CONGRATULATIONS II !!!!!!!!

So, I'm back with the rest of that list, starting with 2013 and bringing us up to date :)
Here we go:

• The entire of this - 3rd January 2013
• I'd like to apologise for the accidental pun on the title of my previous blog post. It was not meant to be in any way funny and (to be honest) it isn't. - 7th February 2013
• when the revolution finally comes, I'll be close behind Miss MacNeill in the line for the Tory Fox Hunt. - 17th April 2013
•  it means that we should've all been relearning what we've already learnt before we've even learnt it since about February, because otherwise WE WILL ALL FAIL AND NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE US EVER AGAIN!!!!! - 2nd May 2013
• Or maybe none of this is really a possibility and I'm just panicking because at my school we're all expected to be able to recite Pi to several thousand digits by the end of year seven. - 2nd May 2013
• "Jumbo Jumble" sounds like a kids' game, in which you have to untangle elephants - 4th May 2013
• Maybe that's why I like Radio 4 all of a sudden... - 17th June 2013
• *The Pink Hair Brigade is in no way affiliated with or similar to the Tolmers Pink Triangle, or any other Pink Triangle for that matter. - 17th June 2013
• Any other band that I'm ever in, no matter how mind-numbingly boring and tedious, will never quite be as fun without being fun, if you know what I mean. Which you probably don't. - 10th July 2013
• Hello, today I have been painting a shed - 14th July 2013
•  I stumbled across half a documentary (well, a documentary which was halfway through when I found it) about Meat Loaf. The singer, not the food - how sad do you think I am? - 11th August 2013
• Frogs apart, Margaret is the funniest thing to have happened in my time working at PhatPocket. - 29th August 2013
• the other benefits of this new job are excellent, but more about them another time... ;) - 29th August 2013
• There's Graham, who works for "the agency" (dun dun duuuun) - 9th September 2013
• My bedroom is orange. Very orange. Special orange. It's so orange that it's like living inside an orange. Or Ginger Chris, one of the two. - 22nd September 2013
• my towels are coral, although I don't think I'll ever understand why that is the case. - 22nd September 2013
• it's by a group of girls called Law Revue, who appear to be highly feminist to the extreme. And American. But that is irrelevant. - 30th September 2013
• So I have come up with a solution. Many of you will think it childish, but to you I say "Ner ner ner ner ner!!!" - 3rd October 2013
• I am still waiting for him to realise just quite how crazy I am, but (mercifully) that time has not yet come. - 14th November 2013
• like a parent who has missed their child's school play, I am now going to ravish you with extra attention and new and more interesting posts to make up for it - 24th January 2014
• Please ignore these people. They're just actors posing as my friends. - 24th January 2014
• I have a lot of friends who bat for the Owen's team, who like to exfoliate and whose favourite film is Moulin Rouge. Is this getting the point across at all? Basically, I've been nicknamed the Fairy Gaymother - 1st February 2014

Rain

Hey guys, I don't know how many people are still reading this, it seems to have been a bit of a five-minute wonder. But, in true Scoutist fashion, I shall continue regardless. As the weather has been (as Peter Andre/Jason described it) "hormonal" recently, it has been raining patchily for the last several months. Some much for summer! And therefore my ponderances have been mostly water-based.

Rain may not be the first choice of weather for fishermen, campers, festival goers, lovers of shorts, naturists etc. however, I have come to believe that it is wonderfully good for the natural world (flora, not fauna - obviously it has affected the migration patterns and breeding seasons for loads of animals). I am convinced that this summer there is even more plant growth than normal; trees are greener, grass is higher and thicker (and less dead) and because of the rain, there is a lot less pollen around, which means that hay fever sufferers such as myself are free to explore and discover nature without exploding every three seconds.

Secondly, there's the Gemütlichkeit of it all. Sorry, but there really isn't a word in English that's suitable; if you type it into Google Translate, it'll come up as "cosy", but I think it's more than that. To me, Gemütlichkeit is more like that feeling you have when you're inside (probably snuggled up in bed, or by a fire with a blanket) and it's chucking it down with rain outside and you feel so snug, like you never want to move again. That's the wonderful thing about rain, you feel safe (as long as your not out in it). This still happens at camp, because the rain is really loud on the tent (as long as your tent doesn't leak, it's fine), but it's colder in the morning. And, as anyone who was at Gilwell24 last weekend will testify (Pencil Guy, Liz, Sammi, MatT, Josh, Ollie, Martha etc), the actual participating in activities, unless that activity is mud-sliding, becomes a lot less possible...
You just don't get the same feeling of snug-cosiness when it's boiling hot in the summer - lying on top of your duvet, failing to sleep and needing to get up for a drink every twenty minutes doesn't exactly give you that same experience...

And yes, there is an element of Schadenfreude in there [for those of you who've never come across the most fantastic word Schadenfreude, it's the concept of "pleasure from the pain of others", the Germans have a word for it :-)] - the idea of being cacooned inside, wrapped up with your big thick book and a cup of tea whilst the rest of the world is experiencing this torrential downpour on their heads, makes you feel quite good (unless you have a Tom and Jerry Christmas moment...)

Don't tell me you've not seen "Tom and Jerry; The Night Before Christmas"?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Right! Next post...

Cub Camp

So, as many of you may know, I have been helping at the District Cub Camp this weekend with a fantastic group of people. Therefore I have been pondering the joys of Cubs, camping and the general topic of Scoutists. So basically, I have decided that I really don't want to be a Cub Leader! I don't know how they do it! The first night, the majority of them were awake until two am chatting and generally being awesome, yet several of them were awake again at four thirty, yelling at the Cubs to shut up and go back to sleep (but more politely, obviously). How do they do it?!?!?! It's amazing. The second night was almost the same, we were up until at least quarter to two, and yet everyone was awake and functioning properly fairly early the next morning. I swear, Cub Leaders have super-human powers.

At this point it may be useful to introduce the leaders, although we didn't actually learn their real names until the last night, as the Cubs tended to call them all by names such as "Akela". We invented our own nicknames, some of which I shall explain. Firstly, there was (of course) Jean (the Cuffley Akela) and Maureen (Hathi). Then there was Rolf Harris, who I think was really called Dave, who appeared to be the Akela-In-Charge, and his sons Beer Guy (Baloo - also Grant) and Steve-the-Two (not sure of his Cub name, but he was really Ian). Finally there was BeardyWeirdy (Miles, we also heard him called "Teenage Mutant Ginger Turtle") and Pencil Guy (Rikki Tikki Tavi - definitely pronounced Tar-vi, not Tay-vi - who was also known as Paul). I shan't go into the whole double-alias thing as it begins to get confusing.

There was also Other Ian, Bagheera (whose real name we don't know), Juan, Julio, GuythatlookslikePip and various people who didn't get nicknames as they didn't do anything awesome enough to warrant one. Or spend enough time with us for us to get to know them.

Anyway, these guys were cool.

Finally, this weekend, I have decided that, in the highly unlikely case that I actually become a Cub Leader, I would like to be Baloo, as he is awesome. Also, I think I would suit Baloo more than, for example, Bagheera or Kaa, and Rikki Tikki Tavi is just really really long...