Halfway between Kingsbury and Creeting St Peter is the railway station at Whittlesford Parkway, a fact which, until recently, had no particular value to me. Until last night, that is, when I found myself on the 17:28 service from Liverpool Street to Cambridge.
It's not a journey that I've made very often, and certainly not recently, but the route up the Lea Valley is pretty enough once you get beyond the London suburbs and a pretty good sunset meant that I could look out of the window and enjoy the scenery. Darkness fell as I left Essex and entered Cambridgeshire, and I was met by Peter, who had very kindly offered to pick me up and take me to the evening's event, a dinner hosted by the South Rural branch of South Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats. Ros had arrived separately, and was out knocking on doors with one of the local campaigners, Tim Stone.
My first surprise was to run into Balan Sisupalan, a former colleague on the London Region Candidates Committee. He has a home inside the Cambridge city boundaries, and had dropped in to see what was happening.
However, Balan wasn't the only person I know in the South Cambridgeshire area. Sebastian Kindersley, the PPC for the constituency, was approved as a Parliamentary candidate by a panel which included your correspondent, and Fiona Whelan, recently elected to the County Council in a pretty sensational by-election win, turned up with her two sons - nice jacket, by the way, Fiona!
Best of all, my old friend Peter Facey was able to make it. Whilst he has recently moved over the border to North East Hertforshire, he has retained his links there, and it was great to have a chance to catch up.
Ros opened the event by speaking and taking questions. You can never predict the types of questions that get asked on these occasions, and last night saw a number of foreign policy questions. Our members in South Cambridgeshire come from a variety of backgrounds, and a retired professor of philosophy raised the interesting dilemma of what to do about Afghanistan. Should we stay and fight an apparently unwinnable war, or should we just withdraw and let the Afghans decide their future?
Dinner followed, with curry and desset, and an opportunity for me to talk about sport - should tennis be an Olympic sport? - Argentina and why it's wonderful, and the fact that South Cambridgeshire is the second best rural authority in which to live. Did I mention that Mid Suffolk is the best?...
And then back to Creeting St Peter for a glass of wine and then sleep...
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