15th October 2017

Dear All,

It has been a fairly busy week with U3A term starting, Street Pastors and cricket business plus autumn gardening.

On Monday after swimming there was time for some gardening sowing broad beans and Kate into serious apple juice production. In the evening I had a Garden Club talk (my 226^th) the other side of Bury St Edmunds at Thurston.

“Baby Pumpkin”

On Tuesday “Just Vegetating” began again. We have a new class of 22 with a waiting list this time. They seem a lively group with plenty of questions. We then had to attend a funeral for David Miles-Dinham the leader of our Biography group – you often learn a lot about someone at their funeral and this was a good example. In the evening we had a church group meeting here.

Wednesday was the annual “Put the cricket square to bed” day. As usual this involved cutting, scarifying, fertilizing, reseeding, top dressing with 50 bags of loam and levelling. This year we assembled a team of 4 workers which made it easier.

On Thursday we were leading a walk starting at Tempsford on the A1 north of Biggleswade. It was an attractive walk following the Great Ouse and its tributaries for a distance, and the sun shone for most of the time. It was a good illustration of the invasive nature of Himalayan Balsam as it present for large sections of the walk.

Ouse near Tempsford

Himalayan Balsam

Old Lock Keepers cottage

We then had to rush off to Royston as we were addressing the WI on “Street Pastors” standing in for our local leader Mark Strivens. It was an interesting experience – like going back a few decades but they listened well and asked several questions. They were most concerned about the recommended levels of alcohol intake – probably worrying how they affect their personal intake!

“Biographies” began again on Friday and the topic was “Thomas Blood” who is most famous for nearly managing to steal the Crown Jewels. He had a very colourful career changing sides in the Civil War and leading several insurrections. He was almost certainly a spy and probably a double agent with the Dutch. I started digging the allotment in the afternoon then we were on duty with Street Pastors in the evening. It was a very busy night – probably the busiest we have had. The first part was dealing with students, all girls who had exceeded their capacity but all had friends to help them get back to college. Each time we took a break we were called out again on the radio to prostrate individuals and were busy all night. The worst cases were a huge, heavy guy who had been ejected from “Novi” and was prostrate on the pavement. He was completely incoherent but we eventually managed to “walk” him to Parker’s Piece and seat him on a bench where he was violently sick. He was unable to tell us where he lived and he was not ill enough for A & E. We left him to sleep on the bench assuming he would come to no harm and checked him at the end of the night when he was fast asleep – not a great result but we had run out of options. We staggered back to base at 4am only to find two “chubby” girls in the road outside one completely collapsed. The other had phoned for medical assistance. We managed to get the prostrate one off the road but she was completely unresponsive. Kate then noticed blood on the other one, then razor blades – she had been self-harming and her arm a mess. When the medics arrived so did the police. An ambulance was eventually called to take them away. We eventually got away at 4.30am.

The Stockholm folk have been exploring the city and adjusting to coffee at £6 a cup!

Love

Mike & Kate