Have you ever thought about setting up a small sided football team with your football club, neighbours, friends or colleagues? Are you looking to keep fit after the football season finishes? Not played for years and looking to see if you still have that magic? Would you like to play at Wembley? If the answer to any of these is yes, County 5IVES is what you have been looking for!

2007 has been a great year for County 5IVES:

1072 County 5IVES matches played during 2007
All matches played on 3G artificial grass pitches
Every match officiated by qualified, registered referees who have completed the FA Small Sided Football Conversion Course
76 teams entered one of the County 5IVES Leagues in Norfolk
The youngest participant was aged 16 years and 7 days
The oldest participant was 57 years old
Over 1000 players registered for County 5IVES
66% of participants were new or returning to affiliated football

County 5IVES football leagues are open to any male adult aged 16 or over. County 5IVES leagues run at four specially selected venues across Norfolk: Acle, Dereham, Hellesdon and Thorpe.

In 2008 County 5IVES will be getting even bigger and better with new Leagues, centres and opportunities in the pipeline. If you would like to become part of County 5IVES and enter a team into one of the County 5IVES Leagues in Norfolk then now is your opportunity.

If you would like to apply and enter the 2008 County 5IVES Winter Leagues starting January 2008 or for more information, please visit www.NorfolkFA.com and download an application form or contact Shaun Howes at the County Headquarters on 01603 704050 or email County5IVES@norfolkfa.com

Active Norfolk
The Turner Road Centre, Turner Road, Norwich, NR2 4HB
Email: info@activenorfolk.org | Tel: 01603 727885 | Fax: 01603 760448

CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT IDEAS FOR WINTER
This month's conservation management ideas, provided by the RSPB, will help you plan ahead and identify specific areas of the farm that can be managed for wildlife. Key topics this month include:

Do the Birds need more Grain?
Demand for grain waste will increase in mid-winter, especially in cold weather. So try putting out more between December and February.

Thin Overcrowded Woodland
Woodland that hasn't been managed for a while will become tall and spindly, and offers little for birds and other wildlife. In time, the trees may start to die. So start to thin out woodland areas and take as much of the felled timber as you need for fuel wood or sale, and leave the rest where it lies to rot and feed the soil.

Winter is a Good Time to put up Nest Boxes
Put up nest boxes around the farm - barn owls and tree sparrows will be especially grateful.

Tell People About Your Wildlife Work
Put up LEAF information boards next to footpaths that explain the conservation work that people can see around them. We have a number of ready made boards to put up around your farm that tell people all the good things that you're doing to care for the environment and wildlife on your farm. Click here to view the boards and order on line. RSPB have some great advisory sheets that could be laminated or you could make up your own.

For more information go to www.thinkwildlife.org.uk

If these management ideas pose any questions, then post them on the discussion forum on www.farmwildlife.info to get your answers.

How to Be Wild - Simon Barnes
by Leena

A fair number of books about wilderness have come out in 2007. I have yet to read the others, but I’m guessing How to Be Wild is at the most accessible end of these. A record of a year in the life of a keen amateur naturalist, it is a collection of personal anecdotes and general observations, divided into short, snappy chapters and told in a chatty, colloquial style (some may find the swearing a little unnecessary) with occasional raptures thrown in (as here, on nightingales: ‘It is the song of everything: it is the song of all birds: it is the song of all life: it is the song of the earth, and of the heavens, too’).

How to Be Wild is a needed reminder that in the modern world it is far too easy to cut ourselves off from the wild, and that we are hurting ourselves by doing so. It reminds us to seek out - and watch out for - the wild in all places. Barnes contrasts his recollections of the Luangwa Valley in Zambia with scenes from his home in Suffolk, and neither of these places is declared the more valuable for being more or less wild. Not surprisingly - considering that Barnes has also written a book titled How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher - this book is brimming with bird-talk, and birds are an excellent emblem for the kind of nature-awareness that he advocates.

The birds twittering in a suburban garden are part of ‘Unofficial Nature’: seemingly ordinary, (too) easy to forget, but none the less wild for that. The food we eat bears little resemblance to its source; we are so isolated that our healthy fear of danger is transformed into a fear of all things remotely natural. ‘We lose our sense of trust in the wild world: we begin to forget that we need it. We impoverish ourselves and then we begin to consider it an enrichment.’

In my case Barnes is preaching to the converted, but he has inspired me to start birdwatching. If he calls himself a ‘good bad birdwatcher’, I am a very bad bad one - ever keen to get my ancient pair of binoculars and observe birds doing strange things in the garden (sparrows squabbling, a pigeon chasing away a squirrel and being chased away by two squirrels in return, a young crow destroying our flowerbeds by delightedly throwing blue - always blue - flowers in the air, a lazy falcon lounging in the garden-chair and wondering why dinner isn’t served straight in his mouth…) but that’s more or less the extent of my expertise.

Barnes, on the other hand, is very convincing about the joys of recognising and naming. After all, naming and categorising are essential parts of the way we experience the world: being unable to call something by its name makes it all the easier to ignore. Little by little anybody can be ‘rehabilitated’ and learn to understand the natural world better.

All that said, the book have done with some trimming: it is a little repetitive in places - a complaint that Barnes seems to anticipate, pointing out that nature repeats itself too! - and peters out towards the end, as there is no natural conclusion. (Pun somewhat intended, but not quite.) The mish-mash of anecdotes, trivia, and environmentalist credo is held together by sheer enthusiasm, and this enthusiasm does sweep the reader along, but the work - and the argument - might have been even stronger with a firmer structure.

Final Verdict: Naturalists might be looking for something more scientific, and those who’d benefit most from reading this book will probably suffer from slight trivia-exhaustion at the end of it; but How to Be Wild is an inspiring read all the same. It isn’t a feel-good book - Barnes is realistic about environmental disasters - but it makes you feel that little bit better, more hopeful and optimistic about the future.

As the author puts it himself, ‘If we love wildlife, we want wildlife to survive. That colours our view of what we see; changes our way of looking at the world. We see a place of infinite fragility, peopled by infinitely vulnerable beings. . . . But behind that, there is also a fierce sense of joy: a joy that is bellicose, confrontational, determined. This is too good. Too good to lose. No, they shan’t bloody ruin it. Not this.’

Short Books, 2007; hardback, 282 pp.; £12.99; ISBN: 9781904977971

Sam and daisy are brother and sister singer/songwriters from North Suffolk who gig regularly in East Anglia, playing original songs and covers.

Visit www.myspace.com/samanddaisy to listen to their music

Debut 6 Track CD is now available

buy online or

send a cheque made payable to

‘S.Lawrence’ for 6 (5 CD plus 1 p&p to anywhere in the UK) to:

Sam and Daisy, Unit 6 Wills Yard, Chapel Street, Diss, Norfolk IP22 3AN.

Sam & Daisy, Queen of The Jungle - YouTube

Hemp provides renewable alternative to concrete

Increasing demand for renewable building materials means there could be more opportunities for UK producers to grow hemp, according to Hemcore.

Work on a new £4million factory near Halesworth in Suffolk that processes dry, un-retted hemp straw is due to start next spring and the firm will need around 50,000 tonnes of straw per year, the firm’s Mike Duckett told delegates at this week’s National Non Food Crops Conference (NNFCC)/ Crops conference.

“Because we will be able to process un-retted straw, there will be less risk for growers,” he suggested. As well as traditional uses in car panels, much of the straw would be used in the bio-composite building blocks called Hemcrete® - a blend of a lime-based binder and hemp shiv (the processed woody core of the plant). “Hemcrete can be used for walls, floors, roof insulation and plasters,” he said.

Crops supplying the new factory would be grown under contract to Hemcore, with the firm supplying the seed. Straw prices were set before the crop was sown and were likely to be around £130/t for October delivery, with an extra £1.50 per month thereafter to cover storage costs, he said.

Mr Duckett said the firm was also keen to increase the amount of hemp grown for seed to around 800ha (2,000acres) next season. “There are some potentially very good returns, but the risks are a lot higher. Hemp seed is unstable and you have to dry it within eight hours of cutting. With a September harvest, this can be easier said than done.”

Source and links:
www.nnfcc.co.uk
www.fwi.co.uk

An Ipswich-based cleaning firm has become the latest recipient of an award which seeks to recognise excellence in staff wellbeing.

Balancing employment with home life, being considerate to individuals’ needs and going the extra mile to make staff feel valued have earned Shirley Shelley Contract Cleaning a Workwise Award from the Suffolk-based mental health charity Workwise.

The charity’s employment project co-ordinator Debs Gibson said: “You’d have to go a long way to find an employer which does as much to accommodate its workforce as Shirley Shelley. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the company, and other employers could learn a thing or two from the way she works.”

According to the Health and Safety Executive, up to five million people in the UK suffer from work-related stress, which costs society around £3.7 billion every year.

Shirley Shelley, who runs her company with her daughter Petra and son Mark, has had some of her staff members working for her for the 25 years she has been in business, and now even employs some of their children.

She takes care to conduct a needs assessment of each employee, to make sure that she finds places for them to work which are close to their homes and in shifts which fit in with their family lives. She builds in incentives, often takes staff to theatre shows or days out and always has individually-chosen Christmas and birthday presents for them. If they’re having a difficult issue to deal with away from work, they are given time away to sort it out.

“It’s wonderful to receive this award,” she said. “My cleaners are my most important asset. They are what my customers see; my ‘end product’, so to speak. I want to encourage them to enjoy their work, look smart and feel good about themselves.”

Four of Shirley’s original cleaners – Debbie Barter, Rosalind Hilling, Val Hodge and Margaret Powel – ago will be present to accept the award, along with some other long-serving members of staff.

Shirley added: “I just want them to feel proud of this award as they helped me to win it. My people are so important to me and we look after each other – nothing fancy, just plain old respect and loyalty.”

For more information about Workwise visit www.workwise.org.uk

Few women are doing enough exercise

Only a fifth of women in the UK are doing enough exercise to be healthy, a report has found. The Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation wants a public debate on how to engage women in physical activity.

It says many women currently feel under more pressure to be thin than healthy and are put off exercise from an early age - typically by school sport. And women desperately need greater sporting role models than the wives and girlfriends of football stars, it says.

The research finds:
• 90% of women feel under pressure to be thin
• almost half of 25-34 year old women feel under greater pressure to be thin than healthy
• 25% of women saying they ‘hate the way they look’ when they exercise or play sport
• nearly a quarter of women say that PE at school put them off sport
• 40% of girls as young as seven don’t want to be seen to be “sporty”

"There is a fundamental mismatch between girls' views of their bodies' functions as passive and decorative, and the use of the body as active and functional in sport," the report says.

"Many girls also dislike the practical requirement of having to alter their dress and appearance in a way that conflicts with their images of femininity in order to take part in PE."

"We need the media to pay greater attention to female sporting achievements. Why, when Nicole Cooke won the French cycling tour on the same day as Andy Murray hurt his wrist, did she become an afterthought on the news?"

The WSFF believes that cultural representations of women have to change if women are to show a greater interest in fitness than thinness. It hopes to kickstart a debate involving the media, government, schools and universities, and also plans to encourage businesses to facilitate more sporting events at work.

It wants to make sport more accessible to women with children by encouraging the provision of crèches at leisure centres and more options to exercise as a family.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is opening the WSFF conference on Thursday, has said his government is committed "to achieving a step change in how women and girls experience and participate in sport".

"The most significant barrier to women being active today is not a practical barrier it's a cultural one. We need to tackle this head on."

Double Olympic gold medallist Dame Kelly Holmes said: "We need to find out ways to encourage girls to do exercise with their friends, to go to the gym, go out for walks, go on bike rides - things that you can find that are fun."

Active Norfolk
The Turner Road Centre, Turner Road, Norwich, NR2 4HB
Email: info@activenorfolk.org | Tel: 01603 727885 | Fax: 01603 760448

Could your photograph travel the world?

Harleston Development Partnership is inviting members of the public to send in their favourite photographs of Harleston and the surrounding villages.

Two winning photographs will be used on fridge magnets sold at Harleston Information Centre to help raise funds to keep the centre open.

Julie Helsby Project Support Worker explains “This is a beautiful area and we are finding it difficult to choose two images for fridge magnets so have decided to ask people to send us their favourite local view. This can be a landmark they feel represents the area or just a local scene they would like to see captured forever on a fridge magnet. Winning photographs could travel to destinations across the world as tourists visiting the centre buy souvenirs to take home and also local people purchase Harleston items to send to friends and family living away.”

Winning photographers will be presented with their own photograph as a magnet.

Photographs or digital images must be at the information centre,
8 Exchange Street, Harleston, IP20 9AB by 30th November.

Entries should be the photographer’s own work.

For further information call the centre:
01379 851917

Email:
hip@harleston-norfolk.org.uk

Or look at our website for more details:

Hi friends,

Another great Slow Food shared family meal is coming very soon:


Freddie, of Frederick's Fine Foods is preparing the turkey, which is local and organic. He will include a sweet potato stuffing and also a special veggie alternative for those who want one. Anyone who knows Freddie's food knows how special it is.

For the rest of the meal – it's up to you. Please bring either a vegetable dish or a dessert to share, using local ingredients if possible. We've done this before (at Palgrave and the Corn Hall) and the results were wonderful, fully justifying the word 'feast'.

As usual, it will be very social. You will meet new people and old friends.

Special treat: Music from 'Rough at the Edges', a great local folk group.

Cost: £7 or £5 for members of Slow Food or Waveney Valley Food Group. (£6 for children, £4 for members children).
(Costs cover the turkey, room hire, food for band. Slightly subsidised by Slow Food Waveney Valley.)

Advance bookings only.

Please phone me on 07766-711999 or Ed Ling on 07775-846166
or buy tickets at the
Cittaslow Centre in Cobbs Yard,
Diss Town Council offices,
or the Tourist Information Centre by the Mere.

I would appreciate your help promoting this event.

Print out the poster and put it in your window or ask a shop to display it.

Thanks,

Hope to see you there.

Gary

Survival of the bittern is threatened after tidal surge destroys habitat

The survival of the bittern, one of the rarest and most endangered species of bird in Britain, has been threatened after the tidal surge along the east coast of England last week.

At Cley Marshes in Norfolk more than 100 hectares of reed beds, fresh water pools and grazing marshes were damaged after the sea rose to its highest level in 50 years on November 9.

Although most of the birds are expected to return, the loss of their main food source could be devastating for the shy, secretive member of the heron family, according to Brendan Joyce, the director of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. “They don’t have fantastic breeding skills; they are fussy in breeding and habitat,” he said, adding that if the bittern at Cley Marshes were cut off from the reed beds on which they depended, and were deprived of food, they would die.

The tidal surge has caused similar problems at reserves along the east coast and at several places inland, such as Strumpshaw Fen in Norfolk, Ciaran Nelson of the Eastern England RSPB, said.

Of the 51 breeding male bitterns in the United Kingdom, 37 are in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Source - www.timesonline.co.uk

Great Yarmouth is becoming an increasingly popular location for property investment as the new harbour development raises the profile of the town, one estate agent has said.

The Outer Harbour scheme is indicative of the scale of redevelopment that has taken place in the area over the past few years, according to Charles Bycroft & Co.

A high level of demand from area which features a significant immigrant population sits alongside such high levels of capital expenditure, the firm added.

"[The buy-to-let market] is fairly strong. There's quite a high level of immigrants in the town centre, in terms of Portuguese and Eastern Europeans who have come to work in the area, who have made that part of the town their own in some ways," said Charles Bycroft & Co manager Chris Fielding.

"It's been noticeable that investment people have been looking at Great Yarmouth as a growing area with the Outer Harbour Scheme being put into practice," Mr Fielding added.

source: www.hotproperty.co.uk

Norwich conference focuses on positive approach to dementia care

The seventh National Conference on Mental Health and Ageing will be held at the John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Colney on Thursday 15 November 2007.

The event is jointly organised by Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, Norfolk Adult Social Services and the School of Social Work and Psychosocial Sciences at the University of East Anglia.

This year's conference is focusing on dementia care, with the aim to promote a positive approach to the provision of services for people with dementia, both in the community and within hospital settings.

Dr Andrew Tarbuck, consultant in old age psychiatry at the Julian Hospital in Norwich, and one of the speakers at the conference, said: "Problems and deficiencies in the care of people with dementia across the country have been highlighted in several recent reports.

"As a result, the Government has set-up a National Dementia Strategy and we very much hope that this will result in significant improvements in the resources and quality of care for this group of people.

"This conference will provide examples of high quality initiatives in clinical care and research, both local and national."

A number of high profile experts in the field, including Professor Sube Banerjee of the Institute of Psychiatry [chair of the National Dementia Strategy] and Dr David Anderson of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, will also be speaking during the conference.

In addition to service user and carers, the event is aimed at staff working in health, social services, housing, voluntary and independent agencies and those in further or higher education. It will be of particular interest to planners and developers of services, as well as mental health practitioners.

For further information telephone the conference co-ordinator on: 01603 261951. Alternatively, visit the University website at: www.uea.ac.uk/swk.

Health Media and Sport Limited Our health news community network via website, blog, epost and magazine. For you, family and friends. Hit www.communicatormentalhealth.org.

Read our news coverage in the language of your choice. Free translation services available online. Lilly Schizophrenia Reintegration Awards finalist for outstanding work in mental health.

The UpStAiRs Gallery has now opened
The gallery launch was a big success with living statues placed outside the galleries entrance.

Our featured artist for the opening launch is Mark Fisher
Marks paintings are vibrant and almost abstract scenes of raw emotion, based on coastal scenes of Suffolk, Cornwall and Normandy.

Other works and artists include:
Gill Riordan, Simon Trinder, Gena Ivanov, Rosemary Simpson, Cate Hadley, Rachel Drake, Antje, Liz Butcher, Mary Vincent, Heather Tamplin and Helen Herbert, Denise Lehrfreund, Mark Ward, Lynsey Adams, Sheila Ford

next event:
The Christmas Sparkle 20th November - 10th December
An event run yearly, the gallery is decorated for the christmas traditions of shopping delights. Spaces are available but limited, please call gallery team for details.

We are also taking bookings for the Christmas run-up, 11th December - 24th December - Spaces available.

For any information on the gallery call the gallery team on
01502 717191

We hope to receive your visit soon!
The UpStairs team

The UpStairs Gallery
Exchange Square
BECCLES
Suffolk
NR34 9HH

www.theupstairsgallery.co.uk

bigARTgallery@aol.com