Hurrah!

I walked in today for the meeting, and it was so cozy and warm, I thought I was in the wrong hut. It was only when I saw the half completed sections of wall, that I realised that I was indeed in 1st Fareham HQ.

A massive thank you to Mike Farmiloe (Danny’s dad) who spent a long day at the hut yesterday, wiring up all the heaters to the mains and installing a new fuse box…all for free! Well, we paid for the bits, but he volunteered his time and effort, and for that we are all extremely grateful.

I should also take this time to acknowledge all the hard work that Tiffy has been putting into the hut over the past year, giving up many weekends and evenings (not to mention summer and Christmas holidays) rewiring all the lighting, laying out the wiring for the heaters and new plugs, ripping down walls and replacing them with new insulated ones, patching holes in the roof, and so on and so forth. We should all be very relieved that he has vowed to stay on and assist with the continued refurbishment of the hut, even when he retires as GSL.

Diamond geezers both!

…and boy do I feel guilty!

At the weekend, Limpet and I were down at Braggers Wood, collecting a load of pioneering poles to bring back to the hut. On the way back, we stopped off at Lyndhurst.

There is this little shop that sells cheap toys and games, and in there, as well as finding a load of light footballs (which are an incredibly scarce commodity at present), I found these large soft frisbee type things. Eighteen inches diameter plastic ring, with a protective tube of foam rubber.

“Cool”, I thought. “We could heave these around all day at the hut and they won’t hurt anyone”. So I bought three of them.

Tonight (Monday) the expedition team have finished their meeting, so I decide to get them out for a chuck around. All is going fine for a few minutes, then I hear Chip comment “I haven’t had a throw yet!”.

So I aim one in his direction….

Now, I didn’t know this at the time, but there is a half inch gap, where the foam rubber doesn’t quite meet, and the plastic tube is exposed. Still, it’s quite a light plastic, so when I say that it caught Chip sweetly in the forehead, you may think “no harm done”.

…and that’s exactly what I thought, even when Chip slowly slid to the floor. It was only when I walked over to him and asked to take a look…..and the removed hand…and entire forehead were covered in blood….that I thought

“Ouch!”

I nearly had a funny moment, as I haven’t had to treat an injury in years (Gareth always took care of that, since he does it by profession - when are you coming back Gareth?), but then of course, the training kicks in. I was like, you know, ready to do CPR and cordon off the area and all that stuff…no sweat.

Chip nearly freaked out (I wonder if that should be ‘froke out’? wierd.) when he saw all the blood, but fair play to him - he manfully held on to his composure throughout the cleaning of the wound. And to be fair, there was a lot of blood - head wounds always look a lot worse than they actually are.

Once exposed, the cut was quite small, but quite deep, so he is going to have a nice battlescar to make me feel guilty whenever he feels like it in future!

Sorry Chip!

Here’s what Bulldogs is on 16th March 2008, there is quite a few of us! With the 3 new cubs coming up as well we are soon to be 7, assuming Luke has left. Which is a big shame because he had real potential to do really well…           …oh well. So here we all are (big breath)!

Spud (SPL/PL)
Simon (APL)
Harry
Ben
Tyler
Luke???
Jacob

I’m very happy with my patrol and believe I have the best scouts in the troop and we can achieve anything if we put our minds to it! Well done to you all. Watch out Falcons, we will win the cooking competition next year and knock you of your thrown.