BOOKS, HATS, BADGES

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 154, 25 March 1939, Page 6

BOOKS, HATS, BADGES

Wellington's "Guide Shop' Offers Curious Mixture

The words “Guide Shop” conjure up a variety of visions, but only a member of the girls guides, or a brownie, could conjure up the right one. This is probably not because of a common lack of imagination, but because only a member or friend of the girl guide movement could understand the necessity for such a “shop,” and certainly 7 it is hidden beyond the public knowledge by its very obscurity. To find it, one must climb to the top of a building in Featherston Street. Here, above the city blare, two rooms comprise a pleasant focal point and news centre for all the 1000 guides in Wellington province. Here guides must come for their smart blue uniforms, their shiny leather belts, and their most important—badges, each a step up the ladder of success in a company. , , n Here small brownies as their name, to be put at ease immediately by the guardian presence —Miss Diana Carlyon. Miss Carlyon is a newcomer to \\ ellington, but is not a newcomer to guiding ranks. She comes from Aidershot, England, and has been in New Zealand since February. She took over . the “Guide Shop” shortly after her arrival, with a “sigh of relief,” as she said m an interview, to be in the movement again. ' „ , Guiding is like that, Miss Carlyon explains. One may not like the idea of the uniforms and the discipline till one joins up, and not till then can the full worth of the movement be appreciated and fullv understood. As a means of developing seif-ex-presion simply by “doing things” alone, guiding had proved its worth in every community. No Difference. Miss Carlyon has found the young guides and brownies in Wellington very little different from their English sisters of the movement. In the county of Hampshire, where she was a commissioner, there were 6000 guides. The Wellington guide shop was started in August of last year, and is the third in the Dominion. Auckland has tr branch and the Dominion headquarters are in Hastings. Secluded as the Wellington branch shop seems, it has justified its existence in the short time it has been going, and Is now upon its feet. Unlike anv other shop, its curious mixture of books, hats, belts, posters and badges are irresistible to the small people who come to call, and to the older folk who train them the shop .is an essential stimulus and means of carrying on the movement.