Catsfield

The two minute silence will be held again in Catsfield on Sunday 13th November during the morning service, which starts at 9.15am at St Laurence Church, when the fallen from Catsfield in the two World Wars will be remembered and the Roll of Honour will be read. The service at Crowhurst will start ten minutes earlier than usual at 10.50am to enable the Church Parade to be in position at the War Memorial by 11am also to mark a two minute silence.

Christmas Market: The St Laurence Church Christmas Market will take place in the Village Hall on Saturday 26th November from 10am – 2pm. This is the biggest fund-raising event of the year for the church and it is always a great pre-Christmas event with the hall brightly decorated with ‘market stalls’, festively adorned with greenery and selling a huge variety of Christmas gifts. There will be seasonal goods, cakes, a bathroom stall, plants, tombola, books, games etc and a raffle. Donations for any of the stalls will be gratefully received. Teas, coffees and snacks will be served throughout and Father Christmas with his elf will be in the grotto for the children.

CADS: This year’s annual performance by the Catsfield Amateur Dramatic Society will be a performance of Anthony and Cleopatra – certainly a very different theme to the old traditional pantomimes, but what’s the betting that all the old favourites (people and traditions) will still be there! Performances are on December 1st, 2nd and 3rd at 7.30pm and there will be a matinee on Saturday 3rd. Tickets are on sale at Catsfield Village Store priced £7 and £4, so get yours soon as this event is always extremely popular. Vanessa says that she does have some at home, if people can’t get to the village shop. Call her on 01424844363 if anyone needs tickets.

Sussex Harmony: On Saturday 10th December at 7.30pm Sussex Harmony will again be making a welcome return to Catsfield to entertain us and sing ‘Shouts of Universal Joy’, a 19th Century Christmas Carol Concert as sung in country churches and chapels of the time and well-sprinkled with lively folk dance melodies. Refreshments will be available, entrance is free and there will be a retiring collection. There will also be a workshop at 3pm for anyone who would like to join in and bring along a musical instrument – or just their voice! Let Mike Cooper know (01424 892681) if you would like to join in with that and book your music and supper between the two events.

WI: The November meeting of the Catsfield WI was held last week in the Village Hall and was extremely interesting. The preliminaries of the meeting were postponed until later to enable our speaker, John Kenton-Page, a volunteer representative from our charity of the past two years, The Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance to talk to us about this wonderful organisation. It has been operational for 25 years starting originally in Kent and the service has grown tremendously in that time. The helicopters are ready to attend incidents that could happen to anyone, anywhere, during their everyday life. The teams are called out on average 4 – 6 times every day (that’s 2,000 missions a year) and they can reach the people who really need them anywhere in these counties within 20 minutes and in the last year they have saved at least a hundred lives.

They currently operate from two bases, with two helicopters flying during the day and one at night. Each crew consists of at least one pilot (always two at night), at least one specialist doctor and one Critical Care Paramedic, trained in advanced pre-hospital care. These highly qualified crews provide a flying ‘Accident and Emergency’ with life support facilities and they have the ability and provisions to give blood transfusions, anaesthetics and even carry out such procedures such as emergency open heart massage. Because of their advanced pre-hospital care training, the specialist doctor and paramedic teams are able to assess and contact the appropriate hospital directly in relation to the patient’s injury and need, they can airlift them there immediately, be it one of three in London, or to Southampton, Brighton or Kent.

John told us many interesting facts about the evolvement of this amazing service. The pilots are all military-trained with many years of helicopter experience before joining the HEMS (Helicopter Emergency Medical Service). The doctors have previous history of being A&E consultants and even then are given extra training and the paramedics have at least 5 years ‘on the road’ experience and are also given another 3 months training. There are two available helicopters in the south-east but the whole of the London area has only one. HEMS has a medically qualified operator at every 999 call centre who can instantly assess the emergency and decide whether to send an Air Ambulance. A HEMS helicopter on an emergency mission is immediately given priority of airspace by air traffic control once they are airborne, which only takes 4 minutes from call-out. Their ability to carry/give blood for transfusion stems from experience gained in Helmand during the Afghan conflict, when unique airborne facilities were developed. The latest helicopters have five blades instead of four and no tail rotor, which enables easier loading and far less noise and draught. The newest one is bigger, faster, lighter, carries more fuel so less time wasted refuelling. It can carry six, thus enabling a parent to travel with a child and can land automatically in poor visibility, with brighter lights.

This charity depends on us, the public, to keep them flying and they do rely on our contributions as they are not NHS funded. Each mission costs approximately £2,600 and the service as a whole costs six and a half million pounds a year to run. Our President was pleased to be able to give John a cheque for £1,135 from our fundraising during the past year to add to the £1.000 already given in 2015.

After that most interesting talk, the meeting had to settle down to the business of the Annual Meeting. Following a reminder about the Christmas Party on 1st December, we were given plastic champagne flutes and invited to enter a competition to create a Christmas table decoration using them, which will be judged by the member’s votes at the party. The Christmas Lunch will be on December 6th at Ashburnham Place and we heard also that we’d been given a cheque for £250 by the Horticultural Society from the proceeds of the summer fete.

Beryl, as Secretary gave us an interesting reminder of all the events and speakers that we’d enjoyed over the past year - it’s amazing how much one forgets! The Treasurer, Ann C gave the financial report, we heard that our bank balance is looking healthy and our members currently number forty-nine, which is pretty good. The President, Ann D gave her address and she thanked all the committee members for their support over the past year and the other members who had also performed regular tasks to help the smooth running of the meetings. A ballot was held to elect the new President for the next year and to no-one’s surprise, Ann was re-elected again! The Vice- President Sarah paid tribute to Ann and thanked her for being a great President and for all that she does to encourage everyone and make the meetings always great fun to attend. Tea was served and we all sat down to enjoy the delicious selection of cakes and sandwiches before the raffle was drawn and we all headed home, having enjoyed a very full, interesting and most enjoyable afternoon.

Sport: Sadly, despite having lots of players signed on, we were unable to field a football team last Saturday to play in our only remaining cup competition. Nick Gurr had to abandon hope of finding enough players and the game was called off. If only the dreams of all the ex-players who still kept their boots could be translated into the 90 minutes of competitive effort, we would have been able to field two teams. However, the bags with the boots remain in the shed.

Tomorrow we play Bexhill Sibex away and the following Saturday a good competitive match looms against the old enemy Punnetts Town.

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