In 36 hours time, almost to the minute, we will be moving out of this flat and moving and it feels a bit funny. Now I know we are only moving a few hundred yards so it might sound a bit melodramatic, but this is the first place, since I left my parents, that has really become home. Durham as a town felt like home, but none of the hosues I lived in was. This flat is home and despite the dodgy decor in the kitchen, the thread bare patch of carpet at the foot of the stairs and the strange smell that appeared everynow and then that we could never quite locate the source of I'm going to miss this place!

Last time I felt like this was my last night at uni. I was in the last lot to graduate so was living in college till the last minute. It was late at night and I was crossing the quad to get some washing and I realised how different it was. normally on a summers evening there would be windows open, music playing, voices and parties but on this night there was hardly anything. I sat there on my own for a few minutes just thinking about everything that had happened over the previous 3 years.

It feels quite similar now.

Weird.

Time for a semi rant, and my rant is this......

Why, as scout leaders, do we not work more closely with a friends in the Girl Guides?

Yes I know we are two seperate organisations (regardless of what many in the general public might think) with differing rules about how we do things, but we are also two organisations with a shared history, a shared ethos, pretty similar set ups and do pretty similar stuff. The promises are extremely silimar. the traditions etc are almost identical.

So when we all moan that we are short on bodies for a camp or an event or want to do joint activities why the hell do we not approach them or them approach us? The hostility that I some times whitness is absurd and stupid in the extreme.

I personally have no such problems, I beg borrow and steal guide leaders like there's no tomorrow and where they can they borrow me back again, and it works! I also, quite proudly, where a Girl Guides promise badge (their equivalent of the world badge) on my uniform.

I went through Cubs/Scouts/Ventures in hertfordshire and there they work really close together, alomost all county events are joint, news letters are joint, many district activities are joint (including St Georges day) so why on earth is it not the same every where?

Well SCRAM was quite good fun, picked up loads of ideas, particularly on the craft front which is what we needed. The leaders at the pack are all very much in to getting out in to the great outdoors and doing stuff like fires and hikes and camping which is all very well but sometimes the kids want a bit more touchy feely stuff! The newspaper bangers were particularly good..... Also got accused of being good with kids after I had to organise them in to an indoor game while we waited for parents to pick them up. Was a bit naughty and taught them how to play 21's (a drinking game for the unitiated!) but adapted for kids. Was well chuffed to be accused of that!

Monday back at cubs we had a potential new leader come along to give it a crack. Think he'll be ok at it, he looked like a rabbit cauight in the headlights to begin with but I'm sure he'll get over that.

Am now desperate for this bloody move to be over and done with, most of our stuff is now sat in cardboard boxes and it's a little bit unsettling.

Well Monday at Cubs was eventful, one new leader who seemed to take to it ok but will tkae some settling in and one kid being violently sick just about everywhere except the toilet.

Which was nice

We now have a trip out to the woods tracking next week only able to muster one leader out of a normal 5. Time to get on the phone and muster some bodies!

It was distric camp at the weekend, very hot, lots of fun, very sociable, wont bang on about it.

AGM tonight, group managed 0 Beaver parents, 5 cubs parents (of whom 2 left early, 1 was there bt mistake and 1 is an ACSL) 0 scout parents, 1 explorer parent (and she's on the excec).

Ever felt underappreciated?

Time to rant, and it's one of my pet rants, it's about the press, and in particular the filthy right wing rags that are The Daily Express and The Daily Mail.

I struggle at times to find thewords to express how much I loath these publications that spread such lies and distortions of the truth that it's almost funny.

Two particular articles this week really got to me and demonstrated quite clearly why I loath them so much.

Firstky the Express got on its high horse about the human rights act. An incident had occured whereby a car theif was pursued by police and he had climbed on to the roof of a house and started throwing bricks and tiles at the police and passers by. A stand off ensued with police negotiators brought in, especially when he threatened to throw himself off. As part of the negotiations food and cigarettes were sent up to him. It was in this that the Express got wound up, screaming about a "human rights farce", how it was undermining society etc.

Actually these are standard police negotiator tactics, it's nothing to do with the human rights act, it's just how they get these people to give themselves up without having to go through the danger of storming a house roof, which would have been extremely dangerous to all involved. They banged on about the cost of the food and fags. One KFC bargain bucket at £9.99 and a packet of fags which I belive are about £5.

That's right the police had the cheek to spend a bank breaking, knee trembling, £14.99 so that they didn't habe to risk their lives cathcing a car theif. What a terrible crime eh?

The Express went on to give positive coverage to an individual who said they should have simply shot the man.

Sorry? Run that past me again? We shoot theives now do we? The only countries I am aware of that do that are China (the country with the worst human rights record on the planet other than North Korea, and even they don't shoot theives) and a handful of fundamentalist regimes in the middle east. We equate oursleves eith those sort of countries now do we?

The Human rights act is there for our protection, it ensures fair trials, it puts the brakes on heavy handed government, it ensures freedom of speach, of privacy, it protects children, it protects our right to protest.

I am sure there are a handful of occasions where it will be manipulated and abused but I am willing to trade that for the protection it affords me and those I care about.

Aren't you?

Then yesterday the Mail got to me, criticising the fact that husbands who rape their wives now face the same sentences as men that rape strangers.

I hope to God that I really don't have to spell out to readers that rape is rape and is fundamentally evil no matter who does it to who.

Why the hell should men get off more likely because they rape their wife rather than a stranger? In some ways I thinkthat the abuse of trust and the destruction of the relationship in the process makes the crime even worse, but not according to the Mail. It is apparently political correctness gone mad.

Paul Darce can kiss my hairy left wing arse.

Off on camp this weekend so I should be a bit more cheerful next time!

Reached a decision today. I have decided not to apply fro IST at world jam next year.

It was a pretty difficult decision. I went to Eurojam last year as an assistant unit leader for a district unit and simply had the time of my life. It was my first jamboree experience, and I hope it wont be my last. I don't think it is any exageration to call it life changing. I made some amazing friends and met people from more countries than I care to count.

And it was so inspiring as well. To find out about the campaign Swedish scouts have mounted against tobacoe companies, or the work German scouts do with refugees or the work of African scouts in countering HIV made me feel like I was 15 again. I felt like I could change the world, that I wasn't some powerless insignificant grunt in the world. And I haved tried like mad to hold on to that feeling. A few weeks after I got back a Guide Leader from Sheffield that I met there came to stay with me and we compared notes. And the big thing was that no one understood! We had both returned to work and stared in to space with silly grins on our face, we were so happy and so inspired and were on a different planet to every one else.

So after all that, after the feelings I came back with, why aren't I going back?

Several reasons.

Firstly, lets remember I am a scout leader not a scout. I could go to World jam and have an amazing time, but at the end of the day I have a pack to lead. Next summer there is some amazing stuff going on. if we are not at the jamboree (which beoing Cubs we wont!) there are some brilliant camps happening for us to go to. It is my job to make sure that thsoe kids remember next year for the rest of their lives. They can look back and say that they were part of someting massive, they were there, they took part when the scouts turned 100. Not sat on a beach with their parents because Akela did something for himself.

Secondly, this is somebody elses dream. There will be no shortage of people wanting to turn up as IST next summer. No matter how grotty the jobs or the amount they have to pay there will be thousands that want to go and clean toilets so that they can be part of it. I've been to a jamboree, it's some one elses turn to come back and be inspired and to have their life changed.

Hope that all made sense!

I feel like Alice in Wonderland.

The story behind the eviction. My flat is partly above and partly behind a shop (they aren't the landlord). The shop want to expand and have asked the land lord if they can take the part of our flat that is behind them. They intend to rent the whole building, convert the upstairs in to a smaller flat and then sub let it.

They have said we are welcome to move in to it but we are talking about a flat a third smaller than before and we would no longer have access to the garden and they want MORE BLOODY RENT for it despite the inconvenience of moving out for a couple of months.

Then today the shop owner and his little twat of a side kick came round along with their builder talking about what they were going to do and were actually joking about how cheaply they can do us a new kitchen, gags about giving us a bench and a camping stove.

Really funny. Utterly bloody hilarious.

Its an utter joke.