Fairlight

Under starter’s orders: Activate will be in the village hall tomorrow, Saturday March 28, with a Race Night, starting at 7.30 pm. The £5 Tickets for the evening have been available from the Post Office, but it’s getting late now and you might be best advised to contact Wendy Hatch, who can be reached on 812297. Or you could just turn up and buy on the door. But however you get a ticket, just be sure you don’t miss what is sure to be a fun evening.

Church Matters: This Sunday, March 29 is Palm Sunday. There’s a service of All Age Worship at St Andrew’s at 10.30 am, and at 6.30 pm there’s Sunday Live at St Peter’s, the service that was postponed from last week, although too late to make Village Voice. This is a very informal service which includes modern songs and a social time at the end of the evening with food.

A new installation: The installation of a new audio/visual system at St Andrew’s began last Tuesday and should be completed today. Now the church power(point)s that be would like to know of any computer-literate people, younger or older, who would be willing to prepare and execute visual material for the services. This would include downloading material from the internet, displaying notices, songs and other items on the screen to help in the worship, an ideal outlet for a computer whizz to get his or her hands on for experience in communication by computer. Just call Kath on 812799 if it could be you.

Messy Church: It’s the first Wednesday of the month next Wednesday, and that means Messy Church will be with us again, in the village hall from 3.30 to 5 pm. Parents are welcome as well as children, and the whole event is free!

Just so you don’t miss Easter at the Church: A note of what is on the horizon for the Easter weekend, they start on Maundy Thursday, April 2 with The Lord’s Supper at 7.30 pm at St Peter’s.

On Good Friday, April 3, there’s the 10 am Walk of Witness from Pett Church to Pett Methodist Chapel, and at 10.30 am there will be an evocative Good Friday service at St Andrew’s. This is open to all comers.

Easter Day, Sunday, April 5, starts very early with the 6.20 am Sunrise Service, on the Firehills, along with the musicians of the Salvation Army. The service will be followed by breakfast at St Andrew’s. St Andrew’s is also home to the 10.30 am Easter Celebration with Holy Communion

St Andrew’s. To round off Easter Day, there is a service of Holy Communion at St Peter’s at 6 pm

No Joy at the Tuesday Ladies Club!: The club was delighted to see so many visitors arrive to hear the Hastings fishing industry spokesman, Paul Joy, but Oh! Calamity! as Robertson Hare used to say, Mr Joy was unable to attend and his deputy failed to find Fairlight. If only he’d been coming by sea along the coast…! Perhaps he did, and expected to come ashore when he saw great swathes of gorse… While this was very disappointing, especially for the club’s visitors, one of them, Bill Sapsford, gallantly stepped into the breach and performed two monologues including the wonderful Albert and the Lion; Club Leader Val King then told a funny story about a bus ride to Eastbourne. After refreshments, there was a quiz. The Club’s thanks go to Bill for saving the day.

April’s meeting will be on Tuesday 21 and will feature Pat Bryer’s talk “Choice Joyce” – the Joyce in question being the much loved Joyce Grenfell. Visitors are very welcome at £2 a head and the meeting will start at 2.15 pm in the village hall.

The Gardening Club: has its April meeting on Monday week, April 6 in the village hall at 2.30 pm, when the speaker will be the popular and entertaining Jacqui Aviolet. Her subject will be ‘Four Days at the Nursery – a behind-the-shed look throughout the year at a traditional nursery’. If you have not yet paid your £5 sub for the year, you could do so at the meeting by seeing Barry Prime, or in person at the Club hut, which is open each Saturday from 10 am to 12 noon, down past Fairlight Gardens.

MOPPs now and then: ‘MOPPs now’ is today, Friday, March 27, when belly dancer Chloe will be entertaining, with lunch afterwards of roast turkey and then fruit jelly. And ‘then’ is next Friday, April 3, when the guest entertainer will be singer Tim Gibson, with the added attraction for the members of an Easter Bonnet Parade as well as a star prize for the raffle. Next Friday’s lunch will be salmon and then fresh fruit salad.

The Cat and the Canary: The next Players’ production, which is the classic spoof horror play most famous as the film which provided Bob Hope with his debut starring role, will be onstage in four weeks time, and tickets will be on sale at the Post Office very shortly – possibly by the time you are reading this! The run is Thursday 23 to Saturday 25 April, at 7.30 pm each evening, and with a 2.30 pm showing on the Saturday, too. They’ll cost you £6 each and, as has been said many times before, book early to avoid disappointment.

Bowls on the cards: The final fortnightly Bowls Club whist drive of the winter season is confirmed for Good Friday, April 3, in the village hall at 6.30ish for a sharp 7 pm start. The members have decided that being the Good Friday evening will not deter them from hoping for a good hand or more. Just a fortnight later, on Saturday, April 18 at 2.30 pm, the green will be open for business at the start of the new season.

Last Saturday’s Coffee Morning saw the village hall well filled with Bowls Club members and friends, eyes down and looking in, though I haven’t heard exactly how they did. Still counting, perhaps…?

April Brains’ Day?: Why should April Fools monopolise April 1? There’s nothing wrong in Brains enjoying it, too, and they’d be well advised to get along to the Cove for 8 pm at the start of the latest in their series of quizzes, run by Bob and Dec. Plainly, this will be happening on Wednesday next, and Brains won’t need this pointing out, will they? It’ll only cost you £1.50 each to enter, and you get to do three quizzes and to have your share of the sandwiches, too. Need I say more? Well, if there’s something else you’d like to have answered, call either the Cove on 812110 or Bob on 812128

Speedwatch is working: A number of inattentive motorists have been observed, either on Battery Hill or in Waites Lane, going faster than the law (and common sense) permits. Watch out and use your loaf to miss the dreaded letter. Of course, there may be some readers who would like to assist in the reduction of the antisocial speeding activity, and they should contact, in the first instance, Cllr Rev Val Gibbs, Parish Council Vice Chair, either by calling 814278, or by email to [email protected]

Pot holes and drains: I wonder what the budget is for the paint aerosols they use to mark out trouble spots for repair. They seldom seem to get round to the repairs before they need remarking. Broadway is a good case in point, with at least three well marked portions overdue for attention. A more difficult one, or rather two, is the two arrows on the easterly pavement in Waites Lane, a little up the hill from the church. They used to point to the outside edges of a rectangle, painted on the grass. Unsurprisingly, the rectangle disappeared many moons ago. It looked about the size of a grit bin, but surely in the wrong place.

Once more unto the beach: Letters regarding the new Visitor Centre on the Firehills have covered several column inches in both this paper and its parent, the Hastings Observer. Some are for the new initiative, most are against. I would have been amused by the muddled thinking behind one ‘pro’ letter if I hadn’t been saddened. There are so many acres of the park, it said, so what is the 250 square yards of the proposed site to worry about? Nothing, really. Alternatively, those 250 square yards could probably accommodate a single wind turbine, or a small block of flats, either of which would look a bit lonely until joined by more of the same… Watch that space – while you still have the chance!

Keith Pollard

Brookfield, Broadway