Etchingham

Please could everyone vote, and ask family and friends to do so. You do not have to be an Aviva customer to vote, and it makes no difference to the vote-counting; so though you have to give your name you are signing up to nothing - just registering to vote. Each person who registers has 10 votes; so please use ALL your votes! If you are on Facebook you can sign up quickly with your Facebook log in. The project is no 2563; title “A New Heart for a Rural Community” to register and cast your votes go to https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/project/view/2563/ you will also find a link on the home page of the village website. So, use all ten of your votes to support the project and spread the word so that as many people as possible register and cast all ten of their votes.

ROBERTSBRIDGE AVIATION SOCIETY: Robertsbridge Aviation Society are holding a Jumble Sale tomorrow, saturday May 16, 2pm to 4pm, at Bush Barn on the A21 north of Robertsbridge. Free parking and admission, light refreshments available. The Museum will be open on the last Sunday of each month until October.

EVENTS CALENDAR: There is a calendar on the village website for residents and organisations to enter details of forthcoming events, this helps organisers check if an event has already been planned for a date they have chosen, and act as advertising for all village events. The idea of the calendar is for village residents and organisations to add details to the calendar themselves to reduce the workload of website admin.

To view or add to the calendar start on this page and follow the instructions www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk/calendar you will need a password to complete your entry, this is just a safeguard against the calendar getting filled up with spam posts. The password is the same for everyone if you do not have it ask me to supply it or ask someone who has already added to the calendar.

If everyone gets into the habit of adding their events to the calendar it will hopefully avoid too many clashes of events and people having to decide which event they will support. If you have any problems adding to the calendar contact me at [email protected] and I will get it added, but I do not want to have to add every event to the calendar.

BUS SERVICE: Sussex Bus have taken over the route and will operate it as an extension of their existing Service 31 which runs from Haywards Heath to Heathfield, now extended from Heathfield to Hurst Green. The new timetables and a table of fares is on the Parish Council notice board outside the Post Office and can be viewed on the village website www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk/about-the-village/public-transport/bus-timetable/

Copies of the timetable are available from the Post Office, if you have difficulty getting one, contact me and I will print a copy for you.

This new service can only continue if it is supported, that is people using the bus for some of their journeys instead of the car, there are regular users but as many journeys as possible need to be made to make the route viable and retained.

DOG FOULING: There have been a few reports recently regarding dog mess on the pavements in the village, in particular the stretch between Burgh Hill and the station.

Please clear up after your dog, you have a legal obligation to clear up after your dog it fouls in a public place, details can be found online

http://www.environmentlaw.org.uk/rte.asp?id=50 please remember other people use the public paths.

COMMUNITY SPEEDWATCH: Could you be a Speedwatch volunteer? There are currently seven volunteer operators, we need a few more so that the existing volunteers do not need to do as many sessions, it would also enable sessions to be run at different times of the day. We have our own equipment in Etchingham so sessions can be run during any daylight hours. It is not difficult to join up and you will be most welcome even if you can only spare a very small amount of time, there is some basic health and safety instruction which is done online, instruction in the use of the equipment is carried out by the group co-ordinator. If you would like to get involved the first step is to register on the Community Speedwatch website, go to www.communityspeedwatch.co.uk and follow the instructions to register, be careful to make sure you register for the Etchingham group because the Hurst Green and Burwash groups both have Etchingham in the title. As soon as new volunteers have registered and completed the online instruction the details are sent to the group co-ordinator and they will be available for sessions, the co-ordinator will then explain the procedures for joining sessions.

We are aware that some local residents will have received Police letters following sessions in the village, if you or a friend have received one of the letters please do not blame the operators - it was not their fault. Some facts about speeds, a pedestrian hit by a car at 20mph has a 95% chance of survival, at 30mph it drops to 50% and at 40mph it is only 15%. One last thing the device does not have a camera and no pictures are recorded, the device simply detects the speed of an approaching vehicle and only those significantly over the 30mph limit are recorded and passed to the Police.

MOBILE LIBRARY: The Mobile Library now visits Etchingham once every three weeks, on Tuesday mornings 9.55am to 10.35am outside the new village halls.

You might like to put these dates in your diary; June 2, June 23.

If these times are not convenient, or you miss the Library when it visits, it will be at Hurst Green village hall, 1.30pm to 2.15pm on the following dates; June 4, June 25.

PROMOTE YOUR ORGANISATION: Do you want to get new members for your group or organisation? Want to tell people what your group does? If you are connected with a village group or organisation send me some details and I will publicise your group in this column. Send me details of what your organisation does, when you meet, how to join, who to contact and any other details that you would like to add, I will then add details of your organisation, as space allows, over the coming weeks.

INFORMATION: If you have given me details of your event to put in this column, please remember to send me some details after the event so I can let your supporters know how successful the event was, how much you raised, interesting facts etc. Your supporters will be interested to know how you did. Get information for this column to me as soon as possible, if you have a diary of events planned for the year let me have the dates and I will put in a list of village events for the year so that people can put the dates in their diaries. There are several ways to get your info to me, but email is preferred because there is less chance of errors during copying. I need information by 10pm on Monday to be sure it will be in time for inclusion, I can sometimes add extra items on Tuesday morning, but this cannot be guaranteed. Just a little reminder, I get plenty of information about events that are taking place, but I get very little follow up information, after your event try and remember to send me brief account of how successful your event was, it can be as simple as a thank you to those that attended and how much money was raised etc. You can deliver to 2 Park Farm Close, telephone 01580 819532 or 07941 786244 or email [email protected] .