Waiter: Would you like white wine sir?
Guest: No thank you, I don’t drink..
Waiter: Very well sir,
Guest: Would you please remove the glasses, so that I am not served accidentally.
Waiter: Certainly sir.
– The waiter returns to remove glasses
Guest: Leave the port glass, I do like port.
I am in admiration.
Snow this morning.. yea..
Being out on a Brompton with at least 25 more minutes of cycling in the snow.. Brr
I had an ice cream headache the from the snow hitting my forehead.
We have a new fridge..
The world is slightly better again.
Today I finally listened to the new bond theme by Sam Smith.. I had been wondering why I hadn’t heard it on the radio. Today I found out, God it is dreadful!
It is even more drippy and mumbled than Skyfall. Who on earth thought that was a good idea.
I will just have to ho back to hoping that they give the next one to Muse, as that would rock.
I’ve just watched someone hand feed an adult squirrel.. as in while holding in in one, let it eat out of the other..
Not sure that I will ever see that again.
This wasn’t at a nature reserve this is while sat on a bench in the sunshine in Bakewell.
Today I have been visiting Mum to help out with a few things. As part of this I unearthed Dads old wash kit.. Which then needed sorting out and deciding what should happen..
Now Dad travelled a lot so his wash kit was a repository of the useful things that he wanted to be sure that he had with him on any trip.
So what were some of the important things that dad carried with him on his adventures:
3 sewing kits, or house maids as he would call them.
An adapter for his razor.. that would plug into a bayonet light fitting. A genius idea, and also madly dangerous.
Several sleep eye masks.
Some aspirin and rennies.
A small unlabelled glass vial, filled with his after shave. A smell that invokes many memories.
And last but not least 2 ping pong balls.
Which is just the sort of thing a gentleman should have to deal with any situations.
I miss you Dad, particularly today.
1) That moment while walking up from the train station to the office, make eye contact with another bowler hat wearing city gentleman, and exchange a hat tip. This has made me oddly happy all day.
2) Talk of Halloween costumes at work that led me to dig out this page selling dust sheets. Somewhere there is a comersal photographer who deserves a bonus for this moment of genius.
3) Meeting up with an old housemate for a drink, natter,and so I could fix the email configuration on her new phone.. Something I managed to do smoothly and efficiently.. go me.
So today I was at the funeral of an old friend and group scout leader.. So it has been a bit of an emotional day..
However I can also say that I have never been at a more packed funeral service, the crematorium didn’t just have a few people stood up at the back, but we were crammed in like a commuter train. People were stood in the aisle, in the corridor at the back, I was slightly surprised that they managed to get the doors closed at all..
Which goes to show the impression that he made not just on me but on so many people from the community.
I first camped with him back in 1993, when he saved me from being camp cook on cub camp. At the time that would have been a really scary situation.
But he calmly took charge, and produced excellent food..
Bruce we will really miss you. Thank you for everything.
So my weekend was spent taking part in Sky Camp a competition weekend for Explorer Scouts / Scout Network an Leaders. So what is Sky Camp? Well apart for lots of hard work and good fun.
The idea is simple, you have to build a shelter that is at least 50cm off the ground and not more than 2.5 meters. You are in a team of between 4 and 8 people. The rules are quite simple, you place all the kit that you want to use in your designated bay.
The Explorers get 3 trips from the bay to the marked out site. Leaders only one.
You have then build a shelter to sleep your team, and cook a three course dinner in the shelter. The Explorers can coo using gas stoves, Network and Leaders have to cook on an open fire.
4000 points are available over the weekend, and are awarded for camp craft, teamwork, style, and for complementing challenges.
Now this is not something that I have ever done before, the rest of my team had a practice weekend a few weeks ago, so we had some ideas. But given that you don’t know where you will be building your shelter so don’t know what sort of trees that you will be able to use. It is all about being flexible and creative.
I can’t even remember the last time I took part in a competition camp.
Over the weekend I tied more lashings than possibly the last 10 years, it was great to do some real scouting for a change, rather than supervising hiking or instructing.
We had a team of Explorer scouts in the competition but during the weekend they had to be on their own. Which in turn meant that we had a free weekend to pool creativity into our site.
How was it it was really full on, from the moment we started we were pushing ourselves to get things done and build and to complete the shelter. While be interrupted by challenges to do blindfold sheep herding.
Now we had put some up front thinking into how we were going to decorate our site and the sort of things we would need, some of which I would have to lug across town and into work on my way.
My standard kit was supplemented with my complete climbing kit (which I mostly didn’t need), 2 hammocks, a mirror ball (and motor), a white tablecloth, a candelabra. a roll of wallpaper. It is an old climbing joke when you get stuck somewhere or take a very long rest, that you are thinking of wallpapering it. So if I was going to build a tree house I had to incorporate wallpaper. (I used string at the top and bottom) and then stapled the wallpaper to it. Which worked surprisingly well.
Anyway after a great weekend, were the weather amazingly stayed dry, which was impressive given the recent very heavy rain.
So how did we do, well despite being confident, we didn’t win. It was very close, we came second by just 15 points.
Going to have book myself up for next year, and buy myself a hammock.
Been out to meet up with friends for both lunch and drinks after work today..
Think that counts as a win.