Fed by Birds

I'd forgotten until reading Boynton reminisicing about gaining her Tree Badge, about all the essential wisdom that I picked up by being a Brownie (Pixie division). Not so much on the badge front - Art and Pet Keeping - but it did teach you how to dance round a papier maché toadstool with insouciance - a highly transferable skill - and most importantly, what to keep in your pockets. Forget all that paraphernalia you're lugging around with you - this, we were told, is all you need to get you out of any situation:

Clean hankie (to be used as a tourniquet if necessary);
Piece of string (to capture animals, tie shelters together etc);
Safety pin (for wardrobe malfunctions);
Pencil and paper;
10p for a phone call (adjust for inflation).

Presumably you'd want to add a machete in jungle terrain, but this wasn't mentioned.

In the absence of regular pocket inspections I'd let this go a bit but we'd all be better off in these testing times if we remembered our Brownie training. Although thinking about it I must have built up a frightening backlog of Good Deed for the Days which I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get through.