Susan van de Ven Melbourn Oil Club: £100 donation to Mind in Cambridgeshire The Melbourn Division Oil Club has been a wonderful way of enabling local residents who depend on oil for household heating to get lowest prices, through community bulk-buying. Our buyer is a local company, Agricole Oil. There is no joining fee for the Oil Club, and no required commitment for repeat purchases. It’s been great to hear from people that the Oil Club has made a significant difference to their annual heating oil bills. An added bonus is the annual rebate provided by Agricole Oil and the privilege of directing this to a local community group. This year our modest donation of £140 is going to the mental health charity, Mind in Cambridgeshire. For some months now, Mind has been exploring ways of starting up mental health support in rural areas. Our modest donation will help make a start for Mind in Melbourn and surrounding villages. Melbourn resident Phil Alsop has been helping to facilitate this work, for which many thanks. It is encouraging to witness the growing recognition that mental health must be approached on an equal basis to physical health, and we hope that even a small venture like this can contribute to raising awareness of this need for parity. To join the Melbourn Division Oil Club, please ring Jeremy Cole, Agricole Oil, on 01954 719 452 / 07860 904 045 or email jeremy@agricole.co.uk. Camsight activities in Melbourn have been very busy with activities in Melbourn. A Goalball taster session at Melbourn Village College took place in April, and tandem cycling teams signed up for the A10 Awareness Ride in May. If you are interested in becoming a ‘pilot’ tandem rider for Camsight, allowing a visually impaired person to get out and ride, please get in touch. A10 cycle paths: Over the past year I’ve been reporting on cycle path funding for the A10 corridor. It’s probably worth explaining that central government funding for cycling infrastructure is being deployed all across the greater Cambridge area, due to population growth and growing road congestion. We’re working to persuade the powers that be to direct that funding to our area. The Greater Cambridge City Deal is designed to provide sustainable transport infrastructure especially in travel-to-employment corridors. It was expected that the Cambridge-Royston corridor would be the recipient of City Deal funding to create a network of cycle paths connecting the villages along the A10. A similar scheme was expected for the Cambridge-Saffron Walden corridor. Both corridors have a preponderance of employment centres, including science parks and industrial estates. The continued on page 27
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Profile David Blundell When I was first introduced to David Blundell and heard that he had worked as a journalist on The Times newspaper I made a mental note ‘interesting profile’ And so it turned out! He was born in Lancaster in 1943 – his father was a Coal Merchant and his mother stayed at home looking after David and his older sister. Mrs Blundell was very artistic – so good indeed that in the 1950’s when much re-development was taking place, the Mayor of Lancaster asked her to do some paintings of the old Georgian architecture before it was all torn down - they were later hung in the Mayor’s office. In her 60’s she qualified as an art teacher, not to teach but just to show that she could do it!. He went to boarding school and then to Lancaster Royal Grammar School where he shone at English. In fact, he won an English Scholarship but never went to University because in the meantime he had found a Saturday job on the local newspaper. The life of a reporter seemed a far more exciting prospect than three years of study. At 18 he was fortunate to be taken on as a Junior Reporter on the Lancashire Evening Post, based in Preston, and he then served several years in Kendal where he covered courts and councils and all the sporting events in the Lake District. Being ambitious, he agreed to move to Preston as a sub editor and subsequently was taken on by the Daily Herald in Manchester, the job lasted just a few months and then the paper folded! He moved to The Sun (the old Sun) working as production and news editor and was there for a while before it, too, folded. He was learning that the newspaper world can be precarious. He then joined the Daily Mail based in Manchester where in 1966 he had the unenviable job of editing copy on firstly the Moors murder trial and then in the 80’s the Yorkshire Ripper. He had to read every word of evidence over both long trials and says that in both instances there was a great deal which was just too gruesome ever to be made public. But he was doing a job which he loved, and continued to enjoy throughout his career although it was always hard work and ever watching the clock to get the next edition out on time. He spent 20 years at the Daily Mail becoming chief sub editor with a staff of 35 under him, working hard into the night to get the paper on the street early next morning. His boss was Charlie Wilson, (then husband to Anne Robinson) and in 1986 Charlie suddenly went off to do a mysterious job in London, Rupert Murdoch had clandestinely equipped a new newspaper plant in Wapping and was recruiting a whole team of journalists and printers. Charlie gave David a job on The Times and he and the family moved south to settle in Hitchin – David remained with The Times until he retired. His sister had married and emigrated to Rhodesia so they
