Etchingham

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

Etchingham Under Five’s Playgroup invite you to a Christmas Prize Bingo Night at Etchingham Club tonight (Friday December 14), 7.30pm. Bring your friends and family for an evening of festive fun and support your local Playgroup.

Lots of great prizes, including a Christmas hamper and Christmas Cake, Drusilla’s tickets, voucher for Slap ‘n’ Dash, 100 tulip bulbs and 6ft Christmas Tree from English Heritage Gardens, Remington hair straighteners, goodies from beauty@thebistro, voucher from The Claypot Hurst Green, Clambers tickets, two sets of five tickets to The Dogs at Brighton. Tickets £6, includes six game cards. Tickets available on the door, or in advance from Playgroup, or phone Suzy Eade 07875 077816 or 01580 819088.

The next Quiz Night at Etchingham Club will be next Saturday, December 15, 8.30pm, the quizmaster will be Keith Boylett, everyone welcome. Please note this is a changed date as the original date clashed with the event in the Church tomorrow evening.

Following very successful presentations in previous years, the Church was packed to capacity last Saturday (December 8),for “Another Etchingham Christmas”, an evening of words, music and drama to get everyone into a seasonal mood. We were treated to Courtney Kenny at the piano, accompanying the Etchingham Singers entertaining us with seasonal songs.Alison Vernon read a passage from ‘The Wind in the Willows’, to take us up to the interval Courtney performed songs by Noel Coward and Flanders & Swann. After the interval, when the audience was treated to mince pies and wine, we reached the highlight of the evening, “First Yule” - St. Wilfrid brings Christmas to the heathens of Etchingham. The short play written by Phillip Hinde and superbly performed by village residents was very much enjoyed by the Audience. There are too many people to mention everyone individually, but many thanks to Courtney and the Etchingham Singers for keeping us entertained with music and songs, the cast who all did a splendid job, the ‘backstage’ crew who made sure the sound and lighting etc. all worked, and of course many thanks to Phillip for giving up many hours of his spare time writing and directing the play.

Etchingham Church continues to arrange a weekly services, Sunday Services have returned to 11am. Children’s services will continue on the second Sunday. If you have ideas about how the popularity of the Church and services can be improved, contact a Churchwarden.

The Church is now open to visitors every day from 11am to 4pm. If you have any queries regarding the Church contact the Churchwardens Mary Barnes 01580 819142 or Geoffry Lucas 01580 819439.

Etchingham Church Services over the Christmas period will be as follows; Sunday December 16, 4.30pm, Carol Service led by the Reverend Peter Clark. Sunday December 23, 11am, Holy communion led by Reverend Simon Gurd. December 24, 4.30pm, Crib and Christingle Service led by Ruth Waller. December 24, 11.30pm, Midnight Mass led by Reverend Peter Clark. December 25, 10am Morning Service led by Sue Greener.

Please note there is a change to the Christingle Service mentioned in this column last week.

Carol Singing in the village will take place next Friday December 21. Meet by the Christmas Tree at the Church at 7pm, the group will then sing at the Christmas Tree and at the station before moving up the High Street. Everyone is very welcome to join in, collection will be for a local charity, remember to take a torch.

Etchingham on Facebook, several village organisations have a presence on Facebook, where you can keep up with what they are doing. There is a general Etchingham page where details are posted of things happening in the village http://www.facebook.com/EtchinghamVillagePage, Etchingham Club is at http://www.facebook.com/etchinghamsocialclub, the Bistro can be found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bistrothestation/, Neighbourhood Watch http://www.facebook.com/etchinghamwatch, and the Shop & Deli can be found at http://www.facebook.com/etchinghamshopanddeli , Christmas trading hours for the shop are on the page.

A date for your diary, the Etchingham Singers are presenting a concert in Hurst Green hall on Saturday March 16, more details here nearer the date.

For details of Hurst Green events, see the Hurst Green column.

If you have items for this column for the weeks over Christmas and the first couple of weeks in January, please get the details to me as soon as possible to make sure they get included.

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]