A Guiding Life

I haven't been writing a lot this year. So many reasons but one of them is I have been busy! At the start of June the townies discovered our local reservior and decided whilst the pubs and clubs were shut it would be an excellent place to go and party, and leave huge amounts of litter behind. This annoyed the nellies off the locals obviously and most decided to moan about it on social media. I decided to go and pick the damn litter up. I'd been an inactive member of the South Leicestershire Wombles for a while and this turned me into a very active member. And to date I have picked 310 dust-bin sized bags of rubbish plus a huge number of periphal things like traffic cones, car parts etc. I will get around to sharing photos of it with you at some point. But for most of the summer I was out and about picking litter and mostly at my local reservoir.

But recently I got an opportunity to go litter picking on the river soar in a canoe. I was rather excited.

Being as I'd never been in a canoe before ever (although the friends I was going with are old hands) the safety team decided we should go in the stablist thing they had. I wasn't unhappy about that!

I had a ball. Paddling up stream towards the National Space Centre until we got to the weir where we attacked the litter.

We filled our boat with 5 full bin bags, a childs bed mattress, a baby bath, a traffic cone, and lots of other sundry rubbish.

Did I mention how much fun it was, despite the pouring rain!

And this is the rubbish the team picked that day.

They do it once a month and I would love to go again.

It's been a year of differences and Remembrance was not going to be an exception.

Each year I do 2 parades as the unit I run straddles 2 villages. This year the village with the morning parade did their service by prerecorded video. So earlier in the week I went down to the memorial and was filmed laying a wreath.

The 'afternoon village' still held an outdoor service but only with about 20 people attending. Those laying wreaths, the priests, the cornet player and 2 of us with flags.

I've never been a flag bearer before, obviously the girls would normally do it, so it was a first for me.

It all felt very respectful and appropriate.

I also had to write on the wreath which is something I've also never done before.

I chose "They hover as a cloud of witnesses over the nation" which is from a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher. It felt relevent to both Remembrance and the current time with Black Lives matter and the American elections hanging so heavy in the news.