Fairlight

Church Matters: While there is a 10.30 am Benefice Holy Communion Service at Pett this Sunday, there will be no service at St Andrew’s this week!

St Andrew’s Church Tower: As many are already well aware, Fairlight church tower has fantastic views across the channel. It also has a peal of bells which can be played by visitors. It would make good sense if the tower were to become more of an attraction for tourists to our locality, but for this to happen the church powers that be would need better advertising and promotion plus a team of willing guides. Would you, or someone you know, like to help achieve this? If you do, please contact the Rector, Rev Richard Barron or his wife, Kath. Either call on 812799, or email [email protected] or www.fairlightandpett.com

Today at MOPPs, and next week, too: Today, Friday, October 28, it’s a double celebration for MOPPs as they think about Halloween – and the Group’s eighth Birthday Party. As ever, singer Carol George will be providing the entertainment. And as if all that was not enough, there will also be the free in-house hearing aid maintenance, an offer which non-MOPPs members are also permitted to take advantage! Lunch today is sausage, sage and onion pie, with tiramisu for pudding.

Next Friday, November 4, there will be Celia King’s popular chair-based exercises, as well as Nicola’s Age UK toe-nail cutting service and a star prize for the raffle. When the food comes along it will be fish and chips, and then cheesecake.

The Fairfest table-top sale: Last Saturday saw the village hall jam-packed full with tables large and small groaning under the weight of decent items looking for a new home. Add a goodly number of stall holders and their friends plus many customers, actual and potential, and you have a typical, thriving Fairfest event. Let’s hope they made a few bob – it all comes back to us in terms of items and features booked to appear at the next Fairfest, in a couple of years time.

A ticket to ride: Seats are still available for the Players’ production next month of Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train. Not far short of its 100th birthday, this play has been a minor classic ever since it was written. The play is on track for presentation from Thursday 10 to Saturday 12 November, at 7.30 pm each evening, and there is also a 2.30 pm matinee on the Saturday for those who dislike the earlier dark nights. Probably some in the village will recall the 1941 film which starred Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch and Kathleen Harrison, with Raymond Huntley. Turned into a vehicle for Askey, it was a great success but a bit of a parody of Ridley’s renowned play. Tickets are only £6 each, and they’re in the Post Office.

The Club: Activate, which is what The Club used to be, ran a highly successful Race Night a while ago, and now the successors, The Club, are aiming for their own success with their forthcoming Race Night at the village hall on Friday, November 4 at 7.30 pm. That short simple sentence should clarify what’s going on (!). Tickets are £5, a price that includes a ploughman’s supper (he’ll be furious you’re getting his supper, I expect). Wendy has those tickets, so call her on 812297, or email her at [email protected]

The Parish Council meeting: October’s meeting of the Parish Council will be held in the village hall next Tuesday, November 1 at 7 pm. Unfortunately, we are unable to tempt your attendance with pointers towards those succulent, ripe, low-hanging items of extreme interest as the Agenda is not yet finalised. Worry not, for experienced Council-watchers will know that over 90% of each agenda is under headings that simply roll over from month to month. Go along next Tuesday, then, and enjoy a pleasant surprise. There’s always the Open Forum, which sometimes rewards attendees with oddball off the wall gems!

The Tuesday Ladies Club: The Club’s October meeting featured a demonstration of wood turning by Bob Turner, who passed round samples of bowls, pens, boxes, candlesticks and clocks made from ash, sycamore, London plane, oak, sapele and laburnum. All the while he was telling the members about the skills and tricks of the trade and making a lidded box on the electric lathe. He has also made pens out of acrylic and laminate and a really beautiful bowl made of plywood. One very lightweight bowl was made of balsa wood which he said, surprisingly, is technically a hardwood! One bowl was marked with fascinating lines and changes of colour caused by the wood being colonised by fungi. Bob presented the finished box to Val King, who thanked him for his interesting presentation.

The club’s next meeting will feature the excellent and popular speaker, Laton Frewen, whose subject, appropriately, will be the Gunpowder Plot. This meeting will be on November 15 at the village hall starting at 2.15 pm. As always, visitors – even men – are welcome for a mere £2, which includes tea and cake.

The Gardening Club Trading Hut: The hut will be open for business tomorrow from 10 am until 12 noon for the last time for three months, resurfacing on the first Saturday in February. You’ll be amazed just how quickly it will come round again! Meanwhile, I’m afraid I have been mistaken in the belief that the hut volunteers would be holding an impromptu end-of-season party in celebration of shifting tons of compost, grit and birdseed, making their pips squeak with a gin and Tomorite, or obscuring their vision with a vodka and Coolglass. Sadly, it doesn’t happen like that at all!

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