RAF Museum Hendon with Cubs and Scouts...PHOTOS TO ADD

Today we were supposed to be going on a visit to the RAF museum in Hendon, which is part of Greater London, with the Cubs and Scouts but it seemed as if our plans would be scuppered before we even left the house when the car failed to start, but made up for this by making a most peculiar noise when it tried. Once more, it seemed, the unreliable electrical system had chosen to mess with us at the most inconvenient of times!


As luck would have it, good for a change,

1. Deb had her phone with her (Unflipping Believable)

2. It was charged (will miracles never cease) and, finally, what is more

3. She had, an up to date, contact number for one of the trip organizers.

Well, by the time I’d regained consciousness, she’d called said contact, explained our situation and arranged for the coach to stop nearby and pick us up as it headed for the motorway.

So, after a brief wait, we were on our way to “The Smoke” or at least to its outskirts. Nat sat with me and Han sat with Deb. Determined to ensure that conversation continued to be a dying art Nat immediately plugged his head phones in to my old Nokia N95 and started listening to episode two of Hardcore History’s Punic Nightmare. Following suit, I too, plugged in my phones and settled back to enjoy a little podcast pleasure.

We had, it seemed, a rather talkative driver on this trip who regaled us with snippets of information about the various places we were passing on our journey; for some reason Deb found this quite odd and remarked the next day that she imagined he would be an extremely boring person to talk to. I, on the other hand, thought he was quite interesting and kept removing my headphones to hear what he had to say. This was why I eventually stopped listening to podcasts and switched to music instead. Oh the joy of rediscovering just how good 10CC were (a 1970’s band I loved as a teenager and who, having reformed, are performing in Birmingham next week). Eventually reaching our destination (http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/) we disembarked and were briefed on what we would be doing that day. Each Cub and each Scout was given a questionnaire that they were required complete in order to win their (RAF Museum Visit!!!???) badge. They would only be able to do so if they toured the whole museum and searched carefully for the answers that were hidden there.

It most certainly was an impressive place, I’ve no idea exactly how many planes were on display (I didn’t have to earn a RAFMV badge did I but here’s a link to the list the museum website gives http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/aircraft/london-aircraft-collection.cfm) but I can certainly confirm there were a bloody great lot of them. You can’t really appreciate the size of these old flyers when you see them on film, it’s only when you’re standing next to a, for example, WW2 USAF Mustang, that you grasp just how big the dang thing is! The visible part of the engine is bigger than our whole car and it’s easy to see why inadvertently walking into a spinning turboprop would totally ruin your day! Even the old biplanes, which for some reason I’d always imagined as being tiny, were much, much larger than expected. I think it may be because we equate fragility with daintiness and we’ve all grown up with an image in our minds of these early fighters as fragile creations of wood paper and wire that fell apart under the slightest stress. Believe me, there’s nothing dainty about these mothers! Below are is a large selection of photos which I think prove my point. (INSERT PHOTOS).



After we’d toured the first hall and Han and Nat had ridden in one of the simulators we crossed over to another building which was dedicated to the history of British Aviation during WW2 and particularly to the story of The Battle of Britain.

One of the most impressive exhibits was a full size flying boat that one could actually enter and walk through from front to back. We’d thought that now we’d seen everything but subsequently looking at the museum website I think we may have missed a few exhibits although I’m not quite sure how we managed to do that.

We returned via the shop where we bought a few souvenirs including two of the legendry Biggles books which are once more back in print. The collected boxed set was priced, outrageously, at £39.99 and that was with £10 off!

We decided to take another look at the battle of Britain exhibition but in the end we ended up in the restaurant where we paid £13 for a few drinks and a couple of cakes! Appropriately, I had a bottle of Shepherd Neame brewery Spitfire Ale and very nice it was. Finally it was 4 O’clock and we headed back to the coach for the return journey.

The kind driver once more dropped as near home and our day out was over.

Deb contacted the RAC Re: the car but after they advised that they were exceptionally busy agreed that there was no urgent need for the car that night and we’d be able to wait until the following morning. Because Nat had to play in a rugby match the next morning Deb phoned Jacob’s Dad Bruce who agreed that he would pick Nat up and also take him, along with Jacob and Zak and Zak’s Dad Chris, to the match.

There’s nothing more really to say about the day but as I’ve not yet reached a thousand words I’m going to have to procrastinate a little here just to reach that magical but also, paradoxically, totally arbitrary, figure. Now, normally, at this point I’d just make up some total bull to fill up the space but I’m beginning to feel that this is something of a cheat so instead I’ll use the time to instead tell you this. What a literary device that proved to be, taking up space by writing about why I didn’t just want to just take up space with pointless waffle. Same end achieved but I come out looking (seemingly) noble instead of venal.

Chief Scout gold award camp

I got to camp on Saturday morning at 8 and when everyone had got up 2 people cooked breakfast on an open fire while the rest of us made are bibvowacks after an hour in which I had to open my survival tin to get the knife out we had breakfast a full English YUM YUM after this we continued to build are bibvowacks and ours was really good. After lunch which we cooked on an open fire same as with breakfast we built camp gadget's or more specificity washing up stands again our group's was da best. We then did some more work on are bibvowacks and had a session on knives, axes and saws after this we had dinner and went to bed in our bibvowacks. After getting up on Sunday we took our bibvowacks down cooked breakfast and did a season on first aid we learnt how to treat Frost bite, Heat exhaustion, Heat stroke and how to give CPR after this we made ballisters and fired them it was fun we then had dinner packed up camp got our badges and went home. 

Queens Scouts Camp 2, Carphone Warehouse, £80!, Steak, Magners Pear Cider, Harry Potter, Stomach Pains, Things To Come,

We were up early because we’d agreed the night before to try and get Nat to camp by 08:00; it was still foggy but nothing like as bad as the previous evening and eventual just before 08:00 we found the entrance, it wasn’t easy thank you Hannah, and left Nat with one of the troop leaders. They would be building bivouacs in which they would sleep that night. Nat had demolished a huge bowl of cereal before we left home and subsequently, we later discovered, sat down to eat a full English breakfast with the rest of the troop…greedy little sod!


The previous evening Deb had gone on line to discover the nearest approved Nokia repair outlet. I filmed the journey and the video quality was outstanding as were traveling at around 50mph. Unfortunately this will probably be wiped while they're trying to fix the phone! This turned out to be the Carphone Warehouse shop on Welford Road so, after dropping Nat off, we headed there to see if they could repair the phone. They weren’t open until 09:00 and as we arrived early I decided to see if the FM transmitter would allow me to play one of the podcasts I’d put on the phone via the car radio. This it did indeed do, perfectly. Eventually the shop opened and I explained what had happened. The guy there wasn’t sure they could repair it, hopefully they say this to everyone, but agreed to send it off to their engineers to see what they could do. If they can repair it, fingers crossed, it’ll cost me £80 so everything I saved by buying on eBay has been lost. In addition they’ll have to destroy the memory card in order to remove it so that’s another £20 down the drain. It’s now just a question of waiting to hear back from them.

Afterwards we did the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s’ where Deb picked up a couple of small, but succulent steaks for she and I for dinner, Hannah doesn’t like beef so she would be having macaroni cheese…one of her favourites. While we were there we also picked up some beers including three bottles of Magners’ pear cider which was on special offer. This was very nice but nothing like as nice as the St Austell’s pear cider she’s bought the previous week. When you open that it smells like pear drops and is gorgeous.

Hannah had a ballet lesion that afternoon and had to stay for an additional hour to make up for the lesion she’s missed on Wednesday so she was exhausted when she eventually got back home.

We had our dinner; the steaks were delicious, while watching the end of the first Harry Potter film on ITV and decided, once it had finished, that we’d then watch number four, Goblet of Fire. I fell asleep and missed the end; Hannah and Deb watched the next one as I slept on. When I woke up they’d gone to bed so I made up a bed on the sofa and went back to sleep. I woke again around 04:00 with a searing stomach ache which I’m still experiencing as I write this. It seems Deb had been suffering from this too and on Monday both of the kids also came down with it, Hannah was particularly severely affected and spent the day in bed when she wasn’t in the loo throwing up!