Fairlight

In Church this Easter… The Good Friday and Easter Day services were given last week in Village Voice, but I expect you forgot to cut out the details and stick them inside the kitchen cupboard door. So here we are again, because these are all of great significance in the Church year. Today, Friday March 29, there is a service at 10.30 am at St Andrew’s. Then Sunday, March 31 is Easter Day with the worship starting early, at sunrise on the Firehills at 6 am, together with the Salvation Army band, and with breakfast to follow back at St Andrew’s. At 9 am, there will be a Holy Communion Service down the hill at St Peter’s, and shortly after that a 10.30 am parish Communion Service at St Andrew’s. Easter is always a good time to be going to church – even if the weather is more like it’s Christmas!

There’s a Gardening Club talk… on Easter Monday, April 1 (no, I’m not fooling around) at 2.30 pm in the village hall, when the speaker will be Jan Sellers, and the subject – the Fisherman’s Museum - a Maritime Treasure Box. It will be too cold for gardening, so why not pop down to the hall in the warm, and hear an interesting talk?

An evening to enjoy… and remember, coming up with the Fairlight Players, whose production of ‘Happy as a Sandbag’ takes to the stage from Wednesday, April 10 to Saturday 13, nightly at 7.30 pm and with a Saturday matinee at 2.30 pm. This will be the Players’ first brush with a full-scale revue, mixing sketches and songs which run through the Second World War in a blaze of nostalgia and patriotism, together with much laughter and a few tears. Why not go early in the week – several did last year for Maria Marten, and enjoyed it so much they went again! Though £10 to £12 tickets are common among amateurs, Fairlight Players can do it for only £6 per ticket. Tickets are available from Fairlight Post Office, though there is a handy phone booking facility for those living out of the village who might find it difficult to get here. Call Carol Ardley on 814178.

At MOPPs today… The entertainment will be by Brian Howard, and the menu is scampi and chips, followed by banana & custard. Sounds (and tastes!) good to me!

The Activate A.G.M… was held at The Cove a little while back, and it was quite well attended despite various reasons meaning a number of stalwarts couldn’t make it. Activate had enjoyed a very successful year, especially with Alice Tigwell leading the club, and the grant from Lloyds Bank, which has enabled them to transform the clubhouse. There’s a chance for all to come and inspect the improvements on Saturday, April 20, when the club will be having a garage sale and car wash, with refreshments. The fun starts at 2 pm.

For your diary, make a note of Saturday, May 18 as this is the date when an idea the youngsters had of holding an afternoon tea party at Fairlight Village Hall comes into being. Details will follow soon.

Activate will be 15 years old this May and so they are planning to celebrate. A special event will be held on Thursday, July 11 for members old and present and then on Friday, July 12 another event will be for staff and management. Wendy Hatch says thank you, as always, to everyone who supports the club.

Annual award… don’t forget the John Lutman Award, which is given by the Parish Council for service to the community, in memory of the late John Lutman. Highly respected in the village, John was a Parish Councillor for 30 years, and also a District Councillor and Chairman of Rother DC. The £100 prize goes to the good cause of the winner’s choice. The Council is awaiting a further crop of nominations for this year’s award, and nomination forms are available at Fairlight Post Office and Stores and through the Residents’ Association email contact scheme. The qualifying service can be any of a vast range of activities, and the award is open to all who have served Fairlight in some way, although Parish Councillors are exempt. The winner will be announced, and the Award given, at the Parish Assembly at 6.30 pm on Friday, April 19 at the village hall.

Singing out loud… at the Village Choir, but not on Monday, April 8, but one and three weeks later, on April 15 and 29. Both dates are at Pett Chapel.

Do you recall our announcement… about the start of Pett Waddlers, a new baby, toddler and parent group meeting at Pett Methodist Church on Fridays term time? It’s been going for just four weeks, and they’ve had a wonderful time! Their next meeting will be on Friday, April 12, and it runs from 1.30 to 3 pm, (so you can get away to collect older siblings after school, remember?) and it’s in the newly redecorated hall!

A Spring Dance and Supper is to be held… on Saturday, April 20 in the village hall from 7.30 pm. Tickets, which are only £5 each, are available from the Post Office, or by calling either Joyce Grant on 814172 or Lyn Mosley on 812144. You take your own drinks and glasses, and the organisers would like to know if you’re going by April 14, so they can get their catering arrangements right.

Earlier that day, Saturday, April 20… there’s a Coffee Morning in aid of the Royal British Legion, from 10 am to 12 noon in the village hall. It’s called a ‘Who…what…where’ morning, so have a cup of coffee and sharpen up those little grey cells!

Coming up… in and for the village hall, their usual Spring Trestle Sale, which will be held in the hall on Saturday, April 27, from 10 am to 12 noon. As usual, this note is not merely to tell you it’s happening and please go, but to alert those who would like to take a trestle and display and sell all sorts of attractive goodies to the residents of Fairlight and beyond. If that’s you, please call either Brenda on 813113 or Val on 814753 to stake your claim.

At last! At last!!... the running sore that was our most aggressive pothole, on Waites Lane a short distance north of the Cove pub, has been filled. The symptoms have gone, but as water can be seen coming down from some six feet up the road from the patch, one suspects the cause has not been eradicated. As the water seeps under the patches, a couple of good hard ground frosts will soon start the whole cycle again. And as they filled the holes, why did they not think to remove the lumps of concrete that had been thrown out of them?

If your car has been damaged by a pothole, you need to phone 0345 60 80 193, which is the East Sussex County Council contact number, and ask for a claim form to be sent to you. You will also need to give the location of the pothole, a rough idea of its size, when the damage occurred and the nature of the damage. A time-stamped photo would help. No, of the hole, not you! There is also a very useful website giving advice about claiming, which is to be found at www.potholes.co.uk

If you go down into Ore today… you’re, indeed, sure of a big surprise. On the carriageway just prior to the entrance to the picnic area car park is a long and almost completely unavoidable two-tier pothole that will shake more parts than even Heineken could reach. I wonder if the Council invests any back-up nest egg they may accumulate in tyre and vehicle suspension businesses. That would be a very wise and lucrative move!

Complaints, I’ve had a few… and here’s one I’m going to mention. A resident from ‘Upper’ Fairlight, where we have our ‘main’ church, a very pleasant Tea Room and extensive pay-to-park areas, but not the majority of those who live in Fairlight, says that Fairlight Village Voice is all about Fairlight Cove, the settlement approached via the almost cul-de-sac of Waites Lane, and nothing about the ‘real’ Fairlight where she lives. Since the top bit lost its school and its shop, the emphasis has been down Battery Hill, as this area contains the Post Office, farm shop, church, pub and the village hall, where so much that’s good in village life is lived. In her defence, I would point out that, when we moved here nine years (and six days!) ago, we were informed our address would be Broadway, Fairlight Cove, Fairlight, Hastings, putting me in mind of the name and address we used to put in our school books, going on to your county and then England, Great Britain, Europe, Earth, the Universe. Also, the wonderful work on getting the ground water pumped away so that the cliff face would be saved was all undertaken by the Fairlight Cove Preservation Trust, and when that work was complete, the Trust dropped the word ‘Cove’ in order to more accurately reflect the fact that they are equally concerned about all of Fairlight. So is this column, and if anything newsworthy happens in any part of the village – please let me know and in it will go!