23rd May 2022 - Natsu 2022 and Camping ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Written listening to the Tyn from Berlin's Third Ear show I missed last friday. So the Natsu sumo tournament finished yesterday after some great bouts. It was an exciting yusho race with Takanosho leading the pack and Terunofuji chasing. However, Takanosho lost on the final day and so there was no play off against Terunofuji. Poor Takanosho! Terunofujo won his seventh yusho which was rather surprising. He sat out the last tournament and seemed to still be suffering early on during Natsu. The Ozekis are in poor form with Mitakeumi and Shodai having losing records and so being kadoban in the next tournament. Takakeisho was going to join them but got his kachi koshi on the final day facing Shodai. There was a questionable moment where his foot went over the straw bales but didn't quite touch the clay. A mono-ii was called but it still seems dodgy. A narrow escape for Takakeisho! We still live in interesting times for sumo with the changing of the guard coming through. It feels like there will be a change in Ozeki this time next year and perhaps Yokozuna. In non-sumo news, I have been busy with Scouts each weekend for the past 3 weeks. It has been busy but nice. The first weekend involved a visit to a safari park with 65 kids aged 6 to 17. We managed to not lose any and I avoided having to go on too many rides with the small people. One of the joys of being the Scout leader is that they can go off in small groups without a leader. That was a very tiring day. I think we were all nearly asleep by the time the coach got back. The weekend after as a joint Cubs (8 to 10) and Explorer (14 to 18) camp. Unfortunately we could not get the cars close to the field and so had to push a trolley up and down to unload. I was knackered by 11 am of the first day! Anyhow, we managed to get a bunch of explorers to feed theirselves without causing too much damage. The cubs had a lovely time even if they didn't join in a bit of camp fire singing. In fairness, it was the first time we had tried singing camp fire songs for some time thanks to similar responses. My lot seem to only appreciate singing Queen songs. Fair play to them. The explorers basically played a chasing game the whole weekend. They didn't even light a fire! Even after chopping up wood and seemingly pulversing the wood to chips with axes. They are a strange bunch at times. It was nice to be out again but the sudden downpour on the Sunday morning made for some wet tents. I did not miss sorting wet tents. Although the rain did help us test out some new tee-pee tents. They were cheap and single skinned. This normally makes for wet insides but we remained dry. Surprisingly happy with these tee-pees. This last weekend was spent in some woods somewhere without running water. It was a leader training weekend for basic bivouac skills. I had done it before but decided to go along with a friend for a chance to play in the woods with fire. It was lovely to be sleeping outside with a bivvy bag again. There is something wonderful about being out with nature. Other than waking up at 4 am thanks to the jibber jabbering birds of course. You cannot sleep well in a bivvy bag but only thanks to noise and light. I got to build fires, try cooking on fire without utensils or plates. One of the surprises was how it was better to cook eggs inside a hollowed out onion compared to using a hollowed out potato. It was quicker and got a thumbs up from those eating it. We also tried using a dutch oven to cook bread. Unfortunately that did not work as well. It seems that you need a trivet inside the oven to reduce the chance of the bread burning. We got half a loaf of edible bread and half a loaf of dwarf bread. The burnt bit made for a good hammer. We also played with some throwing axes and managed to make ourselves ill from hanging around the fire for too long. That was not clever. One of the other leaders felt like a perfect NPC. He was silent until someone asked him something and he broadly had the same responses. He also slept in a chair without a sleeping bag.... Odd but so are we all. One of the things I enjoyed was realising that I could walk at pace for a mile or so with a heavy pack. For context, I have suffered a few years of muscle wasting from statin use and felt like an old man. I was setting the pace for others and they struggled a little to keep up. This was surprising in a good way. I still think I would struggle to walk 15 miles with a pack for a few days as I used to but I am happy with what I did. It was a lovely weekend playing in the woods although I once again surrendered to the evil of napping on the sofa yesterday. I now have a couple of weeks rest before I am back for a beaver camp and a scout camp in June as well as a county ran scout event and a whole group camp in July. Thankfully these are not all in a row so I have chance to catch up on sleep in between.