Blenheim Does Not Recognise Greenwich Mean Time
The clocks go back this Sunday. Nobody has told Blenheim, who has his own views on breakfast, Lick-e-Lix and the proper operation of the ensuite bathroom tap.
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Nelson’s Column, 400 cadets and a splendid Sunday morning
Mark and I had a lovely morning in Trafalgar Square today, attending the Sea Cadets’ annual Trafalgar Day Parade. The weather was glorious, the setting beneath Nelson’s Column could hardly have been more appropriate, and the young people taking part were a credit to themselves and their organisations. I’ve had a long association with Sea…
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The Difference People Make
Tonight I was invited to represent the Oxfordshire Lieutenancy as guest speaker at Oxfordshire Scouting’s recognition evening for adult volunteers. Here’s what I said: It’s lovely to be here tonight, amongst friends and fellow members of the Scouting family, celebrating some truly remarkable contributions to young people across Oxfordshire. I’m here as a Deputy Lieutenant,…
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From Duty to Difference: How Volunteering Has Changed Across the Generations
From Baby Boomers to Generation Alpha: changing expectations, changing communities and the future of volunteering in Britain I have been volunteering for more than fifty years. My earliest experiences were not particularly glamorous. As a young Scout, I spent cold, wet afternoons clearing rubbish from the Stroudwater Navigation. At fourteen, I visited an old people’s…
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James B Partridge and a Journey Back to Assembly
I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole the other evening. This happens rather more often than I care to admit, but this particular one took me somewhere I wasn’t expecting: back more than twenty-five years, into a succession of school halls. The culprit was James B Partridge. If you haven’t encountered him, he is the…
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What is a prison for?
On the final morning of this year’s Friends of Scouting in Europe Tour, Mark and I went to prison. The former Stasi prison in Andreasstraße in Erfurt, to be precise. After our visit to Buchenwald on Friday, this was another encounter with a history which is uncomfortable partly because it really isn’t very long ago….
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Democracy Seedbeds: Growing Scouting in Thuringia
Our second full day with the Friends of Scouting in Europe began with a tram journey across Erfurt to the Bildungshaus St. Martin, where the morning was devoted to understanding rather more about the part of Germany we are visiting. Dr Claudio Kullmann, Ordinariatsrat in the Catholic Diocese, took us through the political and sociological…
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The Few Miles Between Weimar and Buchenwald
There are days when the places you visit seem to speak to one another, and today was certainly one of them. Mark and I are in Germany with Friends of Scouting in Europe, visiting projects supported by the European Scout Foundation. This morning took us to Weimar; this afternoon, just a few miles up the…
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Erfurt: Old Friends, Late Trains and a Missing Apple Strudel
Mark and I are back on our travels, this time in Erfurt in Germany for the annual gathering of the Friends of Scouting in Europe. These visits have become a part of the year that I particularly enjoy: a chance to catch up with old friends, make new ones and, more importantly, see something of…
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Seven Things Worth Learning Before You’re Ten
I was nine when my mum introduced me to a line that has stayed with me ever since: “This above all: to thine own self be true.” It comes, of course, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, although at nine I wasn’t terribly interested in who Polonius was, or whether he was necessarily the wisest source of advice….
