Monday, getting Adam from camp

Adam was at a three day (two night) scout camp at Downe Scout Activity Centre. Joyce and I went with Julie and James to pick him up, and we at at a pub called The Old Jail afterwards.

"Duck or Grouse" wasn't a menu option. It was written on a low beam in the pub.

Because I was here last summer during the Diamod Jubilee and saw the scouts light a smaller, less permanent version of this in Staines, I know it's a beacon. Someone would need to go up a ladder to fill it with wood and light it.

Scouts' beacon 2012

The climbing towers were at the scout camp. The other tower with phone equipment on was a church tower (not an old one, but a modernish tower nextt o an A-frame-ish church) in Westerham, Kent.

I took a couple of photos of things on the bulletin board in the pub. I wish I had taken one of the schedule of the bat and trap tournament. Instead, I walked out to where James was with Adam on the playground and asked him what "bat and trap" was. He didn't know. Julie didn't know. The bulletin board had had a two-page typed out list of dates with pub names (teams). I should have asked someone there, because they had the field (bases?) out there in the garden, but I had no idea it was so rare I should've asked there.

When I got home and started to look it up, google's options came up:
bat and trap game
bat and trap game Kent
bat and trap game pubs Kent
bat and trap game Canterbury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_and_trap

It's related to cricket, and "By the late 20th century it was usually only played on Good Friday in Brighton, on the park called The Level, which has an adjacent pub called The Bat and Ball, whose sign depicts the game." *

About that flag... I put that photo up as a mystery on facebook. After a while, I wrote the explanation.

Adam Daniel was at scout camp for the weekend and we went to pick him up, at Downe Scout Activity Centre, near Westerham, Kent. When we pulled in, I saw the flag and said "We have driven so far we're nearly to Canada."

It turned out that the theme of the campout was Canada. The teams were named for provinces, and they did rodeo things (rode a barrel that could be moved around with ropes, lassoed a PVC cow...)

During the closing ceremony, as they were going to lower the flag, the scout leader said that if people knew the words to this song, they should sing along.

I expected them to sing "O Canada," and I was happy that I know some of the words. But no, they sang "God Save the Queen." And I thought it will be in these scouts' lifetimes that the song will revert back to "God Save the King," and it could be more than a few lifetimes before it switches back. They'll be able to remember that they sang "God Save the Queen."

. . . .

It was just a fantasy Canada for boy-scout purposes. *