Fairlight Village Voice 28.02.25
PEWS NEWS St Peter’s is the home for this Sunday’s 11 am service, which will be Morning Praise. This Sunday, Pett Methodists will be joining with friends at the Emmanuel Centre in Battle for a united service, which will commence at 10.30 am.
FRIDAY LUNCH CLUB This Friday, February 28, for your lunch there’s beef casserole and plum tart for afters. There are exercises today, too. Next Friday, March 7, lunch on lasagne and follow that with cheesecake. Comfort plus will be along as well. And at last we’ve matched up correctly what’s to eat with what’s to do or see.
FAIRLIGHT RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION And the first of the four issues for 2025 of Fairlight News, which is free to Association members, as is their invaluable email scheme, lands on your doormat full of colour and interesting news about out village. And among those items is one that was mentioned in the December issue, concerning Fairfest. A new word Fairfest, shortened from Fairlight Festival, was the cultural entity devised by Jennifer Annetts in 2010, and designed to be biennial (that’s every other year), which has been a great success every alternate year since. Along the way, there’s been a total and complete wash-out once, with a couple of near misses, happily there’s been some successful CPR, which tells you how hard all the volunteers work, and last year’s brilliantly enjoyable evening and day Saturday/Sunday. Favourites keep returning every time they come to light once more – the fun dog show, vintage cars, the gym displays, the bbq to die for, the live music, especially the Kytes, favourites of so many. And then wisdom dictated that the popularity of the goings on warranted a change to a one full day fixture annually. And that is exactly what you’ll get, starting this June 21, and preparations are already under way. Diary note now, methinks. You won’t want to miss this.
DINNER DANCE ANYONE? Don’t forget the FRA is advertising its Spring Fling on Saturday, April 5 in the village hall at 7.30 pm. There’ll be a hot supper and pud, bar and music by the Kytes. Tickets, which are £15, can be had from DISH, the Friday Lunch Club or Hairbase – but only until they’ve sold out. If you prevaricate, it’ll all end in tears…
PETT LEVEL INDEPENDENT RESCUE BOAT It’s their first Quiz, and it’s at Fairlight village hall on March 8, starting at 7 pm. Tables of up to six people each at £5 per person. I expect you’re way too late, but you could try calling Jo on 07546 320 558. Don’t miss this column next week, when there’ll be loads of info about their two-pronged fund raising for a new boat and a boathouse extension, and how buying a brick could be very helpful. In the meantime, if you fancy being part of their action, they will be recruiting at the Boathouse from 10 am to 1 pm on Saturdays March 15 and 22. Volunteer roles include Boat crew, Shore crew, Fundraisers, Events and social media, Launch vehicle drivers, Admin support and a Finance manager. Their number is 01424 812457.
FAIRLIGHT PLAYERS Gail Force Nine is the brand new Kate O’Hearn Comedy in rehearsal in readiness for production in May. Ticket interest is comparable to that for a forthcoming Taylor Swift event and, indeed, they will be on sale in March. They will be available from Sue Evens at DISH on Mondays up to lunch time, or online, or call 07988 540 757. As for ‘when’, keep your eyes peeled for an announcement. They are unlikely to hoist the South cones.
WUF AND DISH – AND WHAT ELSE? First there was WUF. That was Warm Up Fairlight, and it came a while ago when we were all exhausted by the deprivations of Covid, only to find a very sharp fall in temperatures and a very sharp rise in the prices of energies with which to fight the potentially paralysing cold. Fairlight was to be warmed up for six hours each Monday in the village hall, Wednesdays in St Peter’s, and Fridays in the village hall again. Three days was extremely ambitious, but the scheme worked very successfully on the Mondays although those attending tended not so much to need the heat, but the social contact, which was enjoyable and invaluable. Other Parish Councils had heard of WUF and had copied the scheme to some extent or other, while ours settled down to a donation-driven self-sufficient social hub – DISH.
The Parish Council made sure that DISH worked well and did what they intended, but it meant that they had insufficient time simultaneously to seek the details and set up Helping Hands, which they had studied and was running very well in Robertsbridge, collating a pool of people who could get fellow residents to hospital appointments and similar commitments, which would be very useful when the buses do not always solve that sort of problem. One hopes the new Council may see this initiative revived and then completed.
Keith Pollard, Brookfield, Broadway