Silver Chief Scout Award for Joe

Last night Joe was honoured in front of his fellow cubs when he was presented with the Silver Chief Scout Award. He has been working towards the Award for months and the final part he needed was to have passed his Grade 1 piano. As you will see from the video below, that also earned him his stage 2 musicians' badge! There is officially no room left on his arm now.

As Joe is coming up to 10 1/2 he will be moving up to Scouts in November. So he will have a nice clean, new arm to get started on!

Lisa's First Birthday

Lisa was one on Sunday and to mark the occasion, Joe made her a cake fit for a guinea pig! The bottom layer was dried food, then a layer of lettuce, then dandelion with a top layer of kiwi fruit skins. The "candle" was the end of a cucumber!

It lasted about 5 minutes!

Bronze Medal for Luke

On Saturday Luke and I travelled to Kidderminster (to the south-west of Birmingham) so that Luke could take part in a judo competition. Neither of us had very high hopes, as Luke is still quite new and just on his second mon (red belt with one tag).

We were supposed to arrive for 11am but got there about half an hour early. When we got there the girls were still competing and their competition finally ended around 1pm. Then it was the turn of the boys - but Luke's name wasn't called! Although he was below 40 kg, he was put in the higher group because they had too many smaller kids. Whilst we were waiting some of the bigger boys arrived and I noticed Luke go slightly paler than normal!

Finally at around 2.15pm Luke was on. In his first bout he was taken by surprise and very quickly got knocked out. He looked quite put out and dejected at that point, but I noticed a steely glint in his eye when he stepped up for his second bout! He was amazing - he grabbed his opponent by the labels and started spinning him round the floor before tripping him onto his back and pinning him to the floor. He managed to hold him down for the count (25 seconds) to win the bout. See the video below for a rather distorted idea (phone cam!) Luke is in the white belt.

Luke's third bout was a real marathon. He managed to get his opponent down at one point but he managed to wriggle free. After another wrestling match, Luke got him down again and went to pin him. Unfortunately, though, his opponent spun as he fell and managed to end up with Luke underneath him. Luke counted get free and was counted out. It was a close one!

The end result - Luke got a well-earned bronze medal and, I think it is fair to say, a real boost to his confidence. He can't wait for the next competition! Before then, however, he is going for regrading on 24th September and may well get his third mon.

Glam rock and flares

Last weekend Elaine and I went to a 70s night with our friends Kevin and Debbie, and Kevin and Shirley. Debbie (who organised the tickets) assured us that fancy dress was mandatory. Iwas going to risk it and not bother dressing up (seeing as my formative years were during the 80s and I didn’t, therefore, have any 70s gear!) but Debbie shamed me so much and told me that I would be the only one not dressed up that I called upon Elaine’s stepbrother, Dean, to come to the rescue. Dean’s formative years were during the 90s but he seems to have spent most of that time going to 70s parties!

Anyway, in the end we all got dressed up only to find that fancy dress was actually optional and that (at first) we were the only ones dressed up! Thankfully quite a few people turned up later wearing a wide range of 70s gear.

The Platforms provided the music – and they definitely looked the part (all spangly tight trousers and make-up). It was great fun and we are looking forward to seeing the Platforms again at the Melton beer festival in a few weeks’ time.

A few more photos