The House of Commons is on recess this week, which gives me more time for more local visits and meetings as well as time to brave the half-term crowds at family attractions – thankfully for my waistline, Cadbury’s World was fully booked so we settled for the excellent Steam Museum in Swindon instead.

My local agenda is still focused on the aftermath of the storms and floods and included a productive open meeting with the power providers SSE in Little Bedwyn to discuss the lack of communications during the four-day power outages over Christmas and what can be done to improve the resilience of the network and improve communications. A greatly overused phrase is “lessons have been learned” (I always want to ask, “by whom”?) but there does seem to be a genuine change in the way that the company is organising its emergency responses and communications, which is good to see. I also met representatives of Wiltshire Council again to discuss flood responses and review the progress of the high speed broadband programme.

The first community in the constituency to go live this spring will be Broad Hinton, but then I want to see this critical infrastructure rolled out to other towns and villages across the county as soon as possible and also more clarity over the financial support available for those villages that fall outside the 91 per cent installation target. Also this week I had the great pleasure of spending time with some of older residents starting on Saturday when I went to a 100th birthday party for Dr Harry Beckhough in Marlborough and was left in awe at the number of things my friend has packed into his long life, from code breaking to business ventures as well as a lifelong commitment to politics. I then visited Coombe End Court, run by the Order of St Johns, in Marlborough and shared coffee, cakes and some cunning card tips with residents and day visitors and heard, in the process, just how valuable their day programme can be to provide interests and activities for older people living alone. Finally on Tuesday I went to meet Mrs Fry in Worton, now almost 90, still living in her childhood home and once again coping with floods at the property, while remaining active, independent and engaged. The fortitude and achievements and contribution of the older generation are inspiring and the lessons we can learn from them are well worth listening to.

It was good to have some time this week to do just that.