Top award for campaign to save RAF Marham

I was absolutely delighted yesterday to join my editor in collecting the certificate and trophy after it was announced the Eastern Daily Press had won community campaign of the year at EDF Energy's East of England media awards for its Make it Marham campaign - something I am so proud to have been a part of.

It feels like such a long time ago now since the Make it Marham campaign was launched but it was a truly brilliant campaign from start to finish. In just over two weeks in November 2010, 37,000 people signed our petition to save the base which is a staggering amount given the timeframe and it really felt like the campaign had united Norfolk. Throughout that two-week period my office in King's Lynn (the nearest to Marham) were tasked in pulling together a double-page spread on the campaign most days which included stories on the latest signature count, the bases' history and celebrities backing the campaign.

I was delighted to have been allowed to write so many pieces during that two-week period. Looking back, I am so very proud of the work I did from the launch of the campaign, to joining MPs and council leaders in taking the signatures to Number 10 Downing Street, to carrying on the fight as Marham jets flew over the skies in Libya and then being sat in the office in King's Lynn as the government announced the Tornado station would stay open – saving more than 5,000 local jobs and more than £1bn for the local economy.

To be honest, it wasn't just a win just for the newspaper. The award belongs to everyone who got involved in the Make it Marham fight - from the Norfolk people who signed the petition to our MPs and councillors who joined us in taking the fight all the way to Parliament. It was a real win for Norfolk and just shows you what can be achieved when Norfolk and its leaders unite behind an issue with determination and speak with one voice.

The fight to secure Marham's long-term future, however, is still far from over. With the Tornadoes likely to be replaced by the Joint Strike Fighter in 2020, Make it Marham campaigners are now fighting for the base to be the home of the new hi-tech military jets and I am sure when the time is right, a new campaign will be launched to unite Norfolk once more. For now, I just hope I will be the reporter writing the front page story for the EDP when it is (hopefully) announced the JSF fleet is moving to Marham.

Goddaughter reaches footballing milestone

On Saturday my beautiful goddaughter clocked up her 100th live football game and I was fortunate enough to join both her and my uncle in watching Horley Town FC take on Epsom & Ewell FC in the Combined Counties Premier Division. It was the first time either of them had been to the New Defence, home of Horley Town, but it will be a game that will live long in all our memories - not for what happened on the pitch but the fact it was the 100th game my goddaughter (pictured below) has been to.

It was a cold, wet and rather miserable day and the strong gusts of wind and driving rain seemed to have an impact on the game which failed to come to life at all in the first half . But on the stroke of half time Horley secured a breakthrough when winger Adam Pullen beat the offside trap and was pulled down by Epsom 'keeper Adrian Jones who was then given his marching orders. Kyle Hough, one of my oldest mates, fired the penalty home to give his side a slim advantage going into the second half. (See Kyle's cool finish below)

Things went from bad to worse for Epsom as the Houghster bagged his brace shortly after the restart. Pouncing on a simple ball over the top, which had left the Epsom defence rather flat footed, Kyle rounded the stand-in 'keeper and slotted the ball home from a tight angle (pictured below) - much to the delight of the small home support gathered behind the goal. It was soon was 3-0 when a Horley free kick from the left-hand side, which should've been easily dealt with, managed to find its way through a crowd of players to winger Adam Pullen who fired low and between the 'keeper's legs to give his side some breathing space against the 10 men of Epsom.

Epsom scored a late consolation game but Horley always looked comfortable of securing victory from the start of the second half. On leaving the ground, I asked my goddaughter how she felt after watching her 100th football game and she replied: "Yeah fine" which did make me laugh. As we walked to the car, my uncle also said he is going to get my goddaughter a little trophy to commemorate her 100th game which I think is nice. But what I think is very interesting are some of the stats he later sent me about the 100 games they have been to.

Now the first thing to stress is that not all of football games have been non-league. She has been to watch Millwall on numerous occasions as well as Charlton Athletic and Fulham but the vast majority have been in the lower tiers of English football. The most goals she has seen in one game was 10 (although had we gone to Worcester Park on Saturday to watch them play we would have seen 12 goals!) and she has only witnessed two goalless draws. She has watched 80 different teams play and visited 25 new grounds.

She has also seen 357 goals and observed 52 home wins, 34 away victories and 14 draws. Out of the 357 goals there have been 211 different scorers with Beckenham Town's goal machine Gary Gorman leading the way with 17 goals followed closely by 11 own goals. She has also witnessed 29 successful penalties which equates to one in every three and a half games. Finally the record for most individual goals in a game goes to Horley Town's very own Kyle Hough with an impressive four against Colliers Wood earlier this season.

Project Namibia: Eight months on

It does feel like an absolute age since I joined 40 volunteers to travel out to Namibia to revamp a school in a remote region of the country as part of an international project led by the Bobby Moore Fund.

But I got to re-live the whole amazing experience again after being asked to give a talk about Project Namibia at a recent meeting of the Downham Market Lions. The group had given me £100 towards my fundraising target and I had given a talk before heading out to Africa on what my hopes were for the project so they were keen to hear how I got on.

I've given plenty of talks on Project Namibia to various organisations but most of them were within three months of me returning to Norfolk following the project last June. I was a bit worried, therefore, that I would struggle to try and remember everything that happened over those 10 days.

But the evening before the meeting, I sat down and just went through the project day-by-day and I was really surprised by how much I remembered. It just goes to show that when you have a life-changing experience, no matter how much time passes, you still have vivid memories of most of it. I then re-read the blogpost I did about the project back in July to fill in the few missing gaps I had and gave probably the best talk on Project Namibia I have ever done.

To finish my talk off, I decided to show them this video put together by the lovely Pandora Maund: