Raindrops kept Falling on Me 'Ead

Martin Mere - Mere Sands Wood

One of (the only?) problems with moving has been that I have struggled a bit to find a group of people to "hang out" with, as the youngsters say. In Southport we were both very attached to our church and had a group of friends there who we saw on a pretty regular basis. Leyland Road Methodist was great because there were a group of guys of a similar age and we did stuff together. I'm still loosely attached and allowed to join in the walking group ( see my post 'Last of the Summer Wine..... almost').

I do a bit of work with the food bank in St. Annes but there isn't any social aspect to it and I go along as the +1 to social stuff connected to Heather's art club. Unfortunately I don't find our local church particularly inspiring. Heather and I do a cafe church thing once a month which is OK but, because it draws people from a quite wide area, its difficult to make anything social out of it. So, on Wednesday, I did my first walk with The Ramblers (route above)

Anybody in the Southport area will recognise the walk. I've done versions of it quite a number of times. Also anyone in the Southport area will know what the weather was like on April 10th. Very wet, windy, cold and miserable. Ground underfoot incredibly muddy and route flooded in places. Full waterproof gear weather in fact.

Guess what...... really enjoyed it. It was lovely to meet up with some new people with a shared interest and I'm really looking forward to the next one.

We managed to avoid politics as a conversational topic, which was probably wise given some of the stuff in the news recently. I've really been enjoying watching the legal teams at the Post Office enquiry making the upper management of the organisation squirm. If some of this lot don't end up in jail (particularly the Vennells woman) I'll eat my hat!

Paula Vennells

 

There is a ridiculously long list of 'ordinary' people who have been stitched up by this government and a similarly long list of wealthy people who have been enriched by this government. A commitment from Keir Starmer to pay outstanding compensation claims from the Post Office, Windrush and Contaminated Blood scandals in a specific, short, timeframe would, I think, show the difference between the current government and an incoming Labour government. A further commitment to stop doling honours out to party donors and to legislate to prevent this ever happening again might also help. Actually almost any radical proposal that doesn't get overturned 10 minutes after it's announcement might be good!