This year’s Crucial Crew doing well

I’ve been very busy for the last two weeks at Crucial Crew.   That’s something which all 11 year old children in the area attend before they go up to secondary school next term.   It is organized by the Police and the local authority, and the emergency services and others take part.   This year we had the police, fire service, health primary care trust, Network Rail, road safety, recycling, tidy environment, and the one I was doing – water safety.   So I have been giving 16 presentations a day, back to back, and have spoken to 1800 children.  

I have to say that mostly the children were quieter, more attentive and better behaved than previous years.   They also seemed pretty intelligent, and could supply the answers to the questions I was putting to them.

 A few notable exceptions, though.   One girl informed the tidy environment people that she always dropped litter because it made jobs for people to pick it up!   Another was asked to move by his teacher, to separate a couple of noisy ones, and just said “no, I won’t”.   Sometimes the old days of “What did you say?!” and a quick belt round the ears seem pretty attractive.

Most looked neat, tidy and attractive in their school uniforms, but a few seem to ignore the uniform and those also looked in need of a good wash.

All in all, though, a satisfying two weeks which make one feel the next generation won’t be too bad!