Every year at Christmas the local churches combine to deliver a Christmas card to every house in the village. Here is your electronic version with best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
October saw the 200th anniversary of Nelson's victory in the Battle of Trafalgar, and of his death at the height of that battle. Various national events were held through August - October to celebrate the occasion, one was the New Trafalgar Dispatch in which Bagshot played a role as I describe in this new page.
Thanks to all who responded to my survey about preferred character sizes in the last newsletter. The result came as a bit of a surprise, for while most people said that the standard size I use is fine, I also had preferences expressed for a larger range of sizes than I had expected. Thanks especially to the correspondent who pointed out the differences between the display characteristics of a Macintosh and a PC. My solution will be to provide a selector which will appear on every page and which will enable you to choose the character size that you want. The problem is that it does not seem to work with all versions of Internet Explorer. If the control appears alongside on your screen I'd be pleased to hear whether or not it works for you (you can conveniently reply using the message pad below which will have the added advantage of telling me what browser version you tried it on).
Other new material on the web site since the summer newsletter includes:
- Yet more memories of Fortuna's ice cream and of milkman Peter Burrows.
- An enquire for a biography of Prince Albert (son of the Duke)
- More comments about the old Cinemas and the boxing club - intriguingly run by a priest, and a further opinion that he was Father Porter.
- Memory of the bikers who based themselves in the Fighting Cocks' car park.
- A section about walks in Bagshot, initially with one walk and some links to other sites.
- Bagshot Care - a page for a local support charity.
- Bagshot WI - a page for the local Women's Institute.
- A couple of correspondents have asked for a recording of the Broadmoor sirens. So now you can listen to the sound of the siren. Ben recalls the annoyance of the all-clear being sounded in the early hours of the morning
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Family enquiries include:
- Corbett family, sometime owners of the Fighting Cocks Inn.
- Retired gardener 'Bun' Bennett
John Harrington
It was with regret that I heard that John Harrington passed away on 28 November 2005. John was an officer of the Royal Albert Orphan School's Old Boys' Association. The page I have about the RAOS grew out of a request John made for information about Miss Muller and Lady Elphinstone. Most of the information about the school has been provided by him including this picture of life in a bygone era when the scholars (or inmates as John would sometimes call them) were required to work on the farm. The school buildings (Collingwood Court) are seen in the distance.
Weather : wetter than average, though the reservoirs have not yet recovered from previous dry spells. The autumn temperature had been mild, our first frost was not until 14 November when we had a -2C air frost and all the tender garden plants were killed off. This was followed by a lengthy cold spell with heavy overnight frost. Our rather un-scientific impression is that we have already had more frosts than in the whole of last winter - and the garden birds are eating the bird seed and peanuts we put out at an unprecedented rate!
Apologies if you have already seen this piece that's going the rounds by email. It made me smile.
With best wishes to you, and those you hold
dear.
I hope you have an enjoyable Christmas and that the New Year fulfills your
wishes.
God Bless,
Neil
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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. |