Catsfield

VE Day Dinner: The fund-raising ‘VE Day Dinner’ is being held tomorrow, Saturday 9th May. This will be a three course meal with a menu of the time, held in the Village Hall at 7.30pm, VE Day dress is optional. All the tickets have now been sold but I’ll tell you all about it next week!

Plant Sale and Coffee Morning: Hurry to the Village Hall tomorrow, Saturday between 10am and 12 noon to grab a bargain for your garden! The annual Plant Sale and Coffee Morning comes at the start of Christian Aid week, the biggest act of Christian witness in Britain and Ireland which continues until the 16th May and you can learn more about where the money goes on the website www.christianaid.org.uk There’s always a good selection of plants and also cakes for sale and a raffle, for which donations will be gratefully received. Please give generously to this worthy cause.

The Pentecost Parish Rounders Match: Catsfield versus Crowhurst at rounders, that sounds like fun! It will be held at the Catsfield Playing Field on Sunday 24th May at 3pm. Spectators/supporters for both teams are very welcome and necessary. Turn up on the day if you want to play, or sign up in either church. There will be tea and cake after the match at about 4.30pm

Murder Mystery: Tickets are on sale in the Village Store for the CADS Murder Mystery evening on Saturday May 30th in the Village Hall at 7.30pm. These evenings are always great fun and tickets cost £9.50 each, which will include a light supper and there will also be a bar. The Raffle will be run by the WI. All profits from this event will go to The WI’s charity of the year, The Kent and Sussex Air Ambulance.

Sport: Thanks to Ann as usual for another interesting write up – not entirely about sport!

In true Bank Holiday weekend fashion, the first cricket match of the season was cancelled and the following day it was bright and sunny and could have been a lovely afternoon of sport. We hope for better things on Sunday when we play Ashburnham at home, with a Bexhill team using the pitch on Saturday. There is still a lot of work to be done on the square, which again depends on the weather. While out on Bank Holiday Monday, it was exciting to catch up with hundreds of bikers making their way down the A21 to Hastings. There were a lot of bystanders at the roadside waving and taking photographs, even older couples having picnics. The noise was like a busy beehive with the occasional old bike throatily passing by. I don’t know whether it is the leathers or the continual revving-up, but it seemed to make up for the hours the owners must spend polishing the chrome, tinkering with the engines and paying for it all.

Several of us from the village spent a wet Sunday morning walking around the ancient woodlands of Mountfield in the company of Peter Miles, the writer of Mountfield’s village voice. He is an extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable man and taught us a lot about the iron industry, the Sussex Weald and the beautiful trees we can still enjoy. There were two Tudor forges in Catsfield he told us and we imagined the noise, smoke and danger of all the local iron workings, which went on for long periods of the year day and night. It caught our imagination to picture the scene of huge rings of fire all over the Weald; not such a peaceful country area after all.