Scouting
I had wandered idly through my early twenties, in a drug and alcohol haze. As twenty-five approached, the sense of time wasted, of a career not underway, of money pished against nightclub urinals, of friends have far more money than me, began to weigh on me oppressively, toad-like. Of course, I'd had a blast since leaving university, with a degree in English and Politics, in 2000. The first year especially had been a wild, lengthy drugs binge. I'd been a good boy all the way through school and university, studied fairly hard, read very widely, not gone out too often, nor got into large amounts of debt or got naïve freshers pregnant. I had, though, smoked pot especially during the last two years, and was just discovering pills (ecstasy) at the end, through friends in Aberdeen. So when I'd finished my degree, clutching my 2:1 with youthful optimism, to Aberdeen I moved, seeking the thrills and sensations that I felt I'd missed out on during my studious days. I was sure that I would get a Good Job soon enough, as that was what always happened, which would allow me to experience the thrill, spills and bellyaches of an active clubbing lifestyle. As, academically, I'd always considered myself a rebel, devouring Marx, Ginsberg, Alex Trocchi, Zen Buddhism, William Burroughs, and Nietzsche, it was great to finally be living the rebellious life. I loved music that was leftfield, outside the mainstream: acts like the Velvet Underground, Death In Vegas, Roni Size, Daft Punk; genres like techno, drum and bass, and alternative rock. I was a hard-left, ultra-republican, nightclubbing, postmodernist model of defiance of authority. I loathed the police and landlords with all the contempt of the aristocratic rebel.
I didn't get a Good Job, however, only scraping a bar job. This did allow me to go to allnight parties when finished, so that was good, as my friends were either in barwork too or working offshore, and so available to take whatever concoctions we could conjure up. For example: one day I got a hold of some acid, which four of us took. We ambled dreamily to a local park, but split when we saw there were stalls for young kids there. En route, two of us took half a pill each, so that when we got to the local JD Wetherspoon's bar, we were manically buzzing. We got some jugs of vodka and Red Bull, to add caffeine to our over-stimulation, so all four of us were now utterly wired, like hairless chimps on several wraps of quality speed. But this became too much, as the bar was completely filled, a football match being on that day, with burly men giving us malevolent glances. So we retired to one of our flats, where we smoked pot and entered a remarkable mental state where we were all on bizarre tangents from each other, operating in some individual headspace we could neither articulate nor control. This also became too much, the layers of reality feeling peeled back and some dreadful Ur-existence seemed ready to strike me. So we decided to go and get drunk, which we did until midnight, then went to smoke pot until about 2am. A twelve-hour binge like this was not particularly unusual, nor did it seem to take its toll as alcohol would. Pot was plentiful, acid easily obtained, pills came with the nightlife lifestyle I had adopted, and mushrooms were free. It was a gloriously free time, for a while. We were rebelling, but having so much fun with it; the hedonism was tinged with an anti-authoritarian slant, which I found utterly fulfilling.
But not for too long. Things became skewed and fucked up. We had binged on stimulants in particular for far too long. Returning from a major drugs frenzy at T In The Park, one of my friends was completely spaced out for an entire week, enduring several out-of-body experiences. Another had nearly died after taking some unusual pills acquired from some random chancer in a dodgy nightclub, suffering severe paranoia for months afterwards. I had had my head blown apart and painfully stitched back together after accidentally smoking what I must assume to have been a joint of liquid acid, with acid scars leaving a grim trail behind for ever after. After that, things had fallen apart; we retreated fearfully back from the great socialising days into smaller, self-protective groups. If we had carried on like we had, it would have been Syd Barret-time.
But nothing came along to fill the space, apart from drinking, which we then began to overdo. And watching others get on with their lives and careers, whilst I felt utterly held back, banging my head against the brick wall of closed opportunities, was soul-crushing. I had to do something. Having only a degree in English to really fall back on, I decided to apply for teaching, the great fall-back career. But to ensure that I could handle kids, and just get on with them, I decided to become a Scout leader in the nine months before the course actually started. I had been a Scout as a teenager, all the way until leaving home for university, and enjoyed it a lot. Scouting is the most successful youth association in the world, but the chronically unfashionable status it has in Britain suggests the views we hold of our children. There are over a million Scouts, Cubs, Beaver and Explorers in Britain, thousands upon thousands of adults lending their time and work-pressurised efforts, helping young people develop their skills and attributes and gain self-reliance. Yet people tend to look at it highly dismissively, perhaps because it's not rock and roll enough. But it had certainly taken me out of my book-ridden bedroom and into the vibrant outdoors, developing self-reliance and socialising skills in a way I needed; also introducing me to drinking, nobly aided by the leaders by the time we had got into Venture Scouts (now called Explorers, for kids from 15-21). The reading I'd been doing never let me deal out the old right hook to dirty dogs with twice my size, so this was fantastic for a bookworm like me. Thinking that I might be able to recapture some of those feelings, I phoned up the Area HQ and was given a contact number and an address. I was told to come along next Tuesday.
Off I went, clueless as to what to expect. My old Scout hut had been dingy and frowsty, embedded with the sweat of generations of boys from playing games like British Bulldogs, Midnight Murder and limitless variations of Dodge Ball, and had a shabby stock of patrol tents, canes, gas stoves, ropes, maps and so on; yet the worn and eroded equipment was a sign that they had been well-used, by generation after generation of Scouts. As I entered the new "hut", what I found was a modern hall, well built, recently painted and decorated with photos and posters showing modern Scouting in all its glory. The scrum of boys kicking a ball about the hall was a familiar sight, while the half-dozen or so girls sitting chatting on a bench weren't. I was ushered into the leaders room (another radical development) and introduced to the others. They were a contrast from my usual friends; whilst about the same age (only the leader was out of his twenties), they didn't seem the type to go on a pill frenzy to some dirty jungle beats. On the contrary. They all seemed happy and well-adjusted, and welcomed me in, asking jokingly about why on earth I'd volunteered, where I'd been a Scout and so on. Jokes about previous incidents and people I didn't know still excluded me, but of course they had the shared experiences of camps unknown to unite them. I was coming in cold, but they tried to overcome my nervousness and make me feel part of things.
Almost the next week was the Scout Gang Show. I had never heard of these, as they are city events, but assumed it was something like a Boys Brigade Inspection, which I had previously experienced, with sketches, skits and the like. In fact it turned out to be a series of musical medleys on themes such as "School", "Cats and Dogs" and "Halloween", with songs from pop music, musicals, TV programs, and (I guessed) some Gilbert and Sullivan, and with costume and background changes hidden behind comical skits of the most deliberately-bad variety. There were a few sketches by middle-aged leaders taking great delight in dressing as women; they were that kind of camp heterosexual male that you guess has had homosexual experiences in their past. The jolly-hockysticks flavour was acute, particularly at the encore, which was a type of "We Are The World" song called "We're On The Crest Of A Wave", performed in full uniform, woggle and all, in front of an array of the world flags, with a solo section by an angelic girl before rising to a rousing crescendo.
In previous years this would have provoked a number of reactions: fits of giggles (if I was stoned), nausea, or anger at the smug bourgeois attitudes displayed. However, after the years of placing myself in the alternative, this sort of thing was appealingly new. I felt that I was going from a lifestyle that was jaded, dark, cynical and closed-minded, to one that was fresh, light, optimistic and open-minded. It was a new thing, a new avenue.
So I continued on with it. I got to know and distinguish the leaders: Iain, aged about forty, giving up as leader to become Group Scout Leader; Bob, my age, had been in Scouts the whole way through and was to become the new leader; Louise, the attractive young leader who the boys adored and who mothered them if homesick at camp; Duf, a 6'6" Jesus look-alike and professional poker player; Fraser, a True Blue Tory and Christian, who actually thought The Eagles were better than The Beatles; and Alison, a fellow Tory. All of them were essentially suburban young professionals, with cars, little taste in music (Queen was the general consensus), good credit ratings and relationships with parents, and so on. Coming into this from the outside, from a lifestyle of dishevelled flats, rapid flits to avoid Council Tax, no driving licence and small-scale drug dealing, I found this oddly interesting. Here were this pocket of people, some of whom had known each other since schooldays, so different from "my" kind of people, into which I was now joining: how would I fit in?
Generally the weekly meetings were unremarkable The kids seemed much less rough-and-tumble than I remembered being, and with girls making up about a quarter of a Troop, there wasn't the same rough-housing: games like British Bulldogs, the playfighting like lion cubs testing out their strength in controlled conditions that is a part of a boy's growing up. Or should be part of growing up, as too many children are mollycoddled and wrapped in cotton wool. So there were kids there who would not compete in games and just get themselves out as soon as possible. Contact games were out: "Health And Safety" again, presumably. But then the Troop served a specifically suburban area, whereas mine had had a large number of working-class boys, who didn't partake in niceties. "Chalk rugby" was a favourite but vicious game to play. I remember winning a point by grabbing the chalk, running shoulder-down into an older boy, ramming him against the wall, being grabbed from behind, giving a bruising "tit-nip" to my opponent and scrambling, still being held onto, to the end of the hut to mark the point, emerging sore but victorious. It made a change from reading Tolkien.
I especially looked forwards to the camps. They had been such fun when I was a Scout. My own Leader had not been lax, but we had a considerable amount of illicit fun, which I imagine he must have known about and condoned. We had raided each other's tents, giving those inside a friendly thumping; stolen other patrols' food when on Area camps; and eventually been allowed to drink, when in Ventures. Then we had been allowed to stay up all hours, drinking dreadful cheap cider and stubby bottles of beer, with the leaders who were drinking whisky and getting merry. Songs would spill forth, hilarious banter and micky-taking went on, and the mornings would feature hearty fried breakfasts to salve the tired and hungover. Great times, especially after spending all day busily outdoors, building enormous pioneering-pole contraptions, or going round bases doing archery, mountain biking, orienteering and so on.
It was rather different going as a leader. Firstly, there wasn't the same camaraderie we had enjoyed as kids, for there wasn't the same level of shared experience that enables groups to bond closely. However, everyone was fairly friendly and welcoming, and so although there were inevitably leaders who I found more congenial, there was never any cliquishness. However, I found a number of changes, reflecting a difference of emphasis. The Scouts Own, where all gather round at the end of the camp and a leader mouths some high-minded generalities about teamwork, cooperation, self-improvement, had taken on a religious character, going so far as to praise the Pope, or conducting formal prayers. (Similarly, when filling in my details, I had to specify a particular religion ' atheism is not an allowed option. Fortunately, I had read and respected some things about Buddhism, so that was my choice). This I find rather suspect. I respect spirituality, but don't think that in today's multicultural society that we should enforce particular religious observations. Give others the freedom to do so, but it should not be a part of the diet of a youth organisation. However, a spiritual component is part of the Scouting framework, and the leaders being who they are ' white, middle-class, and of Christian upbringing ' this tends to ensure a Christian practise. Which is unfortunate, because one of Scouting's great strengths is in its emphasis on internationalism and diversity.
The attitude to alcohol had also changed. Where it had been seen as an opportunity to socialise young people into drinking sensibly with their elders, now with the legalistic approach required by the sacred Health And Safety Act, we could not been seen or known to be drinking whilst in charge of the kids, so it was all hush-hush. And the older Scouts, now that the age range had changed to 11-14, weren't old enough to drink with us. This was a shame, because laughing at the younger ones making a fool of themselves was one of the great rituals and pleasures. One particular memory I have is a Venture Scout Area Camp, where during the Saturday night one Venture from a neighbouring Unit got horrendously drunk on two cans of cider, and was bundled into the patrol tent where they would all be sleeping. He was so drunk that he pissed not only himself but also all over everyone's kit. How we laughed!
Nevertheless, Scouting was and remains great fun. To be sure, there are aspects of it that are less admirable. It can be contemptibly materialistic and middle-class (there's a competitiveness about expensive camping gear), complacently smug (no mention of the poor and needy, unless they are in Africa), and explicitly concerned with rank and status. Where the Scouts have their award badges, younger leaders have badges denoting camps and jamborees attended, and the senior leaders with vast experience wear only the basic badges, as if to say that they had been to so many events that they were all much the same to them. It is a highly bourgeois organisation, as the Marxists would have it. The ideology of the organisation is that of the managerial class, and it explicitly aims to train young people to take command (Army Cadets, the working class equivalent, teaches young people to take orders), just as it preaches diversity, equality and achievement with all the fervour of similar upper-middle class organisations like the BBC, the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and the Labour Party. The adherence to God, the Queen, and the flag is explained much more easily if seen in these terms.
And yet... and yet is it is great fun, which cannot be denied. There is something immortal about the pick-pack-pock of tents pegs being malletted against a warm dusk sky; about the campfire singsong, where Ging-Gang-Goolie is passed down, hand actions and all, from generation to generation; about enlightening the newer Scouts with the innumerable techniques and skills of camping, from airing a patrol tent to lighting a fire without matches or lighter to constructing a camp entrance; about the wide games, Hounds and Hares and British Bulldogs especially, played in near-dark lit by torches and punctuated by boyish cries and laughter; about the smiling, knowing greeting of the parents picking up their youngsters after camp; about the jokes and catchphrases which brighten up any good camp and are summoned up, years afterwards, in laughing memory; about battered old frying pans cooking charred bacon over eye-watering smoky fires; about the outdoors most of all - the imposing trees silhouetted against the pale night sky, the beckoning warmth of the fire, the sibilant rasp of the water boiler ready for consoling mugs of hot chocolate, the patrol tents proudly erect, the shared formalities of breaking the flag when opening and closing the camp.
These images continue on, these events go on and on, year after year, rendering their ghostly silt on hallowed camping ground. No dryads walk there in the woods, just memories which live forever. Sometimes you can almost feel it, a never-ending procession just a glimmer away from tangibility. May it never fade away.
