retiredmartin

June 2024. Waterbeach.

Another Waterbeach weekend, with a bit of south coast in the middle, a chance to let Dad escape the house and admire the work of the council lawnmower.

It’s been TWICE (2 X) this week,  confirming that a neat lawn is more important than pothole repair in the Fens.

I’ve been taking him to see the progress on Waterbeach New Town. “Progress” may be overstating it a bit. They seem to be about 1% towards the target of 4,500 new homes on the old RAF force site.

Dad remembers bombs dropping in the village 80 odd years ago, and loves seeing the crane moving one brick at a time alongside the A10.

You can see the shape of these £550k 3 bed homes taking place at Denny Abbey, an English Heritage site with farm museum Dad hadn’t been to for 20 years since the “pasteurised cheese incident”.

I used to drive a tractor you know, proper working class lad me,

though you wouldn’t think so now.

It’s a simple museum, exhibits of boats from which Fenmen used to shoot ducks with shotguns,

and if you ever wanted to know what folk in Waterbeach used to do before they sat at home being IT consultants this is the place to come.

Dad loved it, and struck up a conversation with a young lady in the wonderful cafe that reminded me that old folk need conversation not drugs.

I suppose you get both in The Sun, where we chatted to landlady Helen about life,

and I told her the Mighty Oak was quite brilliant.

Almost as good as the spicy squid from Chung Hwa that night.