Etchingham

During the Fete I will be putting on a display of old photographs, postcards, documents and memorabilia in the Church, depicting much of the village history, and a lot of interesting items from neighbouring villages.

The display will be based around my collection of old photos and postcards, along with a lot of items which are forming the basis of a village archive, I also have access to a lot of photos and historic material relating to Etchingham Women’s Institute which will be on display, if you any suitable photos or items I can borrow get in touch with the details. Also as this will be the last year in the old school building, if you have any photos, school books or items that you made at school, or items relating to your parents or grandparents time at the school, I am keen to borrow for the display. You might have photos, books, documents, press cuttings or other items from your school days, or perhaps from parents or grandparents.

Because of rehearsals for the evening concert, the Church will need to be closed by 3.30pm, so the Church will be open for the display from 1pm, entry before 2pm will be by the usual entrance on the south side, when the Fete opens the west doors will be opened so visitors can enter from Queen’s Gardens.

The new PCSO for the village has now taken up his post and is gradually finding his way around the area, his name is Iain Tomsett [email protected] Mobile; 07810813409, or call 101 and ask to be put in touch with PCSO Tomsett. Iain will be holding regular “Meet me in person” sessions at the Bistro at 9.30am on the following dates; July 18: August 5 & 14: September 1 & 16. Your chance to pop in and meet Iain, make him aware of any problems, ask him questions or just introduce yourself. Iain’s mobile number is the same one that was used by Tom, so if you have it in your phone just change the name.

You may or may not be aware that there is a calendar for village events on the village website www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk for village residents and organisations to add details of events. This gives the village an online calendar of events without the need for the website admin to spend time updating. The calendar is included on the website but is NOT updated as part of the site update programme, it is up to village residents and event organisers to add details to the calendar. To add events to the calendar go to the website Home Page and scroll down until you reach the ‘Events Calendar’ section, click on ‘Access the calendar here’ and follow the instructions on the page. If your event has a fixed start time it is probably best to add it as an ‘Appointment’. Please do not send the details to the website admin to add, the idea of the calendar is for village residents and organisations to use the calendar to find out what events are on and add their own, this may then help to avoid clashes of dates. You will need a Password to add entries, I emailed the password to most of the people that I knew would need it, if you do not have the password or have forgotten it, send an email to the address below. However, if you find you have entered some details incorrectly or need to alter some details later, you will not be able to edit the entry once added, only the Admin can do that, if you need to alter something in an entry send an email to [email protected]

The Flower and Dog Show this year will be on Saturday September 13, so start nurturing your plants to get the best exhibits for the show. Get busy making your handicraft items, and photographers get snapping the photography classes this year are ‘Frozen in time’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Portrait of Etchingham’ and ‘Victory’.

Community Speedwatch; The Speedwatch group continues to operate sessions in most weeks, but in the summer months demand on the equipment from other groups in the area increases, so we do have a couple of weeks when we cannot operate because the equipment was already booked by another group. You can keep up to date with the weekly activity of the Etchingham Community Speedwatch group on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/etchinghamspeedwatch ‘Like’ the page and get news as it is added to the page.

We currently have only six trained and active operators, we need more volunteer operators if we are to continue with the same frequency or we will have to reduce the frequency to avoid overloading the few volunteers we have.

If you, or you know in the village, feels inclined to get involved, please get in touch with me. Volunteers need to be trained in the use of the equipment and the safety issues involved before they can go out on Speed checks, the training is not difficult and takes just a couple of hours at Battle Police Station. Once trained, volunteer operators can take part in as many or few sessions as they want. Anyone interested in helping can get more information on the village websitewww.etchinghamvillage.co.uk or atwww.communityspeedwatch.co.uk, updates of the group’s activities are on Facebook www.facebook.com/etchinghamspeedwatch If you have any questions - please ask. Colin Boylett, Speedwatch Co-ordinator 01580 819532 [email protected]

If you might be interested in helping, but would like to find out more before putting your name down, you are welcome to join the group on a session, as an observer, to see how Speedwatch works. A maximum of two observers on a session, so if interested please [email protected] to arrange a session date and time that suits you.

If you have given me details of your event to put in this column, please remember to send me some details after the event so I can let your supporters know how successful the event was, how much you raised, interesting facts etc. Your supporters will be interested to know how you did.

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 07941 786244 or email [email protected].

Colin Boylett

2 Park Farm Close