So I'm back! I've been gone from Friday to Saturday-evening more than a week later. I slept through Sunday, waking up to lunch watching a movie and then slumbering back asleep. Today is easy time, slowly getting back to my old strengths. It's astonishing to watch leaders - among which myself - collapse after the kids have left on Friday. To get you folks into the theme, here's the theme introduction movie, I play the druid...
Above are the usual patrol kitchens made by the scouts of both the morning and the afternoon scouts. The afternoon scouts had two patrols on camp, the morning scouts just one. I was mildly proud of yet another small victory for our afternoon scouts. Even though I was on camp as a cubscoutleader (King Louie), I spend some time explaining stuff to scouts on several occasions. They are hopeless without me ;) The first night I pulled several scouts out of their tents for being too noisy, we placed them across the field, ordered them to stand still, not communicate and remain focused on an object directly in front of them. Any deviation from this would add another 15 minutes to the out-time. I have to admit that I spoiled a really hot blond kid...
These are the tents of the scouts and the cubscouts. In the middle are the two leader tents (the large white one for the scoutsleader and the smaller green one for the cubscoutleaders). The first four tents are the scouts tents, the last two were for the cubscouts. Since I was a cubscoutleader I slept in the green tent, I was with two female leaders so I had one of the two compartments for myself.
This is the guild sign for the guild of Asterix, the trade of warriors. Asterix was lead by Martijn, a fellow scoutsleader of my group who is the other male besides me in the leaders team. In my place he got another male and a female for support, since I was not a scoutsleader this camp.
The guild plate of Hoefnix, the blacksmith of the village, the trade of metal workers. This guild was supervised by Hoefnix, a core member dressed up as the theme figure. He was dressed, appropriately, in a trousers and a brown leather smiths skirt. He usually carried a heavy hammer with him and he also brought a large white dog, which we called IdefixXL, after Idéfix (the small dog in the comics) and XXL for being so huge.
The plate of Obelix, trade of menhir-masons. Of course lead by Obelix himself, who after three days made a nasty fall and was from then on unable to lift his menhir, which he used to carry around everywhere. The guild of Obelix won, surprisingly, since my guild was the leader for the entire camp. I bet someone stole the scores...
And at last, the coat of arms of Assurancetorix, the bard of the village. The trade of entertainment and education, things which suited me. I lead this guild as Assurancetorix, I should have won and that is all. Displayed on it is Air by Bach on the papyrus roll in the center and the text "Be as you would want to be, see as you would want to see" stolen from the movie Were The World Mine. We assumed the first place after the first game and held on to it until the end. We kept the scores near eachother artificially, to keep things more challenging, lowering my score and bringing up the score of the other teams. I was a bit disappointed to find that my guild didn't win by just 10 points, which is far less than I was compensated with to keep the scores close together. Oh well, the kids had fun and there's more to life than winning.
The cars and our smallest tractor. You can see the water tanks and the small diesel-boiler on the top of the brighter green trailer. Behind the trailer were two improvised showers. Both the showers and the general water storage worked by the principle of communicating barrels. The showers were great, a real treat during camp.
This is a cubscout, a menhir and Obelix (with crutches). You can see Abraracourcix, the village Chieftain, walking toward his chair. Obelix terribly injured his knee after a nasty fall during the ghost trip a few nights earlier. I treated him with a pressure bandage and ordered him to take rest. He didn't take rest and the pain remained at a level 5 (in first aid, pain levels are indicated by the victim from 0 to 10, where 0 is absolutely no pain and 10 is the most gruesome pain they can imagine). We sent him to the hospital after the pain hadn't stopped for the next day. Affirmingly, the hospital ordered him to rest and put a pressure bandage on his knee. They gave him the crutches (we don't have any ourselves).
This is Abraracourcix mounting his elevated chair accompanied by Dave, dressed up as Xienix, the false future-teller. Abraracourcix (under normal conditions called Patrick) and I are one of the few who still acknowledge the benefits of wearing wooden shoes. I'd bought new black ones for the camp and the pink ones (from last NPK, where our theme-colour was pink) painted gold, with my Abraracourcix suit. It looked pretty sharp.
Again Obelix near the sign of his trade, unfortunately one of the less charming expressions on his face was caught on camera. By the way, he is not that fat by nature (though slim isn't exactly the word I'd choose either) - we had a fat-suit with the costume.
This is the improvised cave of Metusalix, the old teacher of Panoramix (the druid). In the story, Metusalix has an enormous beard which Asterix and Obelix follow to find him. As you can see, we kept true to the story.
The kids had been on hike for the entire day, it was about 3 in the afternoon as they arrived at this post. We had been waiting in a car for them to come. I had walked ahead of the children the entire hike until then, setting out the route for them. I had a bag of wool with me, putting pieces of it along the road in bushes and road signs. The story was that they were looking for the milk 
of the two-headed unicorn, a very rare ingredient to make the magic potion which makes the Gauls invincible twice as strong.As the kids arrived, we hurried to the cave and dressed up Metusalix. The kids had no idea what they were in for. After answering two questions they collected the milk (which I poured into a small bottle) and brought it back with them to the campsite. Along the hike they had the chance to spend some money in the nearest large town, mostly on candt - of course - but also on postcards and souvernirs.
After the hike I got myself into a safety guard and into a tree to man the 2nd post in the obstacle course. Dave (the straight blond I toy with) manned the first post and secured the kids when they entered the last part of the parcours toward me. After they had reached me (at about 5 metres / 16,5 feet high above the ground) I switched their securing from the track to the cable lane. 
I helped them on the cable track and off they went. Of course I had one kid who started to scream, there always is one... She was a cubscout, one of the older ones, and was three-quarters along the rope you see between me and Dave. She said she was a little scared, I told her she was nearly there. When she was about a metre away from me, she started crying. I was like "Oh fuck". She didn't dare to go back to Dave so I struggled to get her to me. The ropes were slippery after so many kids had surpassed her and that only made things worse. She couldn't possibly fall down, after all: she was secured to the blue rope hanging beside the course she had just completed. Still the cable track seemed too much for her. The only way down, however, was that very same cable track. So she started screaming, and screaming, and screaming until I somehow managed to get her to sit, switched her security lines and had her hold the pulley with which she was to slide down. Dave even had to assist there, holding here while she tried to grasp the bands of the pulley. She went down eventually.
Unfortunately the weather went bad again after a while and it started to grow dark. After the last scout had gone down the cable track I slid down it and called it a day. The weather was generally sunny and rainy. We had periods of delightful sunshine and laid ourselves down on the grass to enjoy it, a moment later it could pour out of the sky like an enormous waterfall. I had a ball during this summer camp, I learned that my place is really with the scouts (ages 11-15) instead of the cubs (7-11), because the cubs are a far less challenge to lead and do hardly anything with scouting that I love so much.Some core members also had a good time finding out I was really, really gay; acknowledging the rainbow flag which now suits my uniforms. One older woman really didn't know I was gay and thought I always just joked around. Poor woman... little did she know. The scoutsleaderteam missed me, they said. I guess I am the cohesive factor in the team which soothes emotions and is always atop tense situations. They admitted there was a lot more stress and bickering without me.
I love being important... ...and the first wank after camp. A week of abstinence, I shot my eye - that never happened before. What a mess! :) God I love this life. I hope you guys had a great week, I'll try to get the post on those blond hunks up somewhere this week. 'Till then! Oh, below is Julian, the BildBoy, from a German magazine which was pointed out to me by some guys. They're such sweethearts, knowing what I like. There's a nice video on the website of der Bild, with Julian during the photo shoot and with an interview in which he claims he is not a total whore - which he totally is.
