A trip East Coast Boat Show near Ipswich with Steven and Christine as a passenger so that I could prepare for my meeting with Derek Giles & Ross McKay later, when I made a plea to the latter to join us back on the Town Council in place of Tony Carmedy.
I had been contacted a few days ago and invited to join a couple of friends for a trip to the East Coast Boat Show near Ipswich and today was the day. Although I had been very busy recently, I decided to accept because I needed the change and cannot keep on working on a continuous basis. I was awake early today and making and receiving many telephone calls before Steven and Christine arrived for me. I took my transportable cellular telephone in their car with me and finished off my calls so that I could concentrate on the trip. The calls were to agree to arrange a meeting with Ross McKay for this evening at Derek Giles' house and to get agreement from my political colleagues that this would be a good idea.
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The car journey was quite long and a little tedious, but we broke the monotony by dint of lively conversation and also by stopping at a Little Chef for a coffee there and tea on the way back. The Boat Show itself was of reasonable interest but there was little that we had not seen before. In fact, the first person I met was John Coulling, the man form the marine electronics company and I spoke to him about not having had the chance to get the auto-pilot completely installed. Also a chat to Buckden Marina who told me of the plans to get the new Leisure complex fully installed by this July. There will be a £70 membership fee and then individual charges for use of the various facilities. He claimed that the sales of the waterside lodges on a 99-year lease are still going well despite the economic recession, but I was not sure I should believe him. A host of other "boat-bits" and chandlery stalls and I did buy an "anchor ball" as one purchase. We also looked at quite a lot of the boats but they were fairly un-inspiring and not very numerous. The weather was showers between sunny spells and we judged our time in and out to suit them both. We left the show-ground after lunch and they had dropped me back home before tea.
This evening, I went over to see Derek Giles and Ross McKay in Eaton Socon and I made my approach to Ross about standing for us in place of Tony Carmedy. It took quite a long time to get my pitch across, but it was well-received and seemed to hit a chord. There was no doubt that Ross was very disappointed to have lost his role as a councillor and would go a very long way to get it back; particularly as he could do so at an early opportunity. We ranged over national issues to sound him out on the areas in which his former extreme views could cause difficulty and these amounted to his very nationalistic/patriotic stance as being of a Scottish Protestant upbringing. Provided he avoided making controversial statements on national issues and was prepared to work as part of a team, he could be a great asset to us and would have an important role in the production of FOCUS. He was surprised at our suggestion that he should become a "card-carrying member of the Liberal Democrats" but I put to him that, if he was going to become part of our team and be involved with FOCUS and other publicity campaigns, I could see no other way. I came home then and stayed up quite late thinking about this and other matters. It was the Monmouth By-election today and the count was taking place too late for me to know the result before I got to bed.