It was one of the first events Aimi and I attended as a couple, wayyyyy back in 2018. And since then, disgracefully, I’ve only managed to attend a few times, so this year I made a special effort to come to the 1st Hampton Hill Sea Scouts Beer Festival.
Unrecounted from the annals of my personal history, is my attendance to Sea Scouts when I was about 15-17 years old. Growing up with Eddie, his dad Tony helped run the local group and so I got involved. Weekly, we would mess about in kayaks on the river Thames and go camping and all the usual scouty stuff, leaning towards nauticality. But for one reason or another the troop declined in numbers until Mum injected some new enthusiasm and petitioned hard around the local schools to get some new kids to become cubs. She roped me into helping run the new cub section as a young leader for a couple years. Since going to university and work, I’ve not lived locally, but tried to lend a hand when needed for events, like the beer festival.
If there is one way to motivate Tony, and most Scout leaders actually, it’s to provide beer. This event started small and grew year by year to now host over 25 beers, 12 ciders, 11 gins and 900 people over 3 sessions! It’s a masterwork of organisation and passion for giving a community 2 things they want and funding one with the other. The beer festival raises funds, by providing the best and cheapest beer available in West London for one weekend a year and then these funds maintain and pay for scouting events. This is for the young people of the area, who when they reach 18, help run the beer festival. It’s a beautifully pissed up circle!
After helping set up the tables and chairs, erect the tents and organise the band, I put on my helpers t-shirt and manned the Gin and Wine bar. It’s mostly bearded men that drink “proper” beer so I was glad to see other drinks put on to cater for the women and people of other tastes. I had been told it would be a fairly quiet job, but very quickly it became obvious that lots of people wanted gin!
Mike helped me man the bar and between us, we figured out all the botanicals and flavoured tonics that go with each gin. It was nice spending time standing around, between servings, just chatting with him and Eddie, catching up on life. Living so far apart, something like this is a useful excuse to meet up.
We took the tokens, filled glasses, cleared tables and cleaned up as needed till the last patron polished off their pints. It was only while clearing up that a girl came over and introduced herself. She was one of the very original kids who signed up when mum was restarting the troop and i was a young leader helping her. She has progressed thru all levels of the scouts and was now a young leader. It was great to hear how she was studying to be an architect and what she thought of those good old days half a lifetime ago.
I’ve never wanted to have children, but that’s not to say I don’t enjoy playing, teaching and spending time with them. I worked at Legoland and as a young leader for scouts for years and now I’m looking to help young kids get STEM educational experiences through playing with drones. I enjoy helping shape kids, but I just don’t want to change their nappies or be responsible for them for any longer than a day. Handing them back to their parents, gabber-mouthing about all the new experiences and fun they have had is really rewarding. And now I’ve seen just how far those experiences can go. Today was really rewarding.
