"The" Devil lands in Chislehurst

5th Chislehurst Scouts with Alex and the Devil

Here at Village News, just as red squirrels are kept safe on Brownsea Island, so we thought we would be kept safe on our island from Tasmanian Devils.

Not a bit of it!

Tasmanian scout, seventeen year old Alex Ruut, has forsaken the sunshine back home to come to the UK for his summer holiday. As part of a scouting exchange programme Alex is staying with a local family, doing what they do – including going to school with his hosts’ son, and joining in with what a typical Village News area family gets up to at this time of the year, so plenty of eating, drinking and fighting then. After Christmas he will spend a few days exploring London before returning home in the middle of January.

Alex has already met a number of the local scouts and they have been keen to find out what it’s like to live on the other side of the world. In some respects, Alex told them, it’s very similar. In others, it’s not. When Alex visited the 5^th Chislehurst cubs last week, they couldn’t quite get their heads around having Christmas dinner outside, or never, ever having snow at Christmas, which should make for some unusual Christmas card designs that we don’t often see over here. Certainly no snowmen or frosty country scenes.

Alex brought with him a Tasmanian Devil and has presented it to the scout group as their new mascot which, apparently, they are very excited about. There have been several attempts to take Tassie home already.

5^th Chislehurst Scouts are in the middle of their new Christmas card initiative, see here for more details, whereby they will deliver your local Christmas cards for less than the normal price of a second class stamp.

So if there’s a knock at your door in the coming days and you find a scout standing there with some Christmas cards in one hand and the Devil in another, make sure you choose the Christmas card hand and tip off the scout leaders as to where Tassie was sighted. But do not approach him.

9.12.2014: Village News understands that 5th Chislehurst Explorers have decided to be called "Tasmanian Devils." Seeing that it's taken them over a year to think of a name that most are in agreement with, it would be churlish to criticise their choice. We wonder whether Invicta Chislehurst have a mascot to go with their shiney new hut (see 7th July 2014)? Could anyone enlighten us?

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