Fairlight Village Voice

It’s that busy weekend… in our two churches this Sunday, being the second Sunday of the month.

There’s an early(ish) start to the day, with Holy Communion, led by Rev Kay Burnett, at St Peter’s

at 8 am. This is followed at 10.30 am with Morning Praise at St Andrew’s, with the service being led by Bishop John Ellison. Finally, it’s back to St Peter’s at 6 pm for Evening Prayer led by John Relfe.

All will be welcome… at the village hall on Saturday for their Craft Fair, which will be running from 10 am to 12 noon. Previous occasions suggest there will be plenty of high quality items to catch the eye – and persuade you to open your wallet. Get some of those Christmas present problems solved nice and early!

Who killed the Director…? The Players’ Murder Mystery and Supper Evening is only eight days away and tickets, selling very well, are not sold out as yet. For £7.50 you get a puzzling murder to solve, and a hot supper to keep you going (and a bar as well!) The remaining tickets are available either from the Post Office, or by calling 813631, so do something about it before it’s too late!

Still with the Players… whose November 8 – 10 production of ‘And This Was Odd’ is set in the 1950’s, leaving the group anxious to dress their set with appropriate furniture. Their fairly long list of borrowing needs include a two-seater settee, a wing back armchair, two smaller easy chairs, a small writing desk, a drinks cabinet, a large valve-type radio, a coffee table, a footstool and a pouffe. If you have any of these items and would be willing to lend them to the Players for a couple of weeks up to Sunday November 10, please give director Keith Miller a call on 812235. He’d be delighted to hear from you.

Oh GOSH! I got it wrong… Activate’s second variety show - Startastic Strikes Back – took to the village hall boards last Saturday. With a programme that was very much appreciated, and not only by doting Mums and Dads, they amassed the princely sum of some £325. This will be split between the Youth Club and, not St Michael’s Hospice as I erroneously reported, but Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, a couple of extremely worthy recipients, (as, indeed, is St Michael’s)

Power to the people… How much influence you may have had if you followed our exhortations to vote for Dorey the Wise we shall probably never know, but the fact is that at the International Final this local outfit came second overall out of 28 acts. No one locally should be surprised, for those of us who have heard them in action know them to be a talented group. Only five bands, none of them in the top three, scored higher text votes. They have already been busy following this outstanding success, with gigs in Birmingham, Manchester and London, and culminating with a headline charity engagement in Rye last Saturday. As it had been hoped they might appear at Activate’s Startastic event, as they had the previous year, they came and played for the young performers before moving off to Rye. A great bunch, with their feet firmly on the ground, and going from strength to strength ever since they won the first Hastings’ Got Talent Show at Azur in 2010.

A Great Day… for MOPPs fourth birthday last Friday, and many happy pictures of the event can be seen on their polished website, which is at www.fairlightmopp.co.uk. And, in that ugly modern phraseology, moving forward today will see the participants entertained by Pat Bryer, who is a Joyce Grenfell impersonator. That should go down a real treat!

Flushed with the success… of their Second Music & Arts Festival, the Fairfest Committee is already busy planning to raise funds for the Third Festival in 2014. Their next interim event planned is a Cheese and Wine Party on Friday November 30th in the village hall. Tickets will be on sale from the Post Office as usual. Stand by and keep a look out for their posters.

There will be a write up on Fairfest, with photos of the day, including the lively Parade, in the December issue of Fairlight News but meanwhile the Committee thought you might like to read this brief report. The wonderful weather on Sunday 26th August meant people poured onto the Recreation Ground enjoying all the activities and stalls on offer. 350 burgers were sold and over 300 sausages consumed, not to mention all the tasty home-made cakes kindly made and donated by friends. Running a Festival of this nature is not just time consuming but expensive and the weather is always going to be a big factor. The Committee’s main expense is the hiring of a large marquee which won’t blow away. The hire fee for this, and the two portaloos, was £790. The tent for the bar and two other tents were lent by the 14th Hastings Scout Group.

This year they were lucky, not only with the weather but in that they received donations from the Fairlight Residents’ Association, the Parish Council and Just Property, estate agents in the village. These donations, together with the profit made on the barbecue and bar, meant that not only was it possible to make important donations to the gymnastic group Acromax, the Salvation Army and the Scouts but there are also some funds in hand to start preparations for the Third Festival in 2014.

The Committee would like everyone to know that the Festival is run for the benefit of the people of Fairlight. It is not a fund raising event but obviously needs to cover itself and keep funds in hand to safeguard future Festivals, especially one which may not enjoy the benefit of such good weather. And it isn’t just the Committee who do the work either. They are enormously grateful to the large army of helpers who ran the bar, barbecue, tea tent, inflatables, games, stalls, car parking, programme selling, and put up gazebos. Other gave their talents freely by singing or playing.

Fairlight is very fortunate in being a village with lots of talent and enthusiasm. The Festival is a wonderful opportunity and occasion for everyone in the village to come together to share and enjoy themselves. Struck by a gremlin… A nice piece about the opening of the Literary Society’s new season disappeared, I know not where, somewhere into the ether, never to see the light of day in the newly laid-out Observer. My apologies for this, if only I knew what it was that had gone wrong - the Observer printed all that they received. To make slight amends, I would remind you all that the season is still new, and that their second talk, by Kevin Gordon, will be on Wednesday week, October 24, with the Halloween-type subject of Sussex Graves and Graveyards. Membership is £7 for the full year, and guests are welcome on payment of £2. If you’d like more details, the season’s fixtures are listed in the village hall display cabinet, or you could ring either 814037 or 812563.

The Fairlight Preservation trust… will hold its 2012 AGM in the village hall at 2.30 pm on Sunday, October 14. As well as the formal AGM business, there will be informative and open discussion on matters that are important to all Fairlight villagers. The Trust has a fantastic record in the literal preservation of our village, with their invaluable work on the prevention of cliff erosion. They are extremely active on other vital issues. It costs a mere £10 for three year membership of the Trust, and you will be welcome to go to the AGM to find out more about it before you join.

It’s all the rage… Family History, thanks to the internet and the BBC, is an attractive subject for many these days. There is a Family History Festival in Horntye Park this coming Sunday from 10 am to 4.30 pm. There will be talks, stalls and a lot of like-minded people there, and it only costs £2 to get in.

Last knockings… May Gurney (contractors for ESCC) will be carrying out the last of the patching work on the Pett Level Road yesterday and today, Friday October 12. These works will be carried out during day light hours working a one-way system with traffic lights for the duration, and there will be no road closures. But I bet they won’t make a detour into Waites Lane to fill a largeish pot-hole that has been there since before they blitzed the whole village earlier. There are stones and bits of the underlying concrete all over the place, and the hole’s smaller brother nearby is getting deeper if not wider day by day.

The Tuesday Ladies Club… meets next Tuesday (ha!), when the speaker will be Sue Jones, talking about the work of the British Legion. (Appropriately enough, for local Appeals Organiser John Pulfer, on 814866, would still like to hear from anyone able and willing to help out with this year’s appeal and poppy selling.) Sue’s talk will be followed by samples from menu of the popular local supplier, Wiltshire Farm Foods. Visitors are welcome on payment of their £2.

Fancy a trip to Ashford…? Don’t forget the Tuesday Ladies Club are organizing a trip to the renowned Ashford Retail Outlet on Tuesday, November 6. It will cost you a mere £10, and if you’d like more details, then call either Mary Stewart on 813031, or Kath Barnes on 01797 224874

Three cats and a dog… not a good week for Fairlight animals. Two cats are missing; the one, Hollie, from Broadway, is a dark tortoise-shell pet with only one eye, missing since last Saturday, while the other is from Meadow Way. The dog is a very shy Italian greyhound, named Luke. Now Luke is not so much missing as uncatchable; he has been caught in a garage, but nipped out as soon as the door was opened. He is still ‘around’, but is new to his Fairlight owners, and has therefore no strong roots to which he is keen to return. And the third cat? Well, that has been found, and it does not appear to be either of the missing animals. If you know of the whereabouts of any of the missing trio, there are any number of notices posted around the village that will give you numbers to enable you to re-unite them with their distraught owners. Let’s hope next week I can tell you they’ve all been found.

What an increase… We have a new layout for our local paper, and initial reactions are interesting. Meeting up with six village friends for coffee, I heard thoughts rather like those when The (broadsheet) Times put news instead of personal ads on their front pages. Give it a chance, says I. The new guide will hopefully settle down to being much more than just Eastbourne cinema offerings, and will reflect the strength of local amateur theatre, too – and not simply The Stables, which is plainly not the only purveyor of quality amateur acting in the district. As for the Voices, the bland, uniform typeface, and the loss of the red square paragraph markers, coupled with the piano-roll alphabetical inevitability of the progression is very different from the previous seek-and-ye-shall-find regime that obtained hitherto. Perhaps we shall all get to love it sooner or later. At present, the 27% price increase is proving hard to take, with the benefits less apparent than some readers would hope for – not that I’ve spoken to all of them! One hopes that the elasticity of demand does not twang back like a mishandled catapult!