Etchingham

ETSR present two short ghost stories, by M.R. James, performed by R.M. Lloyd Parry, “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to you My Lad” and “The Ash Tree”.

The performance will be on Saturday February 8 at 7.30pm in the Church. Refreshments will be available to purchase. Tickets are £10 each available from [email protected] , payment, by cash or cheque payable to ‘ETSR’, required at time of booking.

Last Friday morning (January 24) representative of East Sussex County Council, ETSR, the Parish Council, some children from the school, village residents and representative from the contractors, gathered in the Lambing Field for the cutting of the first turf to start the construction work on the new school and village hall. So we are now one step closure to moving into a brand new school and village hall. I am going up to the site as often as possible and taking photos of the project as it develops, the pictures are all viewable online in a set on Flickr at this location http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttelyob/sets/72157638664694015/ if you take any pictures that you would like to share with the village, email them to me and I will add them to the set, I will of course credit you as the photographer.

Battle Area Community Transport, flexible bus services for the Etchingham area. T Eastbourne, second Monday of alternate months; February 10, April 14, June 9, August 11. To Ashford or Tenterden, third Friday of alternate months; March 21, May 16, July 18. To Rye, fourth Thursday of alternate months; February 27, April 24, June 26, August 28.

All bookings need to be made in advance, times and pick up locations will be arranged according to requests made. Your bus passes can be used on all journeys. To book or get further information call Lyn on 01424 772001 Monday to Friday, 9am to 12 noon.

Community Speedwatch, we now have six operators trained and the group will be carrying out speed checks in the village over coming weeks. By the time you read this the group will have carried out its second set of Speedwatch sessions, and there is at least one a week planned for every week until the end of Aprilm more frequent sessions will probably be carried out during the summer months. With more volunteers available we would be able to do more frequent checks, if you are concerned about traffic speeds through the village, consider volunteering for the local group. If you want to find out more about how Speed Watch works go to the village website www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk, follow the Speed Watch link on the left, or send an email to [email protected] . Sussex Police records show that a driver is caught speeding somewhere in Sussex every ten minutes.

51,121 motorists were issued with Notices of Intended Prosecution (NIP’s) between January and December last year. Sussex Police figures show that daily more than 140 drivers are given NIP’s for speeding and either summonsed to court, given points on their licence or ordered to pay a fine.

If your organisation has events planned for the coming months, let me know the dates as soon as possible, even if you only have the date without full details, I can then put the date in the column so that people can put the date in their diary, you can then send me full details nearer the date.

Get information for this column to me as soon as possible, if you have a diary of events planned for the year let me have the dates and I will put in a list of village events for the year so that people can put the dates in their diaries. There are several ways to get your info to me, but email is preferred because there is less chance of errors during copying. I need information by 10pm on Monday to be sure it will be in time for inclusion, I can sometimes add extra items on Tuesday morning, but this cannot be guaranteed. Just a little reminder, I get plenty of information about events that are taking place, but I get very little follow up information, after your event try and remember to send me brief account of how successful your event was, it can be as simple as a thank you to those that attended and how much money was raised etc. You can deliver to 2 Park Farm Close, telephone 01580 819532 or 07879 818076 or email [email protected].

Note; I have only added a short piece about the turf cutting ceremony last week, on the assumption that you will be able to use some of the information already sent elsewhere in the paper.