After confronting Bob Grubb over his family’s involvement with my poster boards, I took Daniel for a driving lesson for Cambridge and once back, reinstated the boards with Mike and his dad. This, before a family visit to St James’s Church for the St George’s Day parade. During the service, the Rev Peter Lewis advocated my book and publicised my village talk tomorrow. Vera Ruff and Ivy Bunnage really appreciated presentation editions which I took round today. In the meeting with all our candidates this evening, we agreed to concentrate on Percy’s ward where our efforts should have the biggest effect. The news all week has been dominated by the football tragedy.
I was up early this morning and ate a nice fried breakfast. This was the last relaxing thing I did today. I chose to go around Paxton for 15 minutes before taking Daniel for a driving lesson to Cambridge. I found most of our poster boards down and damaged again and I knocked up the Grub family at 8:30am to see if they knew anything about it as I suspected his son and friends. An angry exchange ensued, and I left them to it and came back to take Daniel out. Daniel drove quite well to Cambridge and then stayed the day with his friend Gary. Once back, I went out to help Mike and his Dad restore the flag boards, rescuing two from the river and re-erecting them. I had missed Bob Grubb when he came to see me and, after lunch, I took Della to the church so that we could watch Di and Debbie in the St George’s Day Parade.
Of course, Bob Grub came around just as I was leaving, and we had some short words with each other more in frustration at the lack of a chance to speak. He was unhappy at being woken up at 8:30am and felt he was due an apology as his boys were away this weekend. At church, we had a nice service which dissipated my annoyance somewhat and then the Rev Peter Lewis, the vicar, announced my talk to the village for tomorrow and praised my book as being well worth buying. This afternoon, the other candidates came around and we all discussed tactics. We have decided to put everything into Percy’s Ward for the rest of the campaign to try to get him elected as, according to our surveys, he is just behind now. This evening, Di and I assembled the rest of my first batch of one hundred books, sticking in the maps and folding on the covers. I also signed and numbered these ready for my talk at the Village Hall tomorrow. The news all week had been of the football tragedy last Saturday. After a week when the football pitch and field been steadily been filled with flowers on the terraces with scarves and mascots; the memorial services are over and the ground is being cleared. It seems that all-seater stadiums and now the preferred choice. The weather was rain today and it fell steadily all day. I gave presentation copies of my history book Vera Ruff and Ivy Bunnage today and the delight on Mrs Ruff’s face made all the heartache of local affairs worthwhile