The carnival is far from over

I've just been watching the floats go by here in Burwell. We missed the first carnival when we moved here and then again last year because our eldest son was graduating from The Royal Ballet School on the same day.

Our daughter goes to Burwell Guides, who this year celebrated the Suffragette movement as part of the overal theme of 'Ages in History.' It's good to witness such innocent fun in the Cambridgeshire sunshine especially when you remember those dark before female emancipation.

No more hens

We were heading home down Isaacson Road in Burwell over the weekend when our daughter suddenly became aware of a moorhen (sometimes called marsh hens apparently), ducking and diving in and out of the hedge next to the path. What she hadn't spotted were about a dozen or so moorhen chicks, gamely trying to keep up with their mother and representing a ragged formation more likely to come from Red Bull than the Red Arrows.

At one key point, mum decided they should all cross the road and head into the fields beyond. Unfortunately that message was only partially communicated and not all team members received or understood it. The result was that about ten chicks safely made it - albeit in two stages - but at least two didn't. They were run over by motorists who almost certainly hadn't seen their tiny forms and may not have stopped if they had.

Our daughter was really upset about it, even though she knows it happens all the time (yesterday we also saw a dead badger on the road to Swaffham Prior). She was most upset that, though this particular social network was based on family strength and solidarity, the message still hadn't got through to every member.

Midsommer in Midsummer

Living in a chocolate box village like Burwell in Cambridgeshire, we often think about the TV programme Midsommer Murders where unexpected murders pile up from the most unlikely sources - all in beautiful, quintessentially English villages like ours.
We thought about this again this afternoon when we went to the vicarage for the annual church summer fete.
The garden was populated with the usual plant sellers, book and cake stalls and games for the children - all washed down with copious amounts of strong, sweet tea. The raffle was drawn by a large but befuddled gentleman who consistently messed things up and applauded loudly by knitted ladies in twin sets and men of a certain age with bulging stomachs over bulging legs, exposed below bulging shorts.
All in all a collection of suspicious characters that could have appeared in Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage' all those years ago. In fact not much has really changed since then and I love Burwell all the more for it.

Swine flu in Burwell

It's official: three cases of swine flu have been diagnosed in Burwell and the local primary school has been closed.

I've just walked down to the bank and noticed some children playing on the village green but, as this news article indicates, noticed a lot of the locals looking at them incredulously as though all children in the village should currently be unseen and unheard.

In a curious way it reminded me of the story of Eyam in Derbyshire - near to where my sister and parents now live - when Plague hit the village between 1665-6. One thing we don't share with the Peak District in the Fens are of course the peaks, though some would say outbreaks like this are the very troughs of our existence?

Opening old lines of communication

My son and I have been trying to work out where the station between Bottisham and Lode in Cambridgeshire was located. It's obviously hidden away in fen farmland somewhere and we plan to walk over there next weekend to try and find out.

When the children were younger, our holidays and weekends often took in old or disused railway lines or windmills, as well as recreating the scenes through the model railway in the loft room. Those happy days always took me back to my own youth, watching the trains on the main line at Woodcroft or from the apple tree at the bottom of the garden, just managing to glimpse the trains away to the south-west where only houses can now be viewed.

I saw a story suggesting old lines of communication might be restored. I'm not a subscriber so can't get the full detail but the links that trains offer me with the past will always be there, however hazy.

Reach out

After a day of gardening and generally rushing around yesterday we had a relaxing day in our Burwell garden this morning. We devoured the Sunday newspaper, coffee and cheese and cucumber sandwiches, all to the backdrop of Michael Ball's radio programme and in glorious sunshine.

This afternoon I went for a walk with my eldest son over Devil's Dyke and and round a series of leafy footpaths to Reach and then back again for an evening barbecue. It's all been there for us this weekend and was just a case of reaching out to touch it