Fairlight

A reminder… that it is the Players AGM tomorrow, Saturday June 14 at 7.30 pm in the village hall. The business at the start of the evening should not take too long, and it will be followed by a specially written murder mystery plus supper and licensed bar. It is, of course, free to all members, and if you’ve forgotten to say you’d be going, please call 813631 a.s.a.p. for the caterers to react. The murder promises to be a unique and interesting event, and a report will follow next week…!

Fairlight First Responders… are one among a number of assets of which the village is justly proud. We now have four Responders looking out for us, each of them fully equipped, as is the village hall with its public access defibrillator. Apart from financial help for the equipment of one of the responders, which came from South East Coast Ambulance Service, all the necessary funds have been raised within the village, especially with their Open Gardens day two summers ago. So successful was this that the event is being repeated with no fewer than 14 gardens open on either or both Saturday June 21 or Sunday 22. It will only cost you £5 for a programme for admission to all the gardens, but you will need some spare cash for food, drinks, plants and other tempting offers as you go round. The gardens will be open from 11 am to 4 pm on each day. Children go free, but they must be accompanied. There will be a wide range of styles and sizes – something to inspire everyone, in fact. Plus a chance to be just a little bit nosey…?!

A good turnout… at the village hall Summer Fair last Saturday, which led to just short of a highly respectable £1,400 for hall funds. Thanks come from the hall’s officers and committee for all those who manned stalls, especially the Tuesday Ladies on lunches, the Church Ladies on cakes and refreshments and the Gardening Club outside on plants.

The second of three weekends… of particular interest to lovers of art when local artists and makers of art across the South East region are welcoming visitors into their studios and workshops from 11 am to 6 pm, on both tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. You can meet the artists in person and talk to them about their materials, techniques and philosophy. Three artists local to Fairlight are Annie Soudain, printmaker, at 5 Firehills Cottages, Coastguard Lane, Anna Wilson-Patterson, painter, at Spark Cottage, Fyrsway, Fairlight, and Tim Riddihough, sculptor, at Fardham, Chick Hill, Pett Level. Just put ‘seos’ into your search engine (South East Open Studios) and see the vast extent of this exercise, which continues on next Saturday and Sunday, June 21 and 22.

May’s Trefoil Guild meeting… was entitled ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall’, and it was comprised of a talk and demonstration on make-up by Shirley Lancaster. The Chairman had volunteered to be the model for the occasion and found it very relaxing. Members asked many questions and tried some of the samples which Shirley had taken along, and the Chairman was extremely pleased with the end result of her beauty treatment; members said it had taken years off her!

The meeting on June 25 is ‘Stop, Look and Get the Answer’, when members will go out on a short fun walk ‘round the block’ using their observance skills to answer questions along the route. Those unable to make the walk will be given a different observation activity back at base until the walkers return.

The Tuesday Ladies Club meets next week … with ‘Say Cheese’, a ‘tutored tasting’, something we didn’t seem to have in the days of ‘Cheese please, Louise’ which was all of 49 years ago. No doubt the tutored tasting will include crumbly Cheddar, wonderful Wensleydale, sultry smoked and stinky Stilton (which tells you what my cheese tastes are). It’s all in the village hall starting at 2.15 pm.

Meanwhile, the Club’s outing to Ruxley Manor the following Tuesday, June 24 still has a few places remaining on the coach. If you’d like to go to this garden and outlet centre, which is near Sidcup, give Mary Stewart a call on 813031. For non-members, the cost is £8 per person.

Fairfest news… The exhibition to remember the First World War planned for this year’s festival will be combined with the Royal British Legion stand. They are kindly bringing along Great War posters, but the Fairfest organisers have the offer of only a very few items so far; they now hope that others may have something they would be prepared to lend. Clearly, any such items are precious, and all can be assured that the display will be in the main marquee where there will always be someone on duty. All loan items should be clearly labelled and brought to the main marquee before the start of the Festival at 12 noon. Any stories, letters or poems concerning friends or family involved in any way during WW1 would also be appreciated, especially if they have a Fairlight connection.

Easy listening… East Sussex Hearing Resource Centre is a registered charity working in partnership with Adult Social Care to provide a no charge mobile information and advice service for deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people living in East Sussex. Its arrival in Fairlight is always popular and well-attended. But our next turn is not until the autumn, and those desperate for help, maintenance and advice on hearing problems will be pleased to learn of two imminent visits to our neck of the woods before the end of the month. The mobile unit will be visiting Icklesham and will be in the Robin Hood Pub Car Park on the Main Road from 1.30 to 3.30 pm on Thursday, June 26, and then in Pett, being in the Village Hall Car Park on the Pett Road from 1.30 to 3.30 pm on Monday, June 30. Fairlight residents in need of hearing assistance will be as welcome in Icklesham or Pett as they would be on home ground! You could always contact the East Sussex Hearing Resource Centre, either by phone to 01323 722505, or by e-mail to [email protected] if there is something specific about your hearing that is worrying you.

Putting on the Ritz… is coming to the village hall on Saturday, June 28, by courtesy of the Floral Club. Your £8 ticket will get you a fantastic tea, and the chance to relax among friends while top musician Iain Kerr entertains at the piano. The Post Office has the tickets now – hurry while stocks last!

Failures… not only of power in the village before and after last Christmas, but also of communication with the apparent loss of a letter from our Parish Council to UK Powernetworks, the company responsible for getting the stuff to our homes. After several letters and months, Terry Still of the power company came down to meet with Council Chairman Andrew Mier, the Preservation Trust’s Paul Capps and the Residents Association’s Paul Draper. Mr Still explained that the four cable system was insufficiently robust to withstand the problems in the exposed south west areas of the village, and showed detailed plans to convert the system to the ‘bundled’ fatter cable, like that which EDF installed in Broadway and other parts of village some time ago. The discussions were encouraging, as the company appears fully aware of the problems besetting our fairly far-flung village, though it will be necessary to complete any changes piecemeal, rather than in one fell swoop. The Trust and the Residents Association have promised to talk to any resident who is concerned about the work that could be necessary through their gardens if they are living in Fyrs Way or Channel Way. Andrew Mier’s report will be discussed at the next Parish Council meeting

Echoes of the present… Many, or perhaps most, of the villagers of long standing will recall with affection the A4 landscape ‘Echoes of the Past’ book on Fairlight, a duplicated tome of somewhat rural charm in which the pictures could be seen as though through a glass, darkly, due to the state-of-the-art of duplication with which the book was produced. Now, after a period of gestation longer than an elephant and much meticulous research Haydon Luke’s eagerly anticipated book ‘Fairlight – A Sussex Village by the Sea’ will be available from Saturday, June 28, priced at £19.99. Illustrated in colour, the book runs to almost 400 beautifully presented pages in 25 chapters. The first three cover the village over the passage of time, and the remainder are thematic, and the book is set to become a must-have for all savvy residents. It can be pre-ordered by writing to Haydon at 9, The Close, Fairlight, TN35 4AQ, or by emailing him at [email protected]. Your order means you will be agreeing to pay by cash or cheque when your copy is delivered. Local delivery is free.

Bye-bye barriers… Just as soon as Kier/Southern Water cleared away their barriers, signs, cones and what-have-you from Waites Lane, than along come a fresh bunch, this time from Morrisons Utility Services in a delightful shade of Cambridge blue. This company must be connected to Morrisons the supermarket, because they brought two piles of earth or infill – for the price of one, no doubt. Now the interesting thing about this round of signage is that there are four triangular ones out, two showing Road Narrows, and two showing what is either Man at Work or Man erecting Large Umbrella. These are attached to their bases by strips of flat bendy steel, which obviously allow the sign to flex in the wind and not be blown over. The trouble is, they have been flexed for so long that the actual signs are very nearly horizontal. Anyone coming up Waites Lane in a low-flying helicopter will know exactly the state of the roadworks. Mere earthbound motorists may not be so fortunate.

My cup runneth over… well, it doesn’t, actually, but it caught your attention because what runneth over is the dog waste bin near the Gardening Club hut. It is now festooned with plastic bags of various sizes and hues, like yellow ribbons round an old oak tree. If they’re not quick, they’ll need Google Street View to locate the bin under all that…

A bizarre occurrence… leading on from the note above, there is something particularly weird going on. Many others, like me, have bemoaned the filthy abandonment of dog mess where it is generated. Now some strange impulse is making people pick up the offensive product in those special tie-handle black bags, just as we would all wish them to do – and then leaving the filled bags right there. One in Lower Waites Lane is about eighty paces from two dog bins, one in either direction. Wake Up, England!

Keith pollard

Brookfield, Broadway