Blundell’s Plot

Home-Start

Saturday 12th December Cambridge Wind Band Christmas Concert

St Paul’s Church, Hills Road, Cambridge at 3.30pm Tickets: £8 for adults / £6 for concessions / £4 for children.

Bookings can be made by emailing cambridgewindband@gmail.com Home-Start will benefit from the retiring collection at this concert.

Snowflake Tea Parties – could you help raise funds for Home-Start by hosting a tea party with your family and friends from your office, playgroup, school, book club etc.?

We will supply you with a ‘tea bag’ fundraising pack with ideas for all you need to host an event - the pack includes invites for your use, a snowflake cutter and recipes for any cakes or biscuits you may want to make for your event.

If you would like to host a tea party, please call our office on 01763 262262 or email admin@hsrsc.org.uk “Please join me raising money for The Snowflake Appeal so Home-Start can keep supporting unique and fragile children. Home-Start is in there, making a difference each and every day. It is changing all our communities for the future. It prevents parents’ difficulties from becoming their children’s problems”. Kirstie Allsopp, TV presenter, mum, ste pmum, Home-Start ambassador

Blundell’s Plot

Exactly a century ago, the country was up against it on the Somme and in the Dardanelles, Zeppelins were bombing Great Yarmouth and the Kaiser was about to launch a blockade of our islands. England faced the very real threat of starvation.

Family legend has it that that January, up in a terraced house in the Wirral, my great-grandparents were discovered to be subsisting on a diet of potatoes, parsnips and cabbage. It was an experience of everyday hardship repeated across the land that bleak midwinter – even here in Melbourn among our fields and orchards – and it left a scar on the national psyche that is there to this day.

Twenty-five years later, we were up against it again. We were digging up our gardens, parks, lawns and sports fields and turning them into allotments to grow food. Then, along came an extraordinary character – C.H. Middleton, or ‘Mr Middleton’, as he became known to a generation of gardeners. Long before, Alan, Bunny, Monty and Carol, he was the first celebrity gardener. Each month more than 3.5 million listeners tuned in to the BBC Home Service to hear his endearing reflections from the vegetable patch. It was the launch of Dig for Victory, and it began with his promise that “these are critical times, but we shall get through them, and the harder we dig for victory the sooner will the roses be with us”. He trusted, he said, that his friends across the nation would tune in to hear his pearls of wisdom “when I hold forth on Leeks, Lettuces and Leather jackets, instead of Lilac, Lilies and Lavender”.

For me, and I believe for thousands of vegetable gardeners, these folk memories still encourage us to grow our own food – not, thank heaven, for fear of an empty larder, but for the sheer pleasure of tasting your own produce and the satisfaction of watching a seed germinate and grown into something healthy and nutritious to grace the Sunday roast.

In Melbourn, we’re fortunate to have a good crop of allotments owned and managed by the parish council. They are on each side of The Moor, 88 plots on the main site and seven on the other. Application for one can be made through the council. I haven’t yet managed to discover how long the village has owned its own allotments (maybe someone can enlighten me), but it is known th at at the end of the 19th century the council was given the task of actively identifying suitable land.

At the moment all the plots in the village are taken, with a waiting list of five. Annual rents vary, mostly between £20 and £25, though they can be as little as £13. Traditionally, allotment plots are measured in rods – a unit derived from Anglo-Saxon farming practices. A rod was used to control a team of oxen and measures 5.5 yards (5.03 metres). Originally, plots were 10 square rods but now they are often much less and – as is the case here in Melbourn – half allotments are sometimes offered.

You do not need to have an allotment to join the St George’s Allotment and Leisure Gardeners Association (yes, it was founded on St George’s Day!). The benefits include heavily discounted seeds, advice, quarterly newsletter and membership of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners. Subscription is £5 per year. For more information, there is a link on the village website, or contact the secretary: Bruce Huett on 01763 232855 or e-mail allotments@melbourn.org.uk

Midwinter jobs on the patch: Lift the last of your leeks and parsnips before the soil becomes frozen. Lift and divide established clumps of rhubarb. Remove yellowing leaves from your winter brassicas. Dig over empty borders and pile manure on top. Start a trench where you will be growing your beans next year – fill it with compost and fill in. Net your brassicas against the pesky pigeons. David Blundell

opportunity to have seen one of South Cambridgeshire’s finest schools in action.

I have extended an invitation to the pupils at Monkfield and William Westley to come and visit me in Parliament.

Student politics was as alive and feisty as ever when I attended a Q&A session hosted by Hills road Sixth Form College alongside my city counterpart Daniel Zeichner. It was a chance for some of Cambridgeshire’s best and brightest young adults to quiz Daniel and I on matters from student loans to housing

On 20 September, I was honoured to be invited to the Battle of Britain Air Show at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. I feel so lucky to have this fabulous historical facility in my constituency. Clear skies, 20 Spitfires, need I say more?

The following week I scrubbed up and visited Papworth Hospital just days after its cardiothoracic surgeons were announced as some of the best in the country. During my visit I observed a number of procedures, viewed the hospital’s state-of-the-art Critical Care Lab and met with senior staff from the hospital.

It very quickly became clear to me why local people are so proud of Papworth. I have only one word to describe what I saw, “wow”. When compassion, skill, technology and science come together, you create something very special and I saw that in action.

In September I also met with the board of Addenbrooke’s and spent a day in a GP’s surgery. The staff who make our NHS what it is should be very proud of themselves.

Although the challenges that our NHS face are huge, both operationally and financially I have committed to working with them in partnership to ensure they get the support they need to carry on delivering 1st class services. We are in this together.

Local Healthcare news

Royston Community Health

What’s happening at Royston Hospital? Its a question I am asked over and over again. Many local people have been working towards a good outcome since April 2012 when the NHS decided to close Royston hospital and sell the 6 acre site to a care home provider. On the basis that a care home would only need 2 acres we argued that the site could have a care home and other services too.

The NHS was undergoing a reorganisation around that time and the new structure allowed for the original plan to be shelved. They started to consider our ideas and work with us to develop a new plan.

This has been a long time coming and we are not there yet but a small group of us now work under the name Royston Community Health which is a not for profit Community Interest Company. We are working with the NHS to develop plans for a Health Hub for the people of the town and surrounding area. We are all unpaid volunteers.

Any services developed in the town will be for the villages too. If you would like to find out more about what we are doing, have your say about local services and support our group, please see our website at: www.roystoncommunityhealth. org.uk where there is an online questionnaire as well as lots of information or find us on Facebook by searching Royston Community Health, please “like” our page or follow us on Twitter @RoystonCH If you would like one of us to speak with a Village group about what is happening and what we are doing please contact us by e mail on info@roystoncommunityhealth.org.uk Your support is much appreciated. Maggie Allen, Royston Community Health

Stay well this winter

In the past year as many of one in four residents in Cambridgeshire visited A&E when they could have used an alternative service or looked after themselves at home.

Each visit to A&E costs the local NHS £87, and that’s before any treatment is given. When you look at the figures, this costs the local NHS over £4 million a year. In turn this is the equivalent cost of 677 hip replacements, or 287 liver transplants or 115 more dementia nurses.

Using A&E when you don’t need to can also have a knockon effect to the rest of the hospital, as busy A&E departments resulted in 500 cancelled operations and procedures because a bed was no longer available, and longer waiting and referral times. But you can help • Stay healthy – get a flu vaccination if you are eligible • Look after others – check on elderly friends, relatives and neighbours especially in spells of cold weather, help them to keep warm and have the medication they might need • Be prepared – get your prescriptions in early before the holidays and see your pharmacist or GP for any issues you might be putting off • Choose the right service – your local pharmacy can provide confidential, expert advice and treatment for a range of common illnesses and complaints, without having to wait for a GP appointment.

For help with finding local NHS services visit www.cambsandpeterboroughchoosewell.co.uk