Category: Missed a ThameNews story?

THAME’S High Street, which has seen many innovative schemes introduced over recent years to encourage increased footfall and its attractiveness to visitors, is being entered into this year’s Great British High Street Competition.

The scheme was initiated by the Department for Communities and Local Government, and is being sponsored by Boots, M & S, Costa, the Post Office and Google. Thame’s entry is being co-ordinated by professional Copy Writing Consultant, Helen Johns who lives locally, with the help of Sarah Pracey, a PR consultant who is behind the successful PR on the Thame Food Festival, and with the support of 21st Century Thame, Thame4Business and the town council.

THE PRIZES

The winners (three in each of seven categories) will get a share of a £50,000 cash prize, plus mentoring support for retailers. Also, Google will be offering digital workshops to 100 retailers in each of the seven winning locations of the Great British High Street Competition. Retailers will learn how to use social media, develop their websites and get one-to-one advice from Google’s expert technicians.

Last year’s ‘Winner of Winners’, was Belper, in Derbyshire, which was also the winner in the market town category – which is the category in which Thame is being entered. Interestingly, like Thame, Belper is a small town that generated a lot of objections to a proposed Tesco store, a plan that was later shelved by Tesco.

‘A WONDERFUL BOOST TO THE TOWN’

Belper has said that: “Winning the Great British High Street has been a wonderful boost to the town, stimulating interest and encouraging new partners to work with us.

“Local residents are more aware of how special their town is and the publicity has encouraged visitors from neighbouring areas to make a trip to see what the town has to offer. It has also generated a number of new ideas which we hope to implement to allow the town to continue to improve and build on the success. We’d really encourage villages, town and high streets to get involved in the 2015 competition.”

THAME’S ENTRY

The deadline for getting entries in is September 1, so Helen and her team are busy gathering evidence of all the great initiatives that Thame has instigated, such as the Shop Fronts improvement scheme, the success of our festivals – the Food Festival, the Arts & Literature festival, our Community Equipment Bank, the Cows information boards etc, evidence for which will include photographs, videos and other evidence of how the community and local authorities have worked with local organisations to make Thame’s High Street the vibrant and pleasant place that it is to shop and meet in.

THAME’S Got Talent winner, Vikki Dawson who was brought up in Long Crendon, is to get married at her old school, just over a year after a surprise, fairy-tale proposal in a Scottish castle.

In July last year, Vikki’s boyfriend, Alex Fyvie, with the collution of friends and family, lead Vikki to believe that they were on their way to an engagement party elsewhere. On route, he persuaded Vikki to stop off for a spot of site-seeing at Fyvie Castle, a favourite landmark from his childhood in his native Scotland, bearing his family name.

But unknown to Vikki, Alex, who works for an Oxford Charity, had hired the Preston Tower of Fyvie Castle, and waiting there were friends and family to witness Alex’s romantic proposal, down on one knee. The event made the Scottish news paper, The Advertiser at the time.

Vikki and Alex are currently living in Sandford-on-Thames, and will be married at Dorton House School, near Thame, on Friday, August 21.

THAME Town Council has been listening to residents who have been saying that they miss the regular Saturday surgeries where they could talk to councillors about things concerning them.

The council stopped the monthly surgeries back in 2013, mainly because some councillors complained that they would have to sit in the town hall, sometimes for two hours, without anyone coming in to see them, and that most of the questions were about matters dealt with by either the district or the county council.

Whether it’s because of the Neighbourhood Plan and lots of other changes happening in the town or not, it seems that residents now want more opportunities to talk to their councillors – something Cllr Mary Stiles, who suggested the change back, found was a subject brought up on the doorsteps during the local election campaign.

Councillors have therefore decided to trial monthly surgeries for six months from Saturday, September 5, and see what the take-up is. Residents who can’t make Saturday mornings, will still be able to email the town hall at info@thametowncouncil.gov.uk and make an appointment to speak to a councillor at other times, as they have been able to do since the Saturday surgeries were stopped. So, it’s a case of ‘use it or lose it’.

ASK QUESTIONS AT COUNCIL MEETINGS

Also, following a vote at Tuesday’s Council meeting to change the rules, members of the public can now put questions to the Council on any issue at a council meeting, even if it is not on the agenda, a long as the council is notified by 4pm on the day before the meeting what the question will be. Again, this can be done by emailing info@thametowncouncil.gov.uk.

THE news all over the media these past few days, about migrants camped out at Calais trying to get to England via the Channel tunnel, became a reality today for a Thame freight driver.

Iain Biddle, who runs Thame Freight Services Ltd, had been waiting in the queue at Calais for 13 hours this morning, when the driver of the lorry queued in front of him suddenly realised that there were five immigrants inside his vehicle. Iain managed to capture the incident on video and posted it on his facebook page. See LINK

“I wasn’t really shocked,” said Iain, who regularly transports freight to the Continent, “as I’ve been seeing this sort of thing for nearly 20 years, but it’s just that there have been many more of them in the last year or so. There’s not nearly enough police or security to deal with then all, either at the port or at Eurotunnel’s terminal.”

Later in the morning, Iain reported that Eurotunnel were giving out food packs to freight drivers, and that he had seen four more immigrants pulled out of a truck next to him. Finally, after a wait of 16 hours, Iain reported that he was on the move again.

Hopefully, he’s back home safe and sound in Thame now!

PAINFULLY intense workouts, relentless hunger, strict eating schedules, tiresome treadmill sessions, topped off with mental exhaustion and a touch of insomnia. This was all in a day’s work for local competitive bodybuilder Ellis Quarterman in his five and a half month preparation for his first bodybuilding show, which took place on Sunday, July 19, in Dartford.

The 20 year-old bodybuilder from Thame was placed second in his class, Junior Bodybuilding at the UKBFF Ultimate Beginners show which is held annually and open to the whole of the UK.

Ellis has been training for just over three years, starting at a bodyweight of only 145lbs. He built his mass with hard, heavy training sessions and a gargantuan seven meals a day and after reaching a bodyweight of over 235lbs started his 24 week preparation to shed the extra fat and reveal the muscle for his debut as a competitive bodybuilder.

While Ellis eats clean food year-round, he eats plenty of it when he wants to add extra muscle size and will let himself have the occasional cheat meal when he wants it. So when it came to preparing for the contest, the first step was to restrict the diet, cutting out all cheat meals and tapering down carbohydrate intake over the 24 weeks. Extra cardiovascular training was also implemented starting at just three 30 minute weekly treadmill sessions and ending with 40 minute sessions, twice a day, five days a week, all on top of the still heavy and intense weight training workouts.

“It gets tough, especially once I passed the 10 week in mark,” said Ellis. “You are literally pushing your body past what it naturally wants to do. Not only are you not eating enough food to fuel your workouts, but you’re adding in extra workouts to burn fat, all while trying to keep the muscle you spent years trying to build in the first place – two completely contradictory goals. But all the hard work became worth it the moment I stepped on stage. Being such a niche sport, not a lot of people understand bodybuilding, but if you want something, you can’t care too much about what other people think; you have to do it for you! So it was an incredible feeling once I was on stage, immersed in the bright stage lights to a crowd of hundreds of cheering people, I felt like that stage was where I belonged.”

Ellis works as a fitness instructor at Racquets Fitness Centre and also offers one-on-one personal training sessions. You can contact him via email at ewquarterman@gmail.com or by text or call on 07815763948.