November, and again the streets of Rye will pulsate to the thuds of Bonfire Night on the thirteenth. This year many are pinning their hopes on a record collection. The secret effigy is ready and the celebrity booked. Now we all pray for fine weather so each and all can enjoy one of the biggest spectacles in our town. For a week or two after the place will seem dead, then the Christmas lights go up and another year draws to a close and what a year it has been! The good weather at Easter saw the place swarming with good-hearted trippers. The Salts hosted a medieval fair, which very nearly sank with a thunderstorm that sat over the town for the best part of the day. I had better luck the time I spent up the Town Hall collecting pound coins for the ambulance along with the Rye Wheelers on their fun day. The closing and moving of the doctor’s surgery was a talking point in the spring evoking a march against its closure.
Another topic that has brought a lot of people together was this year’s festival. Many and varied events were sold out before the day and the other excellent shows were well patronised. The subject of building a marina on a field that lies wet, if not drowned all winter, has stirred a lot of folk into voicing their views and in my personal opinion is a non-starter. It’s just a ruse to build houses, as there is no hope of stopping the siltation of the marina as they claim. The town of Rye did very well in the competition of Britain in Bloom, many sites displaying a wealth of colour.
This year I started to feed the birds a month early and am surprised by the numbers of sparrows there are. Along with the sparrow, the green plover seems to have had a good breeding season and have flocked up early.
The harvest was gathered in against all the doom and gloom the weather prophets forecast late in August although a large acreage looks as if it is fallow until spring. I have not talked to any farmers so do not know which crops they intend to grow next year. No doubt there is a spring sown one that will attract a goodly subsidy and that is the reason. we will have to wait and see.
October saw little of the frost to help the trees shed their leaves but the wind burned ones fell early to leave naked patches in the landscape unlike last year when we had a marvellous colour in the fall.
“Rye’s Own” November 2004
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