In today's celebrity centred world it is very easy to be dismissive of
shallow wanabes who are only well known for being well known.

This is just as well as they are prats so we should be dismissive, Jade
Goody, Tara Palmer Junkie, Brian Sewell etc... come the glorious day
brother, up against the wall...

However apparently I am shortly to join their ranks, so need to be careful
with what I say.

One of my year 7 kids asked me is I was Stephen Rainsbury from Gillingham,
and was very impressed when I said that he was correct.

Apparently one of the kids dad is an SL and mentioned that I was a well
known explorer and the word is circulating round the school.

He then asked if I knew Ray mears.

What doesn't help is that I often take in expedition gear for demos, water
filter, trangia to compare gas and liquid sources of fuel, compasses, and
today I took in my wind up phone charger to show how you could generate
electricity in the middle of no where.

How long do I let this run? :-)

What didn't help this afternoon is that a year 10 said that he found a photo
of me on a robot wars website... oh dear, here we go again :-)

The Area news letter is asking for copy and I'm thinking of sending this
in, any opinions? This is a rough draft I will sort out grammar and
spelling if you lot give it an upcheck

"Internet Scouting

The Internet is huge, vast, immense, if you type “Scout” into a search
engine you will receive over 73,100,000 pages to browse through. So
where do you go to find a programme idea or for that any idea about how
to fill a troop night, arrange a pack outing or get advice?

The first thing to remember ( or learn) is that “ The Net” isn't “ The
web” the WWW is part of the Internet but is not all of it. This isn't
the place to discuss the history of the Internet, but there was Scouting
on the Internet well before the WWW was thought of and some parts of it
are still about ( m ore later)

For todays leader the best place to start is probably www.scoutbase.org
where you will find the Scout Association's pages that are aimed at
leaders. This has POR, latest news, badge requirements and...

You put some hair brained activity on the programme, and then find
you've got to follow through.

In our programme planning we talked about begging/borrowing etc,
enough safety goggles to be able to smear vaseline over them to
simulate foggy conditions for some navigation practice. I'm not sure
I'll...

Do you have a "Big Idea" that could reduce your community's CO2
emissions by 60%%? You could be in line for a share of the £1m prize on
offer. http://www.biggreenchallenge.org.uk/ for more information.