Cadets Blog
BURNS NIGHT 2018 by CWO Relyea and Sgt Hamon
24th January 2018
BURNS NIGHT 2018
On 20th January the cadets attended Hever Castle Golf Club for one of the more formal events of the year. A packed room enjoyed the meal and entertainment, and this blog includes two of the formal speeches. In the age old tradition, a toast is made to the Lassies, and a response is given. Here are those speeches, and Im sure that Burns himself would approve.
TOAST TO THE LASSES
By Bradley Relyea
Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls,...... Bridel.
Don't expect a good Scottish accent out of me, my range of vocals goes from talking, to drill.
This is my 4th burns night, and still no one could convince me to wear a kilt, despite how 'freeing' everyone says it is.
I just don't see the appeal, maybe a lass could explain this to me, as I can see that skirts and dresses are very fashionable, but seem so unnatural and restricting. Not even mentioning how expensive they are.
They're always trying to fit into one size smaller, or trying to squeeze back into the one they already have, and this comes down to their eating habits. At the dinner table the lasses are different creatures. The common phrases of, 'The diet starts Monday' and 'Just one more glass of wine' just to name a couple.
Even if they are strict to their diets, stealing off your plate doesn't count as calories... apparently! This happens so often that I had to introduce a rule with Josephine, stating that she can't ask me open questions at the table, because while I'm answering she's stuffing her face full of my pudding.
In the Air Cadets we are lucky to have the involvement of many women. Females have only been allowed in the cadets since the early 1980's, and have since grown in numbers and are vital members as both staff and cadets. In addition, let us not forget our female Air Commodore.
Burns constantly argued that women were intellectually and socially superior.
Intellectually lasses are much like dolphins, they are smart, funny, and sleek. It's incredible in only a couple short weeks a dolphin can train a man to stand at the side or a pool and throw fish at them.
They also outclass us socially; you can see this at any bar or pub. When you observe a lot of women chatting together, lots of words are said and that's hard to keep up as a man.
What man does know, the three fastest means of communication, telephone, television, tell a woman!
Whereas men are polar opposites. 20 minutes at a bar with a pint in their hands, and the only thing said is 'can you pass the peanuts'.
In the end Burns loved his women and so should we, after all they give us happiness, good health and joyous company.
In his words.
To see her is to love her,
and love but her forever,
for nature made her what she is,
and never made another.Lads can you please stand with me to toast the lasses.
The Lasses!
REPLY TO THE TOAST TO THE LASSES
by Josephine Hamon
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It falls to me, your allocated Lassie for this evening, to take up the challenge of replying to Brad's toast. Unfortunately I now have to lower the tone and talk about men - not that I'm in any way suggesting those two things might go hand in hand.
When it comes to women, men are clueless. I recently found the perfect example of how clueless they can be.
I asked Brad to get the mayonnaise out of the fridge, a reasonably simple task I thought, he stood in front of the fridge for a good 5 minuets looking for the mayonnaise before coming back and saying that he couldn't find it, I go and look in the fridge and the mayonnaise is in the center of the middle shelf, this just perfectly sums up how oblivious men are, they can't see things when they are right in front of them.
This is where Burns differs, he could see all the hints that women drop and used them fully to his advantage. His poems show a deeper understanding of women that all the men I know put together. Maybe this is why he was able to father 12 children by 4 women in 13 years, half of which were illegitimate, if that's not impressive I don't know what is.
According to a study modern men use 7000 words a day, most of those words are uh huh, no, what, dinner and where's my keys? The remaining 6,992 are just words for boobs!
There just isn't any small talk when talking to men. As women we find this very frustrating as we think that you are just not listening, we try to talk to you and all we get is: yes, no, what?
But now that I've read this study I understand, it's not that you're not listening, it's just that you've used up all your words. You've got 7000 words a day and that's it. There are just no more words left.
Women, according to this study, use 24,000 words a day. We use language as a reward. If we like you we talk to you, if we don't, we blank you.
The first area of conflict between men and women comes when a women stops talking and goes off in a huff. She withdraws language, and men... well you don't notice for 3 days! You just think its lovely and quiet. While she's going mad from the silence.
But the theory that Robert Burns could bridge that gap of language between men and women still holds true today.
Any man that could write-
'had we never loved so blindly,
had we never loved so kindly
never loved and never parted
we would ner be broken hearted. ....
and countless other beautiful poetry is someone you lads could learn a lesson from.
For all their shortcomings, we women couldn't get along without men. So please, raise your glasses
To the Lads.
Official Remembrance Day Parade at the Menin Gate in Ypres by Sgt Winkett
23rd November 2017
Four cadets from Sevenoaks joined 30 other cadets from LASER to participate in the Official Remembrance Day Parade at the Menin Gate in Ypres.
We paraded through the streets of Ypres alongside cadets and military personnel from Canada, Scotland, Belgium, India and the London Metropolitan Police and London Fire Brigade. The service of Remembrance was held in the Menin Gate in the presence of HRH The Princess Royal. It was a very moving service and during the two minutes' silence, poppy petals fell from the ceiling.
We took part in the Last Post Ceremony which takes place every day of the year to commemorate those who lost their lives during the First World War. We paraded through the streets of Ypres up to the Menin Gate accompanied by the bands of London Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade and Pipes and Drums.
We visited the war graves cemeteries at Tyne Cot and Passchendale where we were shown the grave of the only soilder to have been awarded the VC Medal twice in the same war Captain N.G. Chavasse from the Royal Army Medical Corps. We visited the Trenches Museum where we could exprience some of the harsh realities of life in the trenches.
This trip has made me fully appricate the sacrifices of so many men so that we can live in peace.
Sgt Kathryn Winkett
