The Warped Minds of Children

Hello. These last few days I have been holding a competition of "Who can come up with the most inventive thing to do to a traitor?" with the Splorer girls (minus Sammi who doesn't know the person), therefore I have been pondering this. This is the list so far (Any personal details have been omitted, making them a little less funny, but I can't be seen to be offensive or bullying):

1. Pull out his insides and stuff him with love and rainbows, making a giant teddy (Phoebe)
2. Insert a Bible somewhere... private. (Emily)
3. Shove a Crout inside him (confusingly) (Emily)
4. Shave him. Then he'd completely malfunction. (Phoebe)
5. Stand him up then knock him down. (Phoebe)
6. Break him in half (Phoebe)
7. Drown him in a barrel of water and ferment him, then he'd be beer (Phoebe)
8. Roll him out, cut him out, flavour, bake in the oven at 210 degrees for 20 minutes, then he would be a Ginger Bread. (Phoebe)
9. Mush him up and put him in a bakery oven, then he'd be bread (Emily, somewhat uninventively)
10. Scrub him into your hair, then he'd be shampoo (Emily)
11. Crumble him over apple crumble. (Emily/Miranda)
12. Hollow him out and use him as a canoe (Liz)
13. Fill him with jelly (Liz)
14. Tap him with a wooden mallet (Becky)
15. Lock him in a room with me and Liz. Let's watch what happens (Jess, somewhat rudely)

As you can see, it is quite disturbing how strange my wonderful friends are. Add to this the fact that Maria said she liked rearranging faces (we knew she was a good serial killer) and it is quite horrifying how my friends think. I'd better start keeping a closer eye on them, in case they decide to leave me in a hole to die or something. It has been threatened on many an occasion...

An Apology

I have been asked to point out that Oliver is not the only person to read this, Misa does too....

She sent me this photo: Who is that person? They don't look half bad...

<--- Apart from this one!

Surprisingly, I like some of these. Which, for me, is hilarious... The middle one is just too sexy.

What Am I?

As you can see, my ponderances this week have been mostly philosophical, on a personal level. I have been trying to decide what I am, based on what I know and what had been said about me in the past.

Well, to start with, I'm a girl, although some people say I'm now a woman (hahaha), and Mr Bean (bless 'im) called me a "lady". But I'll stick to girl. According to one person, I'm "a lovely girl with a special personality", but, as someone else said, I'm a "weirdo". They're probably just two ways of saying the same thing...

I'm a rocker, a student, a tea-totalist (shhh, it's a thing...) and a member of a generation which is in the process of ruining the planet for all those who come after us, whilst trying to clear up the mess left behind by the last lot. I've been labelled an anarchist, a communist and fascist (all in the same conversation, by the same person), but only the first two of these are true.

I'm sober, legal, underage, overage, conscientious, stressed, overworked, underworked, tired and confused. I'm a Scout and a Guide (please don't take offence Martha, I did it alphabetically) and I always will be. Apparently, I'm a "musician", but I have very little sense of rhythm, I'm an alto in most of the choirs, I'm the only girl in the school Soul Band who's not a singer and I'm the only person in the school crazy enough to own a barington (baritone) saxophone.

According to recent surveys - or some other unreliable source - I'm broken-hearted, which I suppose answers the question "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted?"; they write stupid blogs nobody except Oliver cares about. I'm used and abused, forgotten, remembered, lead, followed, thanked, ignored, asked and answered, Armenian (but not really, it just sounded good. I like alliteration) and apparently, I'm opinionated, but I think otherwise...

I'm a daughter, a sister, a niece, a granddaughter and a cousin to name but a few. I'm also - hopefully - a friend, I very love you all much, and a provider of Vegan Cake twice a term for my RS Class ( It's you guys).

I'm many other things too; in the depths of the internet somewhere I'm a little teapot, but the less said about that, the better. Seeing as this post is one of the longest yet, we can also assume I'm quite arrogant, but I promise I'm not usually. I'd write a post about my friends, but I'm sure I'd miss someone out, so I'll play it safe and not... None of this really answers the question, but it's a start. If you feel like if (If anyone's reading this) you can comment with stuff that you are and I can agree / disagree as I see fit.

Ice Cream Guy

By popular demand, I have been pondering Ice Cream Guy recently. This was the guy at Butlin's, whose name was Aiden, who was serving ice cream in the restaurant.

On the first night of Jesus Camp, three of us (Lois, Louise and I) went to get pudding together. Being the old fashioned person I am, I had proper pudding, with custard, but Lois and Louise got ice cream. This led to a short, polite conversation with the Ice Cream Guy, in which I also became involved. After we went back to our table, the other girl who went to Jesus Camp with us (Adele), went up to get her ice cream and presently started a conversation with Ice Cream Guy, which she related to us as:
Adele: Did you see my friends just now?
Ice Cream Guy: The three lasses? Yeah, some of them were fit.
A: Which ones?
ICG: The one with the glasses, and the other one.
A: How old are you?
ICG: Seventeen.
A: The girl with the glasses is thirteen.
*awkward pause* Adele walks off.

We then spent a lot of time talking about this and Adele went up for ice cream at least six more times to talk to Aiden. On the last time I went with her, to stop her from doing anything stupid. She then asked Aiden "What about her?", pointing at me, to which he replied "No, I prefer the other one". Thanks. It's not like I'm a PERSON with EARS or anything... (Although, I'm neither surprised nor bothered, I don't like rude people.)

The next day, when we went to get pudding, Aiden was there again. Louise started an argument with him about how inappropriate it was for him to comment on her cousin in such a way. She was standing in what i have come to call the "fight position", legs apart, hands on hips, leaning slightly forward. I, jokingly, said "Lou, it doesn't help your point if you stand like this *copying her*", Aiden replied with "It does if she leans forward".

...

That's not even remotely funny. Plus Louise has a boyfriend. (Hi Craig!!)


Although, Aiden had one redeeming quality. He referred to Adele as "the pain". This made us laugh. A lot. We did have other encounters with aiden, but they weren't as funny, or worth writing about. Oh, except that time he followed us...

Jesus Camp (Spring Harvest) 2012

My pondering for the last week has pretty much all been about "Jesus Camp", which is what we nicknamed Spring Harvest. For those of you who have never heard of Jesus Camp, it's a gathering of roughly 7000 Christians, all together at Butlin's for one fun filled week. They run four of these throughout the Easter Holidays, three at Minehead and one at Skegness, so I was at the Skegness one, which was EPIC.

I have many things to say about this. Firstly, ONESIE!!!!!!!! This guy was a God. He wore the most AMAZING Onesie on several days of Jesus Camp, which led me to leaning out of our window of our apartment and shouting "Excuse me sir! In the Onesie! You look Excellent!" and my friend Adele yelling "Like a sexy baby grow!!" We thought, as any normal person would, that this would make him incredibly embarrassed and that he'd think we were freaks. But NO! This was Jesus Camp, therefore, we became friends with Onesie (who's actually called Will), who said we had actually helped him convince his friends that the Onesie (which wasn't his) had been a good idea. What a nice man...

Secondly, the amazing feeling that you got from the whole experience; everyone there was Christian (obviously) , which meant that you could talk openly about your faith and ask questions that my parents would complain about me asking at home, such as "What does a religious Experience actually feel like?" It also meant that you could trust everyone; if you left your bag somewhere, you could be pretty certain that it would still be there, complete with contents, when you returned. The other religious aspect of this was personal; I was able to truly find and know God through group prayer and other activities. I'm sorry for those of you who are non-believers, but I have come back from Skegness believing more strongly than ever that, even if the Bible isn't quite right all the time, there has to be a God who loves us and, in some way, created us and this Universe.

As many of you know, I have a thing for tents. Over the last week at Jesus Camp, I have discovered the Tabernacle. It is like the mother of all tents; bigger than a yurt and without the yaks. There are about six chapters of the book of Exodus designated to giving Moses the exact measurements and design for this tent of worship, including what the lamps should be made of and the size of the offertory box.

Finally, there are so many stories of Ice Cream men, Power Balls, Crazy Golf, hats, Ant and Dec and beehives that I can't even begin to tell you. Although I will quickly mention the Free Hugs, with which we somehow managed to raise more than £50 for children in Haiti. this was an excellent scheme and we made everyone feel better for it (especially when I shouted "You sir, you look like a man who likes a cuddle!" at an Emo). For anyone Christian who hasn't yet had this wonderful experience, or for those of you who are curious agnostics, I highly recommend, in fact I almost demand, that you go to Spring Harvest / Jesus Camp next year! It's a beautiful thing :)

You Tube

Hello again,

Today I have pondered why on Earth do people put videos of themselves doing funny things on You Tube?? I mean, look at these fools for example; they look so stupid...

Why would you do this?

(That's clearly not me shouting "Do it again!" on this one)

It's ridiculous that people would allow themselves to be filmed and have these funny videos put up on the internet for the world to see. I mean, honestly. And clearly I'm not the cameraman and the person who put them up on the internet or anything...

Sorry. This post had nothing to do with anything, but you chose to read it. It's not my fault.

Hiking

Welcome Back,

Today I got bored of revising and I have reverted to pondering Hiking. Seriously, it's fun, but is there really a point to it? Yesterday I arranged a hike, just because I could, starting and ending at the Scout Hut. We walked, erm, not very far. When we stopped for lunch at... somewhere, I got the map out to discuss the next part of the route. The response from one member of the group surprised me. She said "which way is quickest?", a fair enough question had we been hiking somewhere for a reason, but seeing as how we were hiking in a circle because we wanted to it seemed a totally pointless comment. We ended up walking a completely pointless route, which turned out to be shorter than we thought anyway.

And I know walking (especially whilst laughing that hard) is really healthy and all that, but seriously, we ate so many sweets it must've cancelled out anyway. So basically, what we did is walk in a circle and hide in some guy's rape seed for no real reason, apart from to chat and because Cuffley, Northaw (and the M25) is such a beautiful place...

Although we did have some fun: Sammi broke the countryside by leaning on it; Jack hid in a river while Jess jumped over him; Emily... Well, Emily was just Emily. Then it rained, and we hid under a tree. That was quite fun, until it started hailing. Oh yeah, and we stood on a bridge over the M25 and waved at the traffic; several lorry driver beeped at us. I felt so loved :') So perhaps I've answered my own question here somewhat; maybe we do just hike for the hell of it. Like camping - there's no real reason for camping but we still do it, because it's fun. And we get to set stuff on fire. And buy copies of "Practical Pigs". And laugh at each other.

So, to continue the laughing-at-each-other-ness, here is a picture of Jess the Ninja Monkey.

Movie Adaptations

Once I again, I have found something to ponder and bore you with my opinion of. Today, after several hours of hard revision, I rewarded myself by watching "Starter for Ten" — a film based on the book by David Nicholls. It's very good. Possibly better than the book, which was annoying.

For those of you who don't know, "Starter for Ten" is about a boy called Brian who's struggling through his first year at a University (which we're assured isn't Oxford or Cambridge). His life's dream is to appear on University Challenge, hence the name of the book / film. It's an interesting story and the characters are so believable you actually don't like them at times. The book was interesting and included such gems as "Enough of this Shelley, I'm off to tarmac something" and "The ironic thing is, I actually AM a vicar", which continue to make me smile. And the film... Well, like I said, in some ways the film was better than the book, but in some ways it was worse, as is always the case with films. Which made me wonder whether we could ever really have a perfect adaptation of a book to film. I understand that they are clearly two different genres of expression (or whatever), but surely there has to be some overlap?

The film, as a piece of cinematography, is very good; there are some good actors and actresses in it, including Catherine Tate, Benedict Cumberbatch, James Corden, that guy from "Mamma Mia!" and (for about five seconds, being shouty at the end) David Tennant, and the camera work and special effects (of which there admittedly weren't many) were clever and believable. And compared to the novel, the script was pretty accurate. Well, accurate apart from the fact that one of the main characters was meant to be Glaswegian and appeared to be from Bedfordshire, and that chunks of the story line were left out of the film which (while most of them weren't integral) were really funny (like the Shelley quote). So maybe this is as good as it gets? A good film which portrays the story in an accurate way (without making you hate the central character) which stars good actor? There should be more to life, surely?

Any better book/film combos? Let me know.

Yurts

Hello again,

Today I have been pondering yurts. For those of you who are clearly undereducated, a yurt is a massive tent, a bit like a teepee, with a bendy Woden frame and a canvas. They're really big, bigger than my bedroom (although that isn't hard) and you can live in them all year round. Which is good. If you can get a stove or a heater, they're really cozy in the winter. So, if you're a student who still lives with their parents like the cool person you are, you can just erect (laugh if you must) a "bitching' yurt" (as John Niven calls it) in their garden and just live in it and play music and stuff. I think we should get one for Explorers, which is going to be my new project; Project Yurt.

There is, however, one problem with Project Yurt; to get a yurt big enough to fit an entire Scout Troop would be about £5000 ish. Fortunately, I am only looking to buy an 18 foot yurt, which will hopefully sleep fifteen people in sleeping bags with kit (still waiting for confirmation). Hopefully. I think we might have a problem with the funding, it'll be a lot of jumble sales.

At this point, I was going to get some other people (my parents) to give me opinions on the everyday use of the yurt. However, they've told me, in no uncertain terms, that there are more important things to do with my time than write about the everyday uses of the yurt. And that they, as everyday people, have more everyday tasks to do (such as making sure all the Lego's there before selling it) than tell me what they think about the everyday use of the yurt.  I feel disappointed and betrayed.

So yeah, I want to launch Project Yurt. It'll be really good if we can at least a time share of a yurt, if not a whole one. That's another point. If anyone wants to share a yurt on a six months either side basis, please message me, it'll be awesome. It might be easier if you live in England, or the UK, but if you're somewhere else internationally, that could be really cool too; we could do joint international yurt camps and make some twin towns to go yurting with. It could be epic.

Thanks for listening, now go do some yurt research! :) You know you want to...

An introduction

Well Hi,

I've decided to write a blog, as you can see. It won't be a regular thing and I'll probably give up after about a week, but I'm trying. I think it's good to write stuff down - ideas and so forth - so that you don't forget them and exactly how you felt when you thought of them, because even if they seem like nonsense now, they made sense at the time, so they may well do again one day.
(By the way, I don't expect anyone to actually read this, but if you do, feel free to offer an opinion on my opinions.)

Emma