Wednesday's Water Safety

For clarification, the reason for the title is that today is Wednesday, not that I completed the badge on a Wednesday! In fact the badge was done on a Sunday. 5th January. On a train from Waterloo to Woking. At 22.30ish. With 6 Brownies. Hmm.

My Brownie doll Amy joined me in 2010
when I lifeguarded for the centenary
World Thinking Day event!

I decided this was a badge that I needed to adapt a little - technically, I could probably just have given it to myself, seeing as I was a lifeguard and got my National Pool Lifeguard Qualification in 2008, but where's the fun in that?! So I decided that in order for me to get the badge, I had to get 6 Brownies through it too.

I was slightly concerned that after a weekend of madness the girls would be too tired for anything, but they surprised me! After sharing round my laptop with a few relevant web pages for them to read, we had a chat about it, and then a little quiz. After that, we watched the fantastic clip of Mr Bean at the swimming pool!

Picture in your head, a late night train, with 6 Brownies sitting on the floor, watching this on my laptop, and yelling at me every time Mr Bean or any one else did something they shouldn't have done... they were quite vocal about it, and I was worried the other passengers would get annoyed, but a few minutes in I suddenly realised my Brownies had multiplied. And aged somewhat. I now had half the carriage crowded around, shouting every time something "bad" happened! I couldn't quite believe it!

Once I had sent the girls back to the other leaders (who had enjoyed an entirely peaceful train ride, oblivious to what was going on) to collect their belongings before we got off, a number of these members of the public spoke to me. The comments ran along the lines of "Is this Brownies?" "I haven't had such a good laugh in ages" "I can't believe they knew more about water safety than I did" (this poor man had been very pointedly informed that he was wrong by one of the girls!) and "Brownies was never this fun when I was young!". One particular woman, who was absolutely lovely to the girls said how impressed she was with them (I was too!) and how nice it was to see girls being taught about things that will actually help them in life.

Needless to say, I got off the train feeling rather pleased with myself and the girls, and I feel we all deserve our badges!

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