Elections are highly personal - always have and always will be. The insults on the doorstep stay with you, and the small successes matter disproportionately. But I find in the thick of the campaign, and during the wash of the aftermath, I am reflecting on why I am involved. Who spurred me into this?

There are a mixed and myriad cast of characters: most formidably are my parents and in particular my mother Sally Fordham - voting was what you did, and community involvement and engagement was expected. My father has a strong sense of can-do and so when I see problems I leap straight to finding solutions - nothing too small and few things too large. My primary school headmaster Mick Brookes encouraged me to play chess and with this has gone a sense of strategy and planning and a balanced need to win. John Fordham, my head at secondary school, who patiently explained that people should seek to be judged by their actions and not their name (after I had abused my and his coincidence of surname).

Apologies for the long posting:

I seem to get quite a few questions from Unitarian Chapels about same sex marriage and about comms and promotions. So many that there are in fact common questions and answers. I thought I might lay a few pointers out along with a personal statement or two in order to answer the fundamental "why do I keep going on about this?".

It's not that often these days that I get down to London and so the schedule of what you do is always constrained. First,the purpose of the visit, second the friend whom you are staying with and third a specific close acquaintance with whom you have cause to catch up.  

The only other things I managed to squeeze into that was a coffee with a long standing fellow local history buff about how and where I might dispose of my local history collection of north west London and then a pressured sense of the train times.  Today I'm on time, indeed ahead of time and so get to pop into the British Library.

Sitting in your market stall or in the antique fair is only half of the story if what I spend my time doing - the hunting, buying, looking up and researching occupies at least half of your time.

And sometimes the surprises come in unlikely forms.  I had a lot of old books - and here amongst them, unmentioned, unnoticed and largely untouched lay a Victorian scrap book. Nice binding, quality paper and in top condition with gilt edging and I thought untouched at all. Flicking through there as no sign of any annotation or use.

I thank you for your email and note your comments. Your email has been passed to me as Service Solicitor because I monitor concerns raised and we see feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve.

We usually do have a flag or banner displayed for such events but, unfortunately, it was an oversight that there was no flag or banner at our Chesterfield Station during the Festival. I confirm that we will be putting up a flag or banner at the Station for future events.

As you saw at the Chesterfield Pride event, the Service does support Pride events both in Derbyshire and around the UK. We also have several Rainbow flags and banners which we display at Station Open Days, Pride Events and on Stations in support of national and global events related to the LGBTQ equality movement.

I am pleased to say that we also have a vibrant new covering due to be applied to one of our Training School fire appliances in the next couple of weeks. This features a colourful rainbow together with a prevention and recruitment message - this will be ready for our upcoming Joint Fire and Police Open Day taking place on Saturday 4 August 2018 at our Joint Fire and Police Headquarters, Butterley Hall, Ripley. This event will be open for the public to attend. Further details can be found on our website through this LINK

Whilst the rainbow liveried vehicle will be mostly based at our Training Centre, it will be available to represent the Service at Pride events and other community engagement events. The images of the new livery are shown below. You can see that the main frontage of the fire appliance and side doors remain in our corporate red colour, retaining the identity of a traditional fire engine. The legal requirements relating to the reflective markings on emergency appliances have also been considered as part of the design.

Many thanks for taking the time to provide your feedback.

Kind regards

Louise Taylor - Solicitor & Monitoring Officer

Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service

Today is well and truly a summers day - we are here in Chesterfield Market with our market stall - bottom end near The Market Fish and Chip Restaurant.  It's is a glorious day and the town feels busy.

To get into the spirit of summer and all the positives that inspires I have decided to hold a discount sale - it's not something I have universally done before but it seemed worth a try.  Huge numbers of the books I have previously individually priced up have been poured into my £1 section and a large number of good quality hardback biographies I have placed into a £2 or 3 for £5 section.

Yes we buy books, antiques, bric-a-brac, maps and more.  But here on behalf of Brockwell Books of Chesterfield is our 'honesty policy'.

Let's try and give you a bit more of an insight of how we operate.  People after ask us to quote, purchase and remove items that they no longer need.  These are often items they have received via another friend or relative or wish to sell for the cash.

Well this is something very different and yet I am undergoing almost regular flashbacks just sitting here - yes, I'm doing an indoor antiques fair.  Now it's been a while, but this time here here as the dealer.

Since the age of very young, I was brought up on antique fairs - Saturdays were wrapping and packing the antiques and Sundays were early mornings loading the car and driving to what was often a large venue hotel or sports centre.  There Mum and Dad would run the stall.  I would be the hired hand at 50p a box carried from the car to the stall both in the morning and then the evening - the resulting £5 or so was then my spending money at these antique fairs.

The progression from being an occasional stall holder to being a full on regular market trader is a long path, and after six months other than know where I started I have no idea where this project will end.

What I do know is that I'm loving it.  I would never have predicted with any seriousness that this is what I would be doing if I had looked down the path of career choices, but here I am smiling and chatting to passers-by. Re-reading that sentence before I type in I realise that is not entire true, and my husband thinks that I have it in my blood.

So what do you do when it's raining and you run a market stall? You get up, load the car and drive down to stand on Chesterfield Market - yes selling books, jigsaws, baskets, records and more.

After all - if you are in for a penny then you are in for a pound.  And either I'm a market  trader all weathers or I'm not I reckon, so yes, here we are all weathers and all conditions running our stall.

The excitement of having a new range of stock.  It's not the they types of books are different but rather that I am getting the hang of my stall, range and pitch.  This week is the best example where of my fifteen boxes of stock - thirteen were newly sorted and fresh on the stall.

The consequences of this are curious and gently unexpected. First is when someone asks for a book that you know you have - but that was last week and you have rotated your stock and suddenly you don't have it with you. Second is when they ask if you have a book on a topic, and because this is the first outing of the new stock you realise you don't know.

I like to get involved - I have a strong sense of place, a developed pride in my town, adopted, briefly lived in or newly resident to.  That applies now to my time in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.

In a town this big with this long a heritage - at least two Roman forts - it's hard not to be animated by the story.  But it's also the unlikely stories that fascinate the most and so when the opportunity come up to be involved with Derbyshire LGBT+'s exhibition Other Stories it was too good not to seize it.

Have I begun to find my market feet, at last?  So now I am doing two Market Days a week - first is the Thursday flea market, bric-a-brac and other stuff - broadly anything and then the Saturday open market.  Now in order to try and give myself some structure I have set myself a discipline of doing books on Thursday and a wide range of other stuff that I have gathered hoarded or bought over the years.

So here I am today - with a wide spread of books that I'm selling out at just £1 each - the signage is bold and the popularity, so far, fairly high.

Maps: Set 1.  Rand-McNally new standard atlas of the World. Engraved in Chicago, United States of America, 1900.  Images are available on my Facebook page "Brockwell Books of Chesterfield" - please feel free to join that page and message direct on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Europe and the World

These maps have come out of a broken atlas that is both of the highest quality, but also in largely superb condition.  Where the maps have been removed from the atlas The severed edge has been kept but does not impinge on any of the details at all. This will enable those mounting and framing the map to decide on the size and depth of the Border edge. 

The detail on each map is often outstanding, many are colour codes beautifully and also capture the historical foibles of the time.  They represent a view of the world that is both at the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, but also before the collapse of a umber of Empires - British, Austria Hungarian and Ottoman to cite just three.

  1. Chesterfield's Spital Cemetery - Log 1
  2. Occasional Diary of a Market Trader: Week 14
  3. Occasional Diary of a market trader: Week 12
  4. Occasional Diary of a market trader: week 11