Become a volunteerYou won’t find two little ducks in this bingo game!
Friday 1st May was the initial event for 18-30 members of Girlguiding Midlands, advertised as an evening to simply eat pizza in pyjamas (socially distanced of course!) and find out a bit more about Your Hub and what’s available for 18 – 30’s, but a game of Badge Bingo certainly brought out my competitive side!
The evening started with an introduction to those who’s helping to shape 18 – 30 for all of us based around the Midlands, allowing me to unattractively stuff my face with pizza while hoping no one took any screenshots of the video call! The resources look excellent, the amount of variety we can enjoy with different activities, it’s impossible to see how someone couldn’t find something inspirational with all the opportunities we’ll be able to access!
All the different Counties had the chance to meet their local coordinator so they could join in with any local opportunities going on, and also connect via social media. Once the formalities were through a game was proposed, I’d never before played Badge Bingo but I’m pretty sure it’s my new favourite thing!
As members of Girlguiding it’s in our blood to be obsessed with badges, sew them on blankets, coats, uniform… leave them in a large pile to definitely sew on soon. Separate blankets for Guiding and non-Guiding, trawling all the gift shops on the off chance you’ll find a badge to commemorate your visit! So the premise is simple, a category is given and you have to find a badge that fits from your collection. First to get 10 badges is the winner, we also had a show and tell of everyone’s badges as we displayed them.
And we’re off…category one: a badge with 2010 on it. Now I know I must have one somewhere as Staffordshire had a large camp that year which I attended, only problem is finding it as I’ve got 3 blankets full of badges to search through (I really like badges!), luckily I sew my badges on chronologically, so with that we go back in time and find one for Thinking Day 2010.
Category two: a bug. A little trickier, but I picked one up from Death Valley with a scorpion on when I went on a family trip so that’ll do nicely. There were some fantastic badges on display for this one, Millennium Bugs and all sorts on display!
Category 3: Feet. Found a Union Jack Converse that I picked up from a train station in Oxford (at this point I realise I may have a problem with my badge addiction). I was surprised how many different foot themed badges there were, we’d got Legs 11, wellies and footprints!
Category 4: A badge only able to be obtained as an Adult. This was a wonderful opportunity for people to show off some incredible achievements: Queens Guide Award, GOLD trips and more. There was a wonderful entry of a badge obtained at the Wedding of a Guide and Scout!
Category 5: Orange. Any orange badge, managed to find my 5m swimming badge from when I was little.
Category 6: Find your oldest badge. Panic mode, there are way too many badges for me to look through, I’m sure I’ve got some old ones that belonged to my Mum, but who even knows where they are! I settle with a Rock ’93 Scout badge that was my Dads. No points for me this round, the oldest badges were from the 60’s and 70’s! Although there were a few badges which were old but not dated, we agreed they’d count.
Category 7: A Scout Badge. The pressure is on having missed out on the last round (not that I’ve gotten unreasonably competitive or anything..) but I’m in luck, my failure for the last round was a Scout badge so I’ve instantly got it! Quite a number of people who’ve attended Scout and Guide events and Jamborees.
Category 8: Hard Rock Café. So many entries for this category, we even had a bit of a collector on the call who had a whole section on their blanket dedicated to the Hard Rock Café with badges from as far as Dubai! One attendee was even wearing a Hard Rock top!
Category 9: Food. Found a Kiwi sitting in a Kiwi! So many Cookie badges from the US and rather a lot of Smores too! I never realised how many badges I have which had got food on them, noticing a favourite theme of Guiding I think!
Category 10: Penguin. I was surprised to see I’d got a Girl Scouts badge with penguins having a snowball fight, only 1 point to go now! This seemed to be the trickiest category, we even had a stealthy puffin try to enter as a penguin! We all took a minute to see if anyone was yet to 10 points, but the competition goes on!
Category 11: Ghost. At this point I am ridiculously frantic, there is no prize for winning and yet I’ve become obsessed, but can I find a ghost badge, of course not! I give up and put my blanket down, only to see a Ghostbusters badge staring back at me!
I over excitedly spam the chat with shouts of BINGO and win the game! Although I must admit I’m a little sad it’s over, it was wonderful getting to see how many different badges we all had for the different categories, and even finding out that I attended the same events as members I’d never to met before! It’s a game I’ll definitely be bringing back to my units, the excitement discussing all the different badges and memories was wonderful.
So we all sign off our various devices and I go about tidying up all the blankets thrown around the room…and there it is: Category 6 Oldest Badge, staring right back at me is a 1977 Silver Jubilee and 1961 unreadable camp badge…
All in all, the night was a wonderful introduction to our future opportunities and social gatherings!
