BEAR GRYLLS NAMED AS NEW CHIEF SCOUT

I am very pleased that Bear Grylls has been named as Britain’s new Chief Scout. I think such a blatantly populist appointment will have the desired effect of encouraging more adults in the UK to volunteer as leaders (I might even offer). Apparently The Scout Association are desperate to improve the recruitment of adults to provide local leadership, because owing to the lack of adult supervision there are more than 33,000 people from aged 6 to 25 on the waiting list.

His appointment has certainly boosted my enthusiasm for my son’s newfound interest in the movement and for once I was actually quite looking forward to doing my duty and going along tonight to be a parent helper at a visit to a Lifeboat Station, to find out about the work they do and to look at the rescue boat with all the cubs (well you never know…do lifeboat men look like firemen or fishermen?) I had been asked ages ago. I was taking other children with me. My other two children had been sorted and then I remembered one small teeny weeny problem. I don’t have a cub to take with me. He’s away on a school trip. Does anybody know the number for “rent-a-cub” ?

My teenage son had his Maths GCSE yesterday “it was really hard and I don’t seem to have the same answers as everybody else” are never exactly the words you want to hear at the end of an exam….

Today he’s got English Literature and my daughter asked him last night if he’d seen the film of “Old Man And The Sea”. “NO” he shouted whilst attempting to panic revise. “Well have you read the book at least” I asked him….but he wasn’t in the mood to find that at all funny.