Catsfield

Harvest Festival: This Sunday, 30th September the Harvest Festival Thanksgiving Service will be held at St Laurence Church at 11am. This will also be a Family Communion Service and Harvest Lunch will be available afterwards. Tomorrow Saturday 29th the church will be dressed for the harvest celebrations and gifts of foliage and flowers will be most welcome - but before 9.30am please. Do come along and join in this traditional celebration and thanksgiving for all God’s gifts to us, especially in this lovely rural village where we are constantly so close to nature. Everyone is welcome.

WI: The October meeting of the Catsfield WI will be on Thursday 4th October at 2.30pm in the Village Hall. The speaker will be Penny Philcox talking to us about ‘A Miscellany of Local History’ and because of the local topic, the meeting will be open to anyone who would like to come along (gentlemen too!) The usual delicious WI tea will be served, do come and join us for this special meeting.

Quiz Night: The fundraisers of St Laurence Church will be holding a Quiz Night in the Village Hall at 7.30pm on Saturday 13th October. The price of tickets is £5 per person and are available now from the Village Shop or on the door. Teams can be of four or six people, so gather your friends and think up an original name to call yourselves. Liquid refreshments will be available and bring your own nibbles. John will be setting his usual variety of challenging and fun questions and everyone is bound to have a good time!

Village Hall Bookings: I will repeat this piece in case any of you missed it last week.

Catsfield Village Hall Committee would like to say a big ‘Thank You’ to Kumanan and Priya at the Village Store for looking after the Village Hall bookings for this past year. Carol Hodgson has now taken over this role with immediate effect and is the point of contact for all enquiries and bookings. Carol can be contacted at [email protected] or by telephone on 01424 892831 / 07967116972 or in person at April Cottage, Church Road, Catsfield. You can also now check the availability of the Hall online via Catsfield Parish Council’s website - www.catsfieldpc.co.uk under Clubs and Societies.

Sport: The very heavy rain endured by the few football supporters on Saturday didn’t dim their delight at a very good 1 - 1 draw against Peche Hill at home. Two of our top players couldn’t play, but the team battled hard and it was a good match with no blue cards, at least for us. The groundsman’s two coats, jeans, cap and boots were drying all night in the porch, because he and Martin Gurr had also erected the wire necessary to protect the cricket wicket over winter and got extremely wet doing so. Tomorrow we play Sedlescombe also at home in the Wisdens Cup.

Earlier in the week, the groundsman had been working on the cricket square with one ton of loam, some grass seed, help from two ex-cricketers who help look after The Polegrove, wheelbarrows, scarifiers, brushes, lute (no, he hasn’t given up poetry for medieval music) and other items of torture. Please keep off the square, a lot of effort has gone into it ready for next season.

Tim’s Progress: Martin was able to pass on the news, via ‘Whats App’ (what is that?) that Tim Pitman had crossed the Simplon Pass and is now in Italy, all is well. We believe he is cycling down the east coast which is considerably flatter than the west and will be going through the boring, but flat rice growing area. More news next week.