Profile

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

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

had many holidays out there, usually managing to bring back an interesting story, so much so that it was suggested he should do some travel writing and that led to the very pleasant situation where he was being paid to travel! On one holiday trip he overheard in the hotel lobby a conversation about chimpanzees. He asked a few questions and came home with a story only to be sent back out to Gambia to write a serious article on the rehabilitation back into the wild of orphaned and injured chimps. He spent a week on the project for they were fascinating creatures to study - but you could never forget that they were wild animals, not cuddly toys.

Meanwhile, David’s wife Diane was keeping herself occupied. She regularly shopped at an Italian delicatessen in Marple, Cheshire and when she heard that the owner wished to sell up, Diane took the bold step of purchasing a business about which she knew nothing except that she enjoyed different and exciting foods.. She learnt the mysteries of cheese from a cheese factor, discovered artisan breads and very early on a Saturday morning she and David would tour the ethnic bakeries of Manchester and with a van load of delicious loaves return to the shop to find a long queue of customers awaiting her. When they moved to Hitchin she worked as secretary to Sir Simon Bowes-Lyon at St Paul’s Walden Bury, then once again wanting to run her own business she bought a sub-post office in Hitchin! Now, however, she is happy to lead a less hectic life – I rather felt I should do a profile on Diane!

One day David, who had always owned an allotment and was very keen on gardening, jokingly suggested to Charlie Wilson that they should have a vegetable editor! He was told to go away and produce a sample column and thus Blundell’s Patch was born – some of you Times readers may remember his weekly words of advice and seasonal tips. In June 2001 he was telling us that ‘there was no need to take to the bottle to protect your garden from drought’ and that he found fennel ‘skittish’. The bottle reference was to plastic bottles of water half buried next to vulnerable plants which he had not found to be very effective! The articles are a delightful mix of anecdote and advice and I am going to try and see if we can persuade him to do something similar for us! For 10/15 years he worked as an editor on the Op Ed pages – that is the page opposite the editorial, a pivotal area in any newspaper. At one time he shared an office with Michael Gove and he was at Wapping during the printer’s strike when Margaret Thatcher took on the unions. printer’s strike when Margaret Thatcher took on the unions. There were huge demonstrations outside the building and it was pretty scary (some 400 policemen were injured) especially as David elected to carry on working, despite being a lifelong supporter and member of the union. The journalists who continued to work had to be driven through the picket lines in armoured buses and were called ‘Refuseniks’ It was their proud boast that they never once defaulted on an issue.

When they retired, the Blundells settled on Melbourn largely because they liked the area and because one of their daughters lives in Meldreth. From Hitchin David did voluntary work as a driver for North Herts and regularly had to take a patient to Addenbrookes. Having several hours to wait before the return journey he would go and play golf at Kingsway, so he already knew a number of people in the area. He still plays golf 2 or 3 times a week and is keen on carpet bowls. During his ‘vegetable correspondent’ days David had done a series on walled gardens and wrote about Wimpole Hall where he now works as a volunteer. All these activities plus membership of Royston Rotary Club show that although he has retired he has not slowed down. Mavis Howard