Teenager road safety

The kids are back at school. You can tell, the roads are stuffed up with traffic again.

Cog walked to school without an adult from year 4. It's not so bad here, we live in a village and the really busy road had a lollypop lady that's a crossing guard to the grown ups reading!

I didn't worry as much about her then as I do now. Now she has to cross a road to get to the bus stop without a proper crossing place, there are parked cars, speeding traffic, 8 or more school buses coming through and to be quite frank, it's dangerous.

One morning as I was driving along the road, a school bus came through, a teenage boy, about 15, was clearly late out of bed, he shot out of the alley, across the road in front of me and made it to his bus. I braked in time.....just. I wasn't going fast, who would near school bus stops? Lots of people that's who. He hadn't got a clue that I nearly hit him, he was completely oblivious, totally focused on catching his bus.

The problem with teens is they don't have to think hard about how to cross a road like tiddlers, they don't stand back from the kerb, look left, look right, look left again, they don't need to think stop, look, listen. They are like adults, it is a habit not so much a conscious thing. That's why it is so scary, because they are a bit tired, their mind is on who is on the bus, will they miss it, did they do their homework.  Soon it'll be starting to get darker in the mornings and will be dark by the time the late school bus is back.  Wearing fluorescent is not cool, sensible but not cool.

Every month 1000 children are injured on roads near schools.   That's just the 'near' schools, what about the kids like Cog who start their journey's a long way from the school.   Traffic is the biggest single cause of accidental death for 12 to 16 year olds.

I just think it's worth taking the time now to mention to your older kids that they are more likely to die on the road than they are of cancer.  Remind them to put their phone down and look for the traffic, and to take an earphone out and listen for the traffic.  There's no point in lecturing them, you know they won't listen.  Just mention that 12,000 kids will be hurt this year and you'd prefer it wasn't them.

For 6 to 11 year olds I found this site from direct gov.  There's a lot of stuff out there for drivers, watch some of these videos from Think, another Government initiative.  But what is there for the high risk teenagers? 

Writing all this had me whistling 'Dumb ways to Die', so I'll share it with you again.  Maybe we could just sing it to our kids until they beg us to stop and promise to take more care.





Please remind your kids not just at the start of the school year but regularly throughout the year that they need to be careful to avoid becoming another statistic.  Don't let them add to the 85,000 kids hurt on the roads around schools since 2006. 

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Camp isn't all rush

At Wellies and Wristbands I slept inside the training centre on a proper bed because of the state of my back. But the Rangers were given a pitch at the top of a steep hill about as far away as they could be from the main building.

Each morning I got up early and showered in a lovely, long hot shower in my ensuite, but don't mention that to the campers, they get all huffy about these things! and walked up to the camp site, sat with a cup of tea and waited for the world to wake up.

This meant my Rangers got a cup of tea in bed.  It's a way to say thank you for how they help me out with carrying my bag and generally being great girls.

It's lovely just sitting, waiting to hear the first zips of the tents.

There is usually time, especially at large scale events where activities are lead by other volunteers, to sit and chew the fat or perhaps plan a few meeting nights.

It's not just the leaders, the girls like to have time to chill and will seek out a quiet area to do it.  Down time can be as important as up time.

I spotted this leader tucked away between tents having a mid afternoon recharge well there were a lot of bands to be dancing to later!

Each evening as the girls and our other leader bedded down, I walked back to hall.  On the last night the moon was a gorgeous orange.  There were muted conversations coming from tents, torch lights swinging back from the toilet blocks and a dampness coming down in the air.  It's a special part of camp.

On the walk to my tent late on the last night at Charnwood 2011 I saw the longest, clearest shooting star, it summed up everything about how I felt at the time.  I really can't describe what a lovely feeling it is on a dry, warm camp night after the girls are starting to quieten down, but all Guiders that camp will know what I mean.

But sometimes those early mornings, provide the most beautiful moments.

There really is something very special about being out and about, waiting for day of activity and fun to start and yet feeling that you could freeze time just for a while to soak up the tranquillity.

At Wellies and Wristbands Waddow, one lady went around the dry stores on each camp site at about 5:30am and put on the boilers for hot drinks when the campers woke up.  It seems like such a chore and I was so grateful to her but I could wish to be that lady, happy to have nature to myself, just for a while.

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Wellies and Wristbands 2013

It took us 7 hours and 5 trains and a coach to get to Waddow Hall for Wellies and Wristbands 2013, but it was thoroughly worth the effort.

This was a new 'initiative' this year run centrally by GuidingUK with events happening simultaneously at Waddow and Foxlease training centres.

Apart from the 'festival style' tent pitching instead of horse shoes initially it felt very much like a large scale camp.  It was well organised (if a little lacking in information giving initially). There were volunteers from the camp on the station platform to meet and greet, the coaches from the station to Waddow were spot on, there was a well organised check-in, well marked pitches (even the randomness of festival style was controlled to give it the perfect feel without any down sides).  I just can't fault the Guiding led arrangements.

Our Rangers would have liked a Senior Section camp area, they always prefer this at large scale events. It helps them to mix better with other units.  Some events do it, some don't.

There was a wealth of activities available: crate stacking, tree climbing a very very tall tree!, Jacob's ladder, low ropes, abseiling, zip wire, canoeing, kyacking, rafting, warrens, archery, pioneering, wood craft, marshmallow toasting obviously!, craft tents.






But this wasn't just a Guide camp, this was a festival so there were also indulgence tents, art tents, african drumming, street dance, cheer leaders, tattoos, hair braiding, belly dancing, inflatables, bungee racing, bucking bronco, surf boarding.  Honestly the list of things to do seemed endless.

The hot tubs went down a treat!

I love the way the girls are given opportunities to develop their confidence and self without even realising they are learning - they think they are just having fun - bless them!

I sat in the sun watching some girls get a briefing for canoeing.  They then had to pull the boats down to the water get in them and off they went.

Health and safety was very tight, I was watching the instructors but the girls will have felt like they were off on their own.  You should have seen their proud smiles as they came back to shore after shaky starts.

I couldn't see the smiles on the girls doing night line but I could hear them shrieking with laughter especially after they were hosed down at one point.

The catering was also festival style and I think the organisers learnt a lot from this first W&W event and changes will be made for future ones.  We all truly wished we were living off eggy bread.

The Chief Guide, Gill Slocombe, went to both sites. It was wonderful to see her just being a Guider about site, relating to and interacting with the girls and Guiders. She must have been tired already having 'done' Foxlease before travelling up to Waddow.  The Chief Executive, Julie Bentley was also there, having come up from Foxlease too.  I realised when I  found myself stood right behind her watching the Chief Guide.

How fantastic that she too was stood in a field in blues and just being part of the camp. 'Back to the floor' is something I always advocate and there she was, doing just that.

And what's more, when I asked her if I could take a photo for my website - she knew who I was, I'm taking this to be a good thing!

The lady in pink with Julie Bentley (in green) is quite incredible. A Guider extraordinaire and wow, she can dance.

Back to the festival, there were 3 nights of bands with a fantastic atmosphere.

The highlight for me was Saturday night which had an amazing band and an incredible atmosphere.  But on Sunday night with a warm breeze and the sun just starting to go down, the band on stage started to jam Sweet Home Alabama.  That was pretty cool.

It was a great way for the girls to have a taste of a festival in a totally safe environment.  Free to be themselves but within the well-honed Guiding large scale camp environment.

The balance worked perfectly for me.

It was also an opportunity for us to say the current promise, that is to change very soon, on mass one last time.  I always love it when we do that as a group, it's a reminder of our bond.

If you were hesitant about taking your girls to a Wellies and Wristbands in 2013 I thoroughly recommend it for 2014.  It was a fantastic balance of festival meets Guide camp.  The organisers must have worked very hard and it paid off.

There were some lessons to be learnt but one of the things Guiding is good at is change for the good and I think Wellies and Wristbands 2014 will be bigger and better - go for it.

For those of you reading this not in the know, I'll add that these events are organised and run totally by volunteers.  No one gets paid a bean to be run ragged for a week and have months of work leading up to it.  GuidingUK is full of the most incredible people.  It always amazes me that they will work so hard to give the girls (and me) these incredible opportunities - thank you W&W team.

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Money can't buy you class

Or maybe it should be: Money can't buy you cognitive intelligence.

I was sat watching a group of people thinking 'money can't buy you class' but these days it would seem that there has been a redefinition of class and according to the BBC, money is precisely what buys you class, money and how many times you can afford to get out socialising in a week.

So maybe I'm not actually talking about true 'class' but what, in my world, that defines 'class' or generally nice, caring people from the scrote. A term applied by HWMBO to 'the other type'.

For me swearing isn't part of it. Those who know me know I care a lot about people. I will carry a screaming child with no connection to me around on a long haul flight until it falls asleep to save a mother's sanity but I will call someone who tuts at said child and gives mother dirty looks an utter arse without shame and I consider the F-word to be one of the most versatile in the dictionary when used with discretion. At funeral or Guide meeting: nope; at desk when cat-A service crashes: oh yes indeedy.

For me 'class' is the ability to recognise there are other people that share this world besides you and your family. Our actions directly or indirectly affect others too and that matters.

I watched a 10 or 11 year old boy ram his bike into my parked one. He was also watched by his mother. I waited for her to say something. I expected as a minimum 'be careful' but she said nothing at all.

But it's not even about what I consider to be poor child behaviour going unchecked.

Perhaps it's about stepping aside for buggies, holding a door open for the next person, not leaving litter behind, closing a gate, not putting a group of chairs across a walk through, picking up someone else's coat if it falls to the floor, not brushing crumbs onto the floor.

All of these things, if done, can make the world a slightly nicer place. Lots of slightlies make a big difference.

Sometimes people or families live as if nobody else in the world exists or matters. Everything they do is done with that in mind. They might go on a parent rota if there is a threat of closure but they wouldn't otherwise offer to help. They would ensure their whole family gets a locker but wouldn't double up to enable other families to get one too. They will spread out to take up a whole picnic table rather than squish up to share.

I think I'm fairly well racked up in cognitive but fail in the 'self' part of emotional intelligence. COG is the same. We both get grumpy when things in the world are getting hard or scary or change is afoot. I will fall out with people quickly because I don't take time to rein my emotion in. I then go back to happy quickly as if the quick release of adrenaline cleared the air but it can leave other people reeling in my wake. I guess this isn't classy either.

So is class the stuck up woman that has a handbag full of expensive makeup, has wonderful manners and great conversation but wouldn't roll up her sleeves to help others in need?

Or is is the helper that cares about others, shares their table and swears like a trooper?

Is it somewhere inbetween?

There are some people I just cannot relate to and many, I don't doubt, that can't relate to me.

Life is a rich tapestry.

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Airport Security Effectiveness

How confident do you feel when you walk through airport security that they are doing something worthwhile? Do you believe they are protecting you from bombers and hijackers or that it is for show and mainly a waste of time?

I got into a bit of bother once at Dubai third level security.  We had already 'done' security in Birmingham.  We had got off the plane in Dubai and gone through security again that allows you to enter the terminal, despite only having just got off a plane.  Our plane had arrived 2 hours late, we had 20 mins to make our connection for Australia, 15 of  those had already been spent stood in queues.  We ran down the travelators, we flew up escalators and arrived at yet another security scan station.  HWMBO takes forever to empty his pockets, take off his belt, get his laptop out of the case etc and COG and I were willing him to hurry up. The stress hit and COG burst into tears, my face must have shrieked stress and we were 'profiled'.  We were questioned in detail, but amazingly quickly they got the measure that my stress and frustration was with HWMBO and missing flights and we were again running through the airport.

I remember reading this a longtime ago about Israeli airport security, it's message that stuck with me. Security is not about catching the mum trying to 'smuggle' through a pair of tweezers she forgot were in the bottom of a handbag. It's about screening for behaviour before all else.

This doesn't happen in the UK, the security staff are too busy issuing process instructions, stacking boxes and looking at bags on screens to bother really looking at the person.

How effective is all that looking at the bags on the screens?  Recently on our way out of the UK HWMBO forgot to declare his injections.  He had syringes in his bag, sharp needles, liquids, totally unnoticed by the scanners. 

I had chemical ice packs in my hand luggage.  These are fairly large and when 'cracked' the powders turn into a cold liquid. I showed them to security in the UK and showed a doctors note.  The note was actually the only one I could find in the rush of packing, it that was over 2 years old, was addressed to my employer and did not mention the need for medication or ice packs.  Security barely glanced at it and did not separately scan the packs.

On the way home I left the packs in my bag, Greek security didn't even pick up on the fact that there were 2 large packs of chemicals in my handbag.

So, how safe do you feel about the security?  I may be very wrong but over and over it seems to be a futile exercise in making people queue to have a perception of safety.  Where the emphasis is on speeding up the current system, our safety is never going to be improved.  The system is already flawed from what I can see.

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The Oldest Church in England

St Martin's in Canterbury is the oldest church building in England, still functioning as a church and the oldest church in continuous use in the English speaking world.   It was already an old church when Augustine came in AD 597.

 It is about a 15 minute walk out of Canterbury centre out past the Abbey.  It is only open at certain times,  so check the website before going. This is a 'working' parish church so I'd put money on (or at least into their collection box) that if you are coming a long way and are mad keen to get in, they would see if a church warden would open up at an agreed time or you could go at a service time and enjoy experiencing it's intended purpose.

It was the chapel of Queen Bertha of Kent in the 6th century before Augustine arrived. Queen Bertha was the wife of King Æthelberht of Kent. He was converted to Christianity.

This is a Chrismatory, it is a 14th century container for holy oils.  It was hidden in St Martins during the reformation and only found again in 1849.  Only 2 survived the Reformation.  It is a replica in the church, the original is on display in the cathedral crypt .

The font is such a key point in a church. It could tell you a thousand family stories.  King Ethlebert was probably baptised here.  Just shut your eyes, touch the stone and feel the history.  This actual font was made from a well head in the cathedral cloister some time between 1155 and 1165 so in terms of the life of the church, I guess it's quite new!

Do you ever sit in the pew of a church and imagine the people that went before you.  Through the last wars, though the Victorians, Georgians, the civil war, back to the plague years, all the prayers and thoughts that have welled up in those walls.

It's quite incredible.




We had a long wander around the church yard.  Mary Tourtel (Rupert bear) is buried here, and Hilare Countess Nelson (who married Horatio Nelson's brother and Jane Austin's Nephew but not at the same time.)

From the top of the churchyard you can see the daughter church of St Martin's - yes, that's Canterbury Cathedral. 

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She Wouldn't Go Out

For all Cog's positives, she is a teenager.  I took some time off work this week to be with her.  After lengthy complaining about how bored she was, she refused to come out.  One shouting match later we were in the car and almost immediately her whole persona changed.  Jekyll and Hyde teenagers, honestly!

Suddenly Alice in Wonderland was fair game.

Harry Potter was a loon.  Narnia also got a look in.

Actually, the museums do go out of their way to lay on things for children in the holidays and around here they are all free.

You should check your local ones out.

We decided to educate ourselves with some art.

Although I was often confused, as usual.

This is not a digger, it is art.

This is not a set of seats, it is art.

This is not a funny bottom, it is art *giggles*

Half a piece of art.

I know....I'm a philistine.

We spend an interesting amount of time deciding whether this 2 foot long fish was dead.  After a long wait I was all for throwing stones at it, but it must of heard me, it raised it's head, gave me a filthy look and swam off.

All in all a good day out, considering it looked like it wasn't going to happen at all.

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A day out in the park

 You start to think that teenagers are too old to be 'taken' to the park, I guess you've just got to look a little wider than the play equipment to engage them.

One of our local ones has a table tennis table, we just have to remember to take some bats and balls.

 Then there's pitch and putt.

We were totally rubbish at it....how many swings before the ball was actually hit!

I'd only done crazy golf before, not pitch and putt.  It's quite a move up but it was actually great fun and at £5.50 for 4 of us for 9 holes, I thought it was a bargain.

 A walk around the park in areas we wouldn't previously have ventured to produced some nice surprises.

 Even a den building area.

And I was really happy to see lots of children all doing exactly that.  There was just lots of branches lying around for the kids, nothing fancy, but you should see what their imaginations had them building.

It is so good for all kids to remove them from technology just once in a while.

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Relax? As you were Guides, As you were

This week's Gallery theme is 'relax'

Non Guidey-Scouty people probably think we spend all our time putting up tents or making an Escher 3d staircase out of a few bits of wood and a rope.  Actually a lot of the time we like to just chew the fat.  Guiding is one of the few places where a wider age range than they normally experience in their school groups get together to just 'be' and it is very beneficial.   It's also one of the reasons that the girl only space is maintained and works so well, girls can be themselves, no pretence required.  No emphasis on looks or even achievement, just a group of girls chillin.

These guides are grass sledging.

These Brownies and Young Leaders were doing circus skills.

These Young Leaders were cleaning out the fire place I believe!

I guess sometimes they do actualy wear themselves out and chillin becomes 'out like a light'!

I hunted high and low for a picture of me at a Guide event chillin, even just sat down.....not a single one.  It may be because I'm the one that carries the camera, or it may be because I'm not very good at stopping.  Hey Blue Clothed Friends.....do you have a photo of me sat down?

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Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain

Those of us that grew up around here have always known that Richard III was buried in Leicester.   Of course we knew, they made us learn it at school.  But it's grim round these parts and to be quite frank, if you weren't on the winning team you get concrete poured on your shallow grave and you end up under a car park

All the same, 'The White Queen' on the BBC has whipped my beating heart up in a way that it hasn't stirred since 'The Tudors'. So we poddled into Leicester to see what is to be seen.

The Richard III  'exhibition' is currently near the Guild Hall. (Although for a day out with the kids I would still head off to Bosworth.)

The Guild Hall is a great place, we used to come here fairly regular when I was a child.  It's just this cool Tudor building you can wander around. No ropes, no signage, nada.

It's like the dressy uppy people just stepped out of the room and we walked in.  It's quite bizarre.  Staff anyone?

Anyhoo, back to Richard III. The clever University people worked out where he was buried and dug him up.  They've proved it is him and Leicester is having a field (Bosworth anyone?!) day with it.

I thought it was quite interesting that the skeleton had no feet, they think they were probably lost in the building work of the Victorians. Fancy digging ground so close to a King and having no idea.

After the exhibition and the dig site, we popped into the Cathedral.  The dig just seems to have dug up the War of Roses and Leicester and York are in a tug of bones about where he should be laid to rest.  I'm guessing York feel Leicester's current track record of looking after him isn't looking too great.  But in fairness, he was fairly well looked after until Henry stuck his reformation oar in.  Wolsey died in Leicester too, he's at the Abbey (well, what's left of it!).

And then a most excellent tea break at the Cafe Piero on Loseby Lane.  I thoroughly recommend the casablanca tea and the falafel and humous salad.

Off to the Castle Gardens to see his statue and act like a King going to battle.

I thought we played the part very well.

Cog failed to be impressed.

Mostly Leicester is not pretty.

That is the polite way of putting it.

But parts of it can be fairly nice.

You just have to look real hard!

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