Election Elation
The elation is caused by the realisation that it is all over now. It does mean we are no longer as popular as we were, in that we do not receive daily pleas for our votes. And the blue bin has received a neat top up of waste paper.
I heard that one person was enquiring as to the health of Will Forster as a whole day had gone by without them receiving a message from him. And he is now our new MP.
I see that this constituency now includes not just the Woking borough but the two Guildford villages of Pirbright and Normandy.
We may joke about people who live in one town all their lives and yet their address changes: Saint Petersburg; Petrograd; Leningrad; St Petersburg. They probably rue the day they threw out the old headed notepaper.
Or one could stay at home and one day be told you are living in a different country. Local boundaries are somewhat more stable, but there are several of them.
Thank goodness I know where I live. I am in Horsell parish. Well, I was, but the parish boundary changed and put us into Christ Church parish and we had to fill in forms to get back to the church which had christened, married, and buried family members over the years.
We were within Woking Rural District Council, which morphed into Woking Urban District Council and is now Woking Borough Council. And now Woking constituency has absorbed some villages from Guildford.
In this paper last week there was a piece about the history of the constituency, which was created in 1950 from bits of Farnham and Chertsey and now has an electorate of some 72,000.
That’ll keep Mr Forster occupied and, if he wishes to polish his green credentials, he might do something to improve public transport in this rather large area – 98.99 sq km or 38.22 sq miles.
Of course, our new MP knows the area well. Very well. He was born and raised in Woking and was a local councillor and former mayor of Woking so he is the sort of person to whom you may report a problem in such and such a road and he will know where it is.
Of course, he may not be too clued up on places in Normandy yet, but I guess it won’t take him long to suss that out.
He certainly started off on the right foot by showing up at The Wheatsheaf in Horsell on Friday – the very day after the election, tired but ecstatic after only a few hours’ sleep. He was greeted and congratulated by the many and made time to chat to some of those he now represents.
He said that although he knew the outcome of the poll fairly early on during that day although, naturally, not the exact numbers, he steadfastly remained quiet until the official results were made public. I just hope that his new job does not prevent him from continuing to meet his constituents – and talk with them.
Oh, and another thing about our new MP: he has a dachshund and, as a one-time owner of several such dogs, that is another mark in his favour.
Friends
My thanks to those readers who expressed their concern at realising I had spent time in hospital. I am pleased to report that I am alive and kicking. Not high kicks, you understand. There are more hospital visits to come and I am often asked who will be collecting me from hospital. My answer is “friends or family”.
There has been much conversation on the subject of friends in our home of late. For some weeks we have had a family staying with us who normally reside in New Zealand, but both parents lived in Woking, went to school in Woking, and still have friends in Woking.
We were talking about my daughters’ friends and most of them go back to very early childhood – as it does with our NZ friends who said how easy it was to drift back into old friendships, even though they have not met up for some years.
Of course, these days there are so many ways of keeping in contact via smart phones but, nevertheless, to sit with a friend with whom you have only conversed via screens is a splendid feeling.
They were out with the old photo albums. I thought such things were long gone now no-one prints photographs and places them in albums. Yes and no, for there they were going back through years of photographs safely stored on their phones.
Who is that? How did you know him? He was at school with me! Doesn’t she look like her mother? Did you really wear your hair like that? Ooh, is that who she married? And so on.
Conversation is not dead. Picture albums are not dead. Friendship, most certainly, is not dead. But friendship can need TLC times – a letter, a phone call, is often all that is required to put it on the road to recovery.
Scurry in St John’s
At the May Fayre this year I met my first Squirrel. Now I have received news of their presence in St John’s. That makes it a scurry of squirrels at least, that is what my reference book tells me.
I like that, they certainly do scurry. And I like the fact that these Squirrels, who are closely related to Wolf Cubs and Beavers – I bet that surprised you! – and other Scouts are of the red, Squirrel Nutkin variety, not the imported grey tree rats which abound in our neighbouring woodland.
The 1st St John’s Scout Group recently started a Squirrels Scout Section for children aged 4-6 years and the first nine Squirrels have been invested. The ceremony took place in the garden outside the St John’s Youth Hall in St John’s village, Woking.
The Beavers also joined and formed a Guard of Honour for the newly-invested Squirrels. There was a lot of excitement as the parents and siblings joined in too and all the Squirrels made their Promise.
If you want to join or find out more about what is happening with Scouts in your area please visit www.scouts.org.uk/join. You will be very welcome. I am not sure if you have to supply your own nuts.
Mela
A mela is described as a meeting, a fair, a festival, but however the dictionary may describe it, it is a most enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.
A mela will be held on Sunday 21 July from noon until 5pm at Alpha Field in Alpha Road (GU22 8HA).
There will be competitions, bouncy castles, face painting, mendhi/henna, stalls, waffles, cakes, BBQ and world foods. From past experiences I recommend those world foods. All proceeds go to charity. For further information contact 07928 539061 or [email protected].
Along with other members of the Woking History Society I recently visited the Shah Jahan Mosque. This was not my first visit so when someone asked me what it was like I told them it was like an inside-out Tardis: larger on the outside than on the inside.
And the inside is peaceful. Cool in white and green, with religious texts in beautiful calligraphy. No representations of people, animals, or plants but the surrounding gardens are glorious, with roses and lilies, the scent of which was strong on the early evening air.
It all started with a Hungarian-Jewish linguist and scholar Dr Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, who dreamt of a grand centre for the study of the east to be known as The Oriental Institute.
The world’s four major faiths would have been represented: Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. All that remains of his dreams now are the mosque and the renaming of Maybury Heath Lane as Oriental Road. Had he lived longer Woking would be a university town.
The mosque bears the name of its key donor, the Sultan Shah Jahan Begum, who reportedly contributed £5,000 for its construction in 1889. It was designed by local Anglo/Irish architect William Isaac Chambers in a style that echoes Indian Mughal architecture.
Knowing little about designing such a building he travelled in India for research. The mosque has no real minarets: all four of the minaret-like features are purely ornamental.
Originally it was intended for use as a place of worship for students attending the Oriental Institute, thus its relatively small size. At the time there were few Muslims living in the area.
After Leitner’s death in 1899 there was every likelihood of the mosque being demolished but an Indian lawyer, Khawaja Kamal ud-Din, on a visit to London, heard of the mosque and with the help of several notable converts and influential Muslims, managed to acquire the mosque in 1913 and return it to its original purpose.
Many of the current large congregation came to the Woking area from the subcontinent In the 1960s and now worship in an expanded area opposite the mosque.
In his book A History of Woking Alan Crosby writes: “Dr Leitner was surely the most extraordinary man in Woking’s history.”
I wonder why there is no statue to him. Yes, I know there is an imposing bust of him on his tomb in Brookwood Cemetery but I feel that a man who had such an influence on Woking should be honoured with a public statue.
I also realise that with Woking’s finances in their current state this is not a good time to put forward such an idea.
Heath Week
I am sure we are all very conscious of our good fortune in having the common lands of Horsell and Chobham on our doorsteps but Heath Week wants us to celebrate that local heathland, its wildlife, and its history.
Check out www.tbhpartnership.org.uk/heath-week/ and discover that there are more than those two commons within easy each of Woking and their wildlife is diverse and changes from place to place.
There are many free events at the commons over the period of Monday 29 July to Sunday 4 August. If you want to hear the churr of the nightjar you may do that on Horsell Common on 29 July at 8pm, with another chance on Friday 2 August, also at 8pm.
There is an Insect Walk there on Thursday 30 July at 2pm – and Thursday 1 August at 2pm. All vital information on that website.