Chalk n Cheese

This is a very long entry, mostly to allow me to get things off my chest. So just enjoy the photo and do not bother reading my ramblings. Seriously.


I had a run in with my Girlguiding Division Commissioner today who wants kidnapping included in a risk assessment for a small local Hertford town photo trail! Not only that but she suggests each group of 3 girls aged 10-14 must be accompanied by an adult, rather than being more loosely supervised whereby there’s a mobile phone in each group and the leaders follow at a distance to keep an eye on them. They all have phones anyway and the leaders were to follow behind on the circular route scooping up any stragglers. But no. In addition, as a bytheby we also need special permission slips from parents and emergency home contacts. We are talking about a max of 15 girls in a small quiet countryside town with two leaders.

In contrast, the Wednesday before half term I ran the very same photo trail for Scouts. No additional permission slips were needed, (contact details are already held online for both Guides’ & Scouts’ parents), the scouts walked around town in threes quite safely and kidnapping in Hertford was not even considered. The Leaders followed the scouts, letting them make their own decisions about where to cross roads, but we were always nearby. It went well and the scouts were hugely enthusiastic and competitive about finishing the trail.

Now I’m not saying Scouting always gets it right - on occasion, in my opinion, it can be too laissez-faire, but I do wish that we could merge the two associations and take the best out of each! Haha that will never happen.

I was irritated by the Girlguiding stance, so much so that I was not sufficiently calmed by a Pilates class, so I took a blip walk around Goldings, an adjacent estate which we have a right of access over, written in the deeds of our house.

Enter buttercup blip. Yellow to represent my mood but simple and beautiful. I felt a little better.

Until my next run in; with a dog owner who let her two dogs off the lead and they then ran excitedly backwards and forwards between her and me. Each time they got near me I ignored them and kept walking and she’d call them back. Now I’m sorry to all those of you who love animals but I just don’t. I’m allergic to animal hair so I don’t pet them and I’m scared of dogs jumping up at me. So I ignore them and I expect dog owners to respect that I don’t want their beloved dog’s attention. So after this lady called her dogs away from me for the third time to no avail, I turned around and faced her and told her I didn’t think it was funny. Well she went mental. Shouting at me that it was a private footpath and that she had a right as a resident to let her dogs off the lead and that I was trespassing anyway. She actually bent double in the effort of yelling. So I very calmly told her I did have a right of access and that I didn’t want to be harassed by her dogs and I turned and walked away as she carried on yelling at me.

So I’ve not had a good communications kind of day.

Just to finish, I’m thinking of adding suffocation by cotton wool to the risk assessment.