Woggleknot.com – An Explorer Scout's Blog

I went on the Huddersfield North Jamboree selection weekend hoping to get a place. And failed.  So I’m absolutely gutted. Urban Dictionary Definition for gutted:

Gutted:

1) Bad luck
2) Shame
3) Ouch

Eleven of us went, but there were only three places. They said I was too shy, so I’m gonna work on becoming more confident before the county selection . There’s going to be plenty more people there, so I’ll just make a conscious effort to connect with more people . I really want to go to the jamboree so I have to give it my best shot. The jamboree sounds awesome. The theme is “Simply Scouting” and they are focusing on three things that can summarise scouting: Meetings, Solidarity and Nature. I need to make sure I get a place with the county and use the feedback I got today to my advantage instead of sulking about it! Besides, if you read on you’ll see how fun this weekend was.

The weekend was composed of various challenges. Crazy, seemingly-impossible, difficult challenges that required thought. But we all got through them eventually.The first one was a scavenger hunt. We had to look for various items. I did absolutely rubbish on this challenge and only got a few of them. I should have put a bit more effort in I guess.  Although I am kind of proud of a few clever things I did. One item was The Scout Law handwritten. I wrote down the words “The Scout Law” and got the point. We also had to do other challenges at the same time and I wasted over 20 minutes trying to pitch a tent in the dark. After this, we went to sleep and I discovered I could sleep better on the church floor than in my own bed.

The next day the main challenge was going to be something to do with manchester airport but it got cancelled because of some protestors. At 2:00 am the leaders planned an alternative challenge. We were split into two teams and each had to plan an afternoon tea event to be held at the church. We were given £50 and told whoever makes the biggest profit wins. My team chose to buy ingredients then bake cakes and buns and make sandwiches, and the other team decided to just buy buns from Sainsbury’s. We also decided we would hold a tiny raffle (with two prizes – A £4 cake and a £3 DVD!) which made us £45. We received£15 as donations standing outside Sainsbury’s, and we made exactly £100 from donations for cakes and buns (we were giving out the food and letting people pay whatever they wanted). We used facebook, called people, asked people outside Sainsbury’s and in the streets to come to the event, and the leaders also invited many people to come along. At the end, my team made a profit of £124, and the other team made £129. Everybody was suprised by how well we all did – even the leaders thought we would fail!

That night we split up into groups (we worked with people of a similar age) and cooked our own tea over the open fire. I tried to used a technique I read in a Ray Mears book but that didn’t really work, but we managed to get the fire going in the end. Then we built it bigger so it was hot enough to boil water and fry mince. We had Pasta Bolagnase, and it tasted great. For dessert we stuffed bananas with chocolate buttons then wrapped them in foil and put them in the embers of the fire.It was a bit goey, but it tasted nice. After eating we went on a hike which had challenges at every checkpoint – each was fun and interesting. After this, we slept in tents we’d pitched earlier in the day. I didn’t sleep well.

Today was also fun. We built our own assualt courses using pioneering poles and rope. They were quite simple but still fun to climb/vault over. After we had dismantled the structures, we got called in one by one to be told if we had been selected or not.

Although I’m extremely disapointed, this weekend was still amazing fun and I’m just gonna have to focus on trying really hard for county selection!

I’m going to start looking for other Scouting-related blogs so I can put links to them on the sidebar to the right. So when I do have some blogs to link to, please have a look at them!

I’m also hoping some of these people link back to my blog so some more people read mine

I have exams this week so YET AGAIN I won’t be able to go to scouts. I’m gonna have to miss explorers to revise. This is starting to get annoying now. I’ve missed scouts the last two weeks because of all the snow and stuff.

I should be able to go and help out on thursday though

1940 was a remarkable year in which Britain experienced the blitz, saw the start of food rationing and sent evacuees away from their homes. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of this astounding year, factual channel Yesterday is releasing a selection of TV shows that celebrate the spirit of 1940 during wartime in Britain, and now Yesterday needs you!

Yesterday are compiling an online library of war stories and memorabilia from WW2, and they need people to send in content that they can upload to their website. If you have any memories or photographs of the Second World War, make sure you send them in!

You can get involved in many different ways, such as sending in scans of photographs, or emails sharing your stories. If you’re like me and were born a long time after the war, why not see if your neighbours or older relatives have anything to share?

Send memories in any format by email and Yesterday will feature the best on the website. To get involved, simply visit www.visityesterday.co.uk or email your stories to your1940story@uktv.co.uk

The first commission from The Spirit of the 1940s begins with Ration Book Britain, a brand new, one hour special that begins on 15 January 2010 at 5pm. This particular show will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of food rationing in Britain, with a unique look at this period of austerity in British history and the impact that rationing had on individual lives.

This isn’t really scout related news but I think it’s a great idea to digitally document people’s stories about the war.  Projects like this give people all across the globe an insight into what life is/was like for different people, and I believe it’s extremely important that we have that insight.

Yesterday:
Sky 537
Virgin 203
Freeview 12

We’ve had an extremely cold start the new year and it’s brought both benefits and complications. The main benifit was being able to go home from school early on Tuesday and get the day off on Wednesday, but because of Icy roads near where I live I couldn’t get a lift down to Bradley to help out at Scouts. But meh, my Xbox saved me from boredom.

Monday was an awesome night. We went to LazerZone and played 4 or 5 games or Lazer Tag. A bit pricey at £10 but it was great fun. Although I’m not really that good at it. I came last place in the first 2 games then I came ALMOST last in the rest.

I’m hoping to go on the 2011 Jamboree in Sweden and I heard that there’s a selection weekend sometime in February. I’m gonna be going to that and I hope to get one of the guaranteed places with the W.Yorkshire contingents.

I need to push this blog out further so more people read it and that selection weekend might just give me a brilliant oppurtunity to do so…

I should have posted this extremely short post last week but I’ve been busy being lazy, playing computer games, skateboarding and doing school work.

Last week on Monday we went bowling with Explorers. We hired two lanes and split up into two different teams. I’m not too good at bowling because the only bowling I’ve played recently is on Wii Sports. However, it was still great fun and I can’t even remember which team won.

I meant to post this at the weekend, except two things stopped me. One, I was really tired and couldn’t be bothered after walking all night, and two, my cat had to get put down. So I wasn’t exactly in a blogging mood.

But anyway, this year’s nighthawk was as great as last years, although unfortunately my team didn’t win. All of my team, except for me, dropped out of the competition and I had to join another team. I’m not holding anything against them though, some of them really didn’t seem to be coping well. But I decided to carry on and finish the walk anyway, even without a chance of winning. It was still fun, and still an achievement to me.

Unfortunately, I forgot to get my certificate of achievement before we all went home, but I don’t really care. My ID card that’s been clipped to say I’ve reached the finishing point is enough for me!

The Field Gun competition was tonight. The “Field Gun” was a bit better than the one we used at Bradley, and it could stay in one piece without anybody having to hold onto it.

I was supposed to be helping the leaders, but one scout troop didn’t have enough people in the team so I ended up actually taking part in the competition.

The obstacles were really good, and it was a bit similar to the stuff you could see in the video I posted last week. The scouts began by dismantling the field gun. There were three obstacles on the course. The first was a small wall with a hole in – equipment was passed through the hole and the scouts had to climb over. The second obstacle was barrels stacked up in a pyramid shape – the scouts had to climb over and pass the parts of the field gun over. The third obstacle was a rope and pulley which the scouts used to pull themselves and the field gun parts across from one side to the other. Once all the parts and people were across, the field gun was rebuilt and the scouts had to run back to the beginning of the course.

It was slightly embarrassing being quite a bigger than all the other scouts taking part, but it was still fun.

Next Friday there is a competition called the nighthawk challenge, which Bradley Scouts are entering.

In the competition, the scouts have to hike from checkpoint to checkpoint through the night (and into the morning). The checkpoints are only open at certain times, so Scouts must arrive within a certain time window, or they are disqualified. The walk is usually around 12 miles long. However, the walk isn’t the hard part.

There is also team of Adult volunteers called “Hunters” who split up and search all the areas where scouts could be walking, and any scout troops that get found loses a point. The scout team that reaches the finish point ,and has lost the least amount of points, wins.

Scouts must decide on which routes they should take to each checkpoint, and they should choose routes that hunters are least likely to find them on. In order to win the competition, a lot of decision making and good tactics is necessary.

I managed to win the competition last year with my team, and hopefully the team from Bradley Scouts this year will do well too!

Tonight the scouts were practising for a field gun competition next week on Friday. We built our very own field gun and made some obstacles to practise with. There were horizontal poles to crawl under, tables to crawl over, chairs to run across , and chairs to weave in and out of. The scouts started off with very slow times, but after many practises on the course and discussion of tactics, they managed to improve their times by working as a team. One of the teams managed to get a time that was under half of the original time.

However, although I call it a “Field Gun”, it was actually a milk crate tied to a wooden pole and two old tyres were held to the side of it. It sounds funny, but does it really matter if the scouts still had lots of fun?

In case you have no idea what a Field Gun Competition is, watch this: