Everyone who was once a Boy Scout or a Girl Guide just seems so much more capable, writes Angus Peter Campbell, who missed out on uniformed fun.
I may have had a deprived childhood.
Not because we didn’t have electricity or running water or a phone – their absence was undoubtedly a blessing – but because I wasn’t a member of any official uniformed organisation.
I speak, of course, of the Boy Scouts. Because I might have learned a practical thing or two, instead of constantly relying on my wife, who – thanks to her years in the Girl Guides – can raise fires from two sticks and a chuckie stone, and put up shelves using only a pen knife, and can do the bowline knot with two half-hitches, and sew and cook and draw and paint and drive a JCB and do electric arc welding while reading Proust. Or, maybe that’s just because she’s a woman and can, therefore, multitask.
She was not only a Girl Guide but a Queen’s Guide, which means that she has a beautiful badge she wears on her rucksack, and is also qualified to lead Nato troops over the waters whenever Russia decides to invade Lismore.
She learned most of these skills from her mother, however, who was part of that post-war generation and could make a meal for 20 out of a single tattie. As long as it was Kerr’s Pinks.
I, on the other hand, tended to lie on the floor in front of the peat fire, reading The Beano. Before graduating on to The Dandy and The Topper and The Hotspur, and, when all these were absorbed, a thorough read of my sisters’s Bunty, featuring Pansy Potter the Strong Man’s Daughter – who obviously became a role model for me when I met my wife. Both could lift a Massey Ferguson tractor off the ground with their bare hands.
Bob-a-Job (unofficially)
Even though I was never in the Boy Scouts, I cheated once and managed to wangle my way into their fundraising Bob-a-Job Week. That week consisted of Scouts doing odd jobs for folk in return for some cash to fund the organisation.
I was a teenager and needed funds so that I could get into the picture house in Oban on Friday or Saturday night, so my brother and I approached some houses and offered to cut their lawn grass or wash their windows or cars.
And, yes, my dear people, we made a bob or two. Which I suspect we then gladly spent on lemonade and sweets from Boni’s Shop, because my recollection is that I never managed to pay my way into the start of any picture at the cinema.
Instead, we knew that the well-dressed usher never bothered after an hour or so, at which point we’d sneak into the picture house. Which meant that we saw the ends of dozens of films, but still have no idea how any of them started.
How to find north without a compass
All this came to mind the other day, when I was walking through a local forest with my wife and daughter, and I spotted a caterpillar crossing the path. It reminded me that I had also seen three other caterpillars (surely it wasn’t the same one?) crossing the road in the same district a few weeks ago.
If I ever get lost in a forest, I can always find my way home via the North Pole
And here’s the thing: all four caterpillars (though it might just have been the same one) were going in the same direction. Is there a caterpillar mansion or village where they all live, playing caterpillar shinty and singing caterpillar Gaelic songs?
I wondered which direction they were all heading in and, since I unfortunately don’t carry a compass with me (bets I would have one if I’d been in the Scouts or had done the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme), I asked my daughter if her phone could tell us which direction the caterpillars were heading.
She checked the inbuilt compass on her phone and said: “North-east!” At which point my Queen’s Guide wife (will they now have to be called King’s Guides?) said that she’d learned to work out directions without any compass while in the Girl Guides.
“You just look at the trees,” she said, “and whichever side has the most moss is northerly. Because that side gets less of the sun.” And she’s right: I studied all the trees as we walked along, and, sure enough, the north side of each tree was mossy, or more mossy, than the other sides!
Which means that if I ever get lost in a forest, I can always find my way home via the North Pole. It might also mean that the sooner I join the Boy Scouts, the better. Although I think they are co-educational these days, which means my wife and I could join the same group.
I especially like one of the original Scout Laws, which will be my tour de force when I join: “A Scout always smiles and whistles.”
That’s me! Dib Dib Dib, chums.
Angus Peter Campbell is an award-winning writer and actor from Uist
Conversation