Fairlight

MOPPs: Today at MOPPs, the entertainment is with the ever popular singing voice of Jim Saphin, a familiar treat that all the members will enjoy. It’s toenail cutting time today as well. Lunch will be

sausage and mash followed by fruit crumble. Next Friday, March 18, it’s the turn of another popular and regular visitor, Keith Osbourne, with his Music for Health. Next week’s lunch will consist of turkey and ham pie, with banoffee pie for sweet.

The Bowls Club: The club is hosting a coffee morning at the village hall tomorrow, Saturday, March 12 from 10 am to 12 noon. All will be most welcome at this event, which always proves a strong attraction. There’ll be a home made cake stall, a raffle and many other games on offer and, the catch-all titbit that pulls them all in, bingo at 11am.

Only a month to go before the green is open once more. Details of what’s to come on the bowls front will appear nearer the time…

On Monday next: The by now well-known Hearing Resource Centre will be in the village hall car park next Monday, March 14 from 1.30 until 3.30 pm. All your immediate hearing aid problems may be addressed and most probably resolved then. Take your aids and your little brown book along with you.

Also on Monday next: It’s the Wine and Social Club’s March meeting when, appearing at the Club for the first time, the speaker will be Colin Page and his subject, Nature’s Curiosities. Colin is an accomplished, interesting and polished presenter, whose last appearance in Fairlight came on the Monday of this week at the Gardening Club meeting – see the note below! Membership numbers are quite high, but there well be room for a few more. If you’d like to join this well-supported group, speak to Christine Jones on 813538.

Tuesday Ladies Club: For their March meeting, the Ladies Club will be welcoming Penny Harris, who will tell all about ‘A Wealden Woman’s War’. The meeting starts at 2.15 pm on Tuesday next, March 15.

The Gardening Club: After their February AGM and bring-and-share, the Club had their first ‘proper’ meeting of the new year last Monday. They welcomed back Colin Page who gave a very interesting talk on ‘The Garden Visitor’, covering all aspects of ‘visitors’ from us visiting gardens such as Kew to the animals and insects that visit our gardens. Colin is a very accomplished nature photographer and, as always, he illustrated his talk with some stunning photographs which all the members enjoyed. It is hoped that Garden Visitors will be numerically significant this year when it comes to the second weekend in June, when it’s Open Garden time in the village again, and all in aid of the Cliff Preservation scheme.

Dependent on the weather, seed sowing will be in full flow this month and the Club Hut has plenty of compost, including Jack’s Magic, in stock for all your needs. It is open every Saturday morning from 10.00 am to 12.00 noon.

Feat of clay: Despite the challenging conditions of the winter, the plants in the new beds on the Circle have battled through and survived much wind and rain, though very little frost. Many will have noticed the brave tulips poking their heads up above the soggy clay (worse than Mary Berry’s soggy bottoms!) in the beds on the Circle, and a good show of colour is anticipated in the coming weeks. What will the shortage of frost do to the population of plant eating pests this summer? The Club Hut can probably help if you get overwhelmed, stopping just short of a flame thrower…

Activate Youth Club: The Club is having a fund raising event in the village hall on Sunday, March 20, starting at 3 pm. It’ll take the form of a Musical Afternoon and Tea, and local favourites participating will include Jim Saphin and Aidan Tigwell, increasingly well known through his founder membership of the group Dorey the Wise. Sounds good, in more senses than one!

No surprise here, then: Laurie Beetham, who is constantly monitoring the state of the Fairlight cliffs and any changes they under go, has noted that further cliff falls or slips have been noticed in the Parish. These latest incidents have been in the Sea Road West and Rockmead Road areas, and once more are due to high surface and ground water levels.

Fancy a trip out next Wednesday?: Just a short hop away, the Sedlescombe and District Garden Society still has some tickets for ‘An evening with Tom Hart Dyke’, in the Sedlescombe village hall starting at 7 pm, with doors open half an hour earlier at 6.30 pm. TV personality, horticulturist, author and plant hunter Tom Hart Dyke is the heir to the family seat of Lullingstone Castle in Eynsford, Kent. He will be giving an illustrated talk on his vast horticultural experiences, having created the World Garden of Plants, located at Lullingstone, containing some 8,000 species of plants, many collected by Tom from their native environments. Tom made national news when kidnapped for nine months in Panama when on a plant hunting trip. Those who are not members of the Sedlescombe society are welcome to attend at a cost of £5 per head. Refreshments will be provided and there will be a raffle with some impressive prizes! A lot of interest has already been shown in this event, (and a number of Fairlight residents have already signed up to go along,) so do check ticket availability by calling Sue Parsons on 01580 831996.

The Land that Time Forgot: Well, not just time, but East Sussex Highways, which is far more serious in a way. Inevitably, the land is Battery Hill, in the wooded bit up towards St Andrew’s, and Waites Lane – no specific area, rather all of it until it transforms into Shepherds Way. The surfaces of these two stretches are abysmal, and have been for some time, and it is to be hoped that, with new money coming along in April, they may be planning to redress – literally, I suppose – the problem over the coming months.

The standing complaint area is the kerbside pot holes on the south side of Fairlight Road between Pineridge and Hysted. I say kerbside, though there is no kerb on that stretch. If they could find a few pounds and put one in, they might not see a pot hole for years. Just look at the generally good, unblemished gutters on all the portions of this road that are blessed with kerbs, and you’ll see what I mean.

Government Grammar Warning: There are three exclamation marks in this Voice! Whoops! That makes five! Now it’s six. Oh, stop it or Brussels will hack my computer so I can only use them upside down, as insisted by the Spanish¡

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