4th November 2018

Dear All,

We managed to fit a swim in before “Just Vegetating” on Monday but it is a bit of a squeeze leaving the car in Histon and catching the guided bus into town. These have become less reliable recently as they have a chronic shortage of drivers.

“Just Vegetating” this week covered “Salads – Leaves, Roots & Shoots” and the recipes included: Fennel, Pistachio & oven dried Grapes, Warm Butter Bean salad with olives and various nuts and flowers to add to salads.

We both travelled to Cambridge on Tuesday, Kate shopping and I turned up at the Cambridge U3A Garden Club where I thought I was speaking only to find that I had the wrong day!

On Wednesday Les Cook delivered a large load of FYM to the allotment. We covered most of the allotment and still have a rather large heap left if anyone would like a helping – it could solve our Christmas present offerings this year.

Thursday was not a great day for walking as it was a little moist throughout and the journey to Halls Green near Stevenage was interrupted by a couple of accidents. The walk was still interesting with the leaves starting to change colour and various sorts of livestock in the fields.

Autumn Colours

Walkern Dovecote

Alpacas at Hall Green

That sort of day!

This year the chapel have volunteered to help with the Poppy Day collections as the British Legion men are getting long in the tooth. We were due out on Wednesday but decided that knocking on doors on Halloween evening was not a great idea so we postponed until Thursday evening. It took some time and it is a sign of the times that several folk did not have any cash in the house.

“Biographies” was a little different this week as our Australian history lecturer chose “The Aborigines” as whole rather than an individual. In Tasmania they used to organise Abo shooting expeditions for sport!

We were out on the streets Friday night, it was not very busy but we had two difficult cases which took a long time. We were summoned to the first just as we were due for our break and found a girl collapsed in Rose Crescent after drinking and smoking weed. Her father was summoned but he had been drinking so arrived on a bike. Getting her home was a problem as taxis won’t take anyone who looks drunk. Eventually she was able to reach a seat in the market place and given water and blankets until in shape to get a taxi.

The second was a lad face down outside Vinyl the new club under Waterstones. As we couldn’t get any response from him we were forced to summon an ambulance and they revived him sufficiently to get a taxi.

Our walk leader Philip came round on Saturday as he is wrestling with putting a PowerPoint presentation on his cruise round South America and wanted some extra photos from our Ecuador outings. We were back at West Wratting for football in the afternoon and fortunately the weather was kinder but still a little chilly!

We harvested the first Sweet Potatoes this week.

Love

Mike & Kate