A Busy Fortnight!

I’ve had another busy couple of weeks in the Borough and beyond, meeting people and sharing celebrations with them. A high point was being at Willowfield School when the students got their GCSE results. As a former pupil at the school, it was great to see so many proud and happy faces. Congratulation to them and students throughout Waltham Forest who did well in their exams.

Equally impressive was the hard work that the Scouts had put in to the annual conservation project in Epping Forest. The Scouts work with the Epping Forest Centenary Trust on four sites in the forest and do a great job with help of a band of willing adult volunteers.

I was lucky enough to go to three Eid celebrations last week – one with the Indian Muslim Federation, another with the Senior Citizens’ Asian Group and a Council-led evening of entertainment at Walthamstow Assembly Hall. And because Waltham Forest is such a fantastically diverse Borough, I was also made very welcome at the Shri Nathji Sanatan Hindu Temple at Whipps Cross where we celebrated Lord Krishna’s birthday.

      After leaving the Temple I went to the William Morris Gallery to greet a group of Palestinian teenagers who were in the UK as part of the ‘Common Ground’ Palestinian-UK Exchange project. They seemed to really enjoy Lloyd Park in the sunshine and the guidebooks of the gallery that they received as gifts.

Over the weekend I enjoyed the Pak Cultural Society’s Pakistan Independence Day celebration and also attended the 34th Khatam-e-Nabuwat conference. On Monday I was honoured to receive two high-profile guests in the Parlour – Zafar Mahmood Mughal, the Deputy Attorney General for Pakistan, and M. Lehrasib Khan Gondal, a Supreme Court advocate and Vice Chairman of the Punjab Bar Council.