BEDGRUDGING, as I do, every penny given to Wiltshire Council, I was determined to make use of the leftover 10 minutes I had paid for on a parking meter.

I popped in to Southons and – lo and behold! - bought all my Christmas cards in one go. At the beginning of November! How virtuous, how organised did that make me feel?

It doesn’t mean there won’t be the usual last-minute posting panic, once I’ve got round to actually writing them. Especially the ones that go abroad. I always miss the deadlines.

Being a super-fast typist (and modest with it!) I find writing by hand a laborious business, and tend to put it off.

However, I’ll be making sure this year that any local cards I can’t hand-deliver will be ready by Friday, December 7.

Why? Because that’s the closing day for the Salisbury & South Wilts Scouts’ Christmas Post.

Apart from this being a bargain at 30p a pop, which helps to meet the organisation’s running costs, 5p from every stamp is going towards a fantastic project – buying a campsite, within reasonable travelling distance of our city.

I got talking about it to one of their volunteers, David Waspe, who was manning the Cards for Good Causes till.

He told me that their old stomping ground, Great Yews, can no longer accommodate all their needs, so 18 months ago they decided to find a place of their own – “somewhere young people can camp safely, make as much noise as they like, play their outside games, light their cooking fires and not be a nuisance to anyone”.

With hard work and enthusiasm, they’ve already raised £16,500 towards their £150,000 target.

It’s great to see this can-do attitude being passed on to young people in an era when many of the publicly funded services that we’ve traditionally relied on are vanishing.

In my own youth, it seemed as though every kid in creation was a Brownie or Cub, a Scout or a Guide.

I wasn’t so keen on amassing badges for worthy stuff like polishing shoes, but my, did we all love the camping trips.

Sitting round a crackling fire eating burnt sausages and singing silly songs, then heading for our tents and giggling over nonsense till midnight seemed a huge adventure in those innocent days.

I was at a Guide camp in deepest Essex when England won the World Cup, and I heard the result on our leader’s transistor radio.

The national celebrations that followed ignited an interest in football that has only recently left me, thanks to the revolting spitting and general spoiled brattishness of many present-day stars. I bet not many of them were in the Scouts!

Anyway, let’s be positive.

Every year the 20 Scout groups in our district, with 1,200 members and 220 volunteer leaders and supporters, deliver a mind-boggling 63,000 cards.

So this Christmas their postal service could generate more than £3,000 towards the campsite.

You can buy Scout stamps from any Scout group. For other locations and details including where to post, and delivery areas, go to salisburyscouts.org.uk/page-christmas_post.

anneriddle36@gmail.com