Stuck in between her holiday in Lithuania and her holiday in Italy Bee is occupying her time with the traditional school holiday lament: I'm bored. Lest you think amiss, I should add she is paying for all four (short) holidays herself from her Saturday job working in a bookshop. These days while we still have cheap flights and a minimum wage it seems it is possible to afford holidays on a Saturday job. There she is learning useful work skills like how to look busy when you have finished all your work by 10am, there are not enough customers and there is nothing else to do for the rest of the day except ponder why bosses are all idiots, though she is struggling with the rules saying you are not allowed to read the books and therefore are not in a position to advise customers on books.
The boredom is enhanced by the fact that all her friends are taking boring holidays either in France or camping and looking at nature in Britain with the Woodcraft Folk, so they will not bring exciting news of new places she might like to visit. I had never heard of the Woodcraft Folk until I became a left-winger, when they appeared marching on demos. Bee sneered that they were not allowed to play team games or be competitive, so what was the point. Did I really bring up such a child of Thatcher? I remember at Sloph's first school in Birmingham, they were not allowed to have sports days because not all kids could win prizes. In my day, one of the reasons for having sports days was to let more of the kids win prizes as it was thought you could not be academic and athletic, or vice versa.
I can see that not everyone approves of the militaristic background of the scouts or the dressing up in uniform, which always seemed to discriminate against poor kids like me (What? Secondhand girl guide's uniform as well as secondhand school uniform, not likely). However it seems that you also need clothing to fit in with the Woodcraft Folk.
Clearly, setting up websites is not something you can get a Woodcraft Folk badge for, or they would have a better website.
