Fairlight

MOPPs today and next Friday: Today, Friday, March 17, Sharon Sellens will be here to entertain the members, with songs specially selected for St Patrick’s Day. Lunch is going to be baked salmon with a Hollandaise sauce, followed by cheesecake with cream. Next Friday, March 24, there will be a visit from Bonmarche, and Sarah Stunt will be along with greetings cards. Lunch will be ham, egg and chips, followed by sticky toffee pudding with cream. Whatever you were maybe thinking of getting from Bonmarche might have to be a size larger…!

Whist drive: Tonight’s Whist Drive – 6.45 for 7 pm start, you will remember – with the proceeds going to St Michael’s Hospice, means there only two more sessions remaining in the series that began way back at the end of last summer. So, March 31 and April 14 will complete the entertainment this time round. Enthusiasts will not need a reminder…

Speakers Corner: Next Wednesday, March 22, well known local speaker Laton Frewen will be the guest at the village hall, with his subject ‘The eight most visited National Trust properties’.

Conservative Spring Lunch: Saturday week, March 25, is the occasion of the Conservatives’ Spring lunch in the village hall at 12 noon. Tickets are priced at £15 each, which includes donated wine. If you require more details – and it is now rather late in the day – please call Ann Bird on 813636 as soon as you can.

This note appears here because the luncheon is an event happening in the village, and not because your Voice column has become politicised. Indeed, if any other political organisation plans a fund-raising get-together in Fairlight, I will willingly publicise it here. Even if it an extreme fringe party event being held in one of our extant phone boxes.

The Tuesday Ladies Club: The ladies, and any gentlemen guests who would be welcome to attend, will be taken on an interesting ride with Tony Smith, entitled ‘Horses through History’. This is on Tuesday next, March 21, with a 2.15 pm start. The one thing I know about this subject is, if you are successful after offering your kingdom for a horse, do not go anywhere near any car parks in Leicester…

The Playgroup: The organisers were all very pleased with the results of their recent Jumble Sale. Just over 100 people attended and the takings were in excess of £800, though it’s true both visitor numbers and the total raised were a little down on last year.

The Playgroup has recently been fortunate in that they have received a grant of £5,000 from ESCC towards a ‘Healthy Eating and Physical Activity’ programme. In addition, at Easter, Hastings Rotary Club will be coming along to build a Mud Kitchen and new sandpit which all the children will enjoy using.

Success all round, then, but one can’t help remembering that ‘all the children’ really should be more children. The group deserves them and, what is more important, there are many children ‘out there’ who deserve what the Playgroup can give them!

The Bowls Club Coffee Morning: As usual, the Club’s Coffee Morning went most successfully last Saturday – it always seems to be a happy bunch of people in attendance at their ‘do’s’. Of course, the fact that they have social members as well as playing members may have something to do with that perception. The opening of the green, the Open Day and the grand Charity fund-raising Open Competition day are all not far off now. New Club Chairman John Eveleigh will be nudging me to remind you as each event comes to fruition.

The Market Garden site: The planning application for the Market Garden site is now at Rother DC, as we observed last week. The reference number, you may recall, is RR/2017/457/P. If you would care to seek out rother.gov.uk/planning full details and plans are there for you to peruse, (see the accurate address below) together with details as to how you can register comments or objections on the application. It is worth realising that GemSelect are a very professional organisation, and their plans will not be shot down by trivial ‘I-don’t-like-it’ complaints. Scrutinize the plans and offer your considered objections, if you have any.

Better still, especially from the ‘togetherness’ aspect, would be to note and attend the Parish Council’s Planning Committee meeting on Tuesday next, March 21 at 2.30 pm in the smaller of the two halls in the village hall, in order to consider the application. They will be explaining the application to residents, and listening to their views. They will not be deciding on comments to submit at this stage as they will want the full Parish Council to have time to consider the matter.

This will be an excellent opportunity if you would like to hear more or make comments, so please do go along.

You can view the application on the Rother website’s planning section at rother.gov.uk/article/7296/Search-applications. The Parish Council’s Planning Committee Chairman, Cllr Stephen Leadbetter, observes that it is very important that if you have views on the application you register them either on-line or by letter. Historically, residents have been excellent in their response to village matters urgently requiring their input and support. Let us hope that trend continues.

A new Channel Way?: I fairly recently recalled the County Council’s wonder machine, introduced in the village as an offshoot to their major work on the road to Pett Level, with which they could effect a permanent seal across the join between two sections of road, and they used it here straight up the centre of much of the first part of Waites Lane. Though my report was accurate, the timing was distinctly off. Within the last week, a strip some ten feet long in this ‘permanent’ repair in the road opposite the end of Broadway has lifted out of the specially cut and chased out six inch wide channel in which it sat, and has now deposited itself in about four bits like some worn out corridor carpet runner unwanted but not very carefully disposed of. The channel in the concrete of the road is now exposed for the first time for years, and can start deteriorating as soon as it likes.

There is a national paper feature writer who punctuates his column with ‘Meanwhile, Jimmy Saville is still dead’. We can counter that with the Fairlight equivalent – Battery Hill remains unsurfaced, all potholes remain unfilled’. Nothing new under the sun, then?

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