come available, and such deliveries as came had items unexpectedly missing and some highly creative substitutions. What on earth would I have done without Bury Lane – all thanks to them for starting up their superb delivery service. I also decided that I could probably risk a walk a few times a week. Living on the edge of the village, I could get to the footpath leading to Fowlmere, which would hopefully not be too well-trodden by anyone else. This proved to be the case, provided I timed it carefully: some times in the day are more popular than others. On one somewhat hair-raising outing I narrowly missed being run over by first a jogger, then

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a cyclist. On most days, however, pacing steadily along with just the glorious sound of bird song for company has been sheer delight and a welcome break. A few weeks into the lockdown my family introduced me to Zoom, and we have enjoyed a couple of group video chats via this method. I was also coerced into getting “WhatsApp”, which has brought frequent treats by way of enchanting photos and videos of the grandchildren, showing me what they have been doing. Truly, there have been some compensations in all this. It looks now as if this house arrest will be continuing well beyond the twelve weeks originally suggested, but I have been overwhelmed by all the efforts going into

making it tolerable for us. My latest crisis, cat food (why on earth is there a shortage of cat food?), was resolved by Frog End helpfully starting up a delivery service; the wonderful MCCR volunteers are now collecting and delivering prescriptions and helping out with shopping where needed; even the Vet has started up a no-contact collection system for pet medication and prescription foods. Not to mention the many Physios simple exercises can offers of say help these from my kind neighbours. helpI have improve and balance. troubleco-ordination believing that throughout the country Get on your feet and try them daily – we are “all in this together”, but in this community, oratatleast, least week! thetwice crisis ahas brought out the very best in everyone. • MAKE SURE THE CHAIR YOU USE IS STURDY Christine •Orchard WEAR SUPPORTIVE SHOES

6 6 6

exercises for strength and balance

• IF YOU EXPERIENCE CHEST PAIN, DIZZINESS OR SEVERE SHORTNESS OF BREATH, STOP AND CALL YOUR GP OR CALL 111 • A SLIGHT SORENESS THE DAY AFTER IS QUITE NORMAL

exercises for strength and balance

Physios say these simple exercises can help improve co-ordination and balance. Get on your feet and try them daily – or at least twice a week!

exercises

Sit

Sit cha bac and on Ste tou low the

13 24 5 Heel Raises Stand tall, holding the back of Sit to Stand a sturdy kitchen-type chair or

Toe Raises

Stand tall holding the same Heel-Toe Stand Sta support, then raise your sup Sit tall near the front of a Stand tall, with one hand on kitchen sink, then lift your heels toes – taking your weight on Loo chair with your feet slightly your support. Put one foot direc off the floor, taking your weight your heels. Don’t stick your forw back. Lean a onto your big toes. Hold for forwards slightly bottom out. Hold in forfront threeof the other to makedire and stand up (with hands straight three seconds, then lower with seconds, then lower with line. Look ahead, take tha chair if needed). hand off the support and control. Repeat on 10 the times. control. Repeat 10your times. Aim Step back until your legs balance for 10 seconds. Take Takth touch the chair then slowly front foot back to hip width apa apa lower yourself back into Then place the other foot in the fro the chair. Repeat 10 times. and balance for 10 seconds.

3 3

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• MAKE SURE THE CHAIR YOU USE IS STURDY Simple strength and balance exercises twice for strength • WEAR SUPPORTIVE SHOES exercises • IF proven YOU EXPERIENCE PAIN,you DIZZINESS OR SEVERE for a week are to CHEST keep stronger SHORTNESS OF BREATH, STOP AND CALL YOUR GP OR CALL 111 and balance forsostrength •A SLIGHTcan SORENESS THE DAYindependent AFTER IS QUITE NORMALand longer you keep Heel-Toe Stand Physiosenjoying sayand these simple the greatexercises things incan life, whether Sit to Stand balance Sit tall near the front of a Stand tall, with one hand on help improve co-ordination and balance.shopping, chair with your feet slightly it’s playing with grandchildren, your support. Put one foot directly Sit to Stand Heel-Toe Stand Physios say feet these simple exercises Get on your and try them daily –can back. Lean forwards slightly in front of the other to make a Sit tall near the front of a Stand tall, with one hand on socialising with friends or gardening. and stand up (with hands straight line. Look ahead, take help improve co-ordination and balance. or at least twice a week! chair with your feet slightly your support. Put one foot directly the chair if needed). your hand off the support and During strange times– it is important on Get on your feet these and try them daily back. Lean forwards slightly in front of the other to make a Step back until your legs balance for 10 seconds. Take the and stand up (with hands straight line. Look ahead, take or at least twice a CHAIR week! the chair then slowly front foot back to hip width apart. SURE THE YOU USE IS STURDY to• MAKE keep moving and try to do something touch on the chair if needed). your hand off the support and • WEAR SUPPORTIVE SHOES lower yourself back into Then place the other foot in front back until your legs balance for 10 seconds. Take the • IF YOU EXPERIENCE DIZZINESS OR SEVERE active every CHEST day.PAIN,These six exercises can Step the chair. Repeat 10 times. and balance for 10 seconds. Heel Raises Raises Heel-Toe Walking SHORTNESS OF BREATH, STOP AND YOURToe GP OR CALL 111 touch the chair then slowly front foot back to One-Leg hip width apart.Stand • MAKE SURE THE CHAIR YOU USE IS CALL STURDY A SLIGHT SORENESS THE DAY AFTER IS QUITE NORMAL • WEAR SUPPORTIVE SHOES help keep you stay stronger for longer so lower yourself back into Thenon place footclose in front Stand tall, holding the back of Stand tall holding the same Stand tall, with one hand a the other Stand to your support an IF YOU EXPERIENCE CHEST PAIN, DIZZINESS OR SEVERE the chair. Repeat 10 times. balance for 10hold seconds. a •sturdy kitchen-type chair or support, then raise your support like a kitchenand cabinet. it with one hand. Balance SHORTNESS OF BREATH, STOP AND CALL YOURthings GP OR CALL 111 you can keep doing the you enjoy. kitchen sink, then lift heelsIS QUITE toes – taking your weight on Look ahead and walk 10 steps one leg, keeping the support k • A SLIGHT SORENESS THEyour DAY AFTER NORMAL exercises off the floor, taking your can weightbe done your heels. Don’t stick your forwards, placing one foot soft and your posture upright. These exercises in the comfort onto your big toes. Hold for bottom out. Hold for three directly in front of the other so Hold the position for 10 secon for of your own home and are proven to with halt three seconds, then lowerstrength with seconds, then lower that the feet form a straight line. Repeat on the other leg. control. Repeat 10 times. control. Repeat 10 times. Aim for a steady walking action. and reverse the decline in muscle, bone and balance Take the feet back to hip width KEEP THESE EXERCISES apart, turn around and repeat SOMEWHERE HANDY LIKE and balance, keeping us more youthful as Sitthe tosteps Stand THE FRONT OF THE FRIDG Physios say these simple exercises can in the other direction. Heel-Toe Stand tall near the front of a One-LegStand tall, with one hand on we move into co-ordination older and and vitallybalance. reducing Heel-ToeSitWalking Heel Raises Toeage Raises Stand help improve chair with your support. Putand one foot directly Stand tall, holding the back of Stand tall holding the same Stand tall, with one hand onfeet a slightlyStand close your to your support the chance of serious falls. Get onchair your and try daily – Lean forwards slightly in front of Balance the otheron to make a a sturdy kitchen-type or feet support, thenthem raise your support like back. a kitchen cabinet. hold it with one hand.

6 1 2 1 2 Heel Raises kitchen sink, then lift your heels

Toe Raises

– taking your weight on or atthe least twice toes a week! Stand tall, holding back of Stand tall holding the same off the floor, taking your weight your heels. Don’t stick your a sturdy kitchen-type chair or support, then raise your onto your big toes. Hold for bottom out. Hold for three kitchen sink, then lift your •heels toes – taking your weight on MAKE SURE THE CHAIR YOU USE IS STURDY three seconds, then lower with seconds, then lower with off the floor, taking your weight your SHOES heels. Don’t stick your • WEAR SUPPORTIVE control. Repeat 10 times. • IF YOU EXPERIENCE control. Repeat 10 times.OR SEVERE CHEST PAIN, DIZZINESS onto your big toes. Hold for bottom out. Hold for three SHORTNESS OF BREATH, STOP AND CALL YOUR GP OR CALL 111 three seconds, then lower with seconds, then lower with • A SLIGHT SORENESS THE DAY AFTER IS QUITE NORMAL control. Repeat 10 times. control. Repeat 10 times.

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5 6 3 64 5 5 6

Heel-Toe Walking Stand upsteps (with hands One-Leg straight Lookknee ahead, take Look ahead and and stand walk 10 one leg, keeping theline. support

Stand tall, with onechair handifon a Stand close your to your support on the needed). hand off theand support and forwards, placing one foot soft and your posture upright. support like Step a kitchen cabinet. hold it with one hand.forBalance on Take the back until your legs balance seconds. directly in front of the other so Hold the position for 10 10 seconds. Look ahead touch and walk 10 steps leg, keeping the support chair then slowlyone front footleg. back toknee hip width apart. that the feet form athe straight line. Repeat on the other forwards, placing one foot back into soft and yourThen posture upright. lowerwalking yourself place the other foot in front Aim for a steady action. directly in front of the other so10 times.Hold the position for 10 seconds. the chair. Repeat and balance for 10 seconds. Take the feet back to hip width KEEP THESE EXERCISES that the feet form a straight line. Repeat on the other leg. apart, turn around and repeat SOMEWHERE HANDY LIKE ON Aim for a steady walking action. THE FRONT OF THE FRIDGE the steps in the other direction. Take the feet back to hip width KEEP THESE EXERCISES apart, turn around and repeat SOMEWHERE HANDY LIKE ON THE FRONT OF THE FRIDGE the steps in the other direction.

Lock down with a seven year old I must admit that at 74 I did not expect that my day would be filled with entertaining a seven year old. During term time the morning was spent on home schooling. Luckily this is shared between three of us, but I drew the short straw and was doing English grammar – not my strong point! I don’t really know what a pronoun is! However, the school has provided us with a lot of digital support and we have been progressing steadily up “study ladder“ (and improving my grammatical abilities). I have also had fun with history and geography, my foreign travels providing material for both. During the Easter holidays we have found other activities: e.g. potato men and pasta pictures and Lego is very popular. A friend has horses nearby so the afternoon is a trip to see them with a carrot and a bit of riding. We are very grateful for the good weather (I dread to think what it would have been like if the last few weeks had been wet and cold). We have also been keeping an eye on the development of the tadpoles (not yet sure if they are newt or frog) in the local nature reserve. We also had fun making a video, at the time of the empty supermarket shelves, based on the “bare necessities” song from the Jungle Book movie. I have done some training sessions on Zoom and Jitsu through the U3A but have not set up my own session yet. It is a busy time on the allotment, especially with the dry weather. However, because it has been so warm, crops are germinating early and so far it is looking like a good year. Evening are spent on local history research for the Meldreth local history website. The days are so full I’m not really sure if I want to return to “normal” life! Bruce Huett

A quiet day in the midst of Covid 19 Part way through the Covid pandemic I was furloughed and felt really fortunate to be paid 80% of my salary. I resolved that I would keep to normal routines, getting up as usual and “working” albeit a different kind of work during my working hours. I also would try and keep my fitness routine going although by necessity it has changed a bit! I walk or cycle round the village and surrounding

areas and when I pass a street where I know someone lives I pray for that particular family. I read my weekly news sheet from church more and it helps me to be more focussed on my local prayers. Generally though the first thing I pray for is this world in the midst of the pandemic. It’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed by it all and not to know how we should pray and then I remember the words of a wise friend who counselled me to “pray as you can, not as you can’t.” We will all pray in different ways at different times and there is no right or wrong way to pray as God loves us all and takes us just as we are. Early on in my furlough I had the opportunity to sign up for a quiet day – you might think who needs quiet in the midst of this – but sign up I did. We focussed on the reading from Mark 4:35-41 – where we hear of Jesus calming a storm. We were led on a reflection on the reading and had a guided meditation at the end of which we were encouraged to either go for a walk as part of our daily exercise, or in our gardens or for those who were restricted to the house there were web links of gardens to go to. This walk was to be a sensory walk which perhaps sounds daft but next time you are in your garden get a leaf and hold it up to the light – you will see it in a new perspective. Try drawing sounds you hear for another challenge. When we next met up we heard some music with slides and were encouraged to create a place of calm in our own homes. At the end of this we had our lunch break and an hour to engage in creative activities – some drew, some painted, some made a labyrinth and I even made a papier mache bowl of which I am inordinately proud of. I was pretty sceptical when I saw the list of activities but found making the bowl and the labyrinth immensely relaxing. Our last session after lunch was to help us find a peace within us in that place of calm in our own homes. Throughout the day there was the opportunity for people to speak privately with someone if they felt the need. The day left me feeling more peaceful, aware of resources within me and from other places that would help me to find space to find that calm in the midst of the storm. Although we were all in the midst of Covid 19, we all came on the day at very different places in our lives, and despite being on the computer we were able to share with one another when we wanted to and hopefully we were all a bit more richer for it. If you would like to know more contact details are: underthethinkingtree@gmail.com who ran the quiet day for Ely Diocese but would also be willing to run it for others. Patricia Smith melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Good Vibrations The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations is over fifty years old now, but despite the recent incredible changes to our lives, there are plenty of good vibrations going on around us. For starters, a greater concern for each other has crept into our lives. Phone conversations end with, “keep safe,” families make meals for neighbours who can’t, and children send jokey emails to lonely grandparents. Goodwill is echoed across the country. Before closing their stores, TKMaxx and Homesense donated their foodstuffs to food banks. Lidl took a double page advert to thank their staff for working so tirelessly. And hotels owned by Manchester United players and Chelsea FC have been made freely available to NHS staff. On a smaller scale too. A convenience store makes up free food parcels for health workers. An artist shares a YouTube art project for children stuck at home. Friends in Newport, Shropshire tell me their residential home enjoys sing-alongs through the windows with a music group playing outside. A friend in Sheffield says their church has leafletted the neighbourhood offering to do shopping, collect prescriptions and telephone lonely people, while home-workers are donating saved commuter funds to the local food bank. A chum in Ledbury reports a voluntary shopping service for older people unwilling to venture out, while food shops and cafes do home deliveries for housebound people. This service of course is repeated across the country, and Melbourn residents have received a note listing local businesses willing to deliver groceries or hot food to your door. Meanwhile, walking around the village you can see signs of help and goodwill – bird boxes available to passers-by with a request to donate to an NHS charity, rainbows and teddy bears in windows to make us smile, and friends stopping at a distance to share details of local footpaths. On a practical level, the valuable Melbourn Mobile Warden Scheme covering Melbourn, Meldreth and Shepreth continues to operate an amended service to support housebound people on its books. And now there’s an additional Melbourn Hub/Melbourn Parish Council initiative called Melbourn Coronavirus Community Response (MCCR). MWWS head warden Jeannie Seers told me that if anyone living alone finds themselves without a family member or neighbour able to assist with an essential errand, then the MCCR may be able to help. She explains, “MCCR has a manned helpline, 01763 263303 option 1.

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This matches local volunteers with those who find themselves in isolation, without the support of family or other resource, and who need temporary help with essential shopping or prescriptions.” Indeed, Jeannie adds, clients might simply like someone to phone them for a chat, so no-one should be reluctant to call and explore the possibilities. Good vibrations all around, then, and with luck when all this is over we’ll continue to feel the benefit. Maureen Moody May 2020

Keep Smiling Through What would we do without our families and friends? We laugh with them, share our hopes and concerns with them, and they help us to put everything into perspective. But as the weeks go by without face to face contact the days become blurred and life begins to feel a bit lonely. So here are some ideas on how to avoid getting depressed and some ways of keeping our spirits up. Firstly, let’s not dwell on unhelpful news reports. The press loves bad news, and some newspapers continue to be irresponsible in spreading doom and gloom. There are lots of negative, sensational items on social media too. The BBC is aware of this, and an article on the BBC website says, “Limit the amount of time you spend reading or watching things which aren’t making you feel better. There is a lot of misinformation swirling around.” They recommend staying informed by sticking to trusted sources of information. But before it all gets too much, let’s put the newspaper aside, switch off the news and concentrate on something more cheerful. And this brings me to the next piece of advice. We may not be able to meet our friends and family, but we can phone them and have a chat and a laugh. Looking for the funny and ridiculous in any situation and the sound of a friendly voice always lifts the spirits. We don’t have to wait for people to ring first, either. Many will be working from home, with school children and students at home too. Get them to put the speaker phone on so they can all hear you. Use Skype or Facetime, or download Zoom or Jitsi so you can all have a group chat. Ask them to tell you the latest funny stories and then pass these on to the next person you talk to. And here’s a novel thought – we hardly ever write a letter these days – how about writing to all our friends and asking them to write back? Similarly, we will all have resources at home that can make us smile and provide a bit of escapism. How about comedy programmes on TV and radio, especially on channels you don’t usually use, or those

favourite DVDs of old films or TV series that you haven’t watched for ages? Try the iPlayer or BBC Sounds for a big choice of TV and radio programmes. We could look along our bookshelves for books that we never got round to reading or others that would be good to read again. Have we got jigsaw puzzles gathering dust somewhere? Have we tried the puzzles in our magazines and newspapers? What about games of patience with cards or on the computer? And finally, what about all those jobs we’ve been meaning to do but keep forgetting – shredding old paperwork, tidying the airing cupboard, sorting out the sock drawer – boring jobs maybe, but once done we’ll feel quite pleased with ourselves. We are all living through unusual times at the moment, but there are ways of relieving stress, lifting loneliness and finding something to smile about. Give them a try, and remember – you’re not alone. Maureen Moody, April 2020

A Writers’ Circle Exercise For over forty years writers have gathered at Royston Town Hall once a month to indulge their love of story writing. We now meet online using Zoom, and it’s just as much fun. One evening a couple of years ago we were given the first line and last line of a story and were asked to write our story around them. The first line had to be; In fairness, nobody had told him not to do it. And we had to make the last line; Somehow he knew it wasn’t over yet. This was my story;

Dinosaur In fairness, nobody had told him not to do it. He just had this thing about dinosaurs. Lots of people do of course, but Fabian had lived in Kensington as a child and his most treasured memories involved being pushed, and then walking, around the lofty halls of the Natural History Museum, those unimaginably large skeletal creatures rearing above him. Fabian had been not in the least intimidated. Awed certainly, but for this solemn-faced child the great bones and soaring outlines of prehistory represented safety and escape. Home, the austere, high-ceilinged apartment rented by his American father and French mother in Queen’s Gate Gardens, was a place of chill encounters between parents who had little in common except an unwanted child. Words were few; embraces unknown. Even Inge, the Swiss au pair was cowed into silence here. Only when they emerged into leafy, affluent Kensington did she relax. On warm sunny days they would visit

the Round Pond or the Serpentine, or perhaps gaze at the river, but Inge’s natural reticence prevented her initiating conversation or encouraging contact with other children. On wet or cold days, and there seemed to be plenty of these, they would enter the Natural History Museum’s vast spaces – a world apart and a chance to gaze and imagine. Inge would exchange shy words with a junior curator, and Fabian would wander. The time came to start Prep School, and after the fear and misunderstandings of a lonely first term, Fabian blossomed into a bright enquiring child, loving books and soaking up information like a sponge. Towards the end of his time there, he would walk home alone – it was only a couple of streets away – and inevitably the Museum drew him up those wide steps and through the arches like a siren call. It was on one such day that he found himself following the German tour – the guide’s voice an echo of Inge’s soft accents. The guide had been handling some of the exhibits, and as the crowd moved on, the long leather coat of the last person in the party brushed the display and a large fossilised dinosaur tooth fell to the floor. Fabian gazed, entranced. His hand reached out to stroke the curved surface, and as he watched, his fingers curled around the rough, brown object and lifted it carefully and quietly into his school bag. Unnoticed, Fabian walked home. No, nobody had told him not to do it, but he knew of course that it had been wrong. The dinosaur tooth became his personal mascot and he carried it with him whenever he could. What he never did, however, was to show it to anyone. At 11 years old, the boy became a boarder at Avondale, a public school in Dorset, and, immersing himself in school life, he joined both the archaeology club and the palaeontology society, with field trips the highlight of every term. It was on these that he learned the respect accorded to those professionals who made famous discoveries. Fabian had found his calling. It was wholly fitting and a natural progression, he decided, that he should join the ranks of the international palaeontology fraternity and make his name. It was on the third year field trip to Chalcombe that it happened. The boys were digging and scraping in a disused quarry when it started to rain. The ground was slippery and Fabian misjudged his step and slipped down a scree slope to the quarry floor, straight into a mud-filled depression. As he stood up and wiped the dirt from his trousers he realised the faithful dinosaur tooth had slipped from his pocket. He fell to his knees and desperately scrabbled in the mud. Seconds later, as, heart hammering, he retrieved the object and examined it, his house master reached his side. “OK old melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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chap?” he enquired, and then. “I say, what have you got there? Ye gods, let me have a look. Look boys, Munro has made an extraordinary find!” The boys crowded round, exclaiming and whooping, thumping Fabian on the back. “Lucky devil!” “Good old Munro!” From then on it was out of his hands – literally. A visit to the fossil centre, a phone call to the headmaster, an article in the local paper. Back at school Fabian was entered for the Young Palaeontologist of the year award – hours working on a project book followed by meetings, interviews, and then the finals at the Natural History Museum. Back in those familiar echoing spaces, he felt secure and at home. He watched as the judges reached his exhibit and the senior curator lifted the dinosaur tooth up to his magnifying glass. A frown creased his forehead, he murmured to a fellow judge, glanced over at Fabian thoughtfully and bent again to the fossil. It was then that Fabian recognised Inge’s old flame – the junior curator, now in a senior position. His heart sank – somehow he knew it wasn’t over yet. Maureen Moody www.roystonwriters.org

Evacuation in WWII My sister, a pupil at Parliament Hill High-school for girls and I were evacuated in 1940. We assembled at Kings Cross station which was very busy and a target for bombing day and night. We were then sorted into groups and very quickly loaded into the waiting train with very old carriages, many parents having little chance to say goodbye. The seats were filled with horse hair or harsh fibres of some sort and were prickly to us boys in short trousers. Soon we were off. We all had sandwiches and drinks which we scoffed quickly, then of course, first one then another wanted the toilets! The trouble was, the carriages had no corridors! Fortunately, we were often shunted into sidings to let urgent traffic through. At a little station doors opened and a voice shouted, ‘Boys to the left, girls to the right’ and we got off accompanied by harassed teachers who may well have wanted to go. Then we had a green light – the driver tooted the whistle, and we were hustled into the train whilst teachers looked for stragglers. When we eventually stopped it was dark. I was in Wales a village called Maesycwmr. ‘All out!’, was the cry and we were then taken to the school hall and fed with thick sandwiches of corned beef – delicious, since we had had nothing since the morning! Once fed, the local house holders came to take a child, my sister had a note that said we were not to be separated, but in the end we were, although·next door to each other. My sister with a Mr and Mrs Gibson me with the Doctor and Mrs. Thomas. Ray Pritchard

My War That sounds very presumptuous as I was just five when the war started, but I clearly remember the dismay and panic at the outbreak of WWII. Before the war, my life was blissful I guess, adoring parents, an extensive supportive family of aunts, uncles and cousins, not to mention grandparents. Holidays in Cornwall in our Ford car and trips to the country in the sidecar with Mummy on my father’s much loved motorbike. Summer days watching my mother play tennis and in winter well wrapped up as Daddy played football. We had a nice house with a big garden, an electric washing machine and a daily cleaner called Mrs. Funnell. Life was good. Then came the war and everything changed. Daddy, although he was too old to be called up, was very patriotic and volunteered much to my mother’s annoyance. He joined the 17th/21st Lancers and drove tanks through North Africa, the Kasserine Pass, Tunis and up through Italy via Monte Cassino to Austria – he was away for six years. In his place I got a baby brother with big floppy golden curls (I had straight brown hair) and big blue eyes. Poor old Ian didn’t see his father until he was six! At the beginning, we didn’t have a shelter of our own but shared an Anderson with Mr. & Mrs. Morley next door. Mr. Morley cut a hole in the fence and when the horrid siren went we would troop through the fence and join them and John and Kathleen in the shelter. Later on in the war we had a Morrison shelter in our front room and we slept in there. Last words at night were always ‘where is the whistle?’ The whistle was important as if the house came down on top of us we could alert the rescue services that we were alive! The Anderson shelter was half submerged into the ground and after the war many people kept them as storage places for garden tools etc. The Morrison was a huge steel table with mesh sides, very ugly and lots of sharp angles to catch your knees on. John Morley was the same age as me, and another little boy John Fox lived further up the lane. The two boys used to play games which mostly consisted of me being tied to a drainpipe whilst they fought to rescue me. I spent many hours tied up like Lilian Gish on the railway line waiting to be released and if it wasn’t that I had to be a fielder at cricket. I was well acquainted with the rules of cricket. Grandad Angus worked on The Times newspaper and with a son and daughter (Aunty Joan had joined the ATS) in the armed forces he followed the news very seriously. All the Angus girls were called melbournmagazine@gmail.com

Margaret. Margaret Joan, Margaret Mavis and so on, so we were all called by our second names which has caused confusion all through my life. They lived in Carshalton quite close to St Helier Hospital, which was just as well because I spent huge amount of time there during the war years. I was perfectly healthy until the war started and then I had Pneumonia, Pleurisy, Pleural pneumonia, mastoid in both ears, glandular fever, mumps but worst of all endless nosebleeds which necessitated being ambulanced to hospital each time. I had the last nosebleed when I was about 20 and have never had one since – touch wood! To my mother’s deep chagrin, I also caught Impetigo and was painted with purple gentian – a great badge of shame as it was considered a ‘dirty disease’. St Helier was a big, modern, gleaming white building which was a terrific landmark for the Luftwaffe, so it had to be camouflaged and was every conceivable shade of dirty brown – most forbidding. My mother was very close to her eldest sister Dorothy (Dolly), who lived in Banstead with her four sons and Uncle Joe who was a policeman. Frank was the eldest – he enlisted as a sailor when he was only 17 to everyone’s dismay, then there was Robin, then David, who was exactly one year older than me to the day. After a gap of six years Peter was born at the same time as Ian. We often used to walk up to Banstead and spend time with them, and on two occasions at least when our house was bombed we went and lived with them for a while. They lived near Uncle Mac of Children’s Hour fame and we used to play with his children. Sometimes we took the 163 bus to Banstead. The road was so narrow and heavily lined with trees that as you approached the village on the upstairs deck (which naturally I insisted on) the branches of the trees whipped against the side of the bus, and it went under a very low footbridge which was exciting as it always looked as if we were going to hit the bridge. Having arrived at Auntie Dolly’s we would go out for a walk which took us over that footbridge, and David and I would stand on the bridge and wait for a bus to go under and then we would try and spit on the top of the bus! In a similar vein, Mummy and Auntie Dolly would walk along Banstead High Street (in those days it was a small village) pushing Ian and Peter in their prams and proudly watching as David and I raced ahead. Sweet little things, they thought, until a neighbour told them we used to race to see who could be the first to spit on the pillar box! David was always leading me astray and seemed to have a great fascination for spitting. From high on the hill of Banstead at the edge of

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Epsom Downs we had a clear view over London and would stand on the roof of the chicken hut to watch the dogfights over the city. My maternal grandmother had a business in London and Auntie Dolly would often go up to town to help her, and Mummy would stay and look after the Banstead household. My schooling was erratic to say the least; I went from Primary School on Epsom Road to a little Dame School in Banstead and then to a really tiny school outside Tiverton with about 15 pupils. With all the moving around and spells in hospital I don’t know how I ever passed my 11 plus. We were in Banstead on August Bank Holiday Monday 1944 when a doodlebug hit the village close by the church. We had been for a big family picnic at The Hundred Beeches the day before and on the Monday morning Mummy left me asleep in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden. Grandma Daisy refused to sleep underground and slept on the sofa in the sitting room. She was also still asleep; Uncle Joe was at the Police Station and the others were at breakfast. My brother Ian heard the doodlebug and although he was only three he knew when the engine cut out it would fall and he yelled out a warning. They all got under the table whilst the house came down around them. I was trapped on my own underground in that flipping shelter for hours before they could get me dug out – of course, I was hysterical when I emerged and the first thing I saw was my beloved Grandma Daisy sitting on an upturned pail with huge shards of glass sticking out of her chest and face where the window had exploded onto the sofa. Covered in blood it was a horrific sight I can see even now. My mother collected us together, Grandma was taken off to hospital with Auntie Dolly and the rest of us were herded to a hastily set up British Restaurant. I remember the High Street being covered in bones thrown up from the cemetery. David and Robin were trying to run around to see who could find the best bones whilst my poor mother was dealing with two screaming 3 year olds and a traumatised me. Uncle Joe found us in the queue and having reassured himself that everyone was alive he had to get back to duty. Grandma’s husband, Uncle Tom, (third husband, she was a very charismatic woman and her husbands kept on dying on her but she did not remain single for long) came from Devon where his brother still farmed near Tiverton. Rather than be evacuated to some unknown place, my mother with four children (Robin elected to stay with his father) set off for Tiverton, where we received such a warm welcome and it was as if there was no war on at all. Lots of fresh

eggs and milk and butter, orchards crammed with fruit – within a few days David and I were really sick. The doctor was called and having found out we were from ‘London’ and had never been let loose in the country he solemnly told my mother we were suffering from Orcharditis. Funny how some memories remain. I remember Uncle Tom’s brother took us for a walk by a lake which was full of beautiful waterlilies. I was entranced and wanted to take some home to Mummy to put in a vase. Uncle used his walking stick to fish them to the edge and pick some out for me and I was horrified at their thick slimy tubular stems. But I gamely gathered them up and took them home. How could something so lovely on the surface have such ugly underpinnings? I have another vivid memory of an Angus cousin from Stirling calling in on us on leave and he looked so wonderful in his kilt. I was always dressed in tartan and had to wear a Tam O’Shanter (knitted beret with a bobble). Eventually the house in Banstead was made habitable and the following Spring, 1945, we went back, David and Peter to Banstead and we went back to our house and were able to visit our Angus grandparents again. The end of the war was close and my mother optimistically thought Daddy would be home soon after. She made the mistake of telling Ian his daddy was coming home soon with the result that every day for months he would ask if this was the day – it drove her mad. I don’t know where the bunting came from, but bunting there was. Tables were erected in the middle of the road (there were hardly any cars around anyway as petrol was impossible to get hold of) and all the women pooled whatever treasures they had in their store cupboard. Little did anyone realise that rationing would go on for several years after the war. For us children it was wonderful to see the grownups letting their hair down. My mother had a lovely voice both singing and speaking (she auditioned for The Speaking Clock at one time) and our piano was dragged out into the front garden and of course everyone knew all the words to all the songs. We did the Hokey Kokey and we Conga’d up and down the Lane and in and out of all the houses. We had a wireless out of someone’s window and we all listened to Churchill with many tears. Mummy even danced with Mr. Doubtfire, our local ARP Warden, who had been stalking her all through the war years to her disgust. The following year my father came home with a kitbag of souvenirs, often things pressed on to him by grateful villagers as they were liberated. I have a small silver box with a crest and a coronet on it

which someone gave him, and for many years I wore a silver ring given to him by an Italian soldier. He never, ever spoke about the war to us but just before he died, when in the Falklands war the Belgrano was torpedoed, he broke down and sobbed his heart out. And then we learned that the troop ship he had travelled in to North Africa had been torpedoed with huge loss of life and the news brought it all back to him. I remember so much about the war years, my mother in tears when Daddy sent a crate of oranges from North Africa and the box arrived full of stones – someone had stolen the oranges (my brother had never seen one!). The blackout curtains which my mother took down in the afternoon and started embroidering huge colourful chrysanthemums all over them, then they would go up again with a threaded needle still in place for the next session. After the war those curtains were made into cushion covers and seemed to hang around for years on garden furniture. The excitement when a letter came from Daddy and the tears when there was a long gap. Spending all day in the school shelter waiting for the All Clear and seeing people sleeping in the underground stations. We were visiting Grandma Daisy during the Blitz and had a terrible journey home and I remember standing with Mummy in horror as we watched London burning. Great excitement when a barrage balloon came down in Grandma’s back garden and all the rear windows were blocked by the grey fabric! The distinctive sound of Spitfires, so often heard again in the skies above us here in Melbourn. I don’t remember missing sweets – we ate Ovaltine tablets and of course rationing was my mother’s problem – not mine. I got into trouble when I had a new dress (precious coupons) and was trying to help in the kitchen. I cracked an egg and the blessed thing not only went on the floor but it went via the front of my new dress so I was never allowed near food after that. My Grammar school in Wimbledon did not teach cooking so I got married barely knowing how to boil an egg. I remember being strafed when shopping with Mummy and Ian on Grand Parade in Raynes Park, and we flew into Dorcas the Drapers – the bullet marks were visible on the pavement for years. I don’t remember anyone being hit though I do remember the terror. And here I am 75 years later locked up in my home hiding from another danger even more frightening than Hitler. Once again the whole world wrapped up in a conflict with a terrible, senseless loss of life. Funny old world. Mavis Howard. melbournmagazine@gmail.com

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Melbourn magazine is non-profit and all work on the magazine including design and layout are produced by volunteers. The Magazine is published four times a year in the first week of March, June, September and December. We print 2250 copies which are delivered free to every house and business in the village. Advertising revenue is used for printing costs only. Adverts should be supplied as finished artwork and must be at the sizes shown below. Please send artwork to melbournmagazine@gmail.com. The current rates for advertising in the Magazine are as follows: Size per… 1/4 inside page 1/2 inside page

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Greenlow Kennels – 01763 260624 GYC Photography family photographer – 07786 707869 Hopkins Homes – 07951 110498

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Jeremy Ashworth / Property Maintenance – 07815 093166

Jeremy Rule / Funeral Service – 01763 242560

JKL Tackle / Fishing tackle shop – 07966 268486

J Oliver Radley / Opticians – 01763 273300

Langham Press – 01223 870266

Lawn Partners / Bespoke lawncare – 01763 244955

Phillimore Garden Centre – 01763 260537

St Georges Nursing Home – 01763 242243

Summit / Landscape Gardeners – 01223 929394

Taylor & Co /Chartered Accountants – 01763 248545

The Sheene Mill – 01763 261393

The Spice Hut / Indian Takeaway – 01763 262425

Trademark Kitchens & Bathrooms – 01763 254000

Law Storage Ltd – 01223 874629

Leech & Sons / Master Butchers – 01763 260255

TTP – 01763 262626

Little Hands Nursery School – 01763 260964

Unlimited Logos – 01763 262081

Melbourn Dental Practice – 01763 262034

Urban Plastics / Plumbing Suppliers – 01763 262337

Melbourn Flooring & Interiors – 01763 262413

Wheeler Antiques – Fine Art and furniture 01763 256722

Melbourn Garage – 01763 263344

Wrights Mower Centre / Garden Machinery – 01763 263393

melbournmagazine@gmail.com

treat yourself to a brand new mgzs from £12,495 OTR

8” colour touchscreen* apple carplaytm*, sat nav** dab audio*, 17” alloy wheels* Rear Parking Cameras**

Fuel economy and CO2^ results for the MG ZS. Mpg (l/100km) (combined): 38.6 (7.3) to 41.5 (6.8). ^CO2 emissions: 140–145 g/km. Figures shown are for comparability purposes; only compare fuel consumption and CO2 figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon a number of factors including the accessories fitted (post-registration), variations in weather, driving styles and vehicle load. ^There is a new test used for fuel consumption and CO2 figures. The CO2 figures shown however, are based on the outgoing test cycle and will be used to calculate vehicle tax on first registration. Model shown: MG ZS Exclusive with Dynamic Red paint at £16,490 on the road (OTR). OTR prices include VAT where applicable, vehicle first registration fee, delivery, number plates and 12 months’ Vehicle Excise Duty. Prices are correct at time of being published and are subject to change without notice. Please see your local dealer or visit MG.CO.UK for details. *Exclusive and Excite models only. **Exclusive models only.

book your test drive CAMBRIDGE MG 158 SHELFORD ROAD TRUMPINGTON CAMBRIDGE CB2 9NE call 01223 841616 visit www.buckinghamstanley.co.uk

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