Sponsor Message

Welcome to Belper

With its busy shopping streets packed with unique independent businesses, its history and heritage, its parks, reserves and beautiful spaces, Belper in Derbyshire is a great place to visit.

Find out more about this thriving, historic market town here: belper.madhm.uk.

Welcome to Belper

WWW UBO

National Tombola

Congratulations to Mrs Gladys Womble of Hartlepool who has been awarded the contract to run the UK's National Tombola, to be televised on Saturday nights Players will stand a chance of winning anything from a bottle of wine or a box of dark chocolate liqueurs to a non-slip bath mat or a Victoria sponge baked by Mrs Collins from the corner shop.

Mrs Womble is confident that the Tombola will raise enough money in its first six months to pay for a new bandstand in the memorial gardens, with perhaps some left over to give the community centre a new lick of paint. The government, however, appear to have set their sights a little higher, their spokesman making it clear that they expected this initiative to fund the National Health Service for the next five years.

Blanco

When Milan's Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie reopens next month it will bring to an end 500 years of obscurity for a man who many art historians believe is the greatest unsung master of all time. Two years of painstaking restoration work, stripping away centuries of dirt, pollution and paint, will finally reveal the work of the legendary Renaissance craftsman Gabriello Blanco - the man who did the undercoat for The Last Supper.

"It's been a difficult and delicate business," says project director Professor Michelle Phart. "But we're really excited about finally revealing this wonderful work to the public. At long last Blanco is going to get the recognition he deserves. Obviously I wouldn't want to cast any doubt on da Vinci's genius. His twiddly bits were excellent and he hardly ever went over the lines, but he'd have been nowhere without a smooth, blemish-free surface on which to work."

Not everyone is so excited, particularly celebrated critic Brian Towel, who is characteristically dismissive about the artist. "He was competent enough, but his broad strokes often seem clumsy, and lack the imagination that characterises true genius. Now, if the restoration team had gone further and delved beneath Blanco's third rate attempts, they would have uncovered the handiwork of a genuinely talented virtuoso. I speak, of course, of Fabricci Boshaccello - a craftsman of genuine refinement, extraordinary vision and someone who, in his day, was regarded as one of the most accomplished plasterers in Europe."

Dusting Behind the Large Hadron Collider

The detection of the long sought after Higgs boson is considered one of the greatest discoveries in physics, but perhaps no one was more excited than Mrs Doris Oppenheimer, head cleaner at the CERN laboratory on the French-Swiss border.

"I must say I was relieved when they finally found it," she told reporters as she extinguished a roll-up in her mop bucket. "I thought, perhaps now they can pack their particle accelerator away so that I can finally get round with the hoover."

To many within the scientific community the discovery represents the most important breakthrough in living memory, but as far as Mrs Oppenheimer is concerned it marked the end of a long period in which much of the CERN complex had been off limits to her duster.

"I never thought it would take so long when they first moved in here," she said. "I said to 'em, 'All right,' I said, 'you can leave your particle accelerator set up over the weekend, but I want it gone by Monday'. That was four years ago. I thought I'd never see that back of the blasted thing."

Of course, the discovery of the Higgs particle was just the beginning of the story, heralding years of further study to determine its properties. But Mrs Oppenheimer was having none of it. "I told 'em," she said. "I want it taken down and put back in its box. If they want to set it up and play with it again later, then fair enough, but not until I've had chance to give the place a good going over. And that's an end to it. Now come on, everybody out, I haven't got time to talk to you. Come on, the lot of you, get your muddy feet off my lino. And you, Brian. Yes, the stars are amazing, now be off with you so that I can get some work done..."