Etchingham

The December/January edition of the Parish Magazine is now available from the village shops.

If you have enjoyed the Christmas play in the Church in previous years, now is the time to get your tickets for “Yet another Etchingham Christmas”. The evening show will have Courtney Kenny at the piano, with the Etchingham Singers, and featuring ‘Reddye for Christemas’ - will Sir william de Etchingham win planning permission for his new church? This will all take place in Etchingham Church tomorrow, Saturday December 14, starting at 7pm. Tickets may still be available for £5 (children £1) which includes a glass of wine or soft drink and mince pie. Get the final few tickets today from the village shops or the Bistro.

Carol Singing, the Carol Singers will be singing at various locations in the High Street area on Thursday December 19. You are welcome to join the singers, Carol sheets will be provided, but a torch is advisable, meet at the Church at 7pm. All money collected will go to local charities.

Etchingham Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal organisers, Shaun and Eleanor Knowles, are very pleased to report that the Parish of Etchingham raised £1070.77 for the appeal. This is a wonderful effort for a truly deserving cause, and they couldn’t be prouder of the people who turned out in some dreadful weather to sell poppies door to door. All the village retail outlets were happy to support the cause by having collecting boxes in their establishments, and the Church service was well attended with a generous collection adding to the total.

BUT........ {there always is a BUT!!}

The Etchingham Branch of the Royal British Legion is under threat. Numbers have fallen so low that we may be faced with a forced closure. Many people will wonder what all the fuss is about, we will still have our poppy appeal - but it is really not that simple.

No branch means we do not have the right to have our Remembrance Sunday Service at 11am, to remember the fallen, parade the Standard and have the bugler play the Last Post.

To clarify - if the Etchingham Branch closes we cannot hold a Remembrance Sunday Service, Etchingham residents will be obliged to travel to a neighbouring village to attend a service.

Please help to keep the Etchingham Branch open, anyone can join, you do not need to have served in the forces to join. Membership is just £14.50 a year. To join you can download a membership form and direct debit mandate from the Royal British Legion website, fill it in and hand it to Shaun or Eleanor. You do not need to make a payment when you hand in the form, it will be taken by direct debit.

To dowload form from the RBL site go to www.britishlegion.org.uk/media/7916/rblmembershipform.pdf

Forms will also be available in the Shop & Deli and the Post Office.

JOIN TODAY - - KEEP THE ETCHINGHAM BRANCH OPEN

Put your old clothes to good use and raise funds for Etchingham School. There is a textile recycling container in the Bistro car park, the school get paid for every kilo of clothing collected from the container. You can put in any men’s, ladies or children’s clothing, handbags, bags, shoes, ties and belts. Do not put in any carpets or rugs, pillows and cushions, table linen, blankets, curtains, workwear or soiled and wet clothing. Put your items in a black sack or carrier bag and secure before placing in the container. Good quality clothing is sent to developing countries and low quality textiles are recycled into industrial cleaning cloths. More details of the scheme are on the village website, or go to the Rag Bag website www.rag-bag.co.uk

Community Speed Watch, we are progressing well with getting a Community Speed Watch group organised in Etchingham, at the time of writing 14 people have expressed an interest in taking part, 12 of those have registered as group members, and seven will be going for training at the end of December. We have speed check locations in the village approved, so we should have a group ready to start operating checks from early January. Speed Watch is operated by volunteers from the community, equipped with speed monitoring equipment, they record the details of vehicles exceeding the speed limit, the details are passed on to Police who check the vehicle details and send out warning letters and where appropriate take further action. Full equipment and all the necessary training is given by the Police. If we can get a reasonable number of volunteers, then no one will have to do it too often, it also give us the opportunity to do checks more frequently, more volunteers will be welcome. If you want to find out more about how Speed Watch works go to the village website www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk, follow the Speed Watch link on the left, or visit the Sussex Police website www.sussex.police.uk and put Speed Watch into the search box. If you are willing to be included in such a useful and necessary scheme please ring Jill Copland on 01580 819321, Colin Boylett on 01580 819532 or email [email protected] . You can now also register directly on to the system, go to www.communityspeedwatch.co.uk then the button labelled ‘System Access’ from the drop-down menu select ‘Register as Group Operator’ and follow the instructions, remember to change the group name to Etchingham, fill in your details and register. You will get a confirmation email and the Etchingham Group Admin will contact you as soon as your details appear on the system. Updates on the progress of the scheme will also be posted on Facebookwww.facebook.com/etchinghamspeedwatch and on the village website. If you are concerned about the speed of the traffic through the village, get involved today.

A calendar has now been set up on the village website at this location www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk/calendar there is a link to the page near the top of the website Home Page and another at the bottom of the menu on the left of every page. Full instructions are on the page, but adding entries is very easy, any authorised person can add details, but alterations later can only be made by an admin.

To avoid the risk of unwanted spam/prank posts getting into the calendar a password is needed to complete the entry, I have sent a password to a lot of people who will want to add entries. I have probably not included everyone, so if you are a member of a group or organisation, or individual and need to add entries, contact me for the password if you have not received it.

The idea is that all entries are added to the calendar by village residents, so that I do not have to spend time adding information, and only need to edit errors and changes, hopefully all village organisations will make full use of the calendar and find it useful when planning events.

It is possible that there may be someone who wants to add an event to the calendar and not have internet access, in this case ask a friend or neighbour if they can add the details, if that is not possible contact me with the details.

There is also a page which is integrated with the “What’s on” page on the VillageNet website, you can add your events to that and they will be seen by people accessing the VillageNet website in surrounding villages, you will find a link to the page near the bottom of the menu on the left of the Etchingham website. The page is a link to the VillageNet site, and not part the Etchingham site, so you are responsible for adding your information, the admin of the Etchingham site cannot do it for you.

December is a busy time for everyone with lots of Christmas events in the area, for maximum publicity of all your Christmas events in this column, get the details to me as soon as possible. Also, if you have events planned for January tell people now so that they can put the dates in their diary.

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]