There’s been a spate of smartening-up in the town centre. It started with work on Benbow’s Greengrocers on the corner of Norwich Street and Bridge Street, then seemed to migrate to the cafe next door and has now spread to Clive’s tattoo shop downstairs from my office. I must say, I like the new look of Clive’s place now – its olive and black livery looks classy.

The new shop in Norwich Street, Fakenham – on the site of the toyshop which only recently closed. Apparently (and hopefully somebody in the know will correct me if I’m wrong) they’ll be selling army surplus gear, which sounds a tad obvious being as they’re called ‘Quartermasters’. Well, that’s a bit different anyway and better than having yet another baker/butcher/optician in the town centre. I hope they do well.

I know – I didn’t have to go far to take this snap as it’s right opposite my office door!

 
FAKENHAM NATURAL HEALTH CENTRE

I promised the owner of a new business in town I’d give his new venture a bit of a plug. This info is gleaned from their website…

Opening this Saturday 12th June at 10am
There will be therapists offering taster sessions for £5, with a wide variety of therapies available on the day. Come and have look round and meet the therapists.

They’re running a competition on North Norfolk Radio too. Prizes include various kinds of massage, hypnotherapy sessions and a Wellness & Nutrition consultation. One of their upcoming workshops is, “How to play Tibetan Singing, Talking & Charma Bowls”. Sounds a bit different!

You can find them opposite Tesco’s entrance, behind the Salvation Army hall.

1 Royal Oak Chambers,
Oak Street, Fakenham,
Norfolk, NR21 9DY.

Fakenham’s a small town. You’d think it would be easy to let everybody know when you had some news to tell. Unfortunately, I haven’t found that to be true over the years. We all seem to be involved with friends and colleagues in small groups and news doesn’t always escape into the outside world efficiently.

Newspapers like The EDP, Fakenham Times and The Fakenham Sun play their part. In fact they do a really great job in keeping us all informed. Trouble is, they can only ever print a limited snapshot of what’s going on at any one time and they don’t all pick up on the same information.  Also, there are lots of different people you need to contact when you have something happening and need to tell the world - and if your news is business related you may not be able to reach your target audience easily.

When Kick Start Fakenham held its first tentative meeting over a year ago, I mentioned the fact that there was no central point of information distribution. No single place you could go to make sure that your news reached the right people. At the time, it looked like Kick Start might provide that central point, but their website is still to be published and if the truth’s known, they’re probably finding the same old problems themselves when they need to get their info published.

So, I’ve come up with something myself. It will be launching soon

If you’re the slightest bit interested in how I while away my workdays here in the plush corporate world of Wensum Towers (down that little alleyway in Norwich Street) you can now find out.

I’m experimenting with a new service for my clients where I ‘Tweet’ each job I undertake on their websites. Where appropriate I mention their business and add a link to their site. Twitter is a good way to network for business and hopefully it should be of benefit to Wensum.net and my clients too.

Take a look at Wensum.net to get a flavour of my working day (the latest Tweets are displayed in the right hand column). If you have a Twitter account, please feel free to follow – look for the account name ‘Wensumdotnet‘.

Here’s an informative piece in the Fakenham Times showing the number of shoplifting offences in the town. They even provide a PDF document showing a breakdown of the crimes over the last 5 years, courtesy of the SNT (Safer Neighbourhood Team).

Apparently, since 2005 shoplifting cases in Fakenham have risen from 16 during that year to 32 in 2009. As a comparison, in Dereham the 2005 figure was 78 and now stands at 133 (a slight fall from 2008). The supermarkets are the hardest hit, it seems.

The SNT reports that 72% of these crimes in our town result in charges or some kind of action against the culprit.

One interesting point I realised… I spoke to a shopkeeper in Fakenham last year who was fed up to the back teeth with kids pinching stuff from their shop.  They said they were thinking of closing, with this being a contributary factor (I remember that was moaned at for recounting the conversation on the Kick Start Facebook group at the time). The shop did close and now has a new owner.  Strangely, it doesn’t even appear in the list the SNT published.

The new shop in Norwich Street now has a sign above the door. It’s called ‘Secrets’. Thought you might want to know that!

In other news, the Fakenham chapter of BNI (makes them sound like the Hells Angels) are seeking a local florist to join their ranks. Their contact details are here.

You know how big TV celebrities like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry get followed on Twitter by hundreds of fans. Well the reverse kind of situation just happened to me!

I run the IT side of a new company called House Advertiser, as you may have seen before on this blog. Part of our marketing strategy is to promote our services on our company blog, which is linked to Facebook and Twitter.

Just now, I recieved notification that our company Tweets are being followed by none other then Sarah Beeny, of Channel 4′s Property Ladder.

Hehe. Funny old world, innit?

Sad news – it looks like another shop shutting down in Fakenham – Loulou’s Toyshop is having a closing down sale. The premises are in a good spot, so hopefully another business can take advantage of that. Best of luck to the current owners in whatever they do next!

So it looks like Wetherspoon wasn’t looking at the old Godfrey DIY premises after all. If you peer into the windows, you’ll see loads of bathroom fittings. This is probably a good clue. Unless ‘Spoons are now serving pints in bidets, a new bathroom shop is opening there.

The ex-Evolve shop in Norwich Street is also opening again. The decorators have been busy during the past few days and it’s about to evolve itself into a new retailer. Things are looking positive again. Watch this space.