I’ll remember your name

I know what you’re thinking.  There is a lot going on in China – how are the trusty UK delegation doing? Are they fully prepared?

Caroline and I read the South China Morning Post on the plane – the obvious thing to do on a UK afternoon.  Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few days, you’ll be aware that there have been protests in Hong Kong very recently.  They were peaceful protests.  With 500 people arrested.  (Is that tautology?)

But what are the protests all about? Let me explain in the simplest terms, to provide an overview.  I stress that this is not an in-depth analysis, but a snapshot.  Seventeen years ago, Hong Kong was officially handed back to China, after 150 years of British rule.  Since then, Hong Kong has been an SAR, which is a Special Administrative Region, of China, operating under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ arrangement, allowing Hong Kong to be more liberal than mainland China, in terms of media and governance.  On July 1^st, it was the anniversary of the handover.  Since 2003, this date has seen people taking to the streets calling for greater freedom of speech, a halt to soaring property prices, and much more.  The latest protests focused on the model for the 2017 election of the Chief Executive, the leader of the Region. 

There were other pressing matters in the South China Morning Post which I feel that you, dear reader, would benefit from knowing about.  Where to begin?! Two women ate mushrooms and were ill.  This can happen if you eat wild mushrooms.  The moral of that story is this – only eat mushrooms from Sainsbury’s, or Morrison’s, or a similar establishment, not from a forest.  Unless, of course, you are a professional forager, which most people are not.

Another gripping story focussed on a man who burnt his house down because he was in a bad mood.  He even cursed villagers who tried to save his home.  He was arrested.  He is fine now, but without a home. 

Ah, the things one can learn from a quick read of the South China Morning Post.

Now, the title of the blog.  We met a lady called Hilary who is part of OBPS.  This stands for Olave Baden-Powell Society, a group of former Leaders in Guiding, and others, who support Guiding around the world.  Hilary noticed the delegation in our resplendent international neckers and came and spoke to us.  She’s off to the OBPS conference, some of which is being shared with the WAGGGS World Conference.  We talked for a while, then she asked our names – ‘Caroline’; ‘Helen’; ‘Laura’; ‘Jo’.  She looked at me and said, ‘I’ll remember your name’.  I smiled; perhaps she’d heard of me, or read one of my scintillating blogs, or attended a training I’d run somewhere; the explanation came immediately - ‘one of my horses is called Helen’.