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veined petunia flowers in purple and white

passion flowerBagshot Newsletter - Summer 2005

The most important news is to tell you about is that the Bagshot website now has its own URL www.bagshotvillage.org.uk.  I had been toying with the idea for some while but when I had problems with both the hosting services I had been using I decided that enough was enough and I'd go for it.   You may wish to bookmark this new location.

It was time for a re-organisation of the site content. I've done most of that but I still want to do some more so a few pages may change again. The area for questions and answers had grown a lot since I started it and I have taken the opportunity to break off topics to separate pages and to integrate some of the Q&A with existing pages.

The @bigfoot.com addresses I use for most website correspondence is unaffected by this move of hosting service provider. But if you have got my personal email address @freemantle.dabsol.co.uk in your address book you might like to drop me a line to get my new personal address as the dabsol service is now unsupported and I fear that it will die one day soon.

"That was a really beautiful place to live."  So comments Derrick after viewing my pictorial tour and showing his son where he used to live.  Derrick now lives in Australia and has not been back  to Bagshot for 30 years - but hopes to soon. Coincidentally, Derrick does not live very far from Bagshot, Australia , which he describes as a rural area, no shops, near Bendigo, Victoria.

Re-structuring and extending the pictorial tour will be the final part of my web site update, so I hope Derrick and all my other visitors will like the extension when it is done.
 
On occasions over the past several years I have reported the 'progress' of St Anne's church's desire to build a new church centre. Well, at long last I am pleased to be able to report that it is going ahead. Planning permission was eventually granted, albeit with more restrictions than the church would have liked, contract negotiations have been completed and the builders moved on to the site in mid August. The building, which will be called the Marjorie Pike Centre after the parishioner whose generous legacy to the church has enabled the building to be built, will be at the rear of the church and so will hardly be seen from the road. Even so, a particular feature of the plans has been that it blend in with the existing church building. The photo below is a view of the church that very few people ever see - taken looking across the field behind the church. The sketch is an artist's impression of the new centre relative to a sketch outline of the existing building. The final design of the centre differs slightly from this sketch, but it does serve to give a general impression.

red brick church building with grass and trees in frontartist's imprsssion of a read brick building in front of the outline of a church

The centre provides toilet facilities, a kitchen, storage, and an office in addition to a meeting room that can be partitioned.

The Parish Hall, further down Church Road, nearer the village, is not affected by this new development.  The hall will continue to be available for all the numerous groups and village functions for which it has been used since it was built about 80 years ago.

pink laveteria flowers on a green bushNothing to do with Bagshot, but I thought you might be interested ... the BBC in conjunction with the Oxford English Dictionary are trying to trace when words first came into use and have a list of 50 they are trying to enlist the public's help with. - but they need written evidence of a word's use, not a personal memory. http://oed.com/bbcwordhunt/list.html

An example:
Children of a more innocent age - did you play pass the parcel before 1967? OED researchers have hunted high and low for earlier references to the party game, but with no luck. But there must be documentary evidence out there somewhere.

For ex-pats - BBC local radio is now available as an audio stream on the Internet. For Surrey (together with Sussex and part of Hampshire) see www.bbc.co.uk/southerncounties and follow the link for audio.
 
orange French marigold flowerThere have been several additions to the Bagshot website since my Easter newsletter, many as a direct result of information sent to me by readers, for which I thank you.:

Some updates have taken rather longer to get on than I aim for, and some are still in the pipe-line..  Apologies if you've been waiting to see your material appear on the site.

I aim to ensure that my web pages are convenient and easy to read. Looking at other people's pages I observe that many are done with smaller characters than I use, this gets more information on the screen but may not be as easy to read. Would you like to help me with a little survey? I have created versions of this newsletter in several different character sizes and will be most grateful if you will tell me which you prefer. You can use the message pad at the end of the page to do this.  Feel free to add any other comments you wish.
This survey is now complete and has resulted in a user selection of character sizes as described in the next newsletter.


red dahlia flowerFor some years Microsoft Internet Explorer has been very nearly the only browser to be used. But now an increasing number of people are moving away from it.  One of the reason for them doing so is concern over security.  Mozilla Firefox is the most popular alternative and as discussed in this article Protecting Your Security and Privacy with Firefox  it offers many advantages.  Here is another article. Firefox is free and downloadable from www.mozilla.org
 

With best wishes to you, and those you hold dear. 
God Bless, 
Neil

The Christmas 2005 newsletter is here
 
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The opinions expressed here are those of the author, writing on his own behalf and not representing anyone else or any organisation.

copyright © 2005 Neil Bartlett and licensors. All rights reserved.


ps: each time I do a mailing telling friends like yourself about one of these 'update' pages I get several bounce back as undeliverable because the intended recipient has changed their email address, and I have no way of knowing what it has changed to.  So if you change your email please remember to put me on the list of people to tell if you want to keep in touch.

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