This afternoon, I took up the microphone for a very special award ceremony for the Girl Guides of Southland and had the honour of introducing the recipients of the bars, badges, certificates and other awards, to the audience of parents, grandparents, families and friends of the girls and young women who had worked to earn them.
I tried not to bore and I tried to be amusing. I think I did okay. There was no mass walkout or booing.
I was able to make some connection to the audience at the beginning, by talking about my mother, a Guide leader from way back, my two sisters, both of whom were Guides, my wife, who has managed a number of Guide and Brownie 'circles', and my daughter, who went right through the system from Pippin through Brownie the Guide and Ranger, securing her Queen's Guide award in the same way some of the young women did today. I didn't talk about my fall from grace as a Cub, way back when I was a rat-baggy boy who couldn't control his throwing arm and had a 'dead' eye, but I did say how much I admired any person who could complete the full set of challenges Guiding (and Scouting) presents.
In return for my mc-ing, I was presented with a pink bag stuffed full of Girl Guide biscuits (chocolate and original) and thanked most graciously.
6 comments:
I wish I could have been there so much!
I talked about you several times. Grace played the piano to the ol' Guide camp-fire favourites and at the end of Taps, someone said, very clearly, "night.
Classic!
Isnt it great to be able to base a story around fact or memory. My mother who was a widow looking after five children in the 1960's started both the cubs then scouts in the small town we lived in. Why ? because she had three boys who she thought could benefit from being part of it. Can remember trailing her over the hills on various activities. The good old days!
Your mum was Akela?
We had a black cat named Bagheera. He was a stray wandering about in the local Army mess tent. He had the loudest purr of any cat I've ever heard. He'd lie behind the piano and rumble like a passing truck.
I could never get those knots that we were required to learn as Cubs, nor did I like the faux-army stuff. I just wanted to get outside and throw stones at street-lights :-)
today you would be diagnosed addh or some such thing throwing stones at street lights. In the old days you would just be measured up to see if your bum was the same size as the local plods size 14 footwear.
The size 14s met me twice only - proud of that. I was a nimble yoof.
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