SCOUT IN THE UNIVERSE
At one time I belonged to the 33rd Willesden Scout troop in London We were I think a wee bit disreputable at Regional HQ, using the Scout hall almost exclusively for indoor football, five-a side if we had the numbers. Come summer-time with the possibility of scout camp we became more scout-like and acquired two leaders, Dave Spooner and Brian Hooper. They were not remotely paedophiles but young men with, in my eyes, very pretty wives who were also tolerant of having this shower of adolescents enter their lives.
In advance of camp preparations were made at the flat of Dave and his wife. They were as was common in London then privately rented rooms close to what became the Grunwicks factory/depot which some years later was the site of a crucial fight by Asian women workers for their rights and which was betrayed with consequences for many years to come. Workers who had acted in direct and effective solidarity were also betrayed and it made people in strategic positions in the organization of work as organized by capitalists think twice.
I don’t know, ignorant as I was how .much time Dave gave up of his own holiday allowance but our time came and we piled into a lorry with a half -flap at the back that could be lowered and raised to make loading easier. It would have been a man-and van business, removals, auctions and the like, scout camps included but at that time more of a proper lorry rather than Luton, Sprinter or Transit. Instead like they had in the army. National Service for the “Armed Services” had finished by this time; either it was too expensive when wars were going to be fought with Supersonics, Nuclear Subramines and the like with a few highly skilled and trained operatives; or they were nervous of the riff-raff citizenry skilled with guns and tactics. Either way there would have been plenty of such vehicles on the second-hand market once the conscript army was no more.
We did not have guns but Dave taught us the basics of Ordnance Survey map-reading including how to fold and unfold the thing in strong winds but in the lorry this was not needed. Dave, sat in the front and the driver knew where we were going.. WE had our own haversacks but most of the lorry was taken up with the sacking and packing of the driver’s everyday work and the rolled-up heavy canvas of the large Bell tents we were to sleep in. With the half back of the lorry firmly secured in the up-position by dagger-like heavy metal in heavyweight iron rings off we went. WE took it in turns to stand at the back watching the road and its edges of advertising hoardings and then trees and bushes come and go, looking from outside like boy soldiers ourselves like we’d seen in books and newspapers, photos in sepia or black&white, laughing faces wearing berets.
As it became only trees and bushes disappearing behind, I and not just me, so it became We, got bored with it after an hour or so and lay down among the canvas of the tents and the sisal of the sacks. Our school geography books had made such materials here in this van part of the natural order of things and lying down the smell of both was both reassurance that the natural order of things did function and had “outcomes”. The smell was pleasurable too promising adventure in an exciting sort of way., the very mustiness of the canvas- the damp dried-out many times over-erotic without tits, bums and penises.
It was not the first time I had been out of London. My mother was very smart in doing holiday swaps with people from places as far as the Ashdown Forest, Cornwall and Suffolk who wanted a base in London for a week or two in exchange, but it was the first time not by train, camping and with young men of my own age who I only knew through once-a- week football.
We stood up again when the regularity of the engine changed. The light too, the bright sunlight was giving way. The lorry stopped off a track in a field with no landmarks. At some point when we made a day-trip I knew that we were in Dorset as had been the plan, the name Dorset on a national map. Dave had done a deal with a farmer for us to camp in one of his fields. In the twilight we, surprised ourselves with the efficiency with which a latrine was dug and the Bell tent erected. These tents which are circular sleep fifteen or so, ex-army like the lorry I’d guess now and the canvas was heavy but when someone knows what they are doing, the correct sequencing of tasks, it made for teamwork without speeches. Ron, who was a bit older and stronger held up the centre pole while we scurried around with guy ropes and tent pegs in sequence as directed by Dave without drama.
IT was the first time I’d slept under the same roof with so many people; first time outdoors; the first time I smoked a cigarette -a Woodbine which were filterless- and drank beer. The cigarette was disgusting, the taste and the nausea but , not so much macho as a sense it was something to persevere with for the reward and pleasure that had to exist; nothing so dramatic with the beer, I didn’t especially like the taste but what was the fuss all about.
I couldn’t sleep in my sleeping bag. It wasn’t the sound of the farts and snores though maybe there was some envy or a feeling of inadequacy on my part that I couldn’t just accept the situation and just be asleep like everyone else.. I got up, stepped around the sleepers, undid the laces of the tent and went out into the dark and did not trip over any guy ropes THE moon was not full but bright enough to see we were at the high end of a field. It was obvious, Dave was no mug, this was England even in this glorious summer it could rain at any time. I felt that already I was learning something.
There was no hedge or wall at the bottom end of the field but a sudden drop. I lay down on the ground above the drop, The grass of the field a smell that made me feel I belonged to where I lay and consciously fill my lungs with deep breaths. When the bell tent was up we had laid groundsheets with small aluminium pegs through brass-ringed eyes. Rain was unlikely but it would keep the dew off I wasd told and who wanted to wake up in a damp sleeping bag. I knew the word dew, it had always sounded rather good, bringing freshness to each summer morning. Here at the low end of the field I was on the ground itself, nothing between save my shirt and shorts. The sky was full of stars,; left to right, top and bottom.
Big Ron was lying down close by. He said something to the effect that our planet Earth was just a smudge close to a star called the Sun which was no more than one of many stars. A small one as it happened. I felt a thrill at the words in my ears, lost in the vastness of it while the earth of or planet Earth felt so solid and somehow flavoursome while the universe, that sky full of stars was just there while Ron and I were just here and that was here.
In later years a man at a party was telling me there was no such thing as the Big Bang. This accorded to the thought I’d had then that it Just-Is which was not frightening then though Ron had hinted at our planetary loneliness. In those later years fear of the destruction of our unique atmosphere and its consequences was real enough but not that the universe just is. Around the same time as the party I also read Clarice Lispecter’s The Hour of the Star:
“Everything in the world began with a yes One molecule said to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began.”
There was one more camp, Cornwall this time. I had already learned so much that time in Dorset which I’m relearning in end of life but which meant that then I was a veteran, a dab hand at open fires and cooking on them. In Cornwall I learned only that mackerel are the most stupid of fish eager to be caught with just a simple hook and spinner and that they are especially delicious cooked fresh caught on a fire made by oneself on the beach.
I left the Scouts soon after. It was not dramatic. I did not stand up and denounce the founder of the Boy Scouts, Baden Powell as a racist proto-fascist though he certainly was those things. but other things and companions had come into my life. .