22/01/15
I have just finished my first lot of university exams and have a week off so I came home, specifically to go to the pantomime with Brownies (yes, I miss it that much!)... And this time I got to wear my new necker from the Scouts and Guides society at university.
We met all the girls at a local school, which has a proper stage and theatre, and there was lots of excitement as they didn't know I was coming! I kept an eye on some of the girls, and supervised them buying sweets with the money they'd bought with them while Brown Owl ticked everyone off her list as they arrived, and then we went in and sat down. We had a Leader at the end of each row, to make sure the girls didn't go too far along and then filled in our three rows with the girls. Somehow, we had managed to read the row letters wrong though and ended up sat in C, D, and E instead of D, E, and F, which caused some confusion when the Brownie unit that was sitting in front of us arrived and didn't have enough rows to sit in! We solved it quite easily by just moving the one incorrect row back to the correct one but a few members of the public were having issues with getting in the right row too so I think it was an problem with the system as opposed to us being dim.
The pantomime we watched was 'Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves'. As usual, it was very entertaining, with quite a few references to local places. There were also two of our ex-Brownies in it; one as a dancer and the other as Princess Jasmine, which was nice to see. There were a few slip ups but that's expected from an amateur performance and, in my opinion, that makes it even better because it becomes more spontaneous. In the interval, most of the girls bought ice cream or sweets, if they had brought money with them. One girl had eaten all of the Tangfastics that she liked and only had the cola bottles left, which she didn't, so she offered them to me and one of the Young Leaders so I ended up with sweets to eat in the second half too!
The girls all seemed to enjoy it, and got involved with the audience participation song (Alice the Camel - a popular song in our unit many years back) and there were lots of smiling faces that left that evening. It's always a good evening going to the panto so I was glad that it had fallen in my week off from uni so I could come too (although, if it hadn't, I'd probably have tried my hardest to come home for the night anyway!).
The next time I will see the Brownies again will be for the Thinking Day celebration on February 15th - unfortunately I can't get to a unit to help in my second semester either because of the way my timetable has fallen...
