Your report (Guides ditch napkin folding for boxing, survival skills and vlogs, 21 July) suggests Guides used to learn to make tea.
Not in the 13th Highbury Guides in 1957. I did my astronomy badge, (involving months of recording complicated star charts), we learnt about healthy preparation of food and recycling (the norm postwar), and engaged in a lot of sport, animal husbandry and caring for old people. We had to visit a challenging elderly lady weekly for months – standing me in good stead 60 years later when I cared for my mother-in-law.
Camping in those days was not glamping like now. We slept on the earth, fabricating and lashing together woodwork gadgets – from logs we had to find and chop – to keep our clothes off the ground and dry. As for survival skills, some of our ideas wouldn’t have gone amiss in those Thai caves recently. And never a folded napkin in sight.
Naomi Clayton
Barnet, London
• Your photo caption refers to Lady Baden-Powell as “the first chief Guide”. I have a memory that tells a different story. In 1942 I went with my Finchley company to a camp held in the extensive grounds of Miss Hermione Eckstein. During the week we had a campfire at which we were joined by Miss Eckstein and her house guest, Miss Agnes Baden-Powell. I sat next to Miss Agnes; she told me that her brother asked her to take on the job of chief Guide when Guiding first started in 1910. But some years later when he married, his wife Olave was given the position and Agnes displaced. Agnes responded to my request for an autograph by writing “Agnes Baden-Powell, first chief Guide”. I treasured this for 50 years, until I gave it to a member of the Trefoil Guild, the organisation for former Guides.
Pearl Norman
Meopham, Kent
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