Nick’s Ramblings

I’ve got a very busy couple of weeks coming up. Tomorrow I’m on a first aid course as all Scout Leaders must now have at least basic first response first aid training. On Wednesday I’ve got the District’s annual general meeting. The following week I’m on a two day training course for work. Then it’s our family camp to celebrate the Scout Group’s centenary! Phew!

The amount of planning and paperwork for the camp is quite big as well, but the camp itself will be great!

I’m sure someone once said Scouts was only an hour or so a week!!!

We had a chat with the Scouts on Tuesday about their behaviour and how we expect them to be at Scouts. We talked and made sure it wasn’t a telling off session and they seemed to start to understand.

The thing that really brought things home to them was that they realised that in 2 - 4 years time when they wanted jobs, they can’t just mess around and not expect to get fired! The other thing was I remembered that last year they wrote out their own Code of Conduct! So we reminded them of this and they have now promised to behave better!

Now we can start looking forward properly to our Centenary Celebration Family camp at the end of May.

When I started writing this blog, I turned on the ability to make comments on what I’ve written. Now, so far, all the real comments made by various people have been interesting and helpful, but of course there is the spam comments. These are the ones trying to get me to buy various medicinal products and other dubious stuff!

As soon as I set up the blog, I installed a spam filter and recently updated to Akismet, which is part of WordPress. The amount of junk I’ve been getting has steadily increased so that I was getting around 20 - 40 spam comments per day. I didn’t realise I was that popular! So, getting bored of having to delete all the junk (well I didn’t have to), I decided to up the anti spam protection. I’ve installed a nice plug in which now requires the writer of a comment to prove they are real and not a spambot.

Guess what? Since it was installed not another bit of spam!

  to spammers!

The local Council elections were on Thursday and were very interesting again. The local Labour party have lost more seats again, eight in fact. The council still is not lead by one party, but Labour are getting less and less. It’s interesting to note how and area can swing from one way to another.

I got a phone call from one our old Scout Masters (that dates him immediately!) the other day. He was the Scout Master from 1949 to about 1954 and he invited me round for a chat.

It was fascinating hearing of Scouting from over 50 years ago. He also gave me a pile of old photos to copy.

Camping in 1951

The Cubs and Scouts with our local Guides in 1951

It’s really interesting to look at these photos and see what the Scouts of the past got up to and actually looked like. The earliest photos are from around 1949. So along with the couple of photos I have of Scouts in 1913 & 1916 (although not in uniform), I only have a gap of around 30 years to fill!

Scouts on Tuesday went quite well again. The Scouts were not badly behaved, a bit boisterous perhaps!

I think the Scoutmaster Minute idea from the BSA is a very good one and something that we’ll keep doing.

The AC Loco Group have done it again! They have saved 87002 and it looks like it will be out and about in the near future.

Today is St. George's Day. St. George, amongst other things is the patron saint of Scouting. Today Scouts can wear their uniform at school and we renew our Promise (although I did it at the parade on Sunday and at Scouts last night!).

On My Honour, I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people
And to keep the Scout Law

Although I'm not wearing uniform at work today I am wearing a Scout badge. It's a Boy Scouts of America one that I was given by my old Scout Leader when he moved to the States and helped out at a BSA Troop in California for a while.

Has improved! Last night the Scouts were a little better behaved and were a bit more cooperative! We were looking at mapping a grid references and even the ones who can play up put their best into the task!

I also had a go at a Scoutmaster Minute where I talked about a couple of the bits of the Scout Law and if the Scouts had lived up to them during the day. They seemed to listen, think and take it in. All I’ve got to do now is think of something for next week!

After my last post about the behaviour of some of my Scouts, I’ve been having an interesting Transatlantic chat by email with Jerry of Troop 664 from Gresham, Oregon in the US. This came about after he left some comments on my last post.

It’s always good to have a fresh pair of eyes to look over a problem and especially interesting when that person has a different perspective. We are all Scouts and have the same main aims, but we achieve them by using different programmes and methods. One of the things Jerry has been talking about is the Scoutmaster Minute. This is where the Scout Master (Leader) talks to the Troop at the end of their meeting on a relevant topic. We don’t have anything similar in the UK, but it sounds like a good idea, so I’m going to give it a bash.

Thanks for ideas Jerry.

One thing I noticed about Troop 664 is that one of their patrols is called Fried Potatoes Patrol! Someone has got a good sense of humour!