Councillor Colquhoun?
Samuel Pepys eventually became an MP. Does Week 17 of 2025 suggest a similar future in store for the current resident of his family home?
To see how Sam Pepys spent this week 364 years ago, follow this link.
On Wednesday, I took delivery of the leaflets for my campaign to be county councillor in next week’s local elections, leaving me just over a week to deliver them. But Fate may’ve had other plans for adding notoriety to my name…
That same evening, I followed further in the footsteps of our home’s former owner by accepting a role in politics: I became one of Brampton’s parish councillors.
But it was in my role as co-founder of Brampton’s Flood Defence Group that I set off for the Regional Flood and Coastal Committee meeting organised by the Environment Agency on Thursday.
The last one in March had been three hours in a public gallery listening to complex discussions on the impact of flooding, and the funding available to deal with it.
Deal with – not fix.
“Within minutes of getting home, my phone rang…”
There’d been little to take away beyond despair over the inevitability of future climate disasters, except perhaps the hope of the united front standing against them – at least in that room.
However, at that last one, I’d also connected with the civil engineer who independently confirmed the poor design of National Highways’ defence measures for us. So it was a good networking opportunity.
The RFCC comprises EA officers as well as county councillors and representatives from various related agencies – like our regional water company, Anglian Water.
National Highways were conspicuously absent, however.
This month, a David Kemp gave a presentation about last September’s unexpected floods. The key takeaways, from both his presentation and the discussion which followed, were…
The heavy rainfall was almost entirely in Bedfordshire, which received the worst effects.
Cambridgeshire had hardly any rain by comparison – which is why our area’s floods were so unexpected.
One positive everyone unanimously agreed on was the number of FDGs that had come together after the event, which would help manage the damage and clean-up for the increasingly inevitable future events.
At that last point, I raised my hand. A councillor noticed, and tapped the arm of chairman Brian Stewart OBE as he attempted to close that item of the agenda. He looked to me with some puzzlement.
“Yes?”
Still recovering from my laryngitis, I cleared my throat. “As a founder of one of those groups, could I offer our perspective?”
“We wouldn’t usually,” he replied, “but, if you can keep it brief, you can have the final word.”
“You may have just cut off our chances of being here in future…”
Something made me tap record on my phone before I stood up to speak, which is how I know I kept it under four minutes.
I made a point of thanking those council officers who had supported us in setting up, but highlighted that we don’t want to just be there to manage damage or clean-up – we want to mitigate or even prevent!
“…and we’ve been incredibly frustrated by how certain agencies are just refusing to enter discussion or accept responsibility, like National Highways…”
The councillors around the table were nodding, though I didn’t let them completely off the hook either. I pointed out that miscommunications had resulted in mistrust among residents that any good would be done.
Brian Stewart OBE didn’t nod once. After I finished and sat, he said simply, “Thank you. Now, let’s move on…”
At the break, the first to approach me was the founder of St Ives’ FDG. “I hope that doesn’t come back to bite us,” he said ominously. “The chairman doesn’t like the public speaking in these meetings. You may have just cut off our chances of being here in future.”
Almost every councillor, though, came up to congratulate me for speaking out, and shared advice along the lines of, “The next step for you now is to go to the media. Make as big a thing of this as you can!”
Just before the break was over, I thanked Brian for the opportunity to speak. He didn’t seem at all upset, instead revealing that his intention, before his tenure ends in 2027, is to get a FDG rep onto the RFCC…
As the meeting continued, I shot off my recording to a few email addresses I knew in the press. I had no idea how well my phone had captured the audio, and we hadn’t had any response to our proposed open letter to all flood agencies yet, so I didn’t hold out much hope.
But, within minutes of getting home, my phone rang.
“Hi, I’m a reporter from Cambridge News…”
When I shared the above with our FDG committee, it was met with a mixture of elation and concern. Elation, because we now had a chance to be heard.
Concern, because a neighbour had expressed fear over what this would do to her house price.
I hadn’t been inconsiderate of this fear. In fact, we’d brought it up at the last meeting of our FDG, where almost 30 of us had unanimously agreed to approach the media. We all felt that the agencies clearly needed the pressure, and it couldn’t affect house prices any more adversely than reporting on the floods themselves.
However, 30 people were not the entire village. So I agreed to try reining in our media ally until a wider online poll had been conducted through Facebook and email.
I wouldn’t be able to rely on coverage of my RFCC speech to gain votes, then.
“…maybe I’ll have more time…”
That made those leaflets all the more important – hence why so much of Saturday and Sunday was spent walking around the villages popping them through letterboxes.
Why not Friday? ‘Coz that day, I was down in Peckham with fellow storyteller Amber Lickerish and YA author Matt Killeen, training them both up to deliver my ‘writing for pleasure’ workshops that have successfully inspired young people since 2008.
Having Amber and Matt to help run these workshops will be particularly useful if I am elected this coming Thursday, while I’ll have the chance to affect education policy in my county – as well as flood-related issues.
If I’m not elected… I’ll still be pushing for an education system that stimulates the desire to learn rather than just thrusting info in young people’s faces. And I’ll continue the fight to keep our village safe from floods.
I’ll just be fighting those fights from further afield. But maybe I’ll have more time…
In return for me sharing these words with you, please pay just one word of yours. What one word describes your most pressing local issue?
Want to know why I’m asking for this? Flip back to this post here.
Let’s share tales again soon. In the meantime, ciao for niao…
$;-)
What one word describes your most pressing local issue?
If it weren't for the flooding mentioned here, I'd probably say "Gardening"...