Fairlight

This year’s Christian Aid Week runs from May 10 to 16, and you may well find an envelope poted through your letter box to be filled and await collection during the week. Tomorrow is the Christian Aid Spring Fair, in the village hall from 10 am to 12 noon.

The day comes to a church end at the Fairlight Lodge Hotel with the Auction of Promises (rather like the events yesterday, Thursday, but probably with more tangible rewards) More than 70 items are up for grabs…! If you need more information, call Pete Jennings on 752838.

For your diary, there’s a Men’s Breakfast at St Peter’s, in eight days time on Saturday, May 16, 9 for 9.15 am. The after-breakfast speaker will be Andrew Thomas.

Parish Council: The Council meeting, ten days ago, covered a good deal of business, most of it of the everyday type of item, but for all those in attendance, which included 12 members of the public, the moment that captured the imagination was the time to say goodbye to the two Councillors present for the last time as elected officers. Led by the Chairman, Cllr Andrew Mier, everyone was full of appreciative praise for the pair. First was Cllr Robin Patten, one of our District Councillors over many years, who has been a trusted and invaluable friend to Fairlight in so many ways. One hopes that whoever replaces him, as of yesterday, will continue to carry the Fairlight torch. The other departing was Parish Cllr Charles Mendelson, whose time in office was shorter, but nevertheless leaves the PC missing a likeable, valued colleague.

The ‘new’ Council meets on Tuesday, May 19 at 7.15 pm, thus enabling them to ‘settle in’ a week before the Parish Assembly on Tuesday, May 26, at

Don’t forget the John Lutman Award: You have just over a week to submit your nominations for this year’s John Lutman Award, presented annually to whoever you feel has done the most for the community in the past 12 months. Make your nomination for whichever individual you choose on forms provided at the Post Office or by e-mail to [email protected] The closing date for nominations is Monday, May 18.

The Award will be presented at the Fairlight Parish Assembly on Tuesday, 26 May, which starts at 6.00 pm. The winner will receive a cheque for £150 for a charity or organisation of their choice.

Fairfest Dance: Rightly well-publicised, Fairfest’s Dance to the Kytes last Friday was a fully deserved success, with approaching 90 people attending the fantastic evening. As a result of the generosity of those who went along, and some who couldn’t, the profit for the evening hit the £900 mark. All this money will go to The Preservation Trust for the Save Our Village campaign. The organisers thank all who attended, but most particularly The Kytes themselves, who most generously gave their very professional services free of charge.

Fairfest Summer Bash: And before the Fairfest kettles have cooled after the dance, comes a note concerning their Summer Bash, raising funds for the latest Fairfest in the summer of 2016. The bash will be on Saturday, July 26 on Wood Field Recreation Ground from 4 until 10 pm. Admission is free, but remember to take along a chair and a rug just in case they’re needed. Fun and games from 4 pm, and then music, with another chance to listen to the Kytes, plus Dorey the Wise and the Rye Ukulele Experiment. Another fun evening in prospect, then!

Fairlight Art Club Annual Exhibition: The Fairlight Art Club’s annual art exhibition and wine and cheese evening, which will be with us in eight days time on Saturday, May 16, looks set to be another in their series of highly successful demonstrations of how strong the creative talent in the village really is. Tickets for the ‘do’, which includes a complimentary drink and cheese supper, are £4 each in advance, or £5 on the door on the night. Get yours from the Post Office, or by calling 654360 or 813104, or even by calling at Mistral , on the Circle. The event will run from 6 to 9 pm and is, as ever, sponsored by Just Property. All proceeds from the raffle at the event will be going to the Cliff Preservation Scheme.

Lower Waites Lane Maintenance Association: will be holding their Annual General Meeting this Saturday, May 9 in the village hall. All those living in Lower Waites Lane or its spine roads are invited to attend, though only those who are fully paid up are entitled to vote on matters put to the vote. The meeting will start at 2 pm. If you live down that way and need more details, please contact John Eveleigh at [email protected]

MOPPs up again: Today, Friday, May 8, it’s the Land Army Girls, ooh-arr, and lunch consisting of either chilli con carne or cottage pie, with a pudding of rice pudding (!) and fruit, while next Friday it will be Sale Day with Bon Marche clothing, Sandra Stunt’s greeting cards and a selection of local produce. Oh, and there will also be a talk by Sarah Tibbott from East Sussex County Council about Telecare, which seems to cover all sorts of 24/7 personal monitoring and communications technology. I think. Anyway, it’s not about the best things to see on your telly. A satisfying lunch of roast pork with trifle for afters will follow all that earlier activity.

Fairlight Hall Lunch and Lecture series: One of a series of garden talks at the Fairlight Hall Recital Room will be taking place next Tuesday, May 12 from 10.30 am to 2 pm. The cost is £35 per person, and includes a light lunch, a lecture and a private garden tour with the Hall’s head gardener Peter Godwin. The subject next week is ‘Grow your own Cut Flowers’. The series continues in June, July, August, October and November, and we shall detail the subjects as they come along. Probably with more notice than we are giving this time!

A Hole afternoon of enjoyment: The Mayday Bank Holiday saw some 25 members of our Gardening Club enjoing an outing to Hole Park in Rolvenden. They were fortunate in that they had Edward Barham, the owner of the Estate, as tour guide, and an extremely informative and entertaining guide he proved to be. Mr Barham showed the group round the beautiful gardens, and finishing in the vast bluebell woods, which had been a main focal point of the visit. No one was disappointed and plenty of cameras were clicking away at the sea of blue. Afternoon tea and homemade cakes brought the visit to a perfect end!

The Club’s next meeting, on Monday, June 1, gives the group exclusive access to the gardens at Fairlight Hall. Those attending will congregate in the car park at the Hall at 2.30 pm when Head Gardener Peter Godwin will meet them and go for a leisurely amble round. During afternoon tea and cakes after the tour, Peter will be available for questions and comments. The cost is £5 per person for Club members, a fee that includes refreshments. Please contact Paul or Karen on 814154 if you would like to join the tour.

The Residents Association AGM: On Wednesday next, May 13, the FRA holds its Annual General meeting, 68 years after its inception, in the village hall, with doors open from 7 pm. The evening actually begins with a talk from Katy Bourne, the Police & Crime Commissioner for Sussex. The meeting proper will follow. Refreshments will be available, and Acting Secretary David Lucas points out that, if you have not already renewed your membership, you can do so on entry, which will entitle you to vote at the AGM, and to continue to receive the quarterly Fairlight News. In case you’ve forgotten, the annual subscription is £5 per household

Wine and Social Club: will be having their May meeting on Monday next, May 11 in the village hall at 7.30 pm. It’s a Wine Tasting, with a return visit from guest presenters Phoenix and Plum. If you’d like to know more, or would simply like to join in the fun now and for the rest of the year, please call Secretary Jill Lewing on 812340

Bowling along nicely: Since the opening of the green on April 18, the Bowls Club has enjoyed two social events and two matches. On Monday, April 27 they had their first social function with a fun bowls drive during the afternoon, followed by a meal in the pavilion for twenty nine members. Last Monday, their second social was another fun afternoon followed by a filled jacket potato supper for thirty four members.

The season’s first match fixture was against Clive Vale on Thursday, April 30, when Fairlight ran out comfortable winners against Clive Vale, 83 – 43. On Saturday last, their first league match, against Staplecross, saw them lose by 73 – 70. However, this score gave them three points toward the Mermaid league table.

Scram scam!: A well-known local resident’s email address has been the subject of a patently obvious scam, with emails going to all on the contacts list talking of a ‘mugging in Istanbul, and send money so I can pay the Hotel Manager and catch my flight’. The technological expertise of scammers amazes me, but they have no imagination whatsoever. The text I received is almost word for word the same as that under ‘scams’ on the internet. It has not been changed for several years.

Martineau Lane: Three respectable swathes of tarmac have made a vast improvement to driving down Martineau Lane. The longest has a repainted white line to make it much easier to tell when you are going to be forced off the edge and into fly-tip alley. For a while, at least, driving the lane will not feel as if you’re on an unsmoothed clay track with a bit of bitumen spread on it. Not so preserved is the narrow, southern end of the lane, where touching the edge is practically obligatory when you meet anything bigger than a Smart car. The holes along the edge are deplorable. Battery Hill, in the narrows just below St Andrew’s, remains untouched and untouchable.

The times they are a changin’: All sorts of people celebrated ‘their’ saving of the 344 bus service. Except that it has now gone, reorganised to become the 101. Oh, dear, shades of Orwell and 1984? No, it’s simpler than that. There’s the 100, basically Hastings to Rye, sticking to the A259, and the 101 which does the same job with a detour through Fairlight et seq. Each runs hourly, a half an hour apart. Are you keeping up at the back? What hasn’t happened is that on-site timetables are rare, except for a couple of sheets of A4 blowing in the wind. And then there was one. If only wicked government cuts hadn’t meant they couldn’t afford a laminator.

Of course, I haven’t measured them, but I think double deckers are the same width as singles. With Route 101 using the doubles, they certainly appear wider and further out when approaching you on the Fairlight Road. It is a good idea to use these monsters, as at several times during the day, you now don’t just get two passengers on the ground floor – they can have a floor each. Bearing in mind the reduced athleticism of many of our residents, Stagecoach would be well advised to get each double decker fitted with a Stairlift.