I began working in Farnborough before moving from London to Aldershot. While my end of London was still pretty much a white area, there were nearby areas of diversity and my secondary school friends included backgrounds from white English to Indian with Hong Kong Chinese and Jamaican in the middle. I liked this mix of friends so going into such a non-diverse, conservative area I was startled by the whiteness around me. Walking down the street I’d feel the difference and didn’t like it. But I got used to it, as you do when you get on with your life.
Unrelated but it was during this time working in North Camp, listening to former soldiers talk about their past while waiting for their meds, that I realised “Batman” wasn’t only the Caped Crusader but an officer’s personal servant in the British armed forces. Another told of the time in his youth when he found himself driving the King on one of his visits to the home of the British Army. From ordinary West London to this strange, white world where the monarch visits and people remember the Raj.
We moved to Aldershot where I found the lack of diversity just as strange as it was in North Camp; I did find myself feeling self conscious and apart from us had only come across four non white families in the area, two in North Camp and two in Aldershot. Going to our Islamabad mosque in Tilford a few minutes away provided the only real links with other non white people as there we were a mix of Pakistani, Arab, Chinese, Indian, Ghanaian, French and Bengali. As I’d been working in the area for a few years I did get used to the way it was and the neighbours were lovely.
Shopping for Asian goods was done with monthly trips to Southall in West London where my mum and I would stock up on rice, flour, pulses, Asian vegetables and halal meat plus any fabric or sewing materials mum needed. Returning from one such trip stays in my mind as we drove through North Camp and the military part of town to reach home. Checkpoints were often set up to stop random cars and that day ours was one of those stopped. The soldier greeted us and requested to look in the boot so mum unlocked it for him; as he checked we tried to suppress our laughter at the sight which would have greeted him, bags of daal, karelas, bhindis and more! He didn’t ask to search through everything and we continued home.
The following year I got married and lived between Aldershot and Sheffield before settling down once more in Aldershot. A house of my own, a new baby and working part time kept me distracted and over the next few years I didn’t pay attention to the population mix of the area. I do remember seeing the odd Gurkhas in town, smartly dressed in their green blazers and noticeable to me as fellow non whites along with a very slow increase in others, including a couple of families who moved here from Islamabad. I also remember the ongoing campaign publicised by Joanna Lumley to allow Gurkhas to settle in the UK; this was successful and led to thousands of Nepalese families arriving in the area.
It was one Christmas Eve when I needed to go to town one morning that it really hit me. Perhaps my previous visits had been later in the day when everyone was out but I was struck by number of non white people around; in fact they outnumbered the white people. This triggered thoughts of how much the area had been changing as a diverse mix of people settled here; Nepalese were all around, Turkish with their grocery shop, Afghans and East Europeans. After the EU Referendum I had the opportunity to meet representatives of the various groups in the area and it was startling to discover just how many were here. The first Rushmoor Food Festival celebrated this with food and culture of Nepalese, Indian, Fijian, Jamaican and Polish origin; the second had expanded to include South East Asian and African. The shops sell everything by we need now, store cupboard staples, fresh Asian vegetables, meat, sweets, clothes and even gold jewellery; trips to Southall are just an occasional treat when we need more variety in choosing clothes.
In the last couple of years a lot of families from the Ahmadiyya Muslim community have been moving here to be close to the new headquarters and Mubarak mosque in Islamabad. This has increased the diversity of the town even more so you can see groups of elderly Nepalese walking or chatting outside their homes or the temple, Muslims meeting at the grocers or cafe, colourful clothes and jewellery, spicy aromas. I visited a new grocery shop in the days before Covid and saw two elderly English women wandering the aisles commenting on the produce and how it must be used; Aldershot embracing new things. From that early time I would walk around town and never see anyone I recognise to now, just walking the short way home from my parents and passing the homes of several people I personally know other than as neighbours or from school.
When I tell anyone about the area I still remember being startled by the change but have become used to it and definitely feel it has changed the area for the better.
quillandinkandparchment 