Catsfield

The Lent Lunch: Tomorrow, Saturday 28th February from 11.30am – 1.30pm there will be a Lent Lunch held in the Village Hall to aid the funding of St Laurence Church. Adults £5 each and children £3.50 each, pay on the door.

Women’s World Day of Prayer: Next Friday, March 6th people from around the world will be worshipping together in a day of prayer using a service prepared by the Christian women from The Bahamas. These special services are interdenominational, all are welcome at St Laurence Church at 2.30pm and refreshments will be served afterwards.

Jumble Sale: On the following day, Saturday 7th March, the WI Jumble Sale and Cake Stall will be held from 10am – 12noon in the Village Hall. How about doing some Spring cleaning and bringing your unwanted items to the hall on Saturday morning? This will help the WI raise money for their new charity for this year, the Air Ambulance service.

The Spring Concert: This event will be held in St Laurence’s Church on Friday 13th March at 7.30pm and if the previous concerts are anything to go by, it is bound to be a musical treat! Tickets are on sale now from the Village Stores priced £6 each to include a light supper and will also be available on the door. The evening will feature the St Laurence Church Choir and Guest Artists and will raise money to help maintain our beautiful parish church.

Sports News: Thanks to Ann, our ‘sports correspondent’ who always manages to find something week!

The Playing Field looked very inviting the other day when we again entertained a party of primary schoolchildren from Roehampton under the direction of their teacher Tony Philcox. However, it did not look so good last Saturday after the heavy rain and it was good to have a football-free Saturday. Tomorrow we play Wittersham at home and with only a few matches left in the season, there should be time to attempt to repair the pitch before cricket starts. Returning to the visit of the schoolchildren, they were on a project to compare environments and the contrast between a huge housing estate in London and our village. The children had been well briefed and conducted their project with great delight running around in the open spaces and splashing in the mud on the way to Broomham. They learnt on the way about mole hills, drainage, sports, the pavilion project and how village children had the freedom to find their own amusements. A highlight was the visit to Jan Auer’s farmyard to learn about animal husbandry, see and smell the cows and then walk around the village noting the village hall, local industries, the school, church and finally back to the Playing Field for a packed lunch. All this has been followed up by thank you letters, photographs and more studying in the Easter Term.

Kimber’s Men: Thanks for the following to our ‘theatre critic’ Mike, who organised the show last Saturday evening.

The Village Hall was buzzing with anticipation at the prospect of Kimber’s Men’s appearance. What would they be like? Would they be funny? Would we like the songs? We didn’t have long to wait and were not disappointed - they were GREAT! Five part harmonies, John (Ship’s Cook) had such a deep bass it vibrated the floorboards and Joe (Ship’s Doctor), Micheal (Drummer Boy and yes, he does spell it like that!) Neil (Ship’s Bosun and the Kimber of their title) and Gareth (Powder Monkey) blended in beautifully with it. There were also funny stories, sad and funny songs and songs that we knew or half remembered and that we could join in with during the choruses. There was a stream of banter on the theme of these Yorkshiremen being in the ‘deep south’ and remarks about an audience with funny accents and pronunciation, which enlivened proceedings no end. The first half flew by and finished with a very moving song about The Penlee Lifeboat disaster of 1981 with guitar and English bagpipe accompaniment.

During the interval the usual ‘Catsfield Chat’ ensued over liquid refreshment with many questions being directed at the group, who mingled most happily whilst imbibing pints of Woodfordes’ Norfolk Nog, a rather tasty old ale. Eventually the second half got under way with an amazing rendition of ‘Old Man River’ from John and so the evening sailed on, continuing the shanty theme and culminating in all of the Hall joining in ‘The Mingulay Boat Song’, which of course demanded an encore. This was a beautiful rendering of ‘Leave Her Johnny Leave Her’ a song only sung when sailors were safely back in harbour and leaving their ship and so in the last verse Kimber’s Men left their ship (stage) and sung their way to the back of the Hall to receive thunderous applause and many handshakes and congratulations as the happy audience left for home with the most often repeated question ‘When can we have them back again?’

Mobile Library: The next visit of the East Sussex Mobile Library to its usual place outside the Village Hall will be next Friday 6th March at 11.55am – 12.30pm

Jill Jarrett

Broadview, Bexhill