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[bdnwriters]

Gary Williams - A Swinging Christmas

Music lovers of all ages all turned up on Sunday 30th November to enjoy a night of festive fun from locally born talent, Gary Williams. Packed into two hours of pure entertainment were light hearted anecdotes, well loved Christmas classics and even some all time greats.

Gary brought the showmanship from the West end from where he performed in ‘The Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas’ taking on the role of Frank Sinatra. Following on from this, Williams travelled to many destinations across Europe with the show. His successful career has seen him travel all over the world, including places like Iceland, Hawaii and Tokyo.    

Upon arrival, the audience were handed lyric sheets that included songs from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to The twelve Days of Christmas, which Williams himself joked would involve his own choreography - standing and waving each and every time we sang about the 5 gold rings… which, incase you didn’t know already, appears in the song multiple times.

It’s easy to tell that Gary is a natural performer, the show was mesmerizing each and every second he was on stage. We each commented during the interval just how well the setlist flowed. Songs were split apart with humorous interludes - even at the end after the show we were left wanting more.  

From the moment Gary Williams stepped foot on stage joined by his three piece band the audience were enthralled right through to the end. Each and every one of the songs sung throughout the night were ones that we all loved to sing along to.

Gary even took the time to meet and greet the people who attended the concert signing the merchandise he had brought along with him, which gave the fitting end to a truly enjoyable night. Speaking to Williams after the show, he expressed his excitement on returning to Cleethorpes this coming May for his tribute to Frank Sinatra, which we for one will definitely not be missing.

[bdnwriters]

Shepherd Warwick May

After speaking to Warwick May, a contract shepherd at Elsham Hall Farm Park, He told me all the ins and outs of being a shepherd.

 Warwick started his career in agriculture in the late 70s when he was a little lad. He got involved with Sheep in 83 which was part of a placement on a college year but then went into dairy calves, that didn’t last long as he then got back into sheep in 86 and has been working with sheep ever since, either for other people or his own sheep. Even Though this year will only be Warwick’s 5th lambing season at Elsham, That doesn’t stop him from being so passionate about his sheep and spending so much extra time with them to make sure they're fit and healthy.

Warwick loves his job and sees a lot of positives within his job role. He told me that for him seeing the lambs grow healthy and grow through so they are a finished product is the most rewarding part of the job. For warwick it doesn’t matter if it’s a nice day or if it’s cold and fresh just being outside is a positive. It’s not the sort of career to go into if you just can’t think of anything else to do. People either go into agriculture from a very early age or if it’s a family business. It's not the sort of thing you want to do unless you’re committed to it. As for Warwick he got into farming when he was 6 or 7, he used to watch tractors go up and down the field outside of his house and he just took it on from there. As Warwick has been into agriculture since such a young age, he used to go down to the local farm on the village and help out. When you're that age you just get under peoples feet but this didn’t stop Warwick he was still eager about becoming a farmer he helped out and then got a job on that farm. This shows that hard work pays off and starting by just helping out can help you progress on to bigger and better things.

Lambing season is the busiest time of the year for a shepherd and according to Warwick is very tiring and gets frustrating but Being a shepherd that is your role and to also manage the flock, through the whole production cycle, With all that to consider it’s a very pleasing time of year in many respects starts when they start to lamb which on Elsham it’s middle of march, It lasts about 3-4 weeks it’s very intensive over 3 weeks then you’ll get some ewes that lamb a lot later. Warwick has a great system going as they are all organised and that’s the most important part. Everybody knows what they're doing and there is quite a lot of staff involved also students come on to help and learn.

Warwick has to oversee everything that is happening and also oversee the health and the productivity of the sheep, He said it’s a very busy time of year but it’s great to see them born. Warwick told me an old saying, where there's livestock theirs deadstock. You’ll get live lambs and then you’ll get dead ones, but that’s normal for Warwick as he is used to it. Its an intensive time of year but there are loads of rewards at the end of it.

Lambing is such a long process and starts when they come in the shed in the middle of January but they start preparing for lambing a fortnight before they are actually due, as in the physics of putting the shed together cleaning them out, getting all the veterinary medicines all together. All the sheep are pregnancy scanned so they are grouped to how many lambs they are going to have. But if you take it further back you start preparing for lambing in October when the rams go in, As that is when the mating season starts.

Warwick believes that the most pleasurable part of working in agriculture is working with livestock. The Job has the rewards of seeing the animals born and grow through which is what the job is all about. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day that, that animal is going into the meat chain its the quality of life of that animal and the fact you’ve reared it.

Lambing season is very confusing but intriguing if you don’t know anything about it Warwick told me all about what the lambs have to go through and all about the adoption. The whole process is very clever. Each ewe should have 2 lambs but some of 3 or soome have 1. But they try so all lambs are healthy by giving the ones with only 1 lamb a lamb from a ewe that has 3. That’s some of your profitability is involved in that process because at the end of the day if you can get 2 healthy lambs on a healthy ewe that is where your profit is. One of the ways in which they do this is by getting a lamb from a 3 and putting it with a lamb from a 1 and put them in a bucket, give it a good stir up and what they  actually do is rinse the single lamb and get all the birth fluids, we get it really soaking wet and leave them in the bucket stir them up in the bucket and just leave them in there. Warwick said this works quite well as once you lose the birth fluids you can’t get the lamb you want as wet and that’s alot of it you can’t get it as wet and it won’t smell the same.

I had such a great experience interviewing Warwick, I can see why he is so successful in the agriculture business. Such a lovely man and deserves so much applause for being so hard working. He should be an inspiration to those out there that aren’t as passionate as he is about his career.

[bdnwriters]

Elsham Easter

With Easter Monday fast approaching, where better to visit than Elsham Hall Gardens and Country Park? A fun, educational trip for all. Elsham provides an interactive day out for the whole family, whether you’re visiting for the newly born lambs or just a meander around the lake and walled garden.

Lambing Sundays have just passed and during our visit, the lambing shed was bursting with energy. Shepherd Warwick May enthused about the importance of lambing season and the way in which they, as an animal park, prepared for it. With over 500 ewes, it was necessary for preparations to begin months in advance, right from the October prior to manage the flock through the production cycle.

Lambing, however, isn’t as simple as it sounds. Warwick May described it as an ‘intensive time of year’. Organisation is important right from the start - one essential thing is that you know your sheep and understand the problems that could occur to avoid anything going wrong. Despite the tiring aspects of the job, Warwick put across how rewarding it was throughout the process.

While the lambs seem to be on everyone's minds this Easter, the animal farm and country park are simply unmissable. Talking to Pirjo Johnson, who plays a huge role in the success of Elsham Hall, she explained the way in which trips to Elsham and places alike were important to the younger generations. Having worked mainly on the animal farm for the past seven years, Pirjo spoke passionately about the importance of young children getting hands on experience with animals and learning more effectively outside of the classroom.

Elsham provide many different opportunities for the trip to be an educational one, like the trail centre located next to the walled garden, filled with both colouring activities and fun facts about nature. The adventure playground, however, is just across the lake, only adding to the amount of activities available to the children who visit.

While lambing Sundays have been and gone, there’s still much to look forward to. There’s a wide range of events happening throughout the year, including sheep shearing in May with Warwick, yet why not visit between the 5th and 12th of April for Easter Bunny Week? With all different types of exciting activities for the whole family, you can take part in competitive egg hunts and bunny naming competitions. Elsham Hall Gardens and Country Park is a fun day out for all ages, so why not make this Easter extra special?

[bdnwriters]

Grimsby Bikeathon

For the past 17 Years Grimsby have been raising money by organising A Bikeathon, this is an inspirational event in aid of leukemia and lymphoma research. This event has been a great hit with the locals and usually attract about 300- 400 people and raise about £7000.

The Bikeathon will take place on Sunday 10th May, and starts at 10.30 am. The distance is 26 miles. Yes, this is a long way but definitely worth it to be able to raise money for such a great cause. The event that takes place is a great day out for the family and always enjoyed by many.

The route is along public roads in grimsby, so the support will be given by tons of locals praising the towns success throughout the event.

Are you up for an amazing day to raise money for such a great cause? If so, get yourself registered and you can be apart of such a fantastic event in our local area.

[bdnwriters]

Kickboxing

The term kickboxing falls within the classification of a martial art sport...

Kickboxing was specifically initiated in Japan and evolved from full contact karate. It’s history and roots, in many ways, tie down to the martial art of muay thai boxing, which was originated in Thailand.

In Japan, Kickboxing  was extremely popular and was broadcast on the television before going into a dark period during the 1980s. Kickboxing in North America had unclear rules so it was essentially seen as the same as full contact karate. While here in Europe the sport did not have much success but went on to thrive in the 1990s.

Many people believe that is far more difficult and better for your fitness than kickboxing. From a strictly calorific standpoint, the calories you burn from boxing in the ring compared with kickboxing in the ring are similar. You would burn about 425 calories in both, however training sessions for boxing and kickboxing are completely different and kickbox training can burn roughly 25 percent more calories than boxing training.

So why is it that kickboxing is not an olympic sport or even taught to children at schools? Yes, some of you may feel that it may influence violence in children but in my opinion I don’t feel as though it would. I think it would offer children more discipline and help to boost confidence as well as an opportunity to meet like minded people and a chance to form valuable friendships.

Even though the sport is not on the school curriculum, i do not see any reason why children cannot get involved in kickboxing/ boxing after school or in the holidays. The NHS says the “Children and young people aged 5-18 should do at least 60 minutes of aerobic exercise a day.” Do you really think an hour of PE a week is enough?

Football gets a lot of media attention but I hardly hear or see anything around kickboxing.

I feel this is a reason that we generally see young people joining football teams, as there are so many footballers to portray their sport which obviously inspires young people.

If kickboxing was publicised more do you think there would be more opportunities for young people to get involved in the sport?

My home town Grimsby does not offer many places to take part in kickboxing/boxing but there are numerous football teams to join. I think, though, that if the media paid more attention to sports such as kickboxing/ boxing it may not only attract young people but schools may become more educated around contact sport and add them to the school curriculum. This should mean more children would have the opportunity to enjoy them.

You may generally expect that parents encourage their children to get involved in football, which is usually targeted at boys, and dancing which usually appeals to girls.You may also find that kickboxing/boxing or any full contact sport is aimed more toward boys and don’t expect many girls to want to get involved.

However, the gym I attend, Grimsby Martial Arts Academy, boasts a mixture of both genders and has a range of all ages. Most people see kickboxing/ boxing as an influence of violence but that is not the case. There are a lot of benefits to kickboxing as it can improve your stamina and coordination. It reduces stress and frustration, and it also increases determination and self-confidence.

Great Britain’s female boxer Nicola Adams won an Olympic gold medal and outclassed China’s great Ren Cancan in the 2012 Olympics.This resulted in Adams becoming the first female boxer to win an Olympic medal. This made such an impact on women in Great Britain to want to start boxing. Nicola is such an inspiration and I’m sure she would have influenced a lot of women to take part in this sport.

Since the Olympics there has been some increase in the amount of participants, and exposure in the media, since the Olympics but not as much as these contact sports deserve.

Kickboxing is such an incredible sport and in my opinion it should be publicised in the media a lot more, this way the sport may receive the accreditation that it deserves!

[bdnwriters]

5 aside Hopefuls

In the future peterson hopes to start winning a few more games. He can’t promise anything but will keep trying and might get lucky one day.

After speaking to Brad Peterson a former 5 aside footballer, who tells us all the ins and outs of being on the team. Peterson plays locally against people that are older than them. who are all surprisingly quite good to say how out of shape they really are.

Peterson has been apart of the team for 3 seasons now which is a year and a half. They have been together for a long time though, as they are all good friends and been playing since school. They came up with the idea of starting the team as they were not playing as much football as they used too.

Yet the team have not had much success, they are still carrying on which is by far bringing them closer together. Peterson and his team don’t win very often and haven’t won any games this season but that doesn't matter to the team, as they do it to have fun.

Its strange to explain the way they work together, they always start off great but then implode and fall apart. This doesn’t stop them, as they are all very passionate about the sport and whether there doing well or not they still carry on. I asked Peterson what he enjoyed most about being on the team, he told me, having the chance to play together is great and an excellent experience  and he loves the competitive side.

Danny Charlton one of the members of the team, said by peterson to be their best player, has a huge impact on them and would make a lot of difference if he was not to be there. Within the 28 minutes of playing football the team connect in a way that brings them together off the pitch as well as on which proves their friendship is stronger than ever.

[bdnwriters]

Life as a Pro

I had a great experience interviewing Mickleburgh, he hopes to be living abroad doing golf coaching and custom fitting and I feel very positive about his success and hope to see our local sportsman succeed in the future.

Alex Mickleburgh has achieved a lot in the Last couple of years. Mickleburgh an astonishing Golfer who is based at Cleethorpes Golf Club, has been playing for a long period of time now and sees himself improving everyday.

Mickleburgh took up this sport as he stopped playing football and at the age of 13 was contemplating whether to take up something new.  His father’s best friend took him to a junior class at the golf club and straight away he took to it and thats when he knew he could succeed in this sport.

From winning his first ever tournament he pursued his success and got to the position he is in today. Mickleburgh had to accomplish a few things to become Pro, a playing ability test which consists of 36 holes this is to prove you're a good enough player, You have to achieve a certain score which Mickleburgh passed with flying colours. You also have to do a 3 year degree course covering subjects such as: business,  Golf coaching, sports science, equipment technology and last of all rules. Mickleburgh is currently in his second year.

I asked Mickleburgh whether much has changed since becoming pro a year and a half ago. He told me that the standards of playing golf are certainly a lot higher, and the competition is much bigger also you earn money for playing.

This sport is loved by many but most enjoyable part for Mickleburgh is the fact you get to meet so many new people and its great exercise. He believes its a great idea for others to get involved in the sport as it has a great social aspect and is marvelous for your health.

[bdnwriters]

Nick Triplow

On Tuesday 15th October Nick Triplow gave a talk at the  University Centre Grimsby. Nick’s talk was very inspirational and gave us all a lot of advice about how to become a great writer, like he is.

Nick Triplow is an author and has had his book ‘Franks Wild Years’ published by Caffeine Nights.

Nick gave us a lot of useful advice about becoming a better writer which I thought was a huge help and extremely inspirational. He said we need to make our writing something that comes off the page and is readable, as the publishers are very specific about what they want. Publishers won’t touch the book if it is not 90,000 words long, it has to be a fat book. You need to do your research on what the publisher wants to see. Nick also said that you should always draft it first, and then try and make it not that bad. It took him 4 drafts until it went to the publishers, but it wasn’t until his 5-6 draft until it was published. The font size was 10 but nick thought it was just because the publisher wanted to save paper.

Going to university gave Triplow the chance to write, he thought he couldn’t do it without any help at the start of the course, all he wanted was for his work to get him a good qualification but towards the end he wanted to get his book published. Nick writes so he can tell a good story, also he has to care about the characters he is reading about. Before he got his book published he sent his work into a numerous amount of competitions such as: Bridport, poetry society, regional ect.  Also with a lot of his work, he sent it into online magazines such as: Litro and neon and he used to write into magazines.

Nick told us that there were 3 parts to the process of writing which are: 1. The pre writing process, 2. Compose and actually write, 3. Rewrite. Nick gave us a lot of advice about writing a book, Nick said we should make sure our manuscript is the best it can be and also spend a lot of time on synopsis, as they are both important parts of the book.

Nick Triplow’s talk was very inspirational and he gave us a lot of tips about becoming a writer which were extremely helpful. The most important part of what he told us was to just keep going and trying your hardest.

If you want to read Nick Triplow’s book ‘Franks Wild Years’ published by Caffeine Nights visit the link below to buy it.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Franks-Wild-Years-Nick-Triplow-ebook/dp/B007M2TSNE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1383739176&sr=8-2&keywords=franks+wild+years

By Danielle Mayall