Having not run any photos of Tina dancing over the past two weeks, 'Wyenot News' readers have written in telling me that they have missed seeing her. The reason I have not run any has simply been that there has been nothing for her to dance to of late but we did go to an event for a short while on Saturday, in between photographing the flood.

These photos were taken at the Plough, Overross Street while the popular rock band, 'Double Barrel' provided the music. Tina danced with WN groupie, Jeanette and our neighbour, Chris.

I like Tina dancing - as long as she does it with somebody else. Dancing is something I have never enjoyed myself. I much prefer to watch. The psychologist within me makes me think that this stems back to my primary school days, when we used to be forced to do 'Country Dancing' with 'girls' - of all of God's creatures. You know how it is when you're a nine year old boy, with worms and slugs, a catapult, several pieces of chewed chewing gum and a bag of congealed pineapple chunks in your pocket.

The few boys who did like it were called sissies. The funny thing was, the teacher used to think we enjoyed it and I remember one lesson, being threatened with 'no country dancing!' if we continued to misbehave. I have never seen so many paper aeroplanes and other missiles suddenly start flying around a classroom.

The pre-school aged children from St. Weonard's Primary School held a wedding week and local residents displayed their wedding dresses in the church. On Friday 18th June, the pre-school children held mock weddings. These involved a service at St Weonard's church, Officiated by Rev Elaine Goddard and attended by the school children, parents and local residents.

After the ceremony everybody went back to the school for wedding cake and champagne (fizzy pop.)

If homeowners in Herefordshire and Worcestershire need to urgently get rid of flood damaged furniture and carpets from their homes, they will be allowed to do so at household waste sites without a commercial vehicle and trailer permit.

Since April this year, anybody disposing of household waste in a commercial type vehicle or large trailer has been required to have a permit to use the sites. The aim of this is to reduce the use of sites by businesses and commercial operators who have to make their own arrangements for the disposal of waste. Normally, anyone taking waste to the sites in a trailer or commercial vehicle needs to first obtain a Commercial Vehicle and Trailer Permit.

Mr Richard Wood, Herefordshire Council's waste services manager, said: 'The severe weather means many householders in the counties have suffered flood damage to their homes and will need to get rid of ruined furniture and carpets. Residents may need to use vans or trailers to take their damaged items to the household waste sites and we have decided to temporarily relax the permit scheme to help these householders. People wishing to dispose of normal non flood damaged household rubbish in a commercial type vehicle or trailer will still be required to hand over a permit and we would ask that anyone not needing to use the site urgently waits until the current situation has eased. They will then need to apply for a permit in the usual way.'

Household waste sites are currently open as usual. If residents take their flood damaged items to the facilities and they do not have a permit, they will be asked to confirm its origins and allowed to drop off their damaged property. This service is for householders only and is open to all residents in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Businesses are advised to contact their insurance companies in the first instance who may be able to advise on getting rid of damaged property. Alternatively, local waste companies can be found in the yellow pages.

Plans are underway for a weekly drop in for Eastern Europeans who are working and living in the Ross area. Ross Baptist Church has recently employed a Ukranian Baptist Minister, who will be working in Herefordshire along with two other Baptist churches.

Vladimir Makyeyev will be visiting some of the farms around Ross and working with welfare officers. He will be starting a weekly drop in centre on Wednesday, 1st August from 4.30pm at the Baptist Church in Broad Street. There will be a coffee bar, table tennis and pool as well as free internet access, play station, English classes and films shown in Russian on a big screen.

Tim Shelley, Team Leader at the church said, 'we are delighted to have Vladimir join the staff team. He speaks a number of languages and has made an excellent start on building relationships in the area. Vladimir's work is part of our wider vision to reach all parts of our local community in and around Ross'.

Vladimir was recently welcomed to the town by Ross Mayor, Councillor Derek Bedford. For more information on the drop in, please contact Vladimir at Ross Baptist Church on 01989 566966.

With this year's Tour de France now under way, Herefordshire Council is encouraging cycling enthusiasts to try cycling with a bike from Spokes.

Spokes, based at Ashburton Trading Estate in Ross-on-Wye and 16 - 20 Coningsby Street, Hereford, has a wide range of bicycles available from racers to BMXs at very low prices to get customers on the road. They are also always on the look out for people to donate unwanted bicycles to them.

Having salvaged their stock from the scrap heap, Spokes gives unwanted bicycles a new lease of life by fully repairing and refurbishing them.

Laura Preece, Herefordshire Council's recycling officer, said: 'Reusing bicycles not only saves resources, but also provides affordable bicycles for people to use for health, leisure or travel purposes.'

Spokes can be contacted on 01989 568138 or 01432 265545. People interested in finding out more about reuse initiatives should call 01905 766883 or visit www.wastemissionimpossible.org.

Herefordshire Council supports reuse initiatives as part of its Waste Minimization Strategy.

Government grants totalling £107,970 have been awarded to 22 Herefordshire schools to help them implement plans to cut down traffic congestion. The schools have received between £4000 and £7000 each, depending on whether they are a high school or primary school and on the numbers of pupils.

The money is in the form of a capital grant and is to be spent on improvements to the school which will promote safer and more sustainable travel to school. The government has a target for all schools to develop travel plans by 2010 and has just announced it will continue its programme of funding capital grants and local authority based school travel advisers until that date.

Travel plans are aimed at reducing the use of cars on the school run and encouraging children and parents to walk, cycle, catch the bus or car share to get to school. So far over 80% of state schools in Herefordshire have developed these plans and latest figures show that the initiative is working as there is an increase in the numbers of children walking to school.

The schools awarded the grant are as follows:

Ashfield Park Primary, St Paul's Primary Hereford, Bodenham St Michael's Primary, St Joseph's Primary, Ross, Bridstow Primary, Stretton Sugwas Primary, Goodrich Primary, Sutton Primary, Hampton Dene Primary, Wellington Primary, Kingsland Primary, Weston under Penyard Primary, Kington Primary, Lady Hawkins High School, Lea Primary, Queen Elizabeth High, Bromyard, Leominster Infants, St David's PRU, Luston Primary, Westfields Special School, Pembridge Primary and Pencombe Primary.

These schools were presented with their awards at a ceremony in Hereford Town Hall earlier this month where a number of children gave inspiring presentations on how their travel plans had led to great improvements in safety, reduced congestion and increased the number of children walking to school.

EnviroAbility have attracted more funding to enhance participation of the Re-Box Scheme that started on Tuesday, 24th July.

A very well done to the team at EnviroAbility for obtaining this grant as the competition was fierce and only one in six applicants were successful. Martin Neicho said, 'I am sure this success was largely due to fact that the local involvement and support for the scheme is so high.

As we have come to expect, where we see the name EnviroAbility, they have in built some opportunities for other groups within the community. The staff from the project have been recruited from students that are on their summer break from either college or university. WRAP, Waste Resources Action Programme has enabled us to recruit 5 people to work on a 5 week campaign that will help to identify the best ways to increase recycling in the area. We think that will be best achieved if the workers are committed to the principles of 'Rethink Rubbish!'.'

Martin explained that the grant was given to EnviroAbility and Re-Box to visit and talk to Ross people on their door step about recycling. He went on to say that he hoped the success of the campaign will result in bringing new opportunities to the town. The funding and the project will help to increase recycling levels around Ross even more. Watch out for your (very wet!) recycling visitor over the summer period from 24th July.

Ross-on-Wye Weather Station is located by the tennis courts and bowling green at 'Crossfields' and is one of the important stations around the country which regularly sends data to the Meteorological Office. This is why Ross-on-Wye is sometimes mentioned on the BBC weather reports. It is currently still a manually monitored station and readings are taken twice per day by husband and wife team, June and Rex Swallow.

DO YOU HAVE A STORY FOR WYENOT NEWS?

If you have a local news item or story you can submit it here
or call Alan or Tina on 01989 763217

There is no charge for publishing either news items or What's On Events
This is a Free Service for the local community!

Wyenot News, 1, Hillview Road, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. HR9 7EY

If you would like to order prints from Wyenot News photographs, please click here.

Prints are only available for photographs taken by Wyenot News (Not of those which have been sent in by readers).

Prints of 'people' photographs are only available to those directly involved in the news event covered. i.e. I do not sell prints of people to the general public.