Thursday 12 November 2009

Word is getting further round!

Since I started 'blogging' on the 30th of August, I have got into a diary-style routine of including local and national news items and commenting on matters of interest to myself and, hopefully, to others. Nearly all of the 'comments' relate to my likely candidature as an independent for South East Cambridgeshire in the up-coming General Election, whenever that is to be, and the local and other issues that I and my supporters feel strongly about. It is very clear that at least some of those issues are now being debated and discussed to a greater extent then ever before and it may be that my 'blog' is encouraging debate and discussion. I certainly hope so, for an informed and interested electorate is extremely desirable and pretty well essential for democracy to work as it should. There is nothing that I hate more than canvassing the good people of South East Cambridgeshire - and I have a lot of experience of such canvassing - and being told on the doorsteps that 'I'm not going to vote: you're all the same.' Well, we are not all the same and this independent is certainly different from any others likely to be standing in our constituency.

Regarding the election date, my private guess (don't tell anyone lest I prove to be mistaken) is that the big day - 'Independence Day' for our constituency - is going to be the 6th of May, 2010, which, coincidentally, will be the 105th birthday of my late father, Ladbrook Walter James (Laddie) Woollard, who was born at Downing College Farm, Swaffham Bulbeck, on the 6th of May, 1905. Laddie's father (and my grandfather), Walter Clifton Woollard (1875 - 1942), was a farming tenant of Downing College, Cambridge, as had been his father (and my great grandfather), Joshua Samuel Woollard (1844 - 1929), who was born at Biggin Abbey, Fen Ditton. I wish those ancestors of mine were still around, if only to witness what could well be a rewarding and wonderful day for a Woollard.

The photograph is of my father when he was a pupil at Newport (Essex) Grammar School.