I haven’t! Hence sleeping through most of the weekend and missing a whole host of events – such as the open day held at Mill Road Library
Turns out heatwaves make it even harder for neurodiverse people to get decent sleep because we already struggle to regulate our body temperatures anyway, and trying to cool down at night time when the ambient temperature at night time is over 20 degrees makes this even more of a challenge.
The only one I managed to get to was the AGM of the Cambridge Area Bus Users Group, now reconstituted with a committee of ten. I spotted members of three different political parties at the meeting of which around 20 of us braved the heat!
Above – at The not-easy-to-find Signal Box Community Centre in Cambridge (The local residents really deserved better than this from the developers)
The one big takeaway from this was the lack of publicity for the live buses map from Smart Cambridge – which was a GCP-funded project
Above – from SMART Cambridge, public transport tools
Above – Still a few buses running at midnight on a Sunday evening/Monday morning, or they haven’t turned their transponders off!
Mill Road Library open day
One of three events I slept through and missed was the open day for Mill Road Library’s future.
I also missed a Cambridge Living Streets walking tour of where the new eastern entrance to Cambridge Station is going to be, and also the Cambridge City 75th Anniversary event in town earlier – see photos by CambridgeEye here.
Mill Road Library
Fortunately lots of people turned up, took photos, and added lots of ideas on what sorts of activities the building could hold. (I wrote more about the library building in this earlier blogpost)
Above – Mill Road Library on LI
New Petersfield ward councillor Cllr Kathryn Fisher (Greens – Petersfield) took a snap of one of the ideas boards.
Above – the Mill Road Library’s suggested activities, by Cllr Kathryn Fisher on FB
Residents highlight the challenge of social isolation
It’s not just me.
What’s striking is that people are highlighting the problems that they want to see solved, and how. These lists of things are no longer simply ‘wish lists’ as people have critiqued in the past.
The Cambridge Reddit Group has a recent thread that generated over 100 responses to the question: “What’s wrong with Cambridge?”
Above – What’s Wrong with Cambridge?
The reason for posting it here is to give a glimpse of what people on another social media platform outside what’s left of the local politics bubble. And there are so many things to pick out from that thread that should be of interest not just to local politicians but also those promoting growth while being involved in forums trying to solve Cambridge’s chronic problems.
I followed the above thread with a new one asking “What in terms of leisure and entertainment does Cambridge need as it grows even further, and where could/should those things go?” which so far has generated over 50 responses.
The lack of input from younger adults (18-40 year olds) (both resident – who grew up in Cambridge, and people who have moved to the city more recently) remains striking. And being over 40 I’m not going to pretend to have the answers. Only more questions I guess. For example what outreach has been done with existing professional networks such as the Cambs Junior Lawyers Division? Or the Cambridge Young Professionals Group? Are there any equivalent groups for people from working class backgrounds and/or who do not work in corporate/professional services fields? In times gone by this may have been covered by the Cambridge Trades Council. Some of you may want to browse through the listed groups in Cambridge Resilience Web here and ask who is missing?
(See more about the massive document drop here)
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The Cambridge Town Owl 