SCOUTING THE SCOUT GROUP This was our first term as a separate Group and we started strongly with 61 boys, which means that Scouting appeals to about one in every six boys in the School, a proportion which we feel is just about right. The main Group activity was a Christmas Camp Fire, at which we were very pleased to welcome the District Commissioner, the Scouters of the Chilman Group and parents and friends of many of the Scouts. A collection in aid of the building fund for B. P. House realised the sum of just over £7 and we are very grateful to our guests for giving so generously. -
An appreciative visitor writes : "It was a very happy idea that parents and friends should be invited to join the camp fire. No fire at camp could have been more realistic than that constructed by the back-room boys (or should they be back-woodsmen?) in the Scout Hut : and it was extinguishable at will whenever a sketch was presented on the stage ! A.S. Brining, Harrison, Beckett and White must have worked hard to prepare it all. The evening's entertainment was admirably varied. Some of the items had familiar scouting associations, such as Coulson's sketch of Baden-Powell disguised as an entomologist, spotting enemy gun positions; the Shadow Operation carried out by Best and Ormiston, Bradshaw and Daniel; the Mime to the Anthem of the Ancient Britons, so well timed by R. A. B. Wood and Williams, with interventions in the best I.T.V. manner; or the welcome appearance of Happy Harry (surely not B.H.H. ?) and his Henchmen singing in suitably lugubrious style. The Skiffle Group made one wonder how much skiffie owes to its music, how much to the dress and accoutrements of its exponents. The Bytheway brothers, Clegg, Anfield, M. W. Foster and Hardman, feverishly plucking at the string of his all-too-string-bass, gave a colourful and spirited performance, which was enthusiastically encored. Perhaps the highlight of the sketches was a hilarious incident on the banks of Loch Ness, concocted by Hill and put across with immense brio by Brisby and the author, abetted by a thoroughly Scotsman-like team consisting of Normington, French, Baldwin and Hirst. The macabre was represented by a cautionary tale for all Old Peterites devised by Harrison and played by Burton. After an interval for refreshment we were given a complete contrast in the showing of Mr. Craine's film of last summer's camp and transparencies taken by Smith and Parkin. As befits a camp fire, all these items were arranged within a framework of rounds and songs. These were conducted by Mr. Coulthard 31
