Heading for Wales

Posted by Ellee on Jul 30, 2010 in Personal | 11 comments This year is the first time that my husband and I will not be joined by our two teenage sons on holiday – our eldest will be with his girlfriend’s family in Majorca and our youngest prefers to work hard at his summer job to save for a car having just passed his driving test. However, we will not be alone as pa-in-law will be joining us. It will be his first holiday without Vera, the...
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Allan Brigham’s tour of Chesterton

Posted by Ellee on Jul 24, 2010 in Uncategorized | 10 comments Last night I joined Cambridge’s popular historian and the city’s best known road sweeper, Allan Brigham,  for a guided tour of Chesterton – old and new. He’s a bit like the Pied Piper and attracts hordes of enthusiastic followers who lap up his every word. Last night was no exception, and a score of disappointed folk had to be turned away as they had not booked in...
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Susi and her clever “canine partner”

Posted by Ellee on Jul 22, 2010 in News | 4 comments My mother has a disabled badge and it is always a scramble to find a blue badge parking spot when I take her to Asda in Wisbech. However, I was reminded how easy it is to jump to conclusions when seeing a young and fit looking driver behind the wheel and parked in a disabled bay. That was the case last week when I loaded up our shopping, and the pretty young woman parked next to me in a large...
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The story of vanishing Dunwich

Posted by Ellee on Jul 21, 2010 in Uncategorized | 6 comments My walking buddy Heather and I found ourselves making a return visit to Dunwich Museum at the weekend, captivated by the story of how this once thriving town, or even a city, had vanished into the sea, helpless against the force of the crushing waves against its crumbling cliffs. We had visited it last two years ago, and I can still remember being told as a child about the church bells that still...
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Our sinking Suffolk coastline

Posted by Ellee on Jul 21, 2010 in Uncategorized | 1 comment One of the walks my friend Heather and I had planned to do from a guide book was unexpectedly abandoned – because the footpaths had been swamped by the eroding coastline. We improvised, thanks to Heather’s brilliant map reading, and had a very pleasant walk around Blythburgh during our annual Suffolk walking weekend. I noticed a mysterious tombstone in the village churchyard marking...
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Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh

Posted by Ellee on Jul 21, 2010 in Uncategorized | 4 comments I have just spent the most wonderful few days in Aldeburgh with a dear friend and kind, generous hosts. It’s an annual retreat and point of reunion for Heather and myself, a former nurse from Cambridge who now lives in London, and plans to uproot to Somerset. We plan to continue our annual July walking weekend in that glorious Suffolk town wherever she moves to. Here is a route of our walk...
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Illegal timber harvests, AIDS treatment and bankers’ bonuses – a week in the life of Robert Sturdy MEP

Posted by Ellee on Jul 20, 2010 in PR client, Robert Sturdy MEP | 0 comments This is Eastern Region MEP Robert’s Sturdy’s latest report from the European Parliament sitting in Strasbourg, which tackled issues including illegally harvested timber, AIDS treatment and new rules for bankers’ bonuses: It is often the case that the plenary sessions in Strasbourg before the European Parliament’s summer recess are extremely busy, and last week was no...
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Norfolk head apponts two head girls – and no head boy!

Posted by Ellee on Jul 15, 2010 in News | 4 comments As a nation we struggle with women in high office. The Church of England is currently in turmoil over the ordination of women bishops, an issue I first highlighted two years ago, the European Commission is considering introducing quotas to tackle gender imbalances on company boards where only 10% of members are women, and our Parliament still struggles to achieve more equal representation of...
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Does Brucie’s Fountain of Youth work for you?

Posted by Ellee on Jul 15, 2010 in News | 0 comments My husband’s birthday is coming up soon and I did consider buying him The Fountain of Youth which Brucie swears by for keeping him fit and agile; it was given to him by his mother-in-law 27 years ago when he married the stunning Wilnelia who is 32 years younger.The book claims that by following a regime of exercises based on five rites – energy, fire, water, earth and air, devised by...
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Between Life and Death, have you made a living will?

Posted by Ellee on Jul 14, 2010 in Headway, updates | 7 comments I’ve just watched last night’s harrowing BBC documentary Between Life and Death, which tracked the fate of three seriously brain injured people at the Neurosciences Critical Care Unit in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, following terrible road accidents. No wonder it is a world famous hospital. I thought Neuro Intensive Care expert Prof David Menon was astounding in the way he...
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ME sufferer calls for urgent improved screening of blood donors

Posted by Ellee on Jul 13, 2010 in Uncategorized | 39 comments This is a guest post  by ME sufferer Christine Douglas who is campaigning for an urgent improvement for screening of blood donors in the UK similar to other countries in the world. She has called for an international collaboration on blood screening methods, which makes good sense to me: If someone told you that a brand new human retrovirus (from the same family as HIV) had been discovered in...
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A weekend in Warwick and Hull

Posted by Ellee on Jul 9, 2010 in Headway | 10 comments I’m heading to Warwick University today (pic) to attend a national conference for the brain injury charity Headway this weekend. I last went two years ago and was really impressed by the campus. Up until then, my only recent experience of student digs was at Hull University where my son David was studying. If I explain that his was the last block to get a facelift, you might understand why...
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Iran must stop stoning women to death

Posted by Ellee on Jul 8, 2010 in updates | 8 comments I felt horror and revulsion when I read the story yesterday about the Iranian mother of two who faces stoning by death for alleged adultery. I add my strongest protest to the international campaign led by outraged Western governments and human rights groups pleading for clemency. The son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, pleads her innocence. His mother has already spent five years in prison and...
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Ronaldo buying fatherhood

Posted by Ellee on Jul 6, 2010 in News | 6 comments I know we live in a diverse society, but one has to wonder why hunky footballer Christiano Ronaldo resorts to buying a child from a surrogate mother rather than conceiving naturally in a loving and committed relationship. No mention has been made of him being unable to conceive naturally. So we are left to assume that paternal instincts have kicked in for the 25-year-old, who has dated a host of...
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Should our MPs sleep on office campbeds?

Posted by Ellee on Jul 2, 2010 in News | 5 comments What concerns me is not the fact that some MPs are reportedly bedding down for the night in Westminster, but that not many people will care about it.I wonder if any steps have been taken to discover who the parliamentarians are and what help they can be given now that the London Evening Standard has highlighted this issue.  Their report states states that a handful of MPs use camp beds in...
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Marrying horses and newspaper boys

Posted by Ellee on Jul 2, 2010 in News | 4 comments Nick Clegg has invited us to name some of the loony laws which infringe on liberty and we would like repealed – ending a ban on marrying horses was the first thing that sprang to the mind of some! Every day I am reminded of one law I would like changed which resulted in my newsagent no longer being able to employ newspaper boys (or girls) to deliver my morning read – a weighty load...
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