gjh's blog

Turn up in uniform, answer a short village quiz at the next Scout meeting, and you get 5pts for your patrol AND the theory part of your Community Challenge Badge.

It should be pretty cool too :-)

Hey, that's pretty good, guys! "Attitude" came 6th in the county, "Mutiny" came 24th. (BTW mutineers, with 50 extra points, you'd have been 21st.)

Gonna award 1pt extra per "Attitude" member. That makes 1pt each for Hawks, Owls, Falcons, and 3pts for Kingfishers. All the points have now been updated as of 9th March. Check em out top right on the home page. Swifts back in the lead :-)

Well done everyone who took part in FORWARD. Points may be available on top if either team won.... results not yet in.

In other news, Kingfisher will be losing points for two incidents, mobile phone and organizers' radio abuse. Numbers tomorrow on troop night. Swifts COULD be back in the lead!!

Hey Kids, look... Pioneering Plus badge to the first Scout to lead a building project that includes one of these lashings :-)

Kontiki campsites- cloverleaf octopod lashing -

I like to give you options, kids.

Let's say you were Swifts, and needed 15 points to catch up. You could do that if Becky joined (5pts for CUSAGC), plus Alex pulled his finger out and got his Adventure Challenge (10pts). Easy!

Let's say you were Owls and need 15 points to catch up. I'm offering 15pts for the whole patrol finishing up next week's meeting by singing the traditional Scout Hymn (see box on the right). The original tune is horrible, but it works to the tune of "Tell Out My Soul", which is much nicer.

Suppose you were Falcons - an excellent patrol, but very young, and dragged down by people being ill for a couple of weeks. How to make up 25pts.... well, that would be just one patrol activity outside Scout time, at 5pts per patrol member turning up. Easy :-)

As a Hawk though, you're probably already thinking about the Community Bus, or maybe just sitting at home with the PlayStation on Monday nights. I mean, 45pts down, it's impossible, isn't it? Ahhhaa! No!! Just three of you on a patrol camp, at 15pts per person will fix that. One of you needs to save the day and organize a camp. It's the only way to save face! I believe in you guys :-)

See you all Monday. And remember.... we're on just week 3 of at least a 12 week competition.

Adam, AlexF... get together and make me one of these. Alex - you've got the MindStorms stuff, right?

We're done a lot of cycling this year. It's a perfect end to the year that Alistair, Luke, Ben, Rachel and Jonathan went out and brought most of the trail home with them, attached to their bikes and their bodies. Thanks Guys!

Exhibit A

The recent County Top Awards Ceremony, where one of our Patrol Leaders was awarded Chief Scout Gold, enables us to compare our troop to others in the area. It looks like there were only four Scouts in the county to get CSG this year, so unfortunately it gives us a small sample size. Nevertheless, we feel confident to draw some conclusions.

I draw your attention to exhibit A, where our man, on the left, is holding his certificate that he has received above his head. And he's standing on a box. And what you immediately notice is that our troop is 50% shorter than every other troop in the county. This is quite shocking. Scientifically, we are observing a correlation, not causation. We don't have a good causative theory that fits the data, nor have we attempted to test any theory. But for some reason, 1st Histon produces shorter Scouts than anyone else. We hope that someone else can pick up on our research and find out whether this is matched by everyone in Histon being short too. It would seem strange that this has gone unnoticed before, and this would be a breakthrough discovery.

Just for the record, we want to state our reasonable assumptions:
- Scouts in other troops also ace Chief Scout Gold aged 12
- We're not just better than everyone else

Wheeee! Lovely day for a hike. Especially your first solo outing. Sets a great standard :-)
....oops. Things got sticky in the rain. OMG this was a great day for a hike - wish I'd been out there with you guys. But well done for tracking back to a known location, and well done for carrying on after your rescue. You guys were good.

Tomorrow I'm going to ask you what you learned ;-)

Night Owl 2009
Cameron D
Toby P
Alistair C
Rachel C
Abi C
Harvey A

What do you really need after an evening in the cold, listening to Cameron and Alistair arguing again, going to bed shattered, well after midnight, and then some kid shouting "Shutup Archie" 'til 2:30 in the morning?

[Someone else cooking a full brekkie helps, BTW]

But, really... you want someone to say,

PLs celebrating in the normal way

"teams in reverse order...

blah
blah
over , cottenham, barhill
blah
blah
HISTON, First Place."

Well done, guys! Now, nobody should think that you just turn up and win these things. Everyone on the team except Harvey (the youngest) has either been on the Peak Challenge or CUSAGC Forward before. And this team is getting good. Dear reader, you may expect similar winning announcements thrice annually henceforth :-)