There are some places where time behaves oddly.
Gilwell Park is one of them.
Today I went back for the 100th Gilwell Reunion — and realised, slightly alarmingly, that it is forty years since I attended my first one. I was 22 then. I should make clear that I haven’t been to every Reunion in the intervening four decades. That would suggest a level of commitment bordering on the medically concerning.
Mark came with me too, and enjoyed catching up with people he has got to know over recent years. One of the nice things about a day like Reunion is that the circles overlap: old friends of mine have become familiar faces to him as well, so the day now feels shared in a way it probably could not have done years ago.
Walking onto the Training Ground, an extraordinary amount felt familiar.
The exhibition tents were there, filled with ideas, projects, conversations and people enthusiastically explaining things to one another. The Lid was packed. Everywhere you looked there were people in neckers, badges and assorted Scout clothing, stopping every few yards because they had spotted someone they knew.
And that, I think, remains the great joy of Reunion.
It is a gathering of people who have Scouting in common.
Some are volunteering with young people every week. Some have spent decades in the Movement. Some have travelled from the other side of the world. Some are people you worked with thirty years ago and haven’t seen for far too long. But there is an immediate common language between us: places we’ve camped, people we’ve known, adventures we’ve shared and, above all, the belief that giving young people opportunities to discover what they are capable of is worth a considerable amount of our time.
My own Scouting life was scattered liberally around the Training Ground today.
It was wonderful to see Steve and Lynn Peck, Carl Hankinson, Aidan Jones, Nigel Hailey, David McKee, Tracey and Peter Rogers, Tim Kidd and so many others with whom I have worked, travelled, camped, argued, laughed and occasionally got into mischief over the years. We also ran into Liz and Pat Farr, with Pat looking remarkably chipper after his recent surgery.
Mark knew a good number of people too, which saved me from the increasingly dangerous business of having to introduce everybody while simultaneously remembering exactly which decade each friendship belonged to.
One of the odd things about getting older in Scouting is discovering that your personal history isn’t really a sequence of jobs or appointments. It is a collection of people.
It also means that you can no longer walk very far at Reunion without either recognising someone or trying desperately to remember where you recognise them from. I am now at an age when both happen with disturbing regularity.
There were some especially good encounters.
David Baden-Powell was visiting from Australia, and at the evening campfire he added to the fire ashes he had collected during a year of travels — continuing that old Scouting tradition of taking ashes from one campfire to another, linking gatherings and friendships across years and continents.
I also had dinner with Jill Clay, granddaughter of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell and daughter of Betty Clay. Sharing a table with Jill at the 100th Reunion felt nicely appropriate.
Although I suspect my 22-year-old self would have been rather surprised to discover that, forty years later, dinner at Reunion would involve me sitting with members of the Baden-Powell family rather than queuing for something beige on a plastic plate.
History cropped up elsewhere during the day too, in the shape of Jam Roll, Baden-Powell’s Rolls-Royce. It was presented to him at the 1929 World Jamboree at Arrowe Park, a gift funded by Scouts from around the world to mark Scouting’s 21st birthday.
Thanks to my old friend Tony Harvey, Antonio Bear was allowed to sit in it, accompanied by Mark.
I am not entirely sure how a small bear who has contributed relatively little to the development of world Scouting managed to get himself into Baden-Powell’s Rolls-Royce, but Antonio has always possessed a highly developed sense of entitlement.
I did have one piece of official business to do. As President of British Scouting Overseas, I attended the BSO AGM and had the opportunity to thank the tremendous volunteers who make Scouting happen for young people in BSO communities around the world.
It was particularly important to thank Graham Eden for his exceptional leadership of the Area as its lead volunteer. Roles like Graham’s carry a considerable weight of responsibility, much of it unseen, and BSO has benefited enormously from the time, judgement and commitment he has given to it.
And it was a real delight to see Chris Wall installed as the new Chair of the Area.
Chris is a particularly good example of the way Scouting keeps weaving people in and out of your life.
I first knew him as a member of the UK contingent I led to the World Scout Jamboree in the Netherlands. Later, as a young adult, he was involved in Scouting in London in the District where I was District Commissioner. Later still, he became a young diplomat in Nairobi and, when I visited Kenya, very kindly put me up.
I maintain that I kipped on his floor.
Chris maintains that he lent me an actual bed.
At this distance in time, the truth is probably irrecoverable, although I see no reason to allow that to get in the way of a perfectly good story.
And now, decades later, there I was as President of BSO watching Chris take on its senior volunteer leadership. I felt both very proud of him and very old.
We were also able to recognise John Gill with a long-service award, marking decades of service to Scouting across BSO. It was a good reminder that organisations such as BSO don’t exist because of structures, constitutions or organograms. They exist because people choose, year after year, to give their time to make things happen for young people.
Scout Counties and Districts, wherever they happen to be in the world, depend on exactly that sort of sustained voluntary leadership. It was a privilege to be able to thank some of those people today.
And then, as darkness fell, came one of the things that really hasn’t changed.
Campfire.
The Circle was packed with adults who, for about 90 minutes, were perfectly happy to be 12 years old again.
Songs were sung. Actions were performed. Dignity was abandoned.
In my case, dignity had probably gone rather earlier in the day.
Hundreds of grown adults enthusiastically joining in with songs and actions they may first have learned as children should probably look faintly ridiculous. Viewed from the outside, I am sure it does.
From inside the Circle, though, it simply works.
For all the changes Scouting has made — and needed to make — some things endure because they still bring people together, make them laugh and remind them that they belong.
Antonio, naturally, was at campfire too. Indeed, having already occupied Baden-Powell’s Rolls-Royce, he spent the rest of Reunion building his network. He had his photograph taken with a remarkable assortment of other Scouting mascots and, inevitably, managed one with the Chief Scout as well.
I have been involved in Scouting for most of my adult life, held a ridiculous number of appointments, travelled to more Scout events than I can sensibly count and accumulated several cupboards’ worth of neckers.
Antonio needed one day, a Rolls-Royce and a slightly smug expression to upstage me completely.
As I sat in the Circle this evening, with Mark beside me, I found myself thinking about that 22-year-old who came to his first Reunion forty years ago.
He couldn’t possibly have imagined where Scouting would take him: the countries he would visit, the extraordinary people who would become friends, the opportunities he would be given or the adventures that would follow.
He certainly could not have imagined that, four decades later, he would be back there with his husband, surrounded by people accumulated across a lifetime in Scouting.
And he would have been appalled to discover that he would one day become the sort of person who says, “I first came here forty years ago.”
But I suspect he would have recognised tonight immediately.
The fire. The songs. The laughter. Old friends finding one another in the crowd.
Gilwell changes. Scouting changes. We change.
Apparently some of us acquire titles, grey hair and a teddy bear with better connections than our own.
But forty years after my first Reunion, I am very glad that so much of what matters still feels familiar.
