Moving through Brownies

Tammy today takes a brief look at Brown badges and the like before the major program reorganization of the 2000's.

Like Scouts, Girl Guiding had a good number of publications such as annuals but this 1983 example isn't actually an annual, it calls itself a gift book and in some respects is more of a cross between those Ladybird guides to Scouts and Guides with some of the more "stories of what we do with photos" that tend to be in the annuals.

The original text in this edition is copyrighted 1981 although this is a re-print from two years later.

As with Scouts, these publications are no longer with us.

The original badge scheme in Girl Guides was similar to Scouts with awards for meeting certain challenges and here's a selection that based on my abilities I could of gained and thus in the old-new Brownies world are mine

Legacy Badge Categories consist of Artist, Athlete, Citizen, Cook, First Aid, Girl Scout Way, and Naturalist. With each category you have an individual badge book consisting of 4-12 pages, and contains all the information needed to earn the badge.

The Imp was one pretty much every brownie had like the Trifoil membership badge and reflects the whole faeries story that's woven into it rather like in Cubs they had the Jungle Book.

This last one was the Highways Badge,

Highway Badge

This is the last Brownie Guide Journey and as on the other two journeys,  Brownies completed at least one challenge under each of the Eight Points for the highway journey.  (They could complete more than one if they wanted to).

The Eight Points included:

Brownie Guides are Wide Awake

Brownie Guides Keep Fit

Brownie Guides Do Their Best

Brownie Guides Make and Create

Brownie Guides are Friendly

Brownie Guides Lend a Hand

Brownie Guides Help at Home

Brownie Guides have Fun Out-of-Doors

Before a Brownie received her badge she also had to:

Know how to get adult help quickly in an emergency

Know how and why the Union flag is made up

Know about  guides and rangers

Discuss with her leader how she is keeping the Promise and Law both at home and at school

Congratulations, You are Good Gurl keeping your Brownie Promise.

Easter 2022

It is the Easter edition just a little bit later than you might think thanks to the publishing schedule here  as we don't deviate from it much apart from things like Christmas where you can't post before it and afterwards misses the joy of an "on the day" post.

It's very vintage but actually all those frills and satins do tie in more with this blog when boys could be more dainty which is no bad thing.

This is very much a little sissy gurl blog albeit coming from a feminine but biologically boy and there's no reason why I ought not to have a girls Easter card and still let my feminine side out because I am a Gurl like but never the same as a girl.

Didn't we all enjoy the thrills of chasing around hunting the easter eggs and just think if I could of done that in a pretty dress? That would of been just super.

Well little sissies like me have cutesy girlish eggs with bunnies on them cos that's so so us all over and that was mine this year before it ended up in my tummy!

Minidisc a go-go 2022

Today it must be said hasn't been a great one with much rain and wind and indeed yesterday It even hailed stinging my legs which meant a quick return from the paper shop and brewing a hot cup of tea.

I haven't written much in recent years around MiniDiscs for a number of reasons, one being the demise of my home recorder and issues trying to get a solid reliable working replacement given home decks have been out of production even in Japan since around 2006/7 and lasers don't last long.

Another is because of, the majority of use had been mainly for purely personal headphone based use such as lp records copied to disc which is a faff on computer based systems as the interfaces aren't easy or selections from cd because for whole albums it's easier and quicker to just "rip" to Mp3 or Flac and play from a personal audio player especially as mine have line outputs too.

My circa 2004 Sharp MT MD 270H developed issues with the catch holding the disc getting out of alignment so the slightest nudge caused errors so I was able to get a similar era Sharp MT MD 170 that had had next to no use in its original box just needing a new "Gumstick" battery which while not very easy to find can be still bought as new manufactured stock so still capable of holding a full charge.

This works very well with the controls operating the same way with both digital and analogue record levels being able to be set and a button to start charging when the power unit is inserted for mains operation.

Axia made a bunch of Hello Kitty and other Sanriotown banded blank uber kawaii MiniDiscs which are now highly collectable and those go for around £30 per disc unopened

They did so at the time Hello Kitty branded players including a MD Boombox!

Here's some discs together with a Sony portable recorder with inline remote that become common in the very late 90's that you'd clip on your attire for ease of operation.

I will have to say however in my experience Sony's personal recorders outside of the early MZ-R 30/35/50's from the mid 90's had by far the worst ergonomics for the controls of any, indeed those on my HiMD NH600 are an absolute beeping pain to use especially with sub menus that the rotary encoder is erratic at moving through. 

Their home decks were in the main, much much better.

A spot more Beethoven and his violin sonatas

This blog has always had features and reviews on things I like from its earliest days and music is no exception which is we this is our current entry.

Sometimes people may say "But you've got one recording of" as you take ownership of another.

The amazing thing in the world of classical music is that often different combinations of conductors and players have different things to say from the same score of a composition over and above any technical differences in the sound.

For me this group of three Sonata's as performed by the acclaimed violinist Rachel Podger with Christopher Glynn on piano brings a freshness to the score I haven't heard before and there is a magical airiness in the recording that just takes you into the venue.
 

Recorded in a gap between covid restrictions that hit performance live and recorded hard  this is one to keep I feel.

Technically this plays in stereo on a regular cd player and stereo plus surround sound for those with super audio cd players or other equipment that can play them such as some Blu Ray players.