Category: Scouts

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

LAURENCE BINYON 1914

Please take a look at the on line memorial to the members of my Scout Group who have been killed in previous wars.

At a campsite, with the Cubs about to start the fire for our campfire!

I read this article in my local newspaper tonight –

SCOUTS wants to lease land where they can set up a new base after a church council kicked them out of the headquarters they have used for decades.

The 21st West Stafford Scout Group has asked Stafford Borough Council to lease them a patch of land in Western Downs in Stafford.

Pack leaders warn the group may have to fold if the request is refused.

A report to tomorrow’s borough council cabinet meeting says: "The scout group has been at its headquarters building at Lovelace Close, Highfields, for more than 40 years and the premises has been leased from the Castle Church Parochial Church Council. The group has now been given notice that they will need to vacate the site imminently."

The scout group has a membership of more than 100 children.

If the borough council approves its request, the group will seek funding to build a new scout hut at the site.

Now apart from the fact that the newspaper has managed to mangle the story as usual (talking about the Group and Pack as if they are the same), this does raise something quite worrying.

I have tried to see if there is any more information about this story ‘out there’ but can only find a Facebook page the Group has set up which mentions applying for planning permission for a new HQ, but this was last updated in May. And of course, there is no mention of a reason why the Church are evicting the Group. However, it does seem to somewhat go against the Church’s (and I mean the Church as an organisation not this specific Church) general ethos of helping young people. From the Church of England’s website –

The Church’s concern is not only for young people within it but also those in the wider community.

There is a strong commitment to support and advise those who work with young people regionally, in dioceses, and locally, in deaneries and parishes.

So it does seem rather odd that this Church is trying to get rid of what seems to a successful Group.

However, this is by no means an unusual situation. A Group in my District had their own HQ on a site rented from the local Council. However,  a new village hall is to be built on the site and the Group were evicted from their HQ and now have to meet in the local school. They will be able to use the village hall when it is built, but only at the specific times given to Group’s meeting. They also now have the problem of where to store all their equipment as they won’t be able to do so in the village hall.

I do hope the Stafford Scouts are able to get a new HQ and are not forced to close as that would be a tragedy and serious questions would have to be asked of the Church.

At the weekend, my Group’s Beavers went to Kibblestone for a sleep over (camp). The Leaders all went out the night before to get themselves settled in and everything sorted in advance of the Beavers coming out on the Saturday morning.

As I’ve mentioned before, Beavers can only be away from Mum & Dad for 24 hours, so quite a lot has to be packed into that short period of time. Also, the Beavers need to be kept busy and on the move all the time so they don’t have the chance to get home sick. This could well be the first time they’ve been away from Mum & Dad and / or close family, so if they get time to stop and think, this is when we get homesickness which can cause problems (do you ring Mum etc.). And of course keeping them busy  all the time means that there may be a small chance that they get some sleep at night!

I went out on the Saturday morning with Rachael to visit, and I have to admit it was a strange experience for me. Taking a 9 month baby with me meant that I didn’t actually do anything remotely connected with the camp. I just looked after Rachael, made sure she looked devastatingly cute (proud Daddy here!) and chatted to the Leaders and Explorers when possible. And that was it! Very odd.

 

Me, Rachael & a Halloween ghost!

However, we had fun and from what I saw of the Beavers and the reports I had back, the Beavers had a brilliant time. Which is of great credit to all the Leaders, Young Leaders and parents who helped out on the cooking team. A Beaver camp is hard work for Leaders due to the fact they are on the go virtually for the who camp, so I am immensely proud of the hard work they all put in!

I saw this Tweet this morning from Don District Scouts about the book The Scouting Trail. The book is written by Scouts Ireland and is another useful book showing Scouting skills, and best of all it’s available to download for free! Take a look here.

Many thanks to Don District for publicising this book!

I was sent this list over 8 years ago and found the email again the other day. See how many ring true to you –

I. The number of matches it takes to get the fire going is inversely proportional to the number that were in the box when you started.

2. If you are tired, your Scouts will not be at all tired, and will keep you awake all night.

3. Never turn your back for a moment.

4. Silly hats are practical – they keep your head warm and ensure that no one will ever take you seriously again.

5. The length of time for the water to boll is proportional to how desperate you are for a cup of tea or coffee or hot chocolate.

6. Happiness is a cup of hot coffee (or tea) outside your tent when you get up in the morning.

7. Scouts have endless supplies of energy until they have to walk somewhere.

8. Scouts are allergic to washing up liquid.

9. A Scout’s alarm clock is always set either two hours earlier or two hours later than the leader’s.

10. Be nice to the caterer, or they might put food in your dinner.

11. There is always an unclaimed piece of underwear at the end of camp, but you never find the woggle that was lost at the beginning.

12. Smoke gets in your eyes.

13. Smoke will follow every individual around any given fire – no matter where they move, in which direction, where the wind is coming from, or even if there Is any wind at all for that matter.

14. A shower to a Scout is when it is raining.

15. Scouts do it in hiking boots and waterproofs with rucksacks.

16. If you stand and stare at a tent long enough it will pitch itself.

17. Don’t just do something – stand there!

18. If it’s burnt on the outside it must be cooked.

19. A Scout can cook anything, unsupervised and unassisted, as long as it’s a sausage.

20. A Scout is to be trusted – to do something really stupid and dangerous, usually involving fire, blades, food, vegetation, another Scout or any combination of me above.

21 .A Scout always takes their underwear home, clean, dry and unpacked.

22. When everyone is asleep at night a big spoon comes and stirs the contents of your tent around, so you’ll never find anything again.

23. No matter how large the rucksack or how numerous they are, there is always the plastic carrier bag.

24. I like Scouts, but I couldn’t eat a whole one.

25. The purpose of wide games is to get as many Scouts as possible lost, in the woods, preferably at night.

26. Ask a Scout to build a one man bivouac and you’ll get a cow shed, ask them to build a three man bivouac and you’ll get something just big enough for a Beaver or a cuddly toy.

27. Camping is good for me soul -it must be – anything this much hard work has to be good for you.

28. Trying to remember how many loaves of bread (or pints of milk) you bought. and how many were either left over at the end or had to be bought half way through the last camp, is the second sign of madness.

29. The first step on the road to madness is being a leader.

30. You can always tell where a Scouts’ tent was from me sweet wrappers.

31. You can always tell where a Venture’s tent was from me burnt out beer cans.

32. To estimate the length of time it will take to complete an activity at camp; think of how long it should take, multiply that figure by the number of Scouts doing it, take off me number you first thought of, halve that figure and finally move the decimal point one place to the right. Hence we can allocate four hours and ten minutes for six Scouts to complete a ten minute activity.

33. If at first you don’t succeed – cheat. Just don’t let anyone see you doing it.

34. You know you have picked a bad site when me tent pegs are held in by suction.

35. Anyone who goes camping between November and March deserves what they get.

36. The average Scouts’ First Aid Kit contains: three sticking plasters (one opened), two antiseptic wipes, one sewing needle (unsterilized) and thirty seven safety pins.

37. Building the fire up for the night to leave embers in the morning does not require an imitation of the towering Inferno, but this is what usually happens anyway.

38. When whittling, whatever you produce is what you set out to make.

39. You always remember the laughter.

40. Always stick to what you said.

41. There is no 41.

42. Life, the Universe, and Everything.

I thought this list would make a nice change from the seriousness of my last post!

I’ve been reading a few of my American Scouting friends’ blogs and they regularly talk about their Boy Led Troops. Also, there is this post from Lotta in Sweden about her Group’s and District’s Annual General Meetings.

In both these cases, Scouts are given the considerable responsibility of either running their Troops or having a major say and input into their important meetings.

The thing is, and I hope you don’t think I’m being rude about our Scouts, I don’t believe we would be able to do those things here in the UK.

First of all, the Scout Troop being run by the Scouts themselves like in the USA is unlikely due to the ages of the Scouts.

Scouts leave the Troop when they are 14 to join Explorers. This is run by the Explorers themselves, and very successfully as their ages go from 14 – 18. But with Scouts being in the 10 – 14 age range this doesn’t work.

As an example, I will tell you about one of our Scouts who has moved to Explorers in the last 4 – 5 months. He’d come through Beavers and Cubs and was a generally pleasant 10 year old. But when he was 11 & 12 he was a little  _________ (insert choice expletive here!). In fact, he was close to being chucked out of the Troop for his behaviour. Then, virtually overnight, his attitude changed. He worked hard and gained his Chief Scout’s Gold Award and started to help out with the Beavers. He’s now in the Explorers and a Young Leader with the Group (and a valued one too).  Now he only ‘grew up’ around 6  – 8 months before he was due to leave the Troop.

And this is where the difficulty lies within the Troop. Just as the Scouts start to become more experienced and are able to do tasks themselves, show others how to do things and show leadership skills, they leave the Troop! Now this is where I go a little ‘off message’ and say that having Scouts leaving the Troop to go to Explorers at 14 was a mistake! It means the experienced Scouts are not around long enough to pass on that experience to the younger ones.

Secondly, getting the young people interested in the actual running of the Group (for example) by suggesting items at a meeting would be a struggle. I don’t know whether this is just the young people in our Group, in our area or a UK thing, but when doing something that is ‘serious’ they tend to have the attention span of a goldfish! Is that our fault as Leaders by not presenting things in a way that grabs their attention, or just symptomatic of the time we live in where everything is instant and on a screen? I agree with Lotta when she says that getting the young people interested  and “involved in other circumstances, like student councils, political youth movements and so on” is an excellent idea, (and a necessary one really)  but for the Beavers, Cubs & Scouts are they interested / do they even care?

I don’t know. And maybe I am being unfair to the young people, but that’s the way I see it. Would anyone care to change my mind?

This is a rather good new video from the Scout Association.

Last night I was chatting to the Mums of two new Beavers. As our conversation progressed, one of the Mums whose daughter had just joined the Colony, asked me if Brownies still existed.

Now I have to admit this kind of surprised me. Girl Guiding UK, of which the Brownies are the section for 7 – 10 year old girls, is celebrating its centenary this year and there has been quite a bit in the media about their celebrations.

Quick bit of history. Girl Guides was started in 1910 by the founder of the Scout movement, Baden-Powell and his sister, as girls had started to form their own Scout patrols. The convention of the Edwardian society was that girls were delicate things who couldn’t possibly do the activities that the Scouts did and so the Guides were created to provide suitable activities for the girls. There is some evidence, however, that BP did want girls in Scouts. And it remained this way until girls could join Scouts in the early 1990s (Ventures from 1976). However, only girls can join Guides.

Now does the Mum asking if Brownies are still around, show a failure of Girl Guiding nationally or locally in the North Staffordshire area to promote themselves sufficiently? I know there has been plenty of coverage about their centenary and they do have an interesting campaign about the airbrushing of women in photographs. But do I notice these stories because they are related to Scouting, and would I notice them if I wasn’t in Scouting? The other thing is that the Scout Association does seem, from my point of view, to have a stronger PR department. A huge thing was made about Bear Grylls becoming and being the Chief Scout. Do the Guides have a similar person? The SA are also good at putting good news stories into the press. Again, locally Guides do seem to get less publicity than Scouts and their general organisation (locally) seems weaker. Or is that my perception?

Interestingly, when the Guides publish their membership figures they have more members than the SA, yet the Scouts are seen as the ‘bigger’ organisation.

If any Guides reading this have any views or points they’d like to share about this, I’d love to hear from you.

I was chatting to my Group’s Beaver Leader about the forthcoming Beaver camp (of course Beavers don’t actually camp as such, they have to stay indoors) and she was concerned about the costs.

A little background: Beavers can only stay in indoor accommodation and cannot stay away from their parents for more than 24 hours. This means that when going ‘camping’ buildings have to be hired. On most campsites this means that you have to hire the buildings for the whole weekend and not for a 24 hour period. The other thing to bear in mind is that you can’t really charge a Beaver the same as, say a Cub, ‘camping’ in the same building for a whole weekend.

All this means that a Beaver camp is relatively expensive to run and will most likely run at a loss. So with this in mind, do we then think that we cannot run the camp as we will lose money?

Well, no. That is what the Group’s funds are for. If we take the attitude that we cannot run the camp then the Beavers don’t get to enjoy the experience of being at a campsite with all their friends, being away from Mum and Dad and family, in some cases for the first time and experiencing Scouting activities for the first time, for example climbing or cooking on a fire. If we as a Group have the money available then this is what it is there for. it’s kind of nice to know we have £xxx in the bank, but it was raised for the kids in the Group.

I don’t actually think that we will have to put too much Group money to the camp, but we will and it’ll mean that the Beavers have a great time at camp.

Rachael and I will be going out to see them all, although we’ll just be observers as I can’t do a great deal of Scouting activities with a baby with me!

In my last post I talked a bit about Escouts and the forums they provide. As well as the forums, until recently, they also provided free hosting for UK Scouting websites. This has been of enormous benefit to many Groups around the country who have been able to set up a sit without any cost.

However their free hosting service has been stopped recently due to a number of reasons, but mainly due to technical problems and the lack of time available to the Escouts owners. This is of course, because they have jobs, families and other Scouting commitments before they even think about the hosting. So they’ve called it a day.

Interestingly, by providing this service, they recon they’ve saved UK Scouting in the region of £100,000 – £150,000! Now if that’s not generous, I don’t know what is!

So a big thank you for all their hard work and generosity in providing that service!