STOP PRESS Monday night's snowfall meant that both Thomas Peacocke and Freda Gardham Schools were closed yesterday. The only buses running on Tuesday morning were those along the main road to Hastings via Icklesham. But the railway staff told us at 9.15 that all the trains, including the very early ones, had run so far - congratulations, British Rail! We are asked by the Red Cross to say that the Thrift Shop is cancelled this month, but will reappear as usual on 20 February.. Unless the snow vanishes very swiftly - and it doesn't look like it at the time of writing - people intending to go to any of the week's events would be wise to check up with the organisers before turning out. (See also "Snow Scene II"- page 6.)
Doubtless many people have horror stories about burst pipes in the past few days, and there will be more to come; certainly two Rye shops had nasty experiences. On Wednesday, the Batemans at the Rye Bookshop found their floor, and in due course their cellar, awash with water coming from the rooms above, whose owners were away; books and flooring were extensively damaged, and the shop cannot reopen until eying-out is complete - with luck, early next week. Mr. and Mrs. Bateman are most grateful to all those who saw them mopping up and offered help of various kinds.
On Friday Alan Webb arrived at the Tuck Shoppe at 5 am as usual to find water pouring out of the bakery door and everything wet. Here too the trouble was not originally on his property, and he had to find next door's stopcock in the dark before he could even start clearing up. There was no baking first thing, though they were able to do some later in the day, and Alan is very grateful to Andy Thomson at Longs who helped out with bread for the morning customers.
On Monday we heard a sad story of a Council house in Udimore Road which had had no water at all, either in the taps or the (outside) loo, for a full week. The tenant is unable to get up into the roof to see if water is coming into the main tank, and so far the Council's plumber has not managed to do this either. Rother has only the one plumber in the Rye area - but a whole week without any water at all? We do hope that this is (a.) unusual, and (b) by the time you read this, no longer true.
A reader passes on a useful idea which worked for her neighbours when their fitted carpet was soaked by a burst pipe; they hired a carpet-cleaning machine which sucked up the water and left the carpet merely damp.
Mr. McEntee, of Icklesham, knows all about our big bang (see last week's GAZETTE) - to his cost. Up early on 14 December, he saw the flash of lightning and heard the single enormous clap of thunder, and thought no more about it until he was taking his truck down to his land at Winchelsea Beach later that morning to get a sheep out of the dyke.
One such sheep is nothing out of the ordinary, but then they noticed another - and in the next field there was an astonishing scene. Sheep lay, apparently dead, all over the place. Some were in the dyke, and right in the middle of the 14-acre field - with no trees, no pylons, no nothing anywhere near - was one poor victim completely blackened, with scraps of wool sprayed over a wide area around it.
Sheep were straying all over the place in their panic, and when the rescue operation was complete they had some half-dozen corpses (and another later); the stunned sheep recovered, but Mr. McEntee wonders what will happen later when lambing time comes.
The lightning must have struck right in the middle of the field, on the right of the road where it turns off to the Beach and about half-a-mile from the houses which border it - who clearly had something of a lucky escape.
2.
Mr. Bert Care, of Camber, who died very suddenly in hospital on 6 January, was 68 and leaves a widow, a son and daughter, and grandchildren. As a young man Mr. Care worked on the buses; he served in Italy with the Army in WW2, and then came back to work for Vidler & Co in the market and sale-room. In the mid-1960s he changed course completely, and took over as manager of Rivers, the men's outfitters in the High Street, where he welcomed many of the farmers who knew him from his market days. He was particularly renowned in the district for the shop's excellent range of working clothes. Mr. Care was a Rotarian until his retirement recently, and also a member of Rye Artisans Golf Club. Nearly four years ago he retired from business, but could often be found helping out at his son Kelvin's shop in Cinque Ports Street. He was regarded with respect and affection by his friends and customers from a wide area, and there is much sympathy for Mrs. Care and her family in their sudden loss. She and her children are most grateful to all who have sent such an overwhelming number of cards and messages, and beautiful flowers. The funeral has taken place.
Mr. Vic Shears, of Udimore, died in hospital on 7 January; he was 71. He leaves a widow and two sons. Mr. Shears was for many years employed as an electricism by Mr. V.J. Moore in his Cinque Ports Street business.
Mrs. Olive Pierce, of King's Avenue, died in Rye Hospital on 12 January. She had been in poor health for a considerable time. The wife of Mr. William "Blower" Pierce, she leaves six children; it was her youngest, Roy, who was awarded the sail-training place last summer by the John Williams tlemorial committee, and his achievement gave her much pleasure and pride.
Mrs. Daisy Butchers, formerly of Camber, died suddenly in Greyfriars on Sunday (13th); she was 90 last November, and retained her good health and remarkable memory until the end. Nurse Butchers, as she has long been known, leaves a son, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She was born in Brede to an ex-Army family, and all six of her brothers followed their father's profession; a trained nurse, she also served in France during WW1. After the war she went out to join her sister who was nursing in America, but in 1926 returned to England and became District Nurse (which of course included midwife) for Iden, when she was the first occupant of the Nurse's Cottage in Houghton Green Lane. When she married a Camber man, she exchanged Iden for Camber and Rye Harbour, covering her district for years on a bicycle - sometimes with the help of the Harbour ferry, but having to go right round by Rye in rough weather. Writing in 1977, Nurse Butchers described vividly the evacuation of the Camber villagers in 1940; she herself had been called out of retirement in 1939 to work as staff sister at Rye Hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Butchers went to live with relatives in Iden (their son Clive was in Bedford with the Grammar School), though Mr. Butchers's job as a coastguard was to patrol the long and at that time hazardous beach from Dungeness. After the war, the family returned to Camber, but eventually Mrs. Butchers - by then a widow - had to take the decision to give up her home and move into Grey-friars; however, her son says that she was very happy about this, since her mother had lived at the house for some years as a young girl when it was still in private ownership. In her 20-odd years as a midwife, Nurse Butchers must have delivered hundreds of babies in the villages round Rye, but she will also be blessed by future historians for her little book "Jottings of Camber Village" (1977) which records in reminiscence and photographs so much which has now gone. The funeral takes place on Monday (21st) at Hastings Crematorium at 10.30.
Mrs. Alice Winter, who died at Coulsden, Surrey, on 14 December - her 89th birthday - was born in Rye in 1895 as Alice Wright, daughter of William Newton Wright of the firm of Wright and Pankhurst, and lived as a girl in the house he built beside the firm's big warehouse and stables in Cinque Ports Street. Mrs. Winter's ashes will be interred in Rye Cemetery near the graves of her parents and two of her sisters, her grandfather James Wright and his wife, and her great-grandfather Isaac and his wife.
(continued...)
- 3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 16.1.1985
Mrs. Moira Chetham-Strode, of Watchbell Street, died in a Hastings nursing home on Sunday (13th); she was, unbelievably, 81. After a very major operation last year, she took up the threads of her life in a typically indomitable manner, admired and sustained by her wide circle of friends. The "Mapp and Lucia" filming, in which her house was used, gave her a great deal of pleasure, and she in turn was regarded with much affection by the LWT team, one of whom had worked with her when she was a London stage designer many years before. She and her playwright husband Warren came to live near Rye in the 1950s, and his delightful children's books about cats were written in the Houghton Green house which she had converted from an oast. As Moira Verschoyle, she also wrote books, mainly based on her County Limerick childhood. Their only son Michael died tragically in an accident, leaving a young son to whom his grandmother devoted a great deal of time and love and pride. Some years ago, after the death of her husband, Mrs. >Chetham-Strode moved into Rye. As a young woman she had been extremely beautiful, and her elegance and style, as well as her wit and keen sense of fun, remained with her until the end of her life, making her company something to look forward to and remember with great pleasure. The funeral will take place at Peasmarsh Church, where her son Michael is buried, on Monday (21st) at noon.
We are so sorry that in last week's obituary notice for Mr. Archie Ellis the wrong address was given for donations to Cancer Relief in his memory.
These should go to Mrs. Phil Ellis at 26 Cadborough Cliff. Our reference to Councillor George Ellis was also misleading, since his son Phil tells us that although a Rye Councillor, Alderman and three times Mayor, Mr. Ellis senior was convinced that national politics should be kept out of local >government, and he always stood for Rye Council as an Independent. He did, however, contest the Rye Parliamentary seat as a Liberal (against Sir George Courthope) in 1918 and 1922, and came as near as anyone has to toppling the Conservative majority which has prevailed since the early 1900s.
At last the long-heralded alterations to the Post Office have reached the planning application stage. A quick look at the plans in the Council offices shows a startling new look to the present building: the entrance up the steps vanishes completely, and is replaced by double doors on the far side of the letter-boxes, giving level entry for wheelchairs (and of course pushehairs, trolleys, etc.).
We hope to give more details of the proposed improvements next week. Other applications in this week's list are for ice-cream vans at the bus turn-round at $-,e Harbour and on the Salts, in each case from 1 April to 31 October, for three years; for alterations to the front elevation of a house in Watchbell Street, removing an existing dormer and constructing another at the back; for a fish shop and extended ice store, etc., beside Monkbretton Bridge; and for a service till and relocation of the night safe at the Natwest Bank in the High Street.
Mrs. Fearon has now heard from Rother's Colin Hudson about the various areas in the town which she suggested might benefit from the Manpower Services community programme, after its success with the Tillingham Avenue ditch. Mr. Hudson points out that the team is not part of Rother's labour force and special approval has to be given for it to take on a project.
Rother does intend to deal with the seedling trees in the Baptist Burying Ground this year, and also to repair its wall, and clearing work will also be done on Hilder's Cliff (the cliff the Traders Passage end belongs, he says, to ESCC). Rother has just two gardeners working in the Rye area, so it will take time. The invasive weed, he adds, is "a tenacious perennial polygonum which is very resistant to herbicides". Frank Palmer tells us that it is in fact alexanders, once used as a (very inferior) substitute for celery, and common in maritime areas; giant hogweed is quite different, and very much larger than the plant along the Tillingham footpath.
4.
Vidler & Co's monthly auction sale
Lower School jumble sale, Ferry Road, 6.30
Movie Society (guest speaker), FEC, 7.30
Christian Lunch Club (speaker from L'Arche, with film), CC, 12 Nat.His.Soc., "A Botanist in Madeira" (Trudy Side), FEC, 7.30 FRAG, "The Arts in China" (Cherry Barnett), TH, 8
Wednesday, 13th WI, "Members with something to say", FEC, 7
TPS Parents Evening (1st year), Lower School
Thursday, 14th Blood Transfusion Service, Baptist Hall, 2 to 4, 5 to 7.45
St. John Nursing Cadets, Grand Prior Presentation, CC, 7.30
Museum Association, "Theatrical Influences on European Ceramics" (Kate Dayson), FEC, 7.30
Town Council Bequests Committee party for OAPS, CC, 3.30 to 6.30
Half-term week
Pancake Race, CC, afternoon
BRCS Thrift Shop (selling on Thursday, Friday and Saturday) Neighbourhood Watch meeting, CC, 7.30
WI Market AGM, CC, 2
Nat.His.Soc, "Amberley Wildbrooks" (David Chelmick), FEC, 7.30
Cadborough Jubilee Social Club jumble sale, CC, 2
Movie Society Annual Dinner
Vidler & Co's monthly auction sale
N.Trust, "Baroque Churches in the Alps" (Anthony Dummett), CC, 7.30
Movie Society (RX Trophy), FEC, 7.30
FRAG AGM, TH, 8
Vidler & Co's special evening sale
Nat.His.Soc, "Churchyards and Conservation" (Pat Donovan), FEC,7.30
Winchelsea Flower Club jumble sale, FEC
"Saturday Special" one-day classes: household maintenance, axle Japanese flower-arranging, FEC, all day (book in advance) "March Madness" Community Centre Association show, CC, evening
TPS Parents Evening (Upper VI), Upper School
ARC coffee morning, CC, 10.30 to 12
WI, "The Ghosts of Drury Lane" (Mrs. E. Tubb), FEC, 7
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" (TPS school play) - and 15th and 16th Friends of Hill House Hospital jumble sale, FEC, 2
BRCS Thrift Shop (selling on Thursday, Friday and Saturday) WRVS AGM, FEC, afternoon
TPS Parents Evening (3rd year), Upper School
Natural History Society AGM, FEC, 7.30
WI Group Craft Show, FEC, afternoon
N.Trust, "Watercolour painting in England" (Mrs. G.W. Julius), CC, NSPCC AGM, FEC, 3 /2.30
Last day of term
Catholic Church jumble sale, FEC, 2.
Electric Organ Club concert, TPS, afternoon
Mayoring (provisional), morning; Leasam House Fete,
Playden WI Summer Fair, FEC, morning
Rye WI Summer Fair, FEC
NSPCC Summer Fair, FEC, 10.30 to 3.30
Catholic Church coffee morning, FEC, 10.30
Cadborough Jubilee Social Club Summer Fair, CC, 2
Hill House Fete, afternoon
Rainbow Fair (in aid of Day Centre), TH, all day
Playden Church Autumn Fair, FEC
Catholic Church Christmas Fair, FEC, 2.30
Rye Racers' pensioners party, TPS Pm
vThe Peacocke Art exhibition at the Easton Rooms, about which we wrote enthusiastically last week and which has been much admired by visitors, has been extended until Friday, 18th, owing to the bad weather.
• "A pleasing diversion for a bleak January afternoon" is what Arthritis & Rheuma¬tism Council supporters will find at the Community Centre next Wednesday afternoon (23rd) at 2.30, when Mr. H.V. Brown, MVO, GPM, CPM, will give an illustrated talk on Hong Kong. Before Mr. Brown became the ARC Regional Organiser, he was Assistant Commissioner of Police for the Hong Kong Territories and lived in that exotic part of the worlf for 28 years, so he has "a commanding knowledge of that picturesque and intriguing community" says ARC Secretary Francis Barrett. The admission price of 50p includes tea and biscuits, and there will be stalls and a raffle. There should be lots of room in the big hall, so do come and warm the cockles of your imagination in a good cause.
• The Community Centre's Silver Dollar Country and Western Club has two events planned this Saturday (19th). In the afternoon there will be a jumble sale in aid of Club and Centre funds; if you have jumble to be collected, please leave your leaflet in your letter-box or notify the Centre or ask one of the dustmen to tell Ringo. They will be very grateful for anything you can find them, and will collect on the previous evening (Friday).
Later that day, from 7.30 to 11.45, the Club will hold its first session with real live music. There will be a buffet dance and bar - and the music will come from Tony Falcon of Hastings, known to country-and-western fans as a member of the Phinega County group, with 2 LPs behind him. Admission costs £3 to this lively
A enterprising entertainment at an otherwise very dull time of year.
• More jumble sales coring up shortly: on Saturday of next week (26th) NSPCC at the FE Centre from 2 to 4 (and also the Rye Branch of Mencap at the Iden Hall), and on Friday, 1 February, Lower School in Ferry Road (in aid of school funds), at 6.30. All will be glad of things to sell.
• A new choir is to start rehearsals in Rye at the end of next month. Nigel Spooner, already known in musical circles for his work on the TPS Wurlitzer, will be conductor of the Young Ryesingers - which, as the name implies, will act as a
junior branch of Rye's very popular adult choir. His aim is not to be selective, but to find room for anyone who wants to join and who is prepared to attend the regular weekly practices, on Tuesdays from 6 to 7.30 at the Methodist Hall. The age-range is from 13 to 18, covering school pupils as well as young adults, and those interested should come to the first rehears .1 on 26 February; Mr. Spooner would like to build up a choir with perhaps 50 members, so there should be lots of room.
The Town Diary has no date yet for the Carnival. There are still two empty Saturdays in July, and all four in August (though the Tuesday Painters exhibition occupies the FEC for the second half of that month). There is also the Raft Race and the Rye Racers event, both traditionally held on a Sunday in August. Will Secretaries please notify the GAZETTE as and when they fix dates for summer events? Rye 222303, or a note to 2 Cyprus Place.
6.
Ralph Olesen from ESCC Highways at Bexhill asks us to warn readers that the snow and frost is making pavements and paths dangerous twice over. Of course they are slippery and treacherous while the cold weather lasts. But the frost gets under the surface too, and shifts it, particularly where there are paving slabs but also under new tarmac where pipes have been laid, etc. This means that there is risk of the surface being uneven, and he asks people to be particularly careful how they >go until ESCC can get round to the repairs. A further complication is the vehicle which quite inadvertently parks on the kerb concealed by the snow, so that kerb edges may also be damaged.
We asked him, perhaps rather unkindly, why the Kent roads were said to be so much better cleared than the Sussex ones (several readers had mentioned this). The answer is that Sussex organises its clearing in a different way - main roads are done as part of a planned route, and not automatically first as in Kent, so people living along Kent's side roads could well be less satisfied than rural Sussex residents. (We hope we have reported him correctly) but if you disagree please don't complain to us!
In order to be usable with the gritting lorries, crushed rock-salt rather than the powdered stuff is used by ESCC (Rother has no salt at all). This does melt the ice, but only after it has been compacted by wheel-pressure into a brine - so if there is no traffic on a road, the salt takes longer to work. (The logical consequence of this is that a really public-spirited chap with a heavy car could usefully drive it up and down his newly-salted side road until the salt gets going!) Also, once the temperature drops below minus 5, salt becomes much less efficacious in shifting ice - Mr. Olesen surprised us by saying that it is then only 20% as effective as it ought to be. But this fact, known or not, did not deter private individuals with icy front paths - all the grocers were completely saltless by midday on the Monday the snow really began, though supplies reached shop shelves and agricultural merchants later in the week.
Last week's crop of cancellations included the Rather Housing Committee which was to consider the community alarm report (GAZETTE no.113), and Barry Funnell's National Trust lecture about the Brede valley. All Rye's schools were shut on the Monday, and Thomas Peacocke on the Tuesday as well, though Freda Gardham less dependent on the buses - reopened. One of the problems at the schools is that it is impossible to clear the playground and snow tracked in makes the corridors slippery and dangerous. When Lower School reopened on Wednesday, we were told that the pupils just stood and looked at the white expanse in the play¬ground: two days was enough!
Inevitably, the RN helicopter's visit to Upper School was postponed; a decision had to be taken in advance, and whereas if the ground remained snow-covered on Thursday it would not have been wise to have the entire Upper School standing about outside watching it descend, equally a sudden thaw would probably have led to a riot among the PE staff whose hockey-pitch was to be used for the landing.
The police told us on Monday of this week that there had been very few accidents reported in the area despite the snow. However, if no-one is hurt and names and addresses are exchanged where appropriate, there is no need to report an accident - which is why we don't know the story behind a car seen standing bolt upright on its nose in the dyke along Military Road some days ago.
The hill below Leasam was the haunt of tobogganists - and indeed skiers - at the beginning of last week (and probably again this week); we never thought to see a pair of fully-equipped skiers coming along the Mill footpath! One intrepid athlete achieved a life-time's ambition and ski-ed down Rye Hill.
John Smith tells us that the allotments whose closure is proposed by Rother (see last week's GAZETTE) are not those visible from the station, which are indeed on BR land. There is another set behind them, accessible from a bridge over the dyke in the Upper School playing-field, and it is these to which the report was referring. Sorry.
7.
• An unusual auction sale at the Bedford Arms in the next few weeks will benefit< Rye Racers funds towards their 1985 party for OAPs. Over the past 12 years local artist Chad Coleman has produced a series of 30 caricatures of well-known Rye characters - some of them now no longer with us - which hung on the pub's walls. When the Bedford changed hands recently the new licensee, Mick Carter, returned the pictures to Chad, who has generously given them to the Racers. Anyone with their eye on a particular sketch, either for themselves or as a very unusual gift, should contact Gus Gale at the Town Hall Cottage for further details.
• Mrs. Hilary Bolton of the Red Cross was taken aback this week to find that a number of blankets had been handed in to Dolphin House "for Ethiopia". She is unable to find out where these should have been sent, but it is certainly not Dolphin House, since the Rye Red Cross Centre has no facilities at all for a collection of this kind. If anyone is collecting them, please let Mrs. Bolton know.
• Rye Town Model will open for the new season on 1 April, and due to the resignation of Rae Bark they are advertising for another operator to start then. Hours, up to three days a week, are by "rotarised choice", says the ad; the Model opens from 10 to 5, hourly pay is £2.10 for weekdays and f.2.62 for weekends. Training wi11 be given. Apply to the Town Hall, Rye 223902; Town Clerk John Baker is normally there from 8.30 to 11 except on Tuesdays.
• Councillor Mrs. Tomich reprimands the Editor for implying last week that there was still any question of Rother building expensive swimming pools. She refers to the "now no-longer-confidential talks that are to be voted on shortly re a commercial venture which envisages a quid pro quo of the most exciting nature, and makes a nonsense of your 'expensive swimming pools'". We are absolutely delighted to hear this, and hope that it comes off.
• Millers' customers will be glad to know that most of tlie specialist lines stocked by the shop will continue to be available in Rye after it closes. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson don't want to go into details at this stage, but they would like people to know that they are trying hard to make sure there won't be too much disappointment when the time comes.
• Rye Community Centre committee has presented a carriage clock to its retiring chairman, Brian "Ringo" Chapman, who recently ccmpleted his statutory two years in office. A founder member of the Centre, Mr. Chapman will of course be remaining on the committee, of which he will be vice-chairman this year. New chairman is Mrs. Janet Oliver of Cyprus Place.
• Five carol-singers - Jane Jenkinson, Sarah Whiddett, Simon and Laurence Winkworth and Graham Peters, raised £130 for a local good cause when they sang by invitation in five local hotels on Christmas Eve. Another £100 was raised for the Save the Children Fund in the run-up to Christmas by a group of High Street singers from Thomas Peacocke School under the guidance of Lois Benton.
• Rye Council for Voluntary Service holds one of its two annual Open Meetings at the Town Hall on Thursday week (24th) at 7.30. Speakers will be Mr. Boyce on the work of SSAFA, the Forces' families charity; Mrs. Leach on the progress of St. Michael's Hospice, Hastings; and Mrs. Wild reporting on the Rye Day Centre, started under the auspices of RCVS and now flourishing like the green bay tree and beginning to outgrow its present accommodation. Invitations go out to local organisations, but of course anyone interested is most welcome to come in a private capacity.
• The Tuck Shoppe in Market Street will be closed from Monday, 29 January, to Thursday, 31st inclusive, while a new floor is laid in the bakery - nothing to do with their burst pipe, but part of the extensive building operations which have been going on at the back of the shop for some months.
• This year's Recent Leavers evening for TPS ex-pupils at the Queen's Head was, we are told, the best ever; well over 100 :eople turned up, and the evening was a huge success - and probably half the night as well!
Thursday, 17th Thrift Shop CANCELLED
Local History Group, Library, 7.30
Friday, 18th Museum Association, "Life in the Middle Ages" (Stella Pigrome), FEC, 7.30
ATC wine-and-cheese evening, Upper School Library, 7.30
Week of Prayer: Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, St. Mary's, 7.30
Saturday, 19th Day of Prayer, Baptist Church, from 10 (see GAZETTE no.113)
Silver Dollar Club jumble sale, CC, 1.30
Silver Dollar Club buffet dance, CC, 7.30 (see page 5)
Monday, 21st Rye Town Council meeting, TH, 6
Monday Club, Clinic, 2
Council of Churches AGM, followed by open meeting, Baptist Hall,x7 (see GAZETTE no.113)
Wednesday, 23rd Over-608 Club, Red Cross, 1.45
ARC talk, "Hong Kong" (H.V. Brown), CC, 2.30 (see page 5)
• Hearty congratulations to Timothy Maskens of Beckley, a member of last year's-¬Upper Vlth at Thomas Peacocke, who has gained a place for next October at Downing College, Cambridge. Tim will be joining ex-TPS pupils Amanda Briggs >and Paul Chillingworth at Cambridge, where he will be reading Natural Sciences.
• In St. Mary's on Friday evening the Roman Catholic Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Bishop Cormac, will not just be preaching in the usual sense; after his talk there will be a break for coffee, and then the opportunity for questions from the audience/congregation. It is very much to be hoped that the weather will allow a good attendance at this most unusual ecumenical occasion.
• The charity football match on 23 December raised over £80 for Rye Racers' funds.
• Since the Rye WI meeting on Monday last week was cancelled due to the weather, we are asked to remind members - and will readers please pass word round - about the luncheon at the Hope Anchor on Friday, 25 January, at 12.30 for 1. The next regular WI meeting will be on 13 February.
• The Blood Transfusion Service came to Rye on Friday - with, apparently, a formidable list of disqualifying causes, including recent dental treatment! They also don't like you if you have a bad cold or sore throat. Those who were excluded, for whatever reason, on Friday may like to know that the team will be back on St. Valentine's Day (14 February).
• Congratulations to two ex-TPS pupils, Frances Mobbs who got a 2.2 degree at Plymouth Polytechnic and Judith Sargeant who has a 2.1 from Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.
• St. John Ambulance Brigade is to run a course of six'first-aid lectures at its Conduit Hill HQ, at 7.30 on Monday evenings starting on 4 February. The lecturer will be Terry Myers, of the Rye Division, giving his second series; Alan Webb says that as well as being an excellent lecturer Mr. Myers has some particularly good slides and other visual material. All are welcome.
• The press book shows still more burglaries outside Rye - and an outboard motor stolen from Rock Channel between 5 and 8 January: an Evinrude 6 hp Fisherman's 2-stroke, blue and white, serial number C 0054286.
• The League of Friends of Hill House Hospital holds its AGM at the Town Hall at 7.30 on Tuesday, 29 January; members and non-members alike are welcome.
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, and published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye (Rye 222303). News items for inclusion are always welcome - deadline Monday afternoon, Tuesday 9 am for emergencies. The GAZETTE costs 25p weekly, and is delivered to subscribers and pick-up points on Wednesday; some spare copies of the current issue are available at Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, and back numbers from Cyprus Place.
(Copyright Mary Owen 1985)