Camping Day Six: My Family and Other Animals

Diary: Wednesday 15 July

At camp, the Scouts are quite good at asking awkward questions just when you are at your most busy or most tired.

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For example, how heavy is a jerry can full of water?

Here is the conversation:

Scout: how heavy is a water can full of water?

Leader: how heavy is water?

S: one kilogram per litre

L: the large one can hold 8 litres so that would weigh 8 kilograms

S: that’s like my younger brother

L: I don’t think so…how old is he now?

S: six years old

L: most babies when they are born weigh around 3½ kilos, so imagine two babies, surely your brother is bigger than that

S: he’s only just turned six!

For the record, this Scout always had to have the last word.

Generally the boys are very interesting and to get the conversation going at meal times we have talked about school, holidays and family life. They are polite, considerate and knowledgeable.

One even told me there was an alternative phonetic alphabet: for entertainment we had gone through the whole phonetic alphabet and this boy said there was an RAF one where K was not Kilo but King. His grandfather had told him about it. Upon further research, the phonetic alphabet I knew was the NATO one which replaced the RAF phonetic alphabet.

Sometimes the boys talk to each other about their families…

Scout A: do your parents smoke?

Scout B: they used to, at university. Everyone one smokes when they are at university…

Scout A: really?

Scout B: …also at that time people didn’t know that smoking was bad for you. They only discovered this five years ago.

 

There are letters from parents to the boys. At camp we remove all mobile and electronic game devices. I did bring cards and stamps for them to write to their families but they were too busy to do so.

 

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Cake du Jour: Date and Orange Cake, which is a slight adaptation of the Date and Walnut Cake without the walnuts, as we avoid nuts at camp, or at least the non-human variety.

 

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Visit du Jour was to Amazon World. I admit I was sceptical at first (we have London Zoo at our doorstep) but in fact it was very enjoyable, especially the encounters with the ring-tailed lemurs.

 

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Other animals we saw…

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Dinner du Jour:

Chicken curry and rice and Banofee Pie (recipe in next post).