THERE'LL be no excuse for youngsters to daub “Bored, bored, bored” on their village bus shelter any more when a new club is launched soon in mid-Norfolk.

THERE'LL be no excuse for youngsters to daub “Bored, bored, bored” on their village bus shelter any more when a new club is launched soon in mid-Norfolk.

The Chill Out Club, to be set up at Hardingham, will serve youngsters aged between seven and 17, not just in the village but in neighbouring communities such as Garvestone, Reymerston and Thuxton.

The driving force behind the venture, parish clerk Lynn Whitwell, hopes to have the club running by the end of April.

She has been working on getting it going for several months since she went along to investigate a case of vandalism in the village.

“We had a new bus shelter and there was some graffiti on it. When I went along to get it cleaned up I noticed that the words 'Bored, bored, bored' had been written,” she recalled.

Lynn decided one day to wait for the school bus to arrive and to ask youngsters why they were bored. From what she discovered sprang a meeting with about eight young people from the village last December. Four more grown-ups also expressed an interest in volunteering to help get a club running, and the idea of the Chill Out Club - the name decided upon by the youngsters themselves - was born.

The aim is to meet twice a month at Hardingham Memorial Hall, and Lynn is busy trying to secure the £1,200 or so in grants that the club thinks it will need to buy supplies, such as bean bags, table tennis bats and balls, netball equipment and arts and crafts materials.

She said future activities could include trips to the swimming pool and roller skating, plus music and fashion shows.

“It's all quite encouraging, really,” she added. “Now we just need to get started. It will be a year since the original incident, but in terms of getting things off the ground we need to show that we can have a club that's sustainable for the future.”