Many of you will have seen recent national press releases featuring new, and the reintroduction of previously withdrawn, Scout Proficiency Badges.? The new Parascending badge reminds me that Hertfordshire Scouting has already led the way in this pursuit.? Potential achievers may like to know that as early as July 1974, Roy Lambert (16) from the North Watford Venture Scout Unit became National Parascending Champion.? Two teams from the Unit did very well in a competition dominated by the armed services and during the same year the Unit made over 1000 parascending launches. In 1985, Andrew Waklin and Andrew Asquith from the Unit took their revolutionary designed canopy

In an edition of The Daily Telegraph Magazine (17 April) was a six-page article about Tony Fitzjohn OBE.? He was born in 1945 and joined the Second Cockfosters Scout Group in Barnet, Potters Bar & District as a Wolf Cub and Scout.? He attended an Outward Bound Course and later became an Instructor. When he was 18 he had a calling and became an assistant to George Adamson, whose wife Joy wrote the book Born Free.? Tony spent nearly 20 years with George returning more than 30 lions and leopards to the wild in central Kenya. Since the murder of George (83) by Somali poachers in 1989, Tony has overseen the 2,200 sq. mile Mkomazi Game Reserve in northern Tanzania where he is working to increase the numbers of African hunting dogs and black rhinos.? He has a staff of 30 Wapare tribesmen, is unpaid and has to do his own fundraising with wife Lucy and four children. I have kept in touch with Tony and one can only marvel at his dedication and imagine how his Scout training must have helped him during the past 47 years.

About 30 current and former members of the Fourth St Albans Troop were joined by other interested people to attend a dedication to mark the eightieth anniversary of the death of Jim Dymoke Green on 8 May. We met members of the family and the Revd. Charles Dymoke Newcombe read Psalm 121. Patrol Leaders from Jim