YLM January 2015 | #55

YOUR LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE

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YVONNE MASON Local Businesswoman Making a difference

Road test THE NEW BMWi3

q&a

WIN!

SHAUN WILLIAMSON

a break FOR 2 at Potters Resort

eASTENDERS & EXTRAS STAR

focus on health

BE GOOD TO YOURSELF ALSO INSIDE

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TRAINING FOR LIFE

FINANCIAL FOCUS

NATURE’S ANCIENT REMEDIES

INTERIORS

PARRIS WAKEFIELD WATER LILIES SWIM SCHOOL

ISSUE 55 JANUARY 2015

loving life in Norfolk & Suffolk

YLM

CON TEN TS Welcome ���������������������������������������� 7

LIGHT & BRIGHT ��������������������������� 35 Cheery and colourful objects and furnishings

STORIES YVONNE MASON �������������������������� 8 Yvonne is passionate about discovering potential, whether it be in young people at home or emerging economies abroad...

“Our role when we go in is to persuade the governments that actually what we do, which is tanker-to-tanker transfer of oil at sea, is a support to the country.”

DEN BUILDING ������������������������������ 37 Escape to your very own snug

Q&A Shaun Williamson ���������������� 14 First brought to our attention for his portrayal of Barry Evans in ‘EastEnders’. More recently Shaun has made us laugh in the incredibly popular BBC/HBO series ‘Extras’.

Shaun is currently starring in a marathon run of panto but still found time to talk to Kim Greenacre about his career and the forthcoming show at Potters Resort.

FOCUS be good to yourselF ������������� 17 Is it possible to discover a different way of thinking? Kim Greenacre spent some time in Sri Lanka finding out.

SPLASH INTO 2015 ��������������������� 23 Water Lilies Swimming School fighting fat & Fighting fit ��������������������������� 24 What happens to your skin when you exercise?

What is Scultura clinic? �������������������� 26 We find out in a Q&A with Dr. Raj

MAKE ROOM FOR NATURE �������� 39 Plan now for your dream garden come spring

YVONNE MASON p8

Medicinal Use of Trees �������� 41 Joan Garnham talks of remedies as old as time

BOOK CLUB p58

PARRIS WAKEFIELD �������������������� 43 The graphic design duo enter into a wonderful explosion of textiles and colour TRAINING FOR LIFE �������������������� 46 How you can now prepare for any emergency situation WORK & LIFE BALANCE ������������ 49 Flexible working hours, How do I apply?

FINANCIAL FOCUS ���������������������� 51 What can a Wealth Manager do for you?

Blossom charity �������������������� 53 Where does confidence come from?

practically perfect ������������ 56 Chris lilly reviews the little brother of the ‘i’ seris from BMW

Book Club ����������������������������������� 58 competition time ������������������ 60

SMOOTH AS YOU LIKE �������������� 30 Tips on making a super smoothie

DIRECTORY ����������������������������������� 64

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

ROAD TEST: BMWi3 p56

IT’S ALL IN THE MAKER’S IMAGE ������������������������� 55 How motoring manufacturers make their mark

A Day to remember ��������������� 29 The Dream On Makeover Experience

RECIPE: CHOCOLATE MOUSSE �������������� 33 A winter treat from A Sprig of This

FINANCIAL FOCUS p51

WHAT’S ON ����������������������������������� 62

PARRIS WAKEFIELD

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“You can’t start the next chapter if re- reading the last one ”

you keep

— Michael McMillan

ENQUIRIES T 01379 642 044 E info@ylm.co.uk

BY POST YLM 3 Hales Yard Diss Norfolk IP22 4AF THE YLM FAMILY

Contributors Kim Greenacre Geir Madland Bridget McIntyre Lanassir Lawes Joan Garnham Gabi Reid Gemma Harvey Geraldine Walters Leighten Ball DISTRIBUTION Dayburst Couriers 07810 852 089 dayburst@diss.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHY & CREATIVE DIRECTION Wendy Aiken wendy@ylm.co.uk CREATIVE & EDITORAL Ben Aiken ben@ylm.co.uk CREATIVE Matt Bignell matt@ylm.co.uk

Welcome So here we are welcoming 2015!

Why does time go faster as we get older?, A year flies by!

I am going to start this year with an empty jar and fill it with notes about all the good things that occur. Then, on New Year’s Eve, I am going to empty it and see what awesome stuff happened in 2015.

I think many of us reflect on the year just past and where the new year will take us. I’m going to aim to find some time to be kind to myself. I’m sure I am not alone in wanting to lose weight and get healthy. I would like to make some changes that will be long lasting. Not just do them for one month then back to my bad eating habits.

We have all just filled in the questionnaire by the Blossom Charity on page 52, it’s really good. Why not give it a go? It could change your life, a new year and a new start. I personally have had and still do have an amazing amount of support from the Blossom Charity.

They have helped many woman to live the lives they always

dreamed about.

I would like to thank my amazing friend Yvonne Mason for being our story this month.

Yvonne is one of the most genuine, kind and real people I have had the pleasure of being around. I have admired and looked up to Yvonne for many years and I listen very carefully when she gives me advice. I’m sure you will feel inspired after you have read her story.

So heads up, let’s all have a go-get attitude in 2015 and make it a year to remember.

May you all have a Happy and Healthy New Year!

ACCOUNTS Janet Fairweather janet@ylm.co.uk

FLAT PLAN

DECEMBER COMPETITION WINNERS

Brome Grange: T. Craggs, Diss | Bury Theatre Royal: C. Mordey The Oaksmere: E. Barclay, Stanton | Wordsearch: G. Brown, Finningham Sudoku: A. Ross, Diss

YLM is Published by Circuit Media (P&L) Ltd.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher. Every effort is taken to ensure that the contents of the magazine are accurate but the publisher can not assume responsibility for errors or omissions. Whilst reasonable care is taken when accepting advertisements the publisher will not accept any resulting unsatisfactory transactions. They will, however, immediately investigate any written complaints. © Circuit Media (P&L) Ltd, 2015

Cover Wendy Aiken Photography

find us online www.ylm.co.uk t @ylmuk v@ylmuk

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“By 1720 approximately 250,000 birds were walked from Norfolk to the markets of London.�

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STORIES

TRUST Yvonne The Norfolk girl turned global businesswoman and educationalist

Words by Geir Madland

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t’s January, and here in East Anglia it’s cold and dark.

You’re probably exhausted after the festivities, and already struggling to keep to your resolutions. I’ve just met the founder of the Mason Trust and, I tell you, if you could bottle what she’s got….

Yvonne Mason is a veritable tonic: an indefatigable tour-deforce for Norfolk-based global industry and an inspiration to young people to follow her impressive example. She is MD of two international companies based in Diss and I finally managed to pin her down to talking to me for an hour, after she got back from her latest trip to Singapore.

Yvonne, you’re obviously an extremely busy person?

I don’t sleep much. We have two companies running here and one in Singapore. We oper-

ate in Africa, South America, the Far East, so whatever we do, it involves a lot of very long hours and travelling. We’ve just opened up in Japan, which is one of our proudest achievements. Our role when we go in is to persuade the governments that actually what we do, which is tanker-to-tanker transfer of oil at sea, is a support to the country.

So it’s not fenders anymore?

Fenders have gone. I sold Fendercare back in 2005, left them, set up the Trust in 2008, and then we were basically encouraged back into the industry in a very much smaller way: Fendercare did everything from equipment to ropes to moorings to fenders; everything.

And that’s something you built up?

Yes, from scratch in 1988. We

set a new trend, a whole new market, we co-wrote most of the international standards on the equipment. Bob (Gilchrist) and I helped write the industry guides. We’ve been doing this for many, many years; we don’t just go out and do the job, we do an awful lot to help standards in industry.

What we do now is facilitate the transfer of cargo between two ships, for various reasons: you can have a draft-restricted port – Beira, for example, in Mozambique, a beautiful country but it’s completely devastated, a massive amount of resources but they’re very slow to get the resources out because the country’s so poor.

What they have now is one of the biggest single coal streams in the world up the Zambezi River in Tete, and the problem they have is getting it out of the country, because the infra-

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Pictured left to right: ship to ship transfer, Yvonne and Bob, Yvonne and Bob in Mozambique

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structure they have only copes with very small ships. So the coal is coming out into what they call a handymax-size vessel, into the port which is draftrestricted and heavily silted up by the river. It goes offshore and is ship-to-ship transferred (STS) onto a dedicated vessel.

So you have pilots?

Yes, most pilots are trained to keep ships apart. We train our captains to bring them together very, very carefully!

And the most important bit is to take them apart very, very carefully, with zero spillage. It’s totally global. The only country in the world where it wasn’t happening was Japan. Japan’s a very conservative country but they are opening up now to international markets: Russia, South America. So, what we do is to bring the cargoes to the furthest point on the biggest vessel, to get economy of scale, then transfer onto other vessels for distribution. It’s a service that enables the country’s oil to keep flowing, and gas to keep flowing. If, God forbid, they have another tsunami and any infrastructure gets damaged, STS can facilitate the ongoing movements of oil while they repair the infrastructure. If they have a disaster with a ship and you need to get the cargo off a ship in a hurry, that’s what we do.

Brazil has a massive capacity to produce oil, and very little infrastructure to take oil, convert it and refine it. So they’re shipping it straight off to market and the market is east: China, India, Japan. So, again, we facilitate: we have a base in Uruguay and we transfer cargoes to go off to market.

SafeSTS, this is something you’ve set up from scratch as well?

As you do in the middle of

Norfolk, in Diss! One of the reasons why we wanted to put the Trust in place – I’m a Norfolk girl, a Gorleston girl through-and-through – and I know what a narrow view kids have of the world, when you live in Norfolk. Because what we do is so global, we see it translate into Geography lessons, into Maths lessons. Last week my son was growling about doing his Maths homework and he was saying “do you ever actually use this?” and Bob said: “yep, every day!”

“Algebra?” Every day! He’s been to Mozambique with us, into Kenya and Singapore, he’s been everywhere with us, he picks it up and he did his school project on Mozambique, from first-hand experience of how a country is growing again. What better way to learn Geography can you have? Out of that has come a love of engineering.

And the Trust is a way of helping young people to learn?

Yes. 10,000 so far. Dawn facilitates our grant award programme and looks after all the applicants, Carol’s our Schools Project coordinator. We have a regular quarterly trustees’ meeting and we have some pretty inspirational applicants coming in.

10,000 school kids since 2008?

10,000 Young people across Norfolk and Suffolk, whom we’ve impacted on in some shape or form, whether that’s through the educational programme we run or through our grant funding. If you’re going to do it, do it well! Some of the feedback we get from these youngsters! We send them out to India, to Africa; environmental research, filmmakers in New York, dance training with the Royal Ballet, football training in the States. People come

to us needing a little help; we always make sure they work for it and raise funds themselves.

We support quite a few school trips: we’ve got a whole pile going to the Hadron Collider shortly – real Science learning.

We had guys in here yesterday – we’re doing a project on fatigue at sea with an organisation called MARIN in Holland – they have the most amazing tank facilities. I could play for days with ships in tanks, making them bump and doing strange things, working out wave rhythms and long period wave swells and sorting it all out. And they’ve actually said they’ll host a trip from UTC. UTC? University Technical College, we’ve helped set one up in Norwich. One of the things we wanted to do with the Trust was help young people get a bigger vision of the world because many have such a narrow vision, particularly if they’re living with generations of unemployed, who’ve never seen the wider world.

Is that a particular problem in this part of the world?

It certainly is in Lowestoft and Yarmouth. So, we’ve taken the whole of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Norfolk’s really worked well and adopted us, Suffolk’s beginning to. We wanted this to be a local charity with a global outreach.

When we first started this, Nicola Finch and I said: ‘Where do we start?’ When I moved away from Fendercare, I said to the majors: ‘Come on, folks, you’ve been brilliant to me over 25 years, is there anything I can do to help you?’ And they said: ‘Yes, we want fresh talent.’

What inspired you to ask that at all? You might have just walked away and thought ‘done with that’.

STORIES

“One of the things we wanted to do with the Trust was help young people get a bigger vision of the world because many have such a narrow vision, particularly if they’re living with generations of unemployed, who’ve never seen the wider world.”

I’m not a lady who lunches, not somebody who’s going to sit here covered in jewellery and gold, that’s not me at all.

I’m a full-circle kind of person.

In my life, I’ve had so many friends and mentors over the years that have helped me.

In my head is what you do in life, you push energy out and forward and you work it and it always comes back, but you’ve got to push it out there first and help somebody else. It’s an attitude and an approach in life that I’ve had for years. I’d sold the company and I didn’t want to just sit back and do nothing.

There’s no value in that. All the experience that I had, the thought was ‘how can I use the experience that I’ve had and been lucky enough to have, to help others?’ and we’ve found a whole pile of ways to do that.

Nicola and I started and it was like ploughing through treacle backwards, trying to understand education-industry links going on, it was incredibly laborious and it wasn’t much fun.

We said ‘ok, we need to bring some fun into this for a start,

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Climate Run at The Norfolk Showground 2012

and we need to try and help those that are educating our young people to understand what we do in industry, and what we need in industry’. Otherwise they’re waiting for the EDP on a Thursday and they’re not going to make an informed, valued choice because there’s not enough information out there to really help them. We wanted to work with the youngsters face to face, so we go and do outreach work in schools and colleges and we teach them about industry, and we take companies and organisations with us that are active, inspirational companies in this region.

We pick the ones we know have got some training to offer and take them out to the students.

We have an event that we’ve been running for the last few years. It was called the Climate Run, it’s now called Fit

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For Your Future: a thousand kids together for one day with many regional companies. An old friend of ours organises the race events: we get the students energised and having a really good day, and then we introduce them to the key employers in the region. We’ve done three now. We borrowed Holkham Estate for the first one: he was very kind allowing us to hold the event there.

He was brilliant but then we had the problem of getting the kids there by coach, and supply teachers and everything, so we’ve transferred to the Norfolk Showground and have subsequently held two more events there. We have youth bands playing on the day, healthy food, a good 5k run and a really good opportunity for students to speak to local employers, who have lots of great

jobs to offer.

We then said we wanted something in the youngsters’ space, which is cyberspace, so we have Stuart, who’s a UEA student. He has worked with Carole to develop a careers portal called ‘ICanBeA’ (www. icanbea.org.uk), which is a very well informed website and which we have big plans for in the future….

We’ve taken the economic development plan for Norfolk and Suffolk, and we’ve shown students the career path they can take to get into their chosen industry and the key regional players who could be employing them.

Did you know, for example, that Ben Burgess (machinery dealer) has 40 apprentices?

They’re selling tractors all over the world. I didn’t know that until I asked Ben Turner the

MD. There are some amazing companies in this region.

Which is what we are trying to highlight to young people with I Can Be A. We were laughing because when we were in Uruguay we saw John Deere tractors there! It’s fantastic. I love to work with those kind of people, they’re great. Companies like Gardline (marine geotechnical), fantastic company, SafeSTS are just managing one of their boats for them in East Africa, the original George D, named after George Darling, the founder. What a lovely thing to do! Another Norfolk company, we’re helping them, they’re helping us.

What do you use the boat for?

We’re using it for support runs for various operations, service ship chandlery runs, equipment runs, it’s a very, very

exposed location. It’s pretty heavy going down there. Our phone started this morning at just after six and it won’t stop till about ten tonight. Bob’s oncall. So, we’ve taken it home fully. We had captains on the phone this morning first thing.

My son wakes up to conversations about long period wave swells and wave heights! He’s going to have a natural inclination towards this, and he learns a lot just by the amount of people we have visit us and stay with us. He’s learnt hugely from these guys over the years.

You didn’t personally have an upbringing that related to the sea or shipping?

No, but my father worked in the harbour in Yarmouth as a port pilot, his father was a fisherman, so there’s a connection with the sea. My mother’s side was farming. We lived in Gorleston by the sea, but my love in life is horses. I’ve got that from my mother’s side. Her family came from Northamptonshire.

So, a very different upbringing.

I have no qualifications to do what I’m doing, no idea how I fell into it whatsoever! But I did and I’m glad I did.

I was listening to a woman from McLaren on the radio and she was saying there’s still

very few women in the world of engineering. Is that something the Trust is keen to change?

We’re very open-minded and we don’t actually qualify a person by their sex. We say ‘can you do the job?’ Male or female, we don’t care, and I’ve been very, very keen to make that impression on the young ladies, that it does not matter whether you are male or female, as long as you have the right work ethic, the right attitude and the right aptitude to learn, you will get on. But, you’re quite right, it still exists.

I go to an oil major-led conference once a year, which is CEO level, and I’m the only female in the room. So, we’d like to see that change at every level.

We’re delighted to see a number of young ladies at UTC. Then there’s ‘the gap’. Most of those CEOs, that I converse with on a once-a-year basis, have CEng, BEng after their titles – there’s a hell of a lot of engineers that end up going forward to senior management and the corporate world because, once you’ve got that engineering background, you can take that knowledge anywhere.

Practical hands-on experience gets you the foundation in our industry and our industry covers everything from offshore, marine, subsea, all the way

“What we’ve done is put in place an environment where the youngsters can learn academically and vocationally, with trained engineers on-hand to train them on the tools.”

across, but that principle of having the practical knowledge of what you’re about to do in a very harsh environment is absolutely invaluable.

So, what sort of training is it?

Well, Lord Baker, who wrote the Education Act, it’s his baby, he has something called the Baker Dearing Trust, and there are 30 University Technical Colleges (UTCs) now established around the country.

They are based around centres of industry focus, for example in the Black Country you’ll have one geared towards higher engineering, Silverstone’s got a car-orientated one, ours actually mirrors the Norfolk economic development policy so we cover right across from aerospace, through Lotus cars, through higher engineering to marine.

We opened in September – we got the Government funding on the 1st and opened on the 8th. That was tight! We’ve got the ship-owning community behind us; we’ve got the aerospace community behind us – KLM’s one of our directors; we’ve got racing – Shawn Taylor Racing’s one of our directors; we have Kier – Kier’s actually built the building for us. It’s not a normal school, it’s a stonking great tin shed on the outskirts of Norwich on the A140, half the space is for academia and half is for practical hands-on learning with a mass of engineering equipment. There are 84 companies behind this organisation. What we’ve done is put in place an environment where the youngsters can learn academically and vocationally, with trained engineers on-hand to train them on the tools.

They’ve got everything from lathes to welding machines to HAAS machines, which are sponsored by the companies.

STORIES

This equipment is at the students disposal to give them a practical approach when they first come into the world of work.

My son’s going next year, it’s exactly what he wants to do so he’ll enjoy it, I hope, and it’ll help him light up his education and get what he needs to contextualise learning. They’re there from 9 till 5. We’ve got students coming from Ely, from Lowestoft, that are travelling two hours a day just to get there. These are committed students that want to do engineering. It’s what we need for this region. We are drowning currently in work here, we need more people of the right calibre to come and join us.

The UK’s Chamber of Shipping has a subgroup called the Merchant Navy Training Board.

They train the cadets that end up being either deck officers or chief engineers. We are working with them to embed their framework, which starts at 16, back into the UTC, so we’re effectively providing semi-trained young people to industry locally before they hit the ground running as a fully fledged cadet, and those cadets actually put back 13% more into this country’s GDP than any other university graduate, because of the value of shipping. So, we’ve done things in quite a strategic way. We’re very lucky to have links at MD level in a lot of companies and across a lot of sectors and we’re very lucky to get the support that we do.

Well, you say ‘lucky’ but it isn’t really down to luck is it?

There’s a bit of familiarisation from working with us in the past. I guess. We’re not confrontational people, we just want to get on.

And she does! •

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S

Words by Kim Greenacre

haun Williamson is a very nice man.

In fact I would go as far as saying he is the kind of rare human being that you instinctively know, even after a brief conversation, is someone who makes the world that little bit better just by being in it. Shaun was first brought to our attention for his portrayal of Barry Evans in ‘Eastenders’. More recently Shaun has made us laugh in the incredibly popular BBC/HBO series ‘Extras’ working alongside Ricky Gervaise and Stephen Merchant. He also appeared in Houdini with Adrian Brody but acting is not his only talent; he wowed audiences with his singing voice in ‘Comic Relief does Fame Academy’ in 2007 and flexed his comedic funny bone in ‘Scoop’, a children’s comedy drama show for the BBC in 2009.

On February 1st Shaun Williamson will be heading an evening of Big Band Swing and Comedy at Potters Resort in Great Yarmouth.

Shaun is currently starring in a marathon run of panto. Even with 96 performances of Aladdin in Stevenage to perform over the coming weeks, he still found time to talk to me about his career and the forthcoming show at Potters.

I wanted to know a little more about his life before his TV career took off and with my first question enquired about his early working life: Before being accepted by Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art you had various jobs including 18-30 club rep, Blue Coat and Sailor – I can see the link between club rep / blue coat & performing

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but why did you try a life on the waves?

My Dad was a postman and I tried it for a while but it was not for me and I joined the Navy.

In doing so I was diagnosed as being colour-blind which left me with stores, steward or accounts to build a naval career on. I chose accounts. The first part of the training was great; physical training, weapons etc but the second part, the part that actually involved deskbound learning was not so great and I kind of got myself thrown out.

Your training at The Webber Douglas Academy started when you were 27 and for the following three years you learned your craft, landing the role in EastEnders just six months or so after leaving the academy – was it a bit daunting to join such a huge show so early in your career?

Not really. Barry Evans was introduced to the show very gradually – he was more of a way to weave Roy Evans into the plot. Roy was always destined to marry Pat Butcher and my character was Roy’s son. They didn’t really know what to do with Barry at first so I was able to grow into the show as Barry’s role increased. It was a good way for me to find my feet in the show.

Barry Evans provided comedy and with it an adorable innocence to the soap – since his demise the story lines in ‘Enders have seemingly become darker, regularly focusing on tragedy and fatally flawed personalities to spice the scripts. Would you prefer to see more light-hearted story lines on ‘Enders and other popular long running soaps?

Yes I would. Life can be funny especially in the East End where you find some of the most naturally funny characters

after dinner speaking... it keeps me working!

“I love singing. I am very fortunate to have a voice that people seem to enjoy.

It enables me to be flexible and keep working.”

walking round leading everyday lives. Coronation Street has always thrived on some brilliant comedy partnerships. It is real and gritty but recognises and values how people do play off each other – people laugh all the time in real life, finding the funny stuff mixed in with the mundane.

You are currently appearing in Aladdin in Stevenage – are you enjoying it ?

Yes it is amazing! This is no sprint – we have 96 shows in this run so much more of a marathon but we have a great cast and crew who are enjoying the whole panto experience.

The audience give us something different every time – we can run with it much further than in any other kind of show. It is a brilliant British tradition!

You made everyone aware of your great singing voice in Comic Relief Does Fame Academy when you performed as Meatloaf - Do you prefer singing to acting?

Yes, I love singing. I am very fortunate to have a voice that people seem to enjoy. It enables me to be flexible and keep working. I have to pay my bills like everyone else – I can accept work that requires versatility – singing, comedy, presenting and

The show on February 1st at Potters is an evening of variety; comedy and Big Band Swing – is this your favourite genre of music?

Absolutely! What an era it was for great songs and for the show at Potters we really try to do it justice! No backing tracks great musicians playing live that I have the pleasure of singing to!

Who is your favourite singer from that era?

There are so many great singers of that era but for me there is one, whose velvet voice can never be matched, Nat King Cole. Hands down – he was the man!

And your favourite song?

Unforgettable. I don’t think that anyone, except his daughter Natalie, has ever even tried to cover it. It is one of those ‘singer meets song moments’ that is perfect. You can’t beat perfect!

So we won’t be hearing it at Potters?

No – unless I can really do a song justice I do not go near it.

I have too much respect for the material to try. There are plenty of songs out there that I know suit my tenor voice and that I really enjoy performing and the audience seem to love - if they are happy and have a great evening then so do I! You are only at Potters for one night – how long does it take you to prepare for such a show?

The band knows the music and I know the lyrics to all of our numbers so we may well only have the opportunity to get together once before the show to perfect timing and cues etc so it really is for one night only!

Do you write all the comedy for your variety performances?

Not all of it – some of it is original material but some may be familiar to people. There is kind of an un-written law between comedians and performers – you can use each other’s jokes but not each other’s act.

I stick to this and if a joke is out there and I think that it will entertain the audience I am happy to tell it!

Q&A

You recently celebrated your 50th birthday – saying on Twitter that you still feel 18 in your head.

Do you think that entertaining people has helped keep a youthful mindset?

There is no doubt about it – they say you have to keep the brain active and learning scripts, lyrics and stage direction etc keeps the brain ticking over. I love quizzes and crosswords as well which is all to the good.

Making people laugh is a bonus on top of it all!

How do you think 2015 will be for you – have you any major plans?

I am working quite a lot which is great! I am booked through to 2016 with a great mixture of projects. I will be returning to the stage show of One Man & Two Guvnors which will be touring the UK for a couple of months and then I will be joining the cast of a Cole Porter show which will take me right up to panto again! • Don’t miss the chance to see this very talented entertainer perform An Evening of Big Band Swing and Comedy on February 1st at Potters Resort – it really is “For One Night Only!”

For a chance to win an exclusive break, including the chance to see the show, see page 61. www.pottersholidays.com

Shaun Williamson JANUARY 2015

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be good to yourself What does Happy Look Like?

“I had to identify and then discard all of the things that other people had convinced me I wanted.”

Words by Kim Greenacre

I

FOCUS

f you type “be good to yourself” into an internet search engine you will get information about food; processed and calorie counted, packed in plastic boxes ready for the microwave and which never, in my experience, lives up to the picture on the cardboard sleeve. With our reliance on the internet as a source of essential information, which we use to guide our actions, growing day by day, the implied connection between being good to oneself and low calorie food concerned me. Can deprivation ever be considered as being good to oneself?

With five decades now tucked neatly under my slightly snug belt, I know there is a different way and I am no longer buying in to the suggestion that personal happiness stems from how I look or how others perceive me. I have learned that being good to myself should never involve starvation, eating food that does not please me, trying to survive on a detox diet of boiled water and lemon / grapefruit / cranberry juice or embarking on a boot-camp style fitness regime that would make a Royal Marine weep. In fact I have discovered that the contrary is true. When you embrace who you are, what you love to do and, more importantly, allow yourself time to do the things that make your soul sing, the world becomes a much sweeter place to be. How I look when doing the things that make me happy is irrelevant because I am so busy enjoying myself and having fun that my outward appearance is of absolutely no consequence to me! I have also realised that the craving to consume, whether that consumption is based on food, fast cars or Jimmy Choo shoes, diminishes significantly and a simpler, more contented life evolves. >

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The dawning of this new understanding actually started in January 2013 when I was fortunate enough to take an extended trip to Sri Lanka. This was no five-star jolly; I had been made redundant at the end of 2012 and, determined not to expend an ounce of energy kicking through the ashes of my career, volunteered to help a conservation charity.

The charity provided microfinance packages to individuals, enabling them to start small businesses and thus help them feed and clothe their families.

Please don’t worry, this is not going to turn into a story of how “I found myself” no, there was no light-bulb moment that illuminated my social consciousness or hitherto dormant spirituality. I was not overwhelmed by a sudden desire to give my meagre savings to the poor, shave my head, wear orange robes and join a Buddhist monastery but after a week or so of witnessing smiling, happy faces in surroundings and life situations, that for the greater part, could only be described as antediluvian, I became aware of how rarely I smiled. I had never considered myself dour and yet faced with mile-wide grins from toddlers playing on dusty floors, sweat-drenched tea pickers carrying 20kg baskets full of freshly plucked leaves on their backs, bus drivers conveying city-bound workers in the pearly grey half-light of dawn and gangs of school children, resplendent in their white school uniforms, laughing and joking as they walked to school (I have taken no artistic licence here – the children walk and they really do wear white uniforms), I realised that somewhere along the way I had allowed the pressures of my life to overcome my natural ability to recognise and respond to joy.

I started to look more closely at

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“By the standards of our western expectations of life, there seemed to be very little to smile about.”

© James Gordon Los Angeles on Flickr

the world around me and was able to confirm that people seemed to be loving life, enjoying the company of their friends and family and finding a reason to smile when, by the standards of our western expectations of life, there seemed to be very little to smile about.

By the start of my third week on the island I knew that I needed to unravel the coils of dissatisfaction and pull apart the knots of disillusion that had wound themselves so tightly around my perspective. Unravelling a tangle has never been a forte of mine but as soon as I pulled a couple of ends, loosened a loop here and released a thread there, I found that it just might be possible to re-weave the threads that form the weft and warp of my life into a design that pleased me.

The pattern of my design was

FOCUS

to be formed by four major threads, the first of which required that I recall all of the things that I love to do. This actually took longer than I thought as I had to identify and then discard all of the things that other people had convinced me I wanted and / or needed and replace them with the things that actually make me happy! Remembering the pure joy that these simple pursuits had brought me in the days before duty and responsibility had hedged them firmly to the sidelines of my existence, reinforced the need to indulge myself and enjoy them again.

Armed with the first thread I was able to form the strands of the second thread and weave the aforementioned duties and responsibilities of my everyday life in the UK in such a way that there would be enough time

for me to honour my pleasurebringers!

With the first two threads plaited together I was able to consider the third. This thread was formed by the people I love and, despite a sudden onslaught of guilt, which was fuelled by the fact that I had thought of myself before them, I realised that it may actually delight them to have a smiling, happy me around during the moments that our lives meshed. I would be able to share pieces of my design with them and receive new colours and textures from them in return. Our lives could and should be woven together; by experiencing and sharing the things we all love as individuals we would strengthen the already adamantine tie that binds the group of people I am fortunate enough to have as my family >

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“On more than one occasion the edges of my design started to fray and significant repairs were required ”

and friends.

The fourth and final thread was more challenging as it involved work and how I was going to earn a living whilst enjoying life. There have been many theories penned regarding this illusive work/life balance. I had always thought they were directed at other people but during a particularly hot and uncomfortable four-hour train journey between Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, and Kandy, the city that I was based in, I realised that the reason that I had considered such a balance as illusive was because I had never even tried to attain it. Faced with the uncomfortable truth that for the last fifty years I had expected life to come to me, perfectly weighed out into equal portions of fun, love, health and work without even occasionally checking or rebalancing the scales, caused me considerable consternation.

However, I had spent the last two weeks trying to get over myself and dump the habits and thought processes that had not enhanced my life or well-being, so to beat myself up about it seemed pointless.

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I accepted that I had been responsible for the choices that had seemingly sucked the smile from my face and concentrated instead on deciding what kind of work might make me happy.

It sounds simple enough but my imagination was seemingly not up to such a task and I failed to mentally pull together the components of my perfect job.

With a strong dislike of being thwarted I changed my approach and started to compile a list in my head of everything I didn’t want to do. This proved to be a much easier task and suddenly I was flinging out conference calls, sales targets, commuting and pretty much all the tasks that my previous job had demanded! As I disembarked from that stifling train, thread number four was far from being ready to weave.

It was impossible for me to determine the fibres it would be made of as this could not be confirmed until I found my vocation, or at the very least, a job that paid the bills without demanding every ounce of my being in return for the salary it paid. All I knew, as I walked along the platform towards

the gleam of the ticket collector’s smile, was the colours and textures of thread number four must complement the three threads that already featured in my grand design.

I returned to the UK in March and between then and November of 2013 life seemed to want to test me and my freshly woven pattern. On more than one occasion the edges of my design started to fray and significant repairs were required. I made them and each repair made me and my design stronger. Two months ago I found work that I love in the most unlikely of places and with it the reassurance that I was right to identify and discard what I did not want in my life.

By doing so, I allowed what I do love and want in my life to fill that vacuum.

2015 is upon us and will undoubtedly bring new experiences and challenges to us all.

We will dream new dreams, we may love for the first or last time, some folks will realise ambitions and then perhaps set new ones. Many of us will make new friends and maybe say goodbye to old ones. We

will all laugh, some of us will cry, others will greet new life joining their family or be invited to witness a binding union between two people they cherish. Birthdays and anniversaries will be celebrated; young children will experience school for the first time and exams will be sat by those already in education. Jobs will be won and lost, houses bought and sold, holidays looked forward too, taken and then remembered. Lotteries will be won and fortunes lost.

Life will come at us and bring with it all that is good and, if we are fortunate, a little less of the bad. Before too much of 2015 passes you by, perhaps you could find a moment to check your own design for life? Does it make you happy? Are there tiny changes you could make that will make the next 365 days please you more? Have you included all of the things that enrich you, amuse you, amaze and delight you? Is there time set aside in your year to tick at least two items from your bucket list?

No bucket list? Write one! Make 2015 the year that you live, laugh and love more than you ever have before! •

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HEALTH

“Benefits include: gains in strength and tone, improved balance, flexibility and breath control.”

Splash into 2015 © Amy Pilkington

Words by Hannah Cooke | Water Lilies Swimming School

Swimming - it’s good for us, from the very young to the very old

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© underwater-art.co.uk

t’s that time of year again when we are all thinking about the year ahead. One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to exercise more! It’s good for our body, mind and overall wellbeing. But will we actually do it?

For busy families - why not get your children involved and you will probably keep up your goals and instil a healthy lifestyle for all of the family.

Family swimming has great benefits for all of the family.

Enjoy exercising together and having fun.

Water Lilies Swimming School is a local independent swim school teaching all ages and abilities in lovely private

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pools across Norfolk & Suffolk.

If you’re not sure how to teach your children to swim, why not join a local swimming class? For children under three years you will be in the water with them during the lesson - so you will get lots of benefits too.

Babies and toddlers Did you know that swimming is one of the most complete and beneficial activities that babies can do from birth? Structured swimming lessons are a good idea as they teach both you and your child many holds, moves and safety practices. Playing together in the water is an excellent way for you both to relax and bond. At baby or toddler swimming classes we encourage free movement in the water leading the children to swimming when they are physically and emotionally ready.

For example, we encourage the development of a newborn baby’s natural swimming reflex into conscious move-

ments of the legs and arms.

Happy, confident children Regular swimming lessons for your school age children are a great way to keep them fit as well as teaching them a life -saving skill. The 2014 school swimming census reported that 45% of children are set to leave primary school unable to swim the length of an average pool unaided, a requirement of the national curriculum.

At Water Lilies Swimming School we receive many stories of success and are part of some incredible journeys.

Jesse is five and has Autism & ADHD; he has no awareness of danger. In 2013 his parents had to rescue him after he jumped into a pool on holiday and sank to the bottom. But after 4 months of Water Lilies’ teaching, Jesse swam safely with no form of buoyancy aids in that same holiday pool.

Jesse’s Mum shared a video on our Facebook page because she was so proud of her son.

Exercising more this year Had you thought about swimming regularly? Exercising in the water can be very beneficial! It’s a safe and invigorating way to work out without putting strain on the joints.

Benefits include: gains in strength and tone, improved balance, flexibility and breath control. Boosted endorphin levels increase feelings of wellbeing and positivity.

Come and join in with our fun an invigorating aquarobics sessions. Or join us at Swim Active, every week expert coaches will help you reach your goals by helping you follow a fitness programme designed just for you.

Why not book into one of our small classes or a private lesson?

For more information, 01379 740489 treacle@waterliliesswim.co.uk www.waterliliesswim.co.uk v Water Lilies Swimming School

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It seems that exercise is the answer to

FIGHTING FAT & FIGHTING FIT

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stubborn, sagging skin...

’ve been trying to get back into fighting weight lately (and largely succeeding, thank you very much).

While weighing myself this morning, I suddenly realized that I was pinching the remaining fat around my middle. I wasn’t sure why I was doing that at first, and then it came to me. It was the Special K Pinch.

From the late 70s to the mid 80s, Special K ran an advertising campaign telling us that if we could pinch more than an inch of flesh at our waists, we were overweight. I was, apparently, deeply affected by it, since I’m still using this unit of measurement today.

It is a very good unit too, because it is totally subjective.

On a good day, the inch is very small. Conversely, on a bad day the inch stretches in direct proportion to my guilt.

Whatever, the main thrust of the story is that not all that inch is, in fact, necessarily fat.

“Water is your new best friend. Not only does it improve the texture of your skin, preventing crepiness, it raises the metabolic rate so that you burn your calories more efficiently.”

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I had a client come to visit me late last summer for a treatment for thread veins, but we spent most of the session discussing her amazing body. She had abdominal muscles that were so finely toned there wasn’t an inch of give in them and her arms were lean and strong, but still feminine.

I was in awe of this fortysomething female and asked how she had acquired this amazing physique. The basic answer was losing over three stone and developing a hardcore gym habit. She too, was extremely pleased with her achievement. But it had come at a price. Her weight had dropped so rapidly that she was left with an apron of excess skin – which was hidden below her waistband.

And her breasts had gone the same way too – deep South.

It had all been too quick, too excessive and her skin hadn’t been able to keep up

HEALTH

with the rate of fat loss. Her solution was surgery, and at the point she had shown me her problem, there probably was no other avenue left to explore.

Why does this happen? Skin is an elastic living tissue with several layers to it. The lower levels are where lots of important structures such as blood vessels, hair follicles and connective tissue are found. The connective tissue contains collagen, for strength and density, and elastin which allows stretch and movement. Quick weight loss means the skin can’t adapt to its new shape and if you are older, dehydrated, have had much sun exposure or smoke, this problem is aggravated. It can take up to two years for skin to regain its shape but for some people it will never happen without intervention.

So, even if your bathroom scales make you despair after a seasonal blow-out, don’t be tempted to crash diet, because

you will shed fat but, more importantly, deplete muscle. Keep hydrated.

Water is your new best friend.

Not only does it improve the texture of your skin, preventing crepiness, it raises the metabolic rate so that you burn your calories more efficiently.

Eat well! Source nutrient rich food particularly those high in

vitamin C such as citrus fruits.

That bowl of tangerines is bursting with vitamin C, zinc and selenium – nutrients that help improve elastin production. Peppers and broccoli too aid collagen formation, helping to firm and plump out the skin. Add foods such as avocado, olive oil, nuts, seeds and omega-3 rich salmon for essential fats. People on lowfat diets often develop lines and dryness – not conducive to firm, bouncy skin.

And with diet comes exercise. Building muscle might be more difficult as we age, but it’s not impossible and as the density of muscle mass replaces fat, you’ll find you have better strength and definition.

Don’t worry if the scales don’t show much loss. Muscle is much more dense than fat – it takes up less space, so your outline might shrink even while the numbers don’t!

And remember, if you’re a little older, although you have control over the rate of your weight loss you have no control over your age. So rather than letting that stress you out, just focus on the things you can control – eating the fight foods and caring for your skin – and you’ll find that you always look better than your peers.And feel great!

Words by Geraldine Walters Btec HND/Cert Ed. www.geraldinewalters.co.uk

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think it works well if you are already on a diet. The machine can help you maintain momentum especially as sometimes you plateau and it can then be difficult to keep going. It is also good to help improve and tighten the skin.

What’s it all about?

We chat to Dr Raj Tanna, Medical Director at Scultura, about the New Clinic in Mendlesham invasive medically certified LIPOfirm Plus technology.

So Dr. Raj, What is the Scultura Clinic?

Well, we like to think it’s a bit of a special place to come to.

We are a clinic based at the GP’s surgery in Mendlesham, Suffolk. We offer help in improving your face and body using a completely safe, non-

Why would someone choose Scultura?

For many reasons, if they have areas of their body where they can’t shift stubborn fat, Scultura can help. We also

Before

After

Ok so what does it do?

It uses two technologies – radio frequency and ultrasound. The tightening of skin is all about stimulating collagen (the holy grail of youthful skin) and reduction of fat is about using the ultrasonic cavitation, which destroys the fat cells.

and freshness in the skin, to smoothing of frown lines and we’ve seen tummies and love handles disappear.

Is the fat destruction permanent?

The fat cells can take up to 10 years to regenerate. All fat cells in the body regenerate over 5 – 10 years so the effect can be long term with minimal top up.

Is it expensive?

Each treatment costs £55.

We’d estimate most people need 6-8 sessions. This compares to London, where a similar treatment would be upwards of £195 per treatment.

It sounds too good to be true?

Yes we thought so too. So we bought the machine and spent 3 months training our therapists and making sure we understood what we could do before we launched in May 2014.

Does it hurt?

When the cavitation part of the machine is being used, you hear a tingling noise. This stops once the treatment is finished.

Apart from that our clients say they find it very relaxing.

Is it safe?

Absolutely. We do have very strict medical protocols and checks pre treatment. I personally, as medical director, oversee this. Unfortunately there are certain medical conditions, which mean you can’t have the treatment. We discuss all this at the consultation stage.

Will I look 18 years old again?

No, you will look well, healthy and glowing. We describe it as looking the best you.

Do you treat men and women?

Yes we do. Men tend to come to get help with their love handles, their beer bellies and we’ve had success with man boobs too. (Sorry for the names I’ve given these but that’s how they tend to be described.)

With women again a mix.

From helping smooth the lines on the face to improving a sagging jaw line. We treat tummies, legs, arms, ankles, hands, thighs and even ‘back fat’.

We offer a free consultation to discuss the aims of the treatments. So if you’re not sure we suggest you ring us on 01379 678696 to book a consultation and we can go from there.

Your’e looking good, have you used it?

(Raj smiles)…that’s my secret.

What results have you achieved?

We are pleased with the results. From improved elasticity

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M

akeover Days are great fun and we love holding them at Dream On. We decided to let one of our customers tell you about their experience of the day. Di enjoyed it so much she has since been back again….

How did you hear about the Makeover Days at Dream On? I read about Dream On in YLM and a friend and I decided that we would love a girlie day out together. The Makeover Days sounded just what we were looking for so I rang and booked us both in.

If it was your first time, how did you feel an arrival?

The first time we came was in June of this year. We arrived at 9.30am to be so welcomed by the very friendly staff. There were homemade flapjacks & a lovely hot drink made a great start to the day. Later on we had a delicious lunch and a glass of wine, it all made the day perfect from start to finish!

What did you enjoy about the styling part of the day?

The choice of clothes and price range were fantastic, something for everyone. I was quite surprised by this. It was such fun trying on so many different outfits and quite a few that I would not normally even pick off the rails if I was shopping on my own.

I was surprised at how good I looked in things I’d not normally try on.

What was your favourite part of the day?

The Makeup and hair styling were great. I actually now travel to Ipswich to have my hair cut by Sam at John Olivers. I also loved the photoshoot at the end of the day. I was put at my ease which

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FASHION

made the photos even more special as I felt it was a true reflection of me…. not forced. I also have the photographs as a lovely keepsake of the day.

How would you sum up your day?

I kept saying on the day how much I was loving it. It surpassed my expectations. I enjoyed it so much that I came again in October with four friends this time and they all loved it too. In fact, they have been back to other events at the Dream On studio. I would just like to add that in the short length of time that I have been going to Dream On the staff have become more like friends and I would thoroughly recommend anyone to go along. I can’t wait until my next makeover in 2015!

If you would like to come along to one of our Makeover Days or if perhaps you would like to treat a loved one then just call us on (01379) 678483. We have dates from January through to May on our website and we have even included some Saturdays.

Since Di visited us last we have now included Gelvarnish nails to the day as well so you can now choose the colour of your choice…. perhaps to match your outfit! •

After

a day to remember The Perfect Day from Start to Finish

For further information, www.dream-on.co.uk info@dream-on.co.uk Dream On Poplar Farm Thwaite Road Thorndon IP23 7JJ

“I enjoyed it so much that I came again in October with four friends this time and they all loved it too.”

Before

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smooth as you like Apple, strawberry, spinach and banana

“A giant boost of vitamins and minerals to your system in one glass.�

Words & food by Gemma Harvey Cherry Catering Company Blueberry, mango and pineapple

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FOOD & DRINK

Veggie Detox

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Wishing you a Smooth and Juicy New Year! o your New Year's resolutions include getting more greens into your diet?

More fruit?

Finally starting to eat breakfast? Making better use of that fancy blender or juicer that's languishing on your work top?

Whether you're looking for a vitamin-packed snack or something a bit different for breakfast a smoothie or juice could be the answer.

I don’t know about you but I can feel a bit slow after all the indulgence over the holiday period - juices and smoothies are a great way to give yourself a little boost! I love them because they guarantee you get your veggie and fruit servings early on in your day without too much effort! I have a juicer and love it, but you can use a blender or food processor to make a smoothie in place of a full-on juicer. With a juicer you don’t get the pulp or seeds, whereas a blender produces a much thicker drink. If the thought of the washing up puts you off, a stick blender works too - it just takes a bit more work on your behalf chopping everything a bit smaller.

So why juice or blend? Have you ever tried to sit down and eat two apples, four carrots, two beetroot, a couple of handfuls of spinach and three stalks of celery in one sitting?!

It would be nearly impossible to get all of those nutritional fruits and veggies into your system in one day let alone one

“Add some super-foods like spirulina or wheatgrass powder for extra nutrient intake.”

meal, which is why juicing is so magical. It’s like a giant boost of vitamins and minerals to your system in one glass.

If all of this still sounds like a faff, why not chop and prepare a load in advance, pack them up into bags and freeze them in portions? If your blender can cope you can blitz from frozen. If not, just take one out the night before –whizz it with a stick blender in the morning and go! Strawberries, mango, blueberries, spinach, apples, pineapple all work really well.

The breakfast smoothie in the picture includes oats, almonds and yoghurt for extra nutrition and slow release energy.

Smoothies and juices can be made ahead, I often prep the night before or make twice as much for the next 2 days.

Feel free to play around with ingredients. If you received a juicer from Father Christmas, you might want to start with mainly fruit juices before you start adding vegetables –carrots or beetroot are great for beginners; juice with apples ,ginger and lemon or lime for a zingy start to the day. For a real boost you can add some super-foods like spirulina or wheat-grass powder for extra nutrient intake.

Feel free to mix things up: try adding peanut butter, yoghurt, coconut water, almond milk, or flavour with cinnamon, nutmeg, fresh mint or basil. You can see in the pictures the ingredients that made up each drink – very accessible ingredients all bought locally. Get the family involved – it’s a great way to get the kids to eat more fruit and vegetables. So next time you’re at the market or supermarket have a look at their offers with an eye to blending or juicing – the possibilities are endless! •

breakfast smoothie

Lemon Zinger

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Serves 4

RECIPE

Chocolate & Ginger Mousse with a Spiced Orange Syrup

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Sprig Of This started in August 2014 as a blog dedicated to vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and refined sugar-free cooking with a few little lifestyle tips along the way. The blog aims to promote nutritious cooking that tastes delicious and makes you feel your best. Recipes are created by Caroline Douglas, the editor of www.asprigofthis. com. Caroline, aged 25, set up the blog as a way of promoting her innovative recipes and a healthy lifestyle. Her mission is to show that eating well can be an enjoyable, energised way of life, as opposed to a fad diet.

At a A Sprig Of This we don’t want you to worry about watching your weight this Jan-

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FOOD & DRINK

uary. We believe in anti-guilt eating, which basically means eat what you want but simply make it the healthy way. Who knew that avocados and beans can make gorgeous treats that satisfy the sweet tooth. Yes it’s something different, but it’s something almost traditional too. It’s simple cooking, no fancy tricks, just the occasional fancy ingredient.

We truly care about our food and the ingredients used; everything from where and how the vegetable is grown can affect the nutrition and taste of the ingredient. This is why we like to use organic where we can, and buy as locally as we can - keep it close to home we think. From October 2014, A Sprig Of This started cooking exclusively for clients to enjoy in their homes or at events in Norfolk and Suffolk. •

INGREDIENTS 1 large avocado 150 g dark chocolate / cacao chocolate and a little extra for topping 90g stem ginger 1 dessert spoon of raw honey / 1 tbsp maple syrup 75 ml almond milk pinch of salt juice of half a lemon small handful of cacao nibs few walnuts to serve FOR THE SYRUP juice of 2 oranges 2 satsumas 2 cloves 1 star anise 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg 2 lime leaves 1 dessert spoon of raw honey / 1 tbsp maple syrup METHOD Melt your chocolate on a low to medium heat with your raw honey or maple syrup and a pinch of salt. Keep stirring to avoid sticking then add your almond milk slowly until you have a smooth chocolate sauce. Pour into a mixer with your avocado, stem ginger and lemon juice.

Blend until smooth. Dollop into your serving cups / bowls and add some grated chocolate, cacao nibs and a token walnut.

Keep in the fridge to set for a few hours.

To make the spiced orange syrup, pour all your ingredients into a pan (squeezing the juice out of the satsumas into the pan as you put the segments in). Simmer on a low to medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour the syrup through a sieve into a jug, then serve an espresso-sized amount each.

For further information, www.asprigofthis.com asprigofthis@outlook.com v A-Sprig-Of-This t @aSprigOfThis

Words by Caroline Douglas www.asprigofthis.com

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HOMES & GARDENS

LIGHT & BRIGHT

Copper Shade Tom Dixon www.tomdixon.net £245

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1. Sukumala Wallpaper www.janerichards.co.uk £75 2. Maribowl 155mm www.karlssondesign.co.uk £39 3. Paramini Lilac Throw www.janerichards.co.uk £140

4. Marimekko Lumimarja Cushion www.cloudberryliving.co.uk £42.50 5. Multiplette www.swankinteriors.co.uk £190

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A pair of mid century lounge chairs (fully re-upholstered) Perkins & Gibbs 01986 896655 £1200

Bring ar t into your h ome th at m a ke s y o u s m ile

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3

Dash of Soot little greene www.littlegreene.com

r ra t h e

t y pa in e e r g it wa r m k wh Try a th an star

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Broadway Table Lamp www.made.com £89

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DEN BUILDING Create your own little Retreat

“The ‘Edison the petit’ lamp is rechargeable, dimmable and cable free.”

Words by Lanassir Lawes Swank Interiors

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HOMES & GARDENS

uilding a den may sound like a childhood past time but more and more of us are looking for a comfortable retreat after a busy day of work.

Finding a suitable nook in your home may be easier than you think- one of my clients has used the space under the stairs while I know others retreat to a room in the garden.

Having looked for a range of comfortable furniture that would suit a casual room we were delighted to stumble across the ‘Fatboy’ brand. The centrepiece of the range is the original beanbag that comes in an array of colours and materials for outdoor and indoor use.

We love the way that you can shake and reposition the bag to suit your sitting or laying position.

Other items in the range are lamps that include the oversize ‘Edison the grand’ Floor standing lamp. Their robust nature make them perfect for the patio, or if you are looking for a table top lamp, ‘Edison the petit’ is a good choice- It is rechargeable, dimmable and suits Children’s dens as it is cable free.

The Baboesjka cushion stack is great as with all of the items they are quirky and adaptable.

When strapped into a stack of three they become a stool or scatter them as individual floor cushions. Mixing and matching the different colours and patterns is a great way to add a pop of colour.

Hopefully you are feeling inspired to create yourself a den in which to chill and read next months YLM! •

Fatboy products are available from Swank Interiors in Bressingham, 01379 687542

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t is a proven fact that spending time outdoors, surrounded by the wonders of nature, in our gardens and the countryside is good for our health, happiness and well being.

A very Happy New Year to you all and thank you for your custom over the Christmas period, it was lovely to meet so many YLM readers at the wreath making workshops and the many Christmas fairs and markets that took place in December. Now it’s all over and the New Year is here, it’s time to look ahead to the year to come. I look forward to letting you know each month about what’s happening in Gabriel’s Garden. What’s in season and looking good, how to buy our fabulous cut flowers, dates for floral courses and workshops and when our open days are in the summer.

In January it is good to get out in the fresh air for short walks and wanderings around the garden, then get back in the warm with a good cup of tea and a bit of left-over Christmas cake.

Start to plan and think about what to plant in the garden this year, what flowers will look lovely, what will create structure and shape and how to help and encourage more wildlife this year.

If you would like to see and encourage more wildlife into your garden think about leaving a corner untouched, this will become a safe haven for all kinds of wildlife. Let the grass grow long; long grass is essential for egg-laying insects such as butterflies. Think about filling gaps in the borders or creating beds with insects, birds and butterflies in mind. You could include Foxgloves, Lavender and Sedum and the nectar-rich Echinacea.

Night-scented plants such as Buddleia and Nicotina are loved by the moths which in turn feed

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

MAKE ROOM FOR NATURE Get planning now to bring life into your garden later in the year

HOMES & GARDENS

the bats. Grow "Don’t plants that will forget to provide cover keep feeding the garden birds. It’s and shelter tough out there once as well as all of last year’s food. Trees seed heads and such as the berries have gone."

Rowan, climbing Honeysuckles, Cotoneasters and Pryracantha provide shelter and have a profusion of bright berries that are eaten by the Blackbirds and Thrushes. Let a little Ivy grow up over a wall or shed, this will provide cover for the smaller birds such as Blue Tits and the shy little Wren and, when mature, the Ivy flowers will provide a last supper for the bees before hibernation in the winter.

With all this thinking and planning in mind, don’t forget to keep feeding the garden birds this winter, it’s tough out there once all of last year’s seed heads and berries have gone. It’s a great way to start the year, getting in touch with nature and before long you will have regular visitors to your garden, who will, over time, take up residence if provided with the basics of life. • As always please get in touch by emailing Gabi hello@gabrielsgarden or call 01379 677793.

Subscribe to our newsletter at www.gabrielsgarden.co.uk; See what flowers are available this month. Follow us on Twitter and ‘like’ our Facebook Page for offers, weekly updates, comment and news!

“Think about filling gaps in the borders or creating beds with insects, birds and butterflies in mind. You could include Foxgloves, Lavender and Sedum and the nectar rich Echinacea.”

Words by Gabi Gabriel’s Garden

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part from the aesthetic quality of these majestic and beautiful wonders of nature, trees have a myriad of uses. In this issue we will take a look at some of the medicinal uses.

Malaria has killed more people than all the wars and plagues put together. For centuries the only known treatment was quinine.

Quinine is an alkaloid extracted from the bark of the evergreen

Ginkgo Biloba Leaves

“Quinine was produced chemically from the 1940’s but some strains of malaria are now resistant so the cinchona tree has become the centre of attention again.” cinchona tree found in the tropical forests of Peru and Bolivia.

The Quechua Indians used it to treat malaria and the Spanish Conquistadors brought it back to Europe in the 16th century, calling it the ‘miracle cure’. It has a very bitter taste so the British in India in the 18th and 19th centuries flavoured it with gin to make it more palatable – gin and tonic.

Quinine was produced chemically from the 1940s but some strains of malaria are now resistant so the cinchona tree has become the centre of attention again.

Most medicine chests contain a bottle of aspirin tablets, the world’s most widely used analgesic. This is a derivative of salicylic acid which is extracted from the bark of the white willow, Salix alba. It is now produced synthetically but chewing on a bit of this bark would still ease pain.

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

Medicinal Use of Trees Nature’s Ancient Remedies

Words by Joan Garnham Waveney Tree Specialists

HOMES & GARDENS

The leaves of a “Ginkgo tree which was Biloba is around when used effectively dinosaurs for memory loss, coronary roamed the conditions and to earth - the improve blood maidenhair tree, circulation.”

Ginkgo biloba have been used by the Chinese for millennia in herbal medicine to treat everything from asthma to haemorrhoids.

Now, in the West, it is used effectively for memory loss, coronary conditions and to improve blood circulation.

The Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia is used in the fight against cancer.

The Australian Moreton Bay chestnut contains an unusual alkaloid which is able to help neutralize the Aids virus.

Native Americans such as the Cherokee made a ‘tea’ from the leaves of Witch Hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, which they washed wounds in as it has strong antiseptic qualities.

Anyone who has coughs and sore throats will be familiar with eucalyptus; the leaves contain the oil cineol, which is also useful in treating asthma.

Growing across the northern reaches of North America, balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera) bears buds coated with a gooey, fragrant substance. In the drug industry, it’s called “balmof-Gilead,” and, as an expectorant, it becomes a constituent of cold medicine. It also keeps ointment from going rancid. Applied externally, it helps heal wounds.

Do you get a lift from a carbonated soda? The large kola trees of tropical West Africa, the West Indies and South America are responsible (Cola nitada, C. acuminata). Their dried seeds, which contain much caffeine, provide the stimulant in some medicines. But they also provide an energizing ingredient in many soft drinks. •

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FEATURED ARTIST

Colour Me Happy

PARRIS WAKEFIELD Additions

Two thirds of graphic design studio Design Dialogue, Sarah Parris and Howard Wakefield have worked with clients in music, fashion and interiors.

Working from a converted loft in Mellis, Suffolk, Sarah and Howard have released a fresh and unique range of digitally created and printed soft furnishings to much critical acclaim.

YLM took some time to talk to them about contemporary lifestyle design, collaboration and cabin fever. >

ions & shade Marthe cush

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JANUARY 2015

YLM

FEATURED ARTIST

Colour Me Happy

PARRIS WAKEFIELD Additions

Two thirds of graphic design studio Design Dialogue, Sarah Parris and Howard Wakefield have worked with clients in music, fashion and interiors.

Working from a converted loft in Mellis, Suffolk, Sarah and Howard have released a fresh and unique range of digitally created and printed soft furnishings to much critical acclaim.

YLM took some time to talk to them about contemporary lifestyle design, collaboration and cabin fever. >

ions & shade Marthe cush

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

JANUARY 2015

YLM

ers to produce high-quality, hand-finished products for British designers. The alliance is founded on a desire to help prisoners learn through making, and to give practical and emotional support to help them reintegrate into society on release. They do a fantastic job for us and I would highly recommend them to any British designers looking to have their product made in Britain.

Forget Me Not cushion

> So how did the adventure into the world of fabrics and interiors start?, What was the vision?

H. It began with a graphic design job we had for a Danish textile company called Kvadrat. We learnt a lot about textiles and went to many interiors shows. But we didn’t ever think we would do anything ourselves until we moved to Mellis. Until then, we had rented and made do with the furniture it came with and the standard magnolia walls. We bought a converted barn and were greeted with white walls and gnarled oak beams. We knew we didn’t want the usual shabby chic or ye olde cottage look and embraced a more contemporary approach. But then we couldn’t find exactly what we wanted, so decided as you do - to design our own and fill this gap in the market.

Why do you print digitally, rather than traditional screenpress?

S. There are a couple of reasons; but mainly digital printing gives us freedom in our designs. We are not constrained by the number of colours in each design or the complexity of the design, a large number

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of our designs just simply cannot be screen printed. We can also create variations of the design without having to make different screens - for example we often play with the pattern scale and crop so the cushions and lampshades co-ordinate but are not exactly the same.

Digital printing also has other benefits for us, one is that it is easier and more cost-effective to do shorter runs and the other is the environmental benefits as printing digitally uses half the ink compared with screen printing and, as there are no screens to be washed when changing colours, water consumption is also reduced by approximately half.

Can you tell us about Handmade Alliance and your decision to use them to produce your cushions?

S. We believe that as designer we should consider every aspect of ‘good design’ - its quality, form, function, environmental and social impact.

This is not always easy to achieve, so when Handmade Alliance contacted us, I was delighted to work with them.

Handmade Alliance is a social enterprise, training prison-

The Additions ‘Marthe’ range has a very fluid and organic look.

Sometimes the pattern is more defined, such as seen in ‘Choice’ or ‘Zigzag’, which results in a more industrial feel. Would it be fair to say that your influences are wide-ranging and is the design process itself more organic or structured?

H. Inspiration can quite literally come from anywhere, from the patterns found in nature to artists such as Gerhard Richter and the design process is most definitely best described as organic. We always start with a chosen colour palette and then with no real particular pattern in mind we start to manipulate the colour digitally, working mostly in Photoshop. The designs naturally develop and take shape from a combination of layers and interactions, cropping, rejecting, refining until you have it.

Can you tell us about the way you go about choosing colour and colour combinations?

S. I tend to work on the initial colour palette which is selected from images and photographs we have collected. They could be anything from a fashion page in a magazine to a photo taken when on a day out. The subject is not important - it’s all about how the colours work together. I also love orange and so not surprisingly it tends to appear in a lot of our designs.

“We believe that as designer we should consider every aspect of ‘good design’ - its quality, form, function, environmental and social impact. ” How do you resolve difference of opinion, if there ever are any?

H. We review the designs together as they are being created and we are both honest in our opinions. Which means we keep working on the design until we are both happy and that always creates a better design.

S. I guess we have learnt not to take design comments too personally as this is a normal part of the graphic design process too. You have to take all critique positively in order to make the design as good as it can be.

Once you have a design that you are happy, with do you sign it off straight away or do you like to sit on it for a while?

S. I usually know straight away if we want to include a design, you get that tingly goose-bump feeling and you instantly know it is right. However we only launch one or two designs each year so yes sometimes we do wait for the right time to launch a pattern. We have to think of the whole collection, its direction and how a new design sits within the collection.

“Made me smile.”, “Fun” and, “Happy” are words that appear a lot in reviews of the range online.

You must be delighted with that

kind of response and do you get to have fun producing the designs yourselves?

H. it gives us great pleasure to hear and see that reaction to our collection. They are intended to be fun and we do have great fun designing them. It is a chance for us to let our hair down creatively, so to speak. We are usually constrained to a client’s brief with our graphic design work but with the textiles we have the freedom to really go for it.

You both work from home in Suffolk, what kind of things

do you do to escape from the ‘office’?

S. Working and living together in the same space can, if you’re not careful, result in a little bit of cabin fever. Those who know us from the school run may think it is odd that the two of us drop off and collect the children, this is not because it needs the two of us, but it is important for both of us to get out of the house, it is our commute, our much needed afternoon break. We also look after a friend’s dog, a dashing dachshund called Bertie, twice a week and taking him out for

walks is a great escape from the studio too.

Is there anything new in the pipeline and what events can we find you at this year?

H. We are working on new designs for 2015 and are also collaborating with British textile company Camira printing one of our designs onto wool.

S. We would love to do more commissioned illustrations and prints in 2015. One of our commissions has just been shown in a digital exhibition

by See | Me at SCOPE Art in Miami and as part of Art Basel

FEATURED ARTIST

Week. We have also had an illustration selected to be in a book called ‘That Which We Do Not Understand’ by Amelia’s Magazine. This illustration titled ‘ Order from Chaos’ is available as a limited edition print and the book will be sold in the Tate (www.kickstarter. com/projects/ameliagregory).

• To find out more about Parris Wakefield Additions, 01379 783 048 parriswakefieldadditions.com v Studio Parris Wakefield t @SPWadditions

“The collection is intended to be fun and we do have great fun designing it. It is a chance for us to let our hair down creatively, so to speak .”

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TRAINING FOR LIFE First Aid and Bespoke Training for Business, Individuals and The Health and Social Care Industry

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auline came to our office for a chat. She is so easy to speak to, very passionate and enthusiastic about her business.

She enjoys helping all sorts of people learn new skills and gain qualifications. It’s easy to see why she has chosen to be in the caring sector to train people as her business.

Pauline is a registered nurse.

She completed her training at Clatterbridge Hospital on The Wirral Peninsula. She has always had an interest in teaching and has worked for the NHS and Private Sector for the last 14 years.

With more and more people preferring to have care at home nowadays, Pauline’s experience could be an invaluable skill for anyone to learn.

Training for Life was set up two years ago because different companies were asking Pauline if she would be willing to train their staff. Going it alone has given Pauline more of a free rein to develop courses suited to the customer’s needs.

Pauline is a member of The Association of First Aiders and registered to deliver AoFAQ level 2 awards in the following subjects Emergency First Aid at Work, Paediatric First Aid (for Child Minders & Nursery Schools) Basic Life Support and AED, Moving and Handling People, Moving and Handling Principles and Fire Marshall Training.

Pauline can put together bespoke courses for businesses, individuals and The Health & Social Care Industry depending on their needs. For example, she trained a group of handgliders in First Aid and Emergency Treatment for Suspension Trauma.

There are also courses available for Dementia Awareness for Carers.

In the New Year Pauline will be holding Community First

VENTURE

Aid Workshops around the villages of Suffolk to encourage more Mums, Dads, Grandmas, Grandpas and community minded people to be trained in the Principles of First Aid. These are skills that can be useful to us all, either at home or in the workplace.

Pauline’s work takes her around the leafy lanes of East Anglia to church halls, village schools, offices, residential care homes and hospitals. Courses

“Companies were asking Pauline if she would be willing to train their staff.” can be done on-site or on a one to one basis in special circumstances.

Certificates are awarded on successful completion of a course and are valid for a specific length of time depending on the course attended. Pauline enjoys helping people to gain confidence in themselves, giving them the competence they need, in particular to help secure a new job if you are looking for a new career move.

All employers have to comply with legislation and need to keep up to speed with training requirements for their staff. Pauline can help companies achieve their obligations by working closely with them in developing courses that suit their particular place of work. •

Why not give Pauline a call in the New Year to improve your own skills or develop your staff?, 07928 056 501 tfl.solutions@googlemail.com

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Q. have a six month old son and am currently on maternity leave from my job, due to go back to work in a few months’ time. I initially planned to return full time but having thought about it long and hard, have decided that I would really like to reduce my hours – hopefully to 4 days a week. I’m really not sure how my employer is going to take this news. What are my rights? Can they require me to return to work full time?

A. Since 30th June 2014, all employees with a minimum of 26 weeks’ service have the legal right to make a written application to their employer to work flexibly, not just those with parental or caring responsibilities.

Previously only those with caring responsibilities for children (under the age of 17, or 18 if the child is disabled) or adults, were entitled to make an application for flexible working.

A flexible working request can be, amongst others, a request to change the number of hours worked (e.g. part-time working); change the times of work (e.g. starting and finishing a shift 1 hour later); or change the place of work (e.g. home working). Qualifying employees are only permitted to make one request in any 12 month period.

It is important to stress that you only have the right to request flexible working arrangements; your employer is entitled to turn down the request, provided it has legitimate business reasons for doing so. However, an employer who unreasonably rejects the application, or who

Work and Life Balance fails to deal with it in accordance with the set procedure, may be held in breach of the flexible working legislation and may even find itself liable for a claim of sex discrimination.

Firstly you should check whether your employer has a flexible working policy in place, which should explain the procedure for making a request to return to work on a flexible

basis, including a request to reduce your working hours.

In the absence of a written policy, your employer is still required to consider a request for flexible working arrangements following a set procedure.

Your application for flexible working should be made in writing and must include certain prescribed information. It should set out the work pat-

VENTURE

tern you are seeking and explain what effect this may have on the employer’s business and how it could be accommodated in practice.

Your employer should arrange a meeting with you to discuss your application. A final decision must be made by your employer within three months of your request, unless an extension to this period is agreed with you. You should also be given the right to appeal against the decision should your request be turned down.

If your request is granted, it will be a permanent change to your contract and you will have no right to revert to full time hours at a later date without further agreement (unless your employer has agreed to a temporary flexible working arrangement).

ACAS has published a Code of Practice and accompanying guidance for employers and employees on the right to request flexible working, both of which are available from the ACAS website www.acas.org. uk or by calling the ACAS Helpline on 0300 123 1100. • Should you need any further advice, please contact Steeles Law’s employment team on, 01379 652141 employment@steeleslaw.co.uk

Since 30th June 2014, all employees with a minimum of 26 weeks’ service have the legal right to make a written application to their employer to work flexibly, not just those with parental or caring responsibilities.

Find Us 2 Mount Street, Diss Telephone 01379 652141 Email info@steeleslaw.co.uk Visit our Website www.steeleslaw.co.uk

Words by Robert Hickford Employment Solicitor Steeles Law

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FINANCIAL FOCUS

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ealth management addresses a wide range of issues. A wealth manager can help you with such issues as: investing a lump sum, deciding how much you need to save in order to retire comfortably, estate planning and saving inheritance tax, getting the right types and amounts of life and health insurance, planning to pay school or university fees, deciding how much to borrow and providing a general financial health check.

These are crucial issues for most people and their families, and it’s very important for a wealth manager to have a thorough understanding of clients’ aims and challenges.

It’s generally best to look at

What can a Wealth Manager do for you? the whole of an individual’s financial affairs across the board, not just the issue that is of most immediate concern.

It can sometimes be hard to deal with one particular issue

I am looking for?

You might need to change your goals and aspirations and you may also need to adjust some of your current patterns of behaviour such as spending

“A wealth manager can help you with such issues as: investing a lump sum, deciding how much you need to save in order to retire comfortably.� in isolation because most areas of financial planning are interconnected.

As a potential client, you should be asking yourself: do I trust this person and can I work with them? And it’s important to settle the practicalities: does this adviser and the firm have the right expertise and can they provide what

and saving. A very important issue is clarity about priorities – what might have seemed to be a high priority at the start of the process might have to be replaced by another need.

Most clients want their adviser to keep an eye on their investments and other financial arrangements; you could, for example, receive periodic

To receive a complimentary guide covering Wealth Management, Retirement Planning or Inheritance Tax Planning, contact Samuel Duncan of 6 St. Nicholas Street, Diss on 01379 641211 or email samuel.duncan@sjpp.co.uk

YLM | YOUR LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE

valuations, attend meetings or have phone calls on a regular basis, or as and when needed.

The review process is intended to act as a catch up with what has changed – either in your own circumstances or in the financial world generally.

It is possible to carry out your own wealth management if you have the knowledge, time, patience and self-discipline. But there are good reasons why you probably won’t want to – even if you have all these characteristics.

You may also find it hard to make these important decisions alone.

Words by Samuel Duncan

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ream On held one of their fashion shows at the launch of The Mix in Stowmarket. It’s a fantastic new place, which has the vision of being a leading destination where young people go to feel inspired, develop confidence and experience creativity. We feel the goals of The Mix are very aligned with Dream On and The Blossom Charity, so apart from wanting to support The Mix, we also wanted to be able to promote our work and see if there is interest in us running a programme this year with 16-19 year olds.

We needed some models.

We were keen to have women who had been on our Blossom Development Programme as I planned to interview the model about her experience live on the night.

Now I would rather have pins stuck in my eyes than model so I’m impressed with anyone who volunteers to not only walk the catwalk but be interviewed on stage. That takes some bravery!

We did get a volunteer, Debra. I remember Debra when she first came to visit us.

She’d read an article in YLM and had thought we might be able to help her.

She recalled the time she came to us: “I was a bit nervous coming to Dream On. I felt very

Words by Bridget McIntyre Dream On

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

FASHION

“Just talking out loud and being listened to was great, my family are supportive but having someone independent to talk to was just what I needed.” apprehensive and worried even phoning them up.”

Debra did ring us, she spoke to us and we thought it would be good for her to come in and have an initial chemistry session.

We arranged a meeting with Jackie, “Jackie was so friendly, I talked through my situation, my fears for where I was in my life and my future,” said Debra “Just talking out loud and being listened to was great, my family are supportive but having someone independent to talk to was just what I needed.”

Debra was facing a huge transition. She suddenly found herself in her mid 50’s on her own. Not only was the financial security a huge concern but also the experience had impacted Debra’s confidence.

She needed to find work and try and map out a future.

“I sat down with Jackie and she outlined a programme just for me. As I listened to the design, which had a series of workshops including career coach yourself, budgeting and managing money, creativity and stress management, together with some 1-1 coaching, I thought, that sounds great but how much will it cost?”

Jackie explains the approach: “We designed a programme to meet Debra’s goals. Given Debra’s financial position, I was aware that cost would be an issue. I was quick to reassure her that The Blossom Charity would fund this so there was nothing to pay.”

I NEVER BELIEVED I’D HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO MODEL Phew!...Well the story continues and a few weeks ago as Debra came towards the end of her programme, I chatted with her on the budgeting and managing your money workshop.

Debra explained how her life was now working, she has a new home, a new job and a new-found self-confidence.

“I feel good about myself,” she said. “I’d love to pay you back in some way.”

Now I don’t think she realized what she’d said. I needed someone to model at the fashion show and be interviewed.

When I said she volunteered at the start of this article, I probably should have said that

she bravely agreed!

We travelled together to and from the event: “Would you ever believe you could do this?” I asked.

“No,” replied Debra, “ but I feel great and so much more confident, thank you for helping me move on in my life.”

Seeing Debra on that catwalk and hopefully inspiring other women to take action when their lives aren’t working is all the thanks we need. •

To find out more about the support you could receive, esther@dream-on.co.uk 01379 678483

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one of us can possibly have escaped the proliferation of Logo quizzes that have emerged over the last couple of years. Being a bit of a cynic I’m convinced that this is all part of a grand plan by the marketing departments of multinational companies to dripfeed our subconscious minds with instantly recognisable images and logos. And it works.

Next time you’re standing in the toothpaste aisle just try and resist that imprinted subliminal impulse directing your hand to the tubes of Gibbs SR (OK, I know, I haven’t shopped for toothpaste in a long while).

So what has toothpaste got to do with cars? Only that they are sold to us in exactly the same way. Manufacturers no longer make claims that their product is better that their rivals’ – it’s far more subtle than that. No, they simply plant the image in our minds that their car will be good for us – it’ll make us more youthful, beautiful, sporty, clever and successful the moment we clasp the keys in our hands. And lest we forget the maker’s name, the marketing department always makes sure we know the badge.

Badges, emblems, mascots, call them what you will, they are the distilled essence of the brand, created by (and often in the image of) the original founding engineer with strong hints of their national culture and origin.

Porsche’s badge is a prime example of automotive heraldry: it is based on the coat of arms of the city of Stuttgart, home of the Porsche empire. The city was built on the site of a stud farm (literally Stuttgart), which explains the horse in the coat of arms; the antlers and

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

MOTORING

André Citroën

IT’S ALL IN THE MAKER’S IMAGE Behind the Origins of the Badge red and black stripes are part of the arms of the Kingdom of Wurttemberg. Mercedes on the other hand created the three pointed star we know so well today to represent their dominance over land, sea and air. For BMW there’s always been a common belief that their logo is a stylized representation of a spinning propeller blade in a blue sky – no doubt given some credence

by BMW’s origins as an aero engine manufacturer. However,

it actually predates aero engine production by more than ten years. The emblem evolved from the Rapp Moternwerke (which later grew into BMW), with colours from the flag of Bavaria incorporated.

The Italians, perhaps unsurprisingly, applied a little more emotion to their emblems: Ferrucio Lamborghini, founder of Lamborghini and passionate follower of bull fighting, incorporated a charging bull into his logo. Mr. Lamborghini also

carried this theme over to the names “The of his early prancing horse adorning cars, almost the badge of all of which Ferrari was the were named emblem of WW1 after either fighter ace Fancesco a breed of Baracca.” fighting bull or a particular bull. The prancing horse adorning the badge of Ferrari was the emblem of WW1 fighter ace Fancesco Baracca. Enzo Ferrari was persuaded by Francesco’s parents to use the symbol of their late son for his Alfa Romeo race cars. When Ferrari later started his own car company, he continued to use the same logo. Abarth, famous tuner and developer of racing Fiats chose a shield shape for the company emblem to represent the concept of victory; the red white and green bars were added in recent times to symbolize the Italian origin of these cars. The history of the scorpion in the logo is uncertain but is believed to come from the zodiac sign of founder Carlo Abarth.

And my favourite? The two chevrons on the Citroën badge represent the double helical gears that founder, André Citroën was famous for prior to starting his car manufacturing empire. You could say it was the engineer’s choice – no delusions of grandeur or emotion there. •

Words by Leighten Ball GM Autotech

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PRACTICALLY PERFECT “the i3 REX has ten times the fuel economy and a tenth of the emissions compared to conventionally powered cars while only taking a few minutes to refuel rather than the half hour or more it takes to recharge an electric car.”

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ith its i3 hatchback, BMW has produced one of the most important cars currently available to buy.

Eco-friendly motoring is not only becoming more efficient but also fashionable, and BMW has quickly positioned itself in the vanguard of this crucial change in the automobile.

The German marque’s i8 hybrid supercar might make the headlines but it is the i3 that is far more important.

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Chris Lilly puts the new BMW i3 to the test Like its big brother, it is the i3’s looks that grab the attention quickly. Those who have seen one on the road will not have forgotten it quickly as it features BMW’s futuristic styling, reflecting the advanced technology beneath the skin.

Even if you don’t like the looks, there is no denying that it is striking. Personally, I like the i3’s looks and a strong attribute of the i3 is that there is a cohesive design inside and out.

The interior is a fantastic place to sit. Clean, uncluttered and manufactured using unusual materials, the i3’s cabin mirrors the exterior with swoops and cuts.

The dashboard has two screens that deal with almost every action and display you need. The one in front of the driver deals with the car’s dials and instruments while a central screen displays satellite navigation and media information.

This leaves a few buttons to deal with the air-conditioning and BMW’s iDrive controller which is a nice change from the cluttered interiors of many cars these days.

In another break from the norm, BMW has put the gear selector up by the steering wheel, freeing up space for passengers.

Sticking with the unusual, the rear seats are accessed through

the i3’s rear “suicide doors” which hinge at the back.

This gives a huge, pillar-less aperture though the load space is not the biggest as the boot floor is higher than normal.

This is because of the different mechanical elements seen in the i3 - but there is plenty of space for a weekly food shop.

Those unusual workings are the i3’s raison d’être and it would take someone all day to thoroughly explain the BMW’s drivetrain.

Put simply, the i3 is an electric car that runs on battery power. You can plug the car in and charge it up which makes for incredibly cheap motoring, but the range is only between

MOTORING

80 and 100 miles depending on terrain, traffic and weather.

For most journeys this is easily enough, but it takes a while to recharge when you run out of juice. This is where BMW’s i3 REX comes in and was the car tested.

The REX suffix stands for “range extender” and considerably increases the distance the car is able to go between charges.

A tiny engine kicks in when the car’s batteries are being drained and acts as an onboard generator, recharging them on the move.

Combine this with the i3’s regenerative braking and the range is a far more respectable 200+ miles.

This still doesn’t compare well with a traditional car’s 500-600 miles but those cars don’t return 470.9mpg and emit just 13g/km CO2.

Also, the benefit of the REX over purely electric machines is that you might have to stop after 200 miles of driving, but it only takes a couple of minutes to top up the tank.

So the i3 REX has ten times the fuel economy and a tenth of the emissions compared to conventionally powered cars while only taking a few minutes to refuel rather than the half hour or more it takes to recharge an electric car. It hits a sweet spot that has long been needed in the market.

When driven, the BMW is strangely quiet when you accelerate but you make rapid progress when you do.

The 0-62mph time is 7.9 seconds which is far from sluggish, and you can put your foot down at any speed and feel a jolt as the i3 pushes you forward willingly.

Lift off the accelerator and the car will use the i3’s kinetic energy to recharge the batteries with such eagerness that

the car’s brake lights come on to make sure drivers behind don’t go into the back of you.

You can quickly re-adjust your driving style so that you only need to touch the brake pedal twice during a journey – once when you start it and once when you park at the end of your drive. Use the car’s energy regeneration for the rest of the time and you will dramatically extend your range.

When it comes to the i3’s driving dynamics, the BMW is eager and willing to be let loose on an open road. The car’s balance is excellent and there is a surprising amount of grip considering the i3 runs on low rolling resistance tyres.

Crucially, the suspension is supple enough to deal with all the problems found on roads within town. The steering is light and there is an excellent amount of visibility to park the i3 with ease.

At £34,130 the i3 is pricy, but it doesn’t feel expensive thanks to a good level of kit, excellent build quality and strong performance. The running costs are so low too that you can offset the initial price with how much you will spend keeping the i3 on the road.

The i3 is no revolution but it is certainly a breakthrough.

BMW has made a hybrid car fashionable while also delivering a seriously impressive car.

Words by Chris Lilly

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Book club

BOOK CLUB

Great War Britain: Norfolk Remembering 1914-1918

by Steve Smith £9.99

Reviews by Diss Publishing www.disspublishing.co.uk | 01379 644612

A lovely paperback book packed full of black and white photographs of the era and details the story of the people of the county during the ‘the war to end all wars’.

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman Denis Thériault £7.99 This is a delightful and thoughtful début novel from a French-Canadian author. Set in Montreal, Bilodo the postman lives a solitary and quiet life – he is so lonely that he has taken to steaming open people’s mail. This is how he comes across Ségolene’s letters that are written in haiku form – moved by the beauty of the language, Bilodo falls in love with her. The writing is lyrical and the story is entrancing!

A Song for Ella Grey

by David Almond £12.99 A Song for Ella is a tale of modern teenagers, their joys, troubles and desires. Two friends Claire and Ella meet the strange and handsome Orpheus on the beautiful beaches of Northumberland who sings them into a new understanding of themselves. This is a story of first love and the intensity that might often seem like insanity of that love. Written in a lyrical prose this book is raw, emotional, funny and true.

Paddington

by Michael Bond £6.99

ove We l

Paddington has come back into the limelight again with the release of the new movie. This is a lovely picture book version of the original story with beautiful and bold colour illustrations throughout. A great way to introduce kids to the joys of Paddington.

La Vie est Belle

by Henrietta Heald £25 A stunning book filled with gorgeous photographs of interiors decorated in French style that will immediately make you want to pack your bags and move to Provence. Beautifully put together with insightful essays on the traditions and characteristics of French life and quotes from great writers. An added bonus is the inclusion of recipes for authentic French dishes. This book is a complete dream.

YLM | your lifestyle magazine

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JANUARY 2015

59

YLM

60

COMPETITION TIME

a Big Band Swing & comedy break at Potters Resort

I Laugh out loud and get into the swing with a toe-tapping night of intoxicating rhythms on A Night of Big Band Swing & Comedy featuring Shaun Williamson on Sunday 1st February 2015 at Potters Resort on the Norfolk Coast.

This One Night Special includes Potters Big Band playing jazz and swing, featuring comedy and vocals from Shaun Williamson, best known for his role as Barry in EastEnders.

All this plus a five course dinner with selected wines, late night entertainment, a midnight dish, comfortable accommodation, breakfast, and use of the extensive sports and leisure facilities, including swimming pools, climbing wall and gym.

One lucky reader will win a one night break for two adults on Sunday 1st February 2015, worth £248.

To enter, simply answer the question below:

Q

What was the name of Shaun Williamson’s character in EastEnders? a) James b) Barry c) Gary

Enter via email to competitions@ylm.co.uk (please include name, address and telephone number)

Rules of entry - The winner will be picked at random out of a hat, the judge’s decision will be final. YLM will contact the winner by letter. Closing Date 15/01/15.

For information on this or other breaks at Potters Resort Call the friendly Reservations Team on 0333 3207 438 or visit, www.pottersholidays.com v Potters Resort t @PottersResort

YLM

what’s on JANUARY Saturday 3rd - Saturday 31st New Wolsey Theatre Tour Is opening its stage door to offer a brilliant and rare opportunity to go behind the scenes. Our engaging, knowledgeable tour guides will lead you through the theatre to the dressing rooms, the green room, the lighting box, the trap doors, onto the stage and beyond!

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich | Every Sat 12:30 - approx 45mins | £5pp | 01473 295900 / www.wolseytheatre.co.uk

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Sunday 4th Apollo Country Music Club presents 'Bonnie Diamond & Co' Apollo Country Music Club, licensed bar, hot meals & raffle available.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7.30pm-10.45pm | £5 cmc members / £6 non members. | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club.co.uk

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Tuesday 6th Cash Prize Bingo Feeling lucky for 2015? All welcome - Just come along. Cash Prizes.

Pennoyer Centre, Pulham St. Mary | Bar open from 6.30pm | Eyes down 7pm | £7 for 10 games | 01379 676660 / www.pennoyers.org.uk

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wednesday 7th - saturday31 st British Abstract Printmakers – The Great Generations This exhibition brings together the work of two major groups of British abstract artists. The first was that great avantgarde generation of the 1930s, who went on to become major international names after the war and included Moore, Hepworth and Nicholson. The second group which emerged in the ‘60s and ‘70s is more disparate, some loosely linked with ‘pop’ art, others influenced by American abstraction are represented by Bridget Riley, Howard Hodgkin, Sean Scully and others. Evening viewing Wednesday 7th Jan in the gallery 6.30pm - 7.45pm Diss Corn Hall Gallery | Free | 01379 652241 / www.disscornhall.co.uk

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Thursday 8th Beauty And The Beast Join Fairy Fortunate and Company as they bring you Beauty and the Beast – transformed into one of the New Wolsey Theatre’s irresistible rock ‘n’ roll pantomimes!

A beautiful traditional story married to some monster rock, pop and soul songs all served up by our brilliant company of actor-musicians - Let Us Entertain You! New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich | 7:30pm | 01473 295900 / www.wolseytheatre. co.uk

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Canine Partners are back!

The Fisher Theatre in conjunction with DanHIRE TRAILERS proudly invite you to a Barking Mad evening! Presented by Malcolm Wells MBE. Malcolm and his four-legged friends from Canine Partners

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come to the aid of hundreds of disabled people every year, restoring independence and dignity. The specially trained dogs can perform hundreds of actions from helping with the washing to assisting their owners to get up and dressed.

This is a fundraising event for Canine Partners.

The Fisher Theatre, Bungay, Suffolk | 7pm | £15 includes buffet | Box Office: 01986 897130 / www.fishertheatre.org | caninepartners.co.uk | danhiretrailers.co.uk

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Friday 9th Quiz Night We are delighted to welcome our new quiz host to the fold – Dick Mainwaring. A seasoned stage performer with a wicked sense of humour, you’re bound to enjoy his entertaining approach to being the QUIZ MASTER! Paired with a delicious Jimmy’s Farm Bangers menu, a full bar and great prizes.

Jimmy’s Farm, Ipswich | 7:30pm | £15 | 01473 604206 / www.jimmysfarm.com

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Saturday 10th Elkie Brooks – Live in Concert Proving to be one of the most powerful and versatile vocal talents of our generation. With numerous hit singles, million selling albums and awards.

The Apex, Bury St Edmunds | 7:30pm | £24 | 01284 758000 / www.theapex.co.uk

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Jazz Breakfast Come and enjoy a leisurely weekend breakfast with the soothing sound of live Jazz in the background. We have a great selection of talented local Jazz bands why not try our famous Greedy Farmer’s Breakfast, plus we have some lighter options to suit every taste.

Jimmy’s Farm, Ipswich | 9:30am - 11am | 01473 604206 / www.jimmysfarm.com

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Sunday 11th The Silver Dollar Country Music Club, The Park Hotel, Diss presents MADISON COUNTY. The Park Hotel, Diss | Doors 7pm. Music 7.30pm until 10.30pm | Members £5. NonMembers £6 | John and Teresa Stannard, Committee Members on 01603 433918.

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Come Dancing If you love to dance & love music this is the place for you! Licensed bar available, large dance floor.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7.00pm-10.00pm | £5 | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club. co.uk

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Walk at Buckenham Marshes Buckenham Marshes for winter birds, ducks, raptors and corvids with Philip Howard. Dress warmly, bring a flask.

Norfolk Wildlife Trust | New Buckenham Common | Meet at the RSPB car park at Buckenham Station TG 351057 | 2pm to dusk | Cost: Free | www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk

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Monday 12th Beyond the Barricade This show re-creates original West End/ Broadway musical hit songs with amazing authenticity and features a cast of past principal performers from the West End production of Les Miserables, and the 25th Anniversary Concert at the 02 Arena. Including songs from Miss Saigon, The Lion King, Phantom Of The Opera, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, Blood Brothers, Wicked, Jersey Boys and many more.

Theatre Royal, Norwich | 7:30pm | £5.50 £20.50 + Fee of £1.20 per order for P&P | 01603 63 00 00 / www.theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk / boxoffice@theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk

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Wednesday 14th Film: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (12A) With Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis. Arguably the first of seven sequels to actually improve on the 1968 original.

Andy Serkis is Caesar, the ape who leads resistance to Gary Oldman’s team of humans attempting to build a dam in ape territory.

Diss Corn Hall | Tickets £5 / Under 18s £2.50 | 8pm | 01379 652241 / www. disscornhall.co.uk

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Saturday 17th ROARING 20s CABARET NIGHT Step back into the ‘speakeasy’ of the roaring 20s, where the evening will come to life with live music, great company and a cheeky Charleston to bop along to! The Cabaret Pinup Girls specialise in traditional cabaret performance to entertain and delight from the moment you venture inside, ‘til it’s time to “shim sham” your way home. Dress in your glad rags, meet with your friends and grab a cocktail or few!

The Cut, Halesworth | £10 | 7:30pm | 01986 873285 / info@newcut.org / www. newcut.org

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Sunday 18th DICK WHITTINGTON Following last year’s sell out show, Puzzle House Pantomimes return to Wingfield to present a traditional family pantomime based on the adventures of Dick Whittington. The city of London is overrun by an army of rats, and Dick Whittington, a poor boy from the country, is the only person who can stop them. His friends – Tommy the magic cat, Fairy Bowbells, Dame Delia the cook and Idle Jack – do what they can, but it may still need the help of the audience if good is to overcome the power of evil!

Wingfield Barns | 3.00pm | £7 | 01379 384505 / enquiries@wingfieldbarns.com

you're looking for as part of your wedding is sure to be here.

The Apex, Bury St Edmunds | 11am-3pm | Free Entry | 01284 758000 / www. theapex.co.uk

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Apollo Country Music Club presents 'Bobby Graham' Apollo Country Music Club, licensed bar, hot meals & raffle available.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7.30pm-10.45pm | £5 cmc members / £6 non members. | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club.co.uk

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Thursday 22nd Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of murder, money and mutiny is brought to life in a thrilling new stage adaptation by Bryony Lavery, broadcast live from the National Theatre. It’s a dark, stormy night. The stars are out. Jim, the inn-keeper’s granddaughter, opens the door to a terrifying stranger. At the old sailor’s feet sits a huge sea-chest, full of secrets. Jim invites him in – and her dangerous voyage begins.

Diss Corn Hall | Thursday 22 January 7pm (Live) | Saturday 21 February 2pm (Encore) | Tickets £12 / Under 18s £10 (Suitable for 10+yrs) | ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk | 01379 652241 / www.disscornhall.co.uk

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THURSDAY 22nd - SATurday 31sT SIGN OF THE TIMES Frank is the Head of Installation at Forshaws, a commercial lettering factory, and an aspiring novelist. Teenager Alan is his reluctant trainee, more interested in his band ‘Lizard’ and his iPod than the complexities of bracketing systems and electrical isolators. However, this pair of Yorkshiremen have a lot more in common than they both think, and as their relationship develops, their roles are reversed and they realise that they hold the key to each other’s salvation…

Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds | Box Office 01284 769505 / www.theatreroyal.org / booking@theatreroyal.org

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Friday 23rd Down to Earth - An Evening with Monty Don Monty Don is a renowned gardening writer and BBC television presenter and the nation’s favourite and most respected gardener. Hear him speak about his life and travels visiting gardens all over the world, what really happens behind the scenes when filming, about how he made his own organic garden from a bare field and how understanding and working with nature enriches and empowers us all.

The Apex, Bury St Edmunds | 7:30pm | £18 | 01284 758000 / www.theapex.co.uk

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The Apex Wedding Fair Come along and chat with wedding suppliers, enter our competition, grab some lunch at the cafe and listen to live music.

With around 60 exhibitors, whatever

Quiz Night Popular quiz night with fish and chips.

Teams of up to 6. Booking essential.

Pennoyer Centre, Pulham St. Mary | £8.00 or £4.00 without food | Bar opens at 7pm for a 7.30pm start | 01379 676660 / www. pennoyers.org.uk

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UPDATES & EVENTS

a selection of forthcoming events in our region

Saturday 24th Music: Paul Jones & Dave Kelly Founder members of The Blues Band, Paul Jones and Dave Kelly’s roots go way back into the true undergrowth of the tradition. As well as their own original material, they not only perform the work of the greats, ranging from Howling’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker through to Sonny Boy Williamson - they have actually played alongside them, and enjoyed their friendship.

Diss Corn Hall | Tickets £15 | 8pm | 01379 652241 / www.disscornhall.co.uk

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DANCE TO THE band: HI-DEFINITION Wreningham Village Hall, Mill Lane | Music 8.30pm until midnight | £6.50 | Licensed bar, tea, coffee and rolls | Christine Minns on 01508 488123.

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It’s all about Wood & Glass An opportunity to come and purchase (as well as sell) furniture. If you are interested in having your own stall please contact the Box Office for more information.

The café will be open all day.

The Fisher Theatre, Bungay, Suffolk | 9am - 5pm | Free Entry | Box Office: 01986 897130 / www.fishertheatre.org

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Burns Night Supper Celebrate Burns Night with us at Jimmy's farm this January! Traditional Burns night supper, complimentary glass of whisky, and Bagpipes!

Jimmy’s Farm, Ipswich | 7:30pm | £40 | 01473 604206 / www.jimmysfarm.com

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tribute to the great 20th C. British cellist and teacher, Jacqueline du Pré (b. 26 January 1945), Rebecca and Catherine will play impressive but rarely publicly performed duets by Bach and some of the best known 18th-20th C. cellist-teachers.

Complimentary tea, coffee and cakes after the concert.

Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds | Box Office 01284 769505 / www.theatreroyal.org / booking@theatreroyal.org

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Monday 26th - Saturday 31st Sister Act Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society.

Nightclub singer Deloris van Cartier witnesses a crime. Sit back and see the hilarious exploits as she takes refuge in the last place anyone would look for her – a convent. Under the suspicious watch of Mother Superior, Deloris helps her fellow sisters find their voices as she unexpectedly rediscovers her own.

Theatre Royal, Norwich | £5.50 - £21.50 + Fee of £1.20 per order for P&P | 01603 63 00 00 / www.theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk / boxoffice@theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk

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Wednesday 28th film: Pride (15) With Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine. This uplifting comedy drama is based on real events.

In 1984 lesbian and gay activists raised money to help striking miners’ families – despite reluctance from unions and some in the gay community.

Diss Corn Hall | Tickets £5 / Under 18s £2.50 | 8pm | 01379 652241 / www. disscornhall.co.uk

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VOODOO ROOM Paying tribute to both Hendrix & Cream - Voodoo Room are a stunning high energy "Power Trio" featuring some of the UK's finest musicians. Their credits include: Steve Winwood, Duran Duran, Ben E King, Fish, Thunder, Jo Harman etc.

The Cut, Halesworth | Online £10 / Door £12 | 7:30pm | 01986 873285 / info@newcut. org / www.newcut.org | www.voodoo-room. com

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Sunday 25th Come Dancing If you love to dance & love music this is the place for you! Licensed bar available, large dance floor.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7.00pm-10.00pm | £5 | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club. co.uk

Friday 30th Corn Hall Comedy Club John Moloney - A comedian for over 20 years – and headline act at all the major comedy clubs around the world.

Christian Reilly - Part of the Perrier Award-winning show Otis Lee Crenshaw and the Black Liars.

Compere – Nicky Wilkinson, an exceptional comic improviser, Nicola is a fastrising talent in the world of stand-up.

Line-up is subject to change.

Diss Corn Hall | Tickets Advance £9 / Door £10 | Minimum age 18 | Hot chilli & Rice and bar from 6.30pm | 8pm Start | 01379 652241 / www.disscornhall.co.uk

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The Silver Dollar Country Music Club, The Park Hotel, Diss presents JONNY AND LYNETTE. The Park Hotel, Diss | Doors 7pm. Music 7.30pm until 10.30pm | Members £5. NonMembers £6 | John and Teresa Stannard, Committee Members on 01603 433918.

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Monday 26th LUNCHTIME CONCERT – R.WELHAM & C.JOHNSON At Theatre Royal, Rebecca Welham and Catherine Johnson, Cello Duo. As a

Bistro Night Enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal; main course starting from £9. Book early to avoid disappointment.

Pennoyer Centre, Pulham St. Mary | Bar opens at 6.45pm for 7.30pm | 01379 676660 / www.pennoyers.org.uk

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Saturday 31st Basic digital photography post-processing techniques Spend an informative day with professional wildlife photographer Kevin Sawford learning how to enhance your images, and look at the different types

of software available. Aimed at those of you who are looking to enhance the postproduction of your images. The course will cover basic development skills and demonstrate how these can really bring an image to life. You will work on RAW, TIFF and Jpeg images. Visit the website for more information.

Lackford Lakes, Lackford, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP28 6HX | 10:00am - 3:00pm | £40 | 01473 890089 / www.kevinsawford. com

The Residents’ Meeting Room, Taylor Road | 7.00pm - 10.00pm | Bob Morgan 01379 650977 / disscomputerclub@gmail.com

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First Friday & third Sunday African Djembe Drumming Lessons ‘Backspace’, Angel Cafe, Fair Green, Diss | Friday: 10 - 12pm & Sunday: 3 - 5pm | £12 per session | Jane 01379 641233

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Table Top Sale Toys, books, bric-a-brac, clothes, DVDs, homeware, crafts and more. Cafe open all day. Ring to book a table!

Pennoyer Centre, Pulham St. Mary | 10.30am–1pm | Free Entry| 01379 676660 / www.pennoyers.org.uk

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Sunday 1st FEBRUARY Apollo Country Music Club presents 'Jim Worton' Apollo Country Music Club, licensed bar, hot meals & raffle available.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7.30pm-10.45pm | £5 cmc members / £6 non members. | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club.co.uk

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MONTHLY

The Wyken Vineyard Farmers Market The Wyken Farmers’ Market is about farmers, producers, bakers, makers, friends and family.

Wyken Road, Stanton, Bury St Edmunds | 9am - Noon | 01359 250262

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Every Saturday barbeque All you can eat barbeque followed by different entertainment.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7 - 8pm | £5.95 | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club.co.uk

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Strictly Saturdays Dump the shopping and come dancing at The Apex in the upstairs bar! Ballroom, Latin and Rock & Roll.

The Apex, Bury St. Edmunds | 2.30pm4.30pm | Free | 01284 758000 / enquiries@theapex.co.uk

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Every Monday

Odd Balls Knitting Club Just bring along your needles and ‘knit & natter’.

Pennoyer Centre, Pulham St. Mary | 1pm – 3pm | Free | 01379 676660 / www.pennoyers.org.uk admin@pennoyers.org.uk

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EVERY TUESDAY Tuesday Time Together Come along for a chat, fellowship, refreshments or quiet space.

St John’s Church, Harleston | 10.00am4.00pm | Free | 01379 851148

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FIRST & THIRD TUESDAY DISS & DISTRICT CAMERA CLUB Grasmere Club, Denmark Street, Diss | 7:30pm-9:45pm | www.disscamera. org.uk

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First Tuesday Waveney Bereavement Group Number 7 - Prayer & Counselling Centre, 7-8 Mere Street, Diss | 2pm | 01379 658956

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Third Tuesday Buskers Night A relaxed evening with all types of music including modern, blues and folk. Bring along your instrument & speak to Dave when you arrive. Bar with real ale & bacon butties.

Pennoyer Centre, Pulham St. Mary | 7pm | Free | 01379 676660 / www.pennoyers. org.uk / admin@pennoyers.org.uk

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First Thursday Diss Computer Club

FIRST Saturday Indoor Flea Market Vintage, antique, collectables, etc.

Swan Hotel, Harleston | 9.00 - 1.00pm | Stalls £10 | 01379 855486

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EVERY SECOND & FORTH SATURDAY Bingo For Cash Prizes Apollo Social Club, Harleston | 8.00pm | Six games for £6. All money paid in is paid out in cash prizes Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club.co.uk

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Every Sunday Stonham Barns CAR Boot Sale Stonham Barns, Pettaugh Road, Stonham Aspal | 8am for Sellers / 9am for Buyers | Simon Tilley 07817 539168

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EVERY FIRST & THIRD SUNDAY Come Dancing If you love to dance this is a great night!

Professional DJ, fantastic dance floor & fully licensed bar.

Apollo Rooms, Harleston | 7.00pm-10.00pm | £5 | 01379 854205 / www.apollo-club. co.uk

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Disclaimer: Whilst every effort has been made to make this listing as accurate as possible, we recommend that you verify times and dates prior to attending any events.

Entries for February by 10th January via info@ylm.co.uk

63

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FEBRUARY

W EDD I NG S To book into this feature now, get in touch with us on, 01379 642 044 info@ylm.co.uk Or why not pop into the YLM office in Hales Yard, Diss for a coffee and meet the team!

Also, keep up to date with what all our contributors have been up to in Interiors, Gardens, Fashion, Skincare and Motoring

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