KUDU

the scout and guide magazine

KUDU

Volume 5, Issue 3

A FINAL GOODBYE

SSAGO 50th REUNION 2017

23rd September 2017

THANK YOU FROM THE EDITORS! Thank you for getting involved and sending in your stories.

Edited by: Vicky Swain, Russell Thorne and Tom Candy

From all of us at Reunion HQ, we just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who came to Reunion and made this such a special event, a celebration of all that SSAGO is, was and will be in the future. Scouts, Guides, SSAGO members, across all the ages and generations all coming together in one place in friendship and in service. This truly was a weekend to remember, and we hope that you all have as fond memories of the event as we do. After hours of setting up and getting the site ready, people started to arrive and the campsite became covered in tents. The evening started off with everyone catching up with each other, playing some games, gathering around a campfire and a truly devious quiz. Stories and laughs filled the hall, helped with some nice drinks from the bar and fuelled by jacket potatoes for dinner. After a full breakfast, Saturday morning began with the opening ceremony, and speeches from Joshua Smith and Em Reed, the chairs of SSAGO and SAGGA and our special guest and UK chief commissioner, Tim Kidd, who came to celebrate with us. From there, the entertainment kicked off, with some people going off site for treasure hunts, taskmaster, escape rooms, museum challenges, pub crawls and brewery tours. Others stayed on site to enjoy a selection of traditional games, craft, lock picking, woodwork and storytelling.

As the day went on, SAGGA kindly provided Pimms on the Grass, while we found out if SSAGO had talent (they didn’t), who the task masters were and whether SSAGOers playing quidditch could ever find the Snitch darting around campsite. Following dinner, the evening kicked off with the ceilidh and the silent disco, sometimes even mixing and both with the usual levels of dancing abilities from SSAGO members. Those not dancing could be found around the campfire, or enjoying the games shows or just the joys of cheese and wine as the night fell and people moved to their tents after a busy day, or to the silent Cinema to see whether the Scouts could indeed beat the zombies. The giant SSAGO birthday card was passed around and soon filled up to capture all the people who SSAGO itself had captured over the years.

(Continued on next page)

REUNION ROUND-UP

(CONTINUED)

Horoscopes

Aber is old

Tom (Cambridge) allegedly

reverses van into bus stop

Brian (beaver) has not yet

recovered from the trauma of

being neckerless for two nights

SSAGO still can’t spell ceilidh

‘Sudokudu’ voted best pun of

2017

Overheard

@Reunion

Sagittarius - Today's

mission is to empower,

not enable.

Capricorn - Peel back the

mask and reveal more of

who you truly are

Libra - Mars has

entered the Milky Way.

Cancer - Error displaying

horoscope

KUDU

Volume 5, Issue 3

SSAGO 50th REUNION 2017

23rd September 2017

Gossip Column

“Having shipped an entire house

before…” - Oli Bills

After few too hours of sleep, Sunday began with another full breakfast and a Scouts Own at the campfire, reflecting on people's own journeys and adventures. After gathering around for a final Reunion photo and filling the campfire circle, the Reunion Tournament began with all kinds of games and bases, along with the classics of archery, climbing and shooting and even some fencing! Meanwhile, the Archive Exhibition was taking place, showcasing the history of SSAGO over the years with a great selection of artefacts, stories and a timeline to where we are now. Following the tournament, people turned to enjoy the inflatables, whether fighting each other in the Sumo suits, doing the bungee run, or bouncing on the castle to show that we are still the children we always were. Behind the inflatables, The Gadaffy plate challenge took place, with Nottingham challenging the Exec to a cart race, but once again, the Exec prevailing. The village fete saw Joshua take to the stocks to receive some wet sponges and gunge while people enjoyed some table tennis, guessing the amount of badges in the jar and contributing to the SSAGO guest book and quilt. As the closing ceremony began and we said our goodbyes and thank yous, it truly hit what an amazing and truly special organisation SSAGO is, made what it is by all the people standing there in that circle. Reunion as an event planned, organised and run purely by volunteers, the amount of people who volunteered as staff over the weekend and gave up a little of their time to make Reunion such a success. To everyone who travelled and camped and took part in this amazing weekend, we hope you enjoyed it!

Happy birthday SSAGO, and see you at the next Reunion!

It was Spring 2016 and I had just left a lecture about preparation for our dissertations and that we need to work on it over the summer!

I had a long think over the couple of weeks and one afternoon I found myself at home scrolling through Facebook (obviously taking a break from exam revision) and saw that my friend was going to an event. The event was to his Student’s Union archives. Then I thought about SSAGO and archive materials… we started chatting about it in the comments of this Facebook feed. Two months later we found ourselves going to Gilwell, Scout HQ to look at the SSAGO materials.

Over the past year the archives and our knowledge of SSAGO’s history has dramatically increased. In fact it was particularly interesting to see that a lot of the time SSGO hasn’t changed! Such as introducing rally feedback surveys… only back in the 1970s the only form of communication was snail mail.

The museum at Reunion was a combination of materials from around the country and across the web. We had the rally box, Gadaffy plate, ex-member’s memories, SkyBlue, a video of Southampton’s trip to Iran in the 1960s and attendee’s collections on display too. It’s safe to say that there was something for everyone. Thank you to everyone for bringing along your SSAGO memories and collections it was a real insight into SSAGO’s past.

I was particularly interested to learn about Panants. Until about 1973 each InterVarsity/InterCollegiate and subsequently SSAGO rally Panants were made and given to each attendee, they’d be decorated and themed for the camps. Another item which has only slightly changed was in the late 1980s and into 1990s, you would make yourself a pin badge on arrival (yes SSAGO had a badge maker), today we have our lanyards but they worked the same way as pin badges!

It was lovely to meet people from different points in SSAGO’s history, from the formation in 1967 to early 00’s, everyone had their unique story to tell. While walking around the museum I did overhear a couple people looking at the Gadaffy plate and saying how they cheated on one occasion! One member recalled their trip to the Norfolk broads, a regular trip with their club (UCL) and over the years became a confident sailor.

SSAGO has and always will be a social environment and has helped bring many people together and reunion has shown that lifelong friendships are formed and in some cases partners for life.

Here’s to the next 50 years of SSAGO a unique youth led movement which is always growing with the times.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

LARAH KORRISON

Have you had enough of life without potato smiley faces, school discos and the original Disney Pixar collabs? The 90s for many of us occupy little of our memory so Plymouth would like to help you remember the decade of technological advances, the real Postman Pat without helicopters and how we are the last children of the 90s.

If you wish for a chance to relive an easier time, then join us at Sidvale Scout Campsite, Sidmouth on the 17-19th

November 2017. The website is live so head over to rally.ssago.org.uk for a cheeky peak at the plan for the weekend and don’t forget to join our Facebook page “PLUGS 90s Rally”.

Now I don’t know about you but food is very important to us at Plymouth! With this in mind, we have spared no expense designing a menu to give you flashbacks to the better decade! Breakfast will be a Full English (proper portions) featuring our childhood favourites potato smiley faces because why not?! For lunch, we will have the old favourites with the additional option of “no lunch” helping us to reduce food waste. After an exciting day of activities dotted around Devon, dinner will be a delicious roast dinner with Yorkshires and stuffing because you deserve it! And what would a 90s rally be without jelly and ice cream?

For activities we have a variety of exciting opportunities in Plymouth, Exeter and Sidmouth. We have something for everyone from adventurous to culinary curious to explorers and much more! For the adventurous we have increased hike spaces so that both long and short hikes have 20 spaces.

Now at PLUGS we seemed to have gained the reputation of drinkers, we have no idea where this came from! We have two pub crawls in Exeter and the legendary PLUGS Drinkers Badge pub crawl. Yes that’s right, you too can earn the Drinkers Badge and see all our favourite Plymouth establishments (we miss you Odd Bar, RIP).

There are also many more activities so it’s up to you to pick whether to discover the underground passages of Exeter, make pasty’s and cream tea in our Devon Spectacular or even do a café crawl round Exeter for those true caffeine and tea lovers!

We are really excited to see you all and show you the time of the 90s!

PLUGS and SSAGO Love xox,

Elly, Nathan, Leigh, Tom, Fran, Thom and Matt

NEXT DECADE: PLYMOUTH 90S RALLY!

KUDU SSAGO 50th REUNION 2017