Fairlight village voice

Starting with Holy Communion led by Rev Kay Burnett at St Peters at 8 am, and moving to St Andrews at 10.30 am for Morning Praise, led by Rev Graham Atfield, the day’s worship will be concluded by Evening Prayer, at 6 pm, back at St Peters and led by Richard Baines

Tickets, please… Well, they certainly will if you get some. That’s tickets for the forthcoming concert to be given at St Andrews Church on Saturday, September 22 at 7 pm. The concert, in case you haven’t caught up yet, will be performed by the boys of Canterbury Cathedral Choir under their Director of Music, Dr David Flood, and will consist of a mix of historic and contemporary sacred music by some of the most renowned composers, both ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’. This internationally appreciated and praised choir, not long returned from their 2012 tour of the United States, will be giving Fairlight an opportunity not to be missed, and all for the trifling sum of £8 in advance, or £10 on the door on the night (though I get the feeling that, if you do leave it until the 22nd, there may well be nothing left to purchase on the door!) Tickets are going well, but are not sold out as yet. I would urge you to contact either Alex Brodie on 813515 or Patrick Cox-Smith on 812560 to stake your claim. You will thus be ensured of an evening that promises to resonate in your memory for a long time to come. Why not phone now?

Write’s right… With the new Parish Clerk, Tony Cox, relinquishing his post after but a short tenure, Fairlight Parish Council has appointed John Edmunds as its new, new clerk with effect from September 10. John, who lives in Hastings, has recently retired from a career with local branches of a major bank. Among his interests John has been treasurer of Bodiam Cricket Club for many years. The Parish Council contact list will be updated soon, but in the meantime emails to [email protected] will get through, and of course parishioners can contact the Chairman, Andrew Mier or, indeed, any other councillor.

Road closed… you must know by now that the Fairlight Road, from its junction with the A259 in Ore, right through Pett Level and Winchelsea Beach to the junction with the A259 again, will be closed for five nights from Monday next, September 10 from 7 pm to 6 am each night. They will be replacing cat’s eyes, road markings and signage, and making carriageway repairs to potholes and cracks. Additionally, they will include the Fairlight spur off this main stretch, made up of Waites Lane and Shepherds Way as far as the circle. They are also warning that the removal of the existing white lines will be by hydroblasting, which may be fairly quick, but is also quite noisy. Temporary earplugs may be a good idea. If you wish to use the road during these hours, you may have to wait for up to half an hour for the works to accommodate you, which is reasonable. The size of this project is pretty large and it is obviously impossible to maintain the facilities as we like them to be while such major works are undertaken. If you have queries you can contact the contractors on 0345 60 80 193 – but only during normal day-time hours of 8.30 am to 5 pm Monday to Friday, (but to 4.30 pm Friday)

The Parish Council… had its monthly meeting ten days ago. As usual, there was little that was contentious in the meeting proper, but there was the attraction of the quarterly visit from the Police in the welcome form of PC Paul Fielder. And, as it happens, his name was appropriate on this occasion, for a question from one of the 17 members of the public present introduced almost everyone to ‘lamping’, where animals are hunted at night with the aid of a powerful spotlight, and then shot. Apparently a difficult area in law, involving firearms and animal species, the point raised here appeared to have the added complication of shooting across a public footpath or right of way. The Police, however, are fully aware of the practice, and monitor reports of occurrences.

Our PC was able to provide us all with a very useful number, which is operative from 7 to 11 pm on Friday and Saturday evenings, and which could bring a pretty rapid response team of up to six to deal with any serious case of Anti-Social Behaviour. The number to call is 07787 685 725 – though you are unlikely to need it in our quiet cul-de-sac village, where the events of most concern at present are opportunistic thefts from visiting builders’ unlocked vans (so warn tradesman who are working for you)

The Open Forum led to questions loaded with gentle, polite hostility. In the main, this was due to the fact that Rother has been negotiating a new waste disposal contract, on ‘favourable terms’, but one that will mean that all Fairlight residents who wish to retain their fortnightly green waste collection, will have to pay £25 per year (or was it £26?) The main thrust of the public argument was ‘it ain’t broke, so why are they fixing it’? It seems apparent that the Rother Council has, as we surmised some weeks ago, finessed a tax increase without any prior notification to us residents. However, the self-same service in Hastings currently costs each participant £40 per annum. When our charges come into being, will Hastings, with whom we shall now be jointly contractually bound along with Wealden and Eastbourne, be paying £40 or £25? If it is the latter, it would appear that we shall be subsidising a lower rate for Hastings. Answers were partly clarifying and partly obfuscating. This subject will run and run, like our maggot infested black bins…

Purls of wisdom… I missed it by a couple of days, but Knit and Natter resumed its meetings on Wednesday this week. From now on, meetings will be on the first and third Wednesday of each month, so the next is on September 19. All meetings are from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm at Kingsdown, Channel Way, which is Betty Snow’s house, at the Country Park end of the road. Why not give them a look? They would be very pleased to have you join them, ‘them’ being Lynette Forward, 813417 or [email protected], and Betty Snow, 812694 or [email protected]

The Cutting Hedge… for once, an excruciating pun that is not mine, but one that belongs to James Holland, East Sussex’ grasscutting guru. Activity on our verges has been rampant in the past week (I hope) and James has sent an informative report. Says he, ‘With the recent hot and rainy weather, the grass has shot up, the hedges are growing and a lot of people are asking how they can help. So, as well as carrying out an extra cut this season, the County Council is reminding people how they can get involved.

Highways teams regularly trim the hedges that are on council land, but most hedges on the roadside belong to private landowners. Where highways staff are informed of a problem, they will ask the landowner to cut them back. Please check your hedges regularly and make sure they are not

blocking paths, obscuring road signs or making it difficult for motorists to see the road ahead.

Grass verges in rural parts of East Sussex will get an extra cut this season because there has been so much rain. The highways teams usually cut verges in urban areas five times a year and those in rural areas twice. But after the UK’s wettest June since records began, the county’s verges have grown at a rapid rate. The council has been making good progress with the second cut and the third cut, the extra one, will start in mid-September. Each cut covers 2700km of grass verge and takes around 40 days to complete. (Hey, that’s 42 miles per day – they must have Lewis Hamilton on the Mountfield!) Some people like to cut the grass near their home more often. It is perfectly okay for people to do this, but people wishing to cut the grass on the verge should be aware of the possible risk of injury to themselves, passing pedestrians and traffic, so please do take care and only cut the grass where and when it is safe to do so. To help keep grass and hedges under control, please do not park on grass verges, do not place decorative stones or logs on verges as these can be extremely dangerous, and do maintain your own hedges safely and responsibly.

For more information, see www.eastsussex.gov.uk/grasscutting. To contact James Holland call 01273 482053, or out of hours, 07974 427569

Under way… The Players have started rehearsals for the light period comedy And This Was Odd, which will be running in November. In the cast are Jennifer Annetts, Libby Annetts, David Burchell, Charlotte Eastes, Penny Kenward, Pauling Lucas and Tom Miller, in addition to newcomers Bez Cuss and Jodie Snow, who were mentioned last week. Tickets are not on sale yet, but it won’t be long…

Dorey the very Wise… We have pleaded with our readers to vote for Dorey the Wise, the young local group whose lead singer and songwriter is Fairlight’s talented Aidan Tigwell, in the hopes that would progress further in the Surface International Festival and, lo and behold, the group has made it to become one of seven groups out of 20 competing to make it to the International Finals, to be held in the O2 arena complex on September 29. For the stage in which they have just been successful, there were three judges, each of whom was responsible for 25% of the final marks, with public voting making up the final, vital, quarter. We’ll try to make good and sure you know how, when and where you can cast your votes now the band is in the home straight – let’s see them right through to the very top.

Keep voting… While we’re on the subject of voting, our Activate Youth Club is in the final four in the area in line for £5,000 from the Lloyds Bank Community Fund. There are four finalists, and two will be winners. This highly respected and much loved facility in our village thoroughly deserves what would be a terrific shot in the arm, and you can help them achieve it by sending ‘Text TN4’ to 61119; no need for the parentheses, but do observe the gap between Text and TN4. If you haven’t got your mobile phone handy, or you lack texting confidence, go to lloydsbankinggroupcommunities.com/communityfund/cf_home.asp It’s really very simple on line – and it’s free!

Anyone for lunch…? The Hastings and Rye Conservative Association will be holding its Autumn Buffet Lunch at our village hall at 12.30 pm on Saturday, September 29. Our M.P., Amber Rudd, will be in attendance and tickets for the occasion are £12, which includes donated drinks. If you’d like to go along, call Anne Bird on 813636

Keeping warm this winter…The Energy Advice Centre is to be found at 31 Station Road, Bexhill, and they are an energy co-operative working in partnership with Rother Voluntary Action plus Rother and Hastings Councils. You can contact them on 0844 415 2279, or email them at [email protected]. They can help with free insulation for your house, or someone you know who is in need, and this free offer expires in December. Don’t be fooled by a warm autumn – it will get much colder soon enough. Contact them before it’s too late!

Keith Pollard, Brookfield, Broadway