General Chat

As far as I am concerned I know about the same as everybody else and, if I know something, so does everybody else and ,probably, their dog who might even know more.

It was the village lunch yesterday and the conversation turned to the lack of ethnic diversity locally.

I mentioned that I had only ever even known a couple of Catholics when I was growing up and was a bit taken aback when I went for a briefing in London and a lady had mentioned her nephew coming home from synagogue.

We were trying to think where the nearest synagogue must be to us and OH mentioned that there was one in the Beavois Valley in Southampton. I said I knew of the mosque but could not recall seeing a synagogue.

HE THOUGHT THEY WERE THE SAME and that Jewish women wore yashmaks.

Explaining the difference took the conversation to other beliefs and I realized that I must know a bit more than the others in the group.

When I mentioned the Amish, M (three wheeler, Polish living in electricity sub-station) said his so many times great-grandfather who had lived in Bognor had been an Anabaptist.

It seems unlikely, you would never get enough people in for a barn raising! I do know there was a Baptist church in Bognor.

Yet another had seen a man in a big hat walking near the school with some children and concluded that he must have been Amish. The likelihood of that is just marginally less than the other conclusion we came to that he might be an Orthodox Jew.

It is, I believe, possible for a man to wear a big hat without having to take on any religious doctrine at all.

Thought Moslems and Jews were the same? :-S Doesn't he even watch the TV?

The village my parents and I moved to is mentioned in the Doomsday Book but didn't sart to expand until about 1910 then again in the 1950s. Since it had a CoE, Catholic and Congrational Church, its likely that we knew followers of all 3 demoninations.

White 'Christians' don't physically look any different from each other - you may well have known someone different from you, you just didn't know it!
In my opinion, its only in the last 20 years or so that 2nd generation immigrants have been able to afford rural property, or have felt integrated enough to move away from where their parents set up home.

There is an excellent Primary school in the next valley, one of those 3 classroom places. A while ago they were marked down by Ofsted because they have no ethnic diversity pupils. Errr...was it their fault that children had to be driven to the school? I'm not even sure if they have a public bus service. Being surrounded by agricultural land, planning permits were strictly enforced, so any 'ethnic' children would have to be the offspring of wealthy parents who could afford to buy into the village.

I knew who the Catholics were, we all did. They didn't go to our school but had to travel into Chichester every day or, if they went to our primary, they went to a different secondary school and, anyway, it's a village, you can be sure we knew!

OH watches television but has just never bothered to pick upon that bit. To his utter shame I thought there was a Scottish football team called Celtic Rangers because I had never picked up on that bit of information.

Our village has not grown greatly over the years and, the most shops we have ever had is five and they were spread over a large area, never in a centre.

There is only the one church (C of E) but there was a Methodist Chapel for about a hundred years and that was built to accommodate the needs of the Welsh workers who came to reclaim the harbour in the eighteenth century and that didn't last long either.

‘What distinguishes religion above everything else is its emphasis on immortality’.

(Short excerpt from 'The Story of Civilisation' - by Will Durant 1885-1981).

Life would be much simpler if Moslems and Jews were the same. Ethnically, Israelis and Palestinians are I suppose. No-one among my friends, (and yes, I do have some) gives a fig about religion, and the group I drink with on a Tuesday could come straight from the "Englishman, Irishman Scotsman " book of jokes. Actually, I think there is only one churchgoer amongst us, and I still don't know which one he goes to. Our local C0fE vicar sometimes comes in, and he is gay. (That is not a negative comment, by the way, I do have gay friends) The only catholic I know goes to confession regularly, and then carries on committing all the "sins" he has just confessed to. Still, keeps him happy I suppose.

I read Dermot's post, above, wrongly, I thought he had put "immorality". Probably nearer the truth though.

Southampton and esp Bevois Valley (pronouced "beever") has a large Polish population most of whom are nominally Roman Catholics. My GF was RC, my OH is Jewish but brought up RC ... there is a large Jewish population complete with synagogue in Brighton and Bournemouth.

The Jews and the Poles are excellent cooks unlike the Irish and native Brits who are poor but not as bad as the Scots even though there are now some decent places to eat in Glasgow as well as Auld Reekie.

There are quite a lot of Buddhists living in rural Hampshire but as they tend not to wonder around in yellow garb or beat up on people they are not much remarked. That's where being friendly gets you. Unremarked.

All members of the Anglican church are catholics ( read the creed lately ? ) just not RC. Despite the efforts of Martin Luther and Thos Cromwell the COfE is not a Protestant church. Just an early example in clawing back powers and money from the other side of the channel.

Doing good is religion’s best recruiting tool. Hellfire ranting doesn’t work.

Oi!! who are you calling a poor cook? I'll have you know my lasagne, stir-fries, curries, pasta marinara etc. are renowned among family and friends. My wife on the other hand....

And I'm a dab hand with boiled bacon & cabbage - except on Fridays of course.

The dog is more than happy to lap-up the remains.

Bob, are you saying your wife has never heard of your cooking?

I have never heard the Bevois valley pronounced Beever and have only ever heard it called the Beavis Valley.

The monks at Chithurst would always do a very good, if interesting cup of tea in the afternoon but I have not been there for many years as I used to see them when I was delivering that way. Many of them were American veterans of Vietnam.

Bus drivers and such call it "beevis" or "beevus".
otherwise

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Old 12th September 2005, 06:17 AM #5
nickds1 is offline nickds1 England
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I did my EE degree at Southampton. ISTR Bevois (pronounced "beavers") Valley was a very cheap residential area popular with students. Rumour had it (though I wouldn't know!) that nominative determinism had played its part and that part of the "red light" area was there too...

I too went to the electronics junk shop, and bought an IBM keyboard amomgst other rubbish - I don't remember seeing any valves in there, but that was 25 years ago. Most of my valves etc. came from HL Smiths in Edgware Rd or Proops in TCR.

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Nicko

We have every nationality and religion where i live , no one bothers to differentiate any more.

We do not have a Synagogue yet( nearest only abt 10 miles away) but we have lots of new Mosques as the Muslims are the fastest growing community.

Many churches are now being converted into dwellings or being knocked down, make of that what you will :-S

The St Mary's/Chapel /Portswood areas of Southampton have a very diverse population - it always has had - but then being a port, that is to be expected!! The race and religion of the population has always changed too.
I know of at least one church that has been turned into a Gudwara (Sikh Temple), and there is a building used as a mosque and Islamic Centre, both in St Mary's. Others are spread around the environs.
There used to be a very large Jewish population in Southampton (increased by the Rosthchilds), and a Synagogue in East Street, but the majority have since moved West, though the synagogue remains.

My family lived in these areas for many years. At the turn of the 20th century, my g uncle worked at the Chinese Laundry, that was, indeed run by Chinese, so that would have mean any/all of the following religions:
Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Taoism, Shamanism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Special buildings weren't/aren't necessarily built for worship.

As for rural areas, there is a village to the North of Winchester that has a very high population of Plymouth Brethren!

I grew up in a cotton mill town in Lancashire.

I went to a CofE primary school, knew no RCs at all, although there were Baptist, several Methodist (Wesleyan, Primitive, etc), etc churches. I couldn't even tell you if there was an RC church. or where it might have been.

There were always at least 3 or 4 RC students at the Grammar School, and they were all known to us because they had to sit outside Assembly every morning until after the "hymn, prayer and lesson", and then come in to hear "school notices". Indeed I was best friends with one of the girls. They also had to miss RE classes.

I knew of no Jewish people, as far as I knew the nearest Jewish people lived in Manchester. I was most surprised when I read Maisie Mosco's books in the 1980s to learn that there had apparently been a very small but thriving Jewish population in my home town, although they had to go to Manchester to synagogue.


........ and of course there very few "people of colour" until the 1960s when we began to see immigrants from the Caribbean nations. This was followed by the Ugandan Asians in the 1970s. Now there is a very large Asian population in many areas of the town.

I didn't really start this thread to discuss religious diversity in the rural population.

I did it to take the rise out of OH and our friends!

Sharron ............

you know quite well that posters on here almost never follow where the OP intended them to go! :-D

Originally I had thought of asking if the villagers had webbed feet...then thought better of it ;-)

I actually do have webbed feet. Photo to follow...

Of course we do.

OH, however, does not. He comes from Tottenham!