Islam Awareness Week

Islam Awareness Week at Surrey History Centre, 25 November 2006, 10-4pm

As part of national Islam Awareness Week, the Surrey History Centre in Goldsworth Road, Woking, has been working with the local Muslim community to offer a family day celebrating Islamic history and culture.

The day includes:

• Children’s activities from 11am
A film celebrating 'A thousand years of Islam in Britain' featuring archive film footage of the Shah Jahan Mosque (the first purpose-built mosque in the country) running all day
Free exhibition telling the history of the Muslim Burial Ground, Woking, accompanied by a commemorative film by artist Said Adrus
Free exhibition by English Heritage 'Remembering Forgotten Heroes', honouring the role of Indian soldiers in the First and Second World Wars.
The day will culminate with a talk at 2pm by Professor Humayun Ansari OBE, of Royal Holloway, University of London, 'Islam in Britain: weaving the strands of the past and the present'. Tickets for the talk are £2.00 on the day, no need to book.

There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions over light refreshments throughout the day - all welcome!

For further details call:
Di Stiff, Archivist (Collections Development) Surrey History Centre 130 Goldsworth Road Woking, Surrey GU21 6ND www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistoryservice
Tel: 01483 518737

A handbag...?!

( Article about handbags, and handbag insurance(!) )

Dark dinners

Dining in the dark

http://www.mirabilis.ca/2006/11/13/dining-in-the-dark/

From csmonitor.com: Dining in the dark.

If you're ever considering eating a three-course meal in pitch darkness, a word of caution: choose your dining companion carefully. For even a usually restrained, well-behaved individual can morph into someone quite different when shut inside a black box for dinner for several hours, and when they think no one's watching.

It's a grim, cold Saturday night, and the venue is Dans Le Noir, London's first dining-in-the-dark destination, where dishes are consumed inside a sealed dark room, and where, no matter how much you strain, you can't make out so much as the outline of your napkin. Tonight, it's a surprise menu and communal tables.

In the lighted lobby, conspicuous signs instruct that diners must remain seated to avoid collisions, and that no sources of light are allowed: no lighters, cellphones, digital watches, nor cameras. My husband already looks anxious: No cellphone for three hours? Surreptitiously, he switches his phone to silent mode, and slips it in a pocket. Who's going to know? After all, he reminds me, the waiters are blind.

Blind waiters are what makes Dans Le Noir unique among dining-in-the-dark experiences across the globe. Edouard de Broglie, their founder, explains that he first heard of the concept through an organization for the blind that had been arranging "dark dining" events in Europe since the mid-1980s, to raise awareness on blindness. [continue]