A Life in Scouting: The Memoirs
Chapter Two: Learning to Lead
Bristol, Oxford and the beginnings of a teaching career, 1982–1986
When I returned to Scouting in Bristol at the end of 1982, I had no particular intention of staying for long. I was working towards my Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and needed to complete its service requirement. Helping with a Cub pack seemed an obvious choice. I had enjoyed being a Scout myself, understood something of how the Movement worked and thought I might be reasonably useful. It was an entirely practical decision, with consequences rather beyond the original plan.
I received my first adult Scouter warrant on 11 December 1982, and in January 1983 became an Assistant Cub Scout Leader with the 160th Bristol Scout Group. I was eighteen years old, a university student, and probably rather more confident about what I could contribute than my experience justified. Being a Scout had given me some useful preparation, but there was a considerable difference between taking part in activities and being responsible for organising them.
The Cubs were not especially interested in my qualifications or previous Scouting experience. They wanted to know what we were doing that evening, whether it would be fun and, quite reasonably, why they should listen to me. I quickly discovered that enthusiasm was useful, but preparation was rather more important. An activity that looked perfectly straightforward on paper could become surprisingly complicated when presented to a roomful of energetic eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds.
I was fortunate to work alongside more experienced leaders who knew when to offer advice and when to let a young assistant find his feet. There were games to organise, activities to prepare, badges to help with and the countless practical tasks that keep a weekly meeting running. None of it was particularly glamorous, but I enjoyed it enormously, even when the result bore only a passing resemblance to what I had originally intended.
The 226th Bristol
By 1984, I had moved to the 226th Bristol Scout Group, based just off Old Market Street, where I became Cub Scout Leader, or Akela. The pack drew children from the St Paul’s and Easton areas of Bristol, and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them. I was still a university student, barely out of my teens, and suddenly responsible for planning and running a programme for a group of lively youngsters.
Becoming Akela meant thinking about the whole programme, the other adults, the parents and, above all, the experience of every child in the pack. There was a great deal to learn, and I suspect the Cubs were responsible for a fair proportion of my education.
One of the things I particularly enjoyed was taking the children beyond their immediate surroundings and introducing them to experiences they might not otherwise have had. Scouting could open up a world that was geographically close but, for some youngsters, surprisingly unfamiliar.
In the summer of 1984, we took the Cubs on a week-long camp at Minchinhampton, on the edge of the Cotswolds. We organised it in partnership with a rather more prosperous Cub Pack from Clifton, also led by university students. The children came from very different parts of Bristol and very different backgrounds, but they got on remarkably well. It was one of those occasions when Scouting quietly did what it does best: brought youngsters together who might otherwise never have met, and gave them the chance to share an adventure.
The only difficulty emerged after we got home, when we discovered that some of the boys had returned with head lice. There was a certain amount of concern, and perhaps a few assumptions about where they might have come from. It turned out that the original culprit was one of the boys from Clifton. A useful reminder, if one were needed, that nits are no respecters of class distinctions.
Minchinhampton wasn’t particularly far from Bristol, but for some of the children it was an entirely unfamiliar world. During a walk across Minchinhampton Common, one of the boys, Jake, suddenly stopped and stared. We eventually realised that he had never seen a real cow before.
Most of us had taken cows rather for granted. They were simply part of the countryside, something you encountered on walks or saw through the window of a car. Jake knew perfectly well what a cow was, but knowing about something and actually meeting it are rather different experiences.
The following morning, at breakfast, he refused to put milk on his cornflakes. Having finally met the animal responsible for producing it, he was distinctly uncertain about the whole arrangement. There was considerable amusement among the rest of us, and I have no idea how long his new-found suspicion of milk lasted.
I’ve remembered that incident for more than forty years, partly because it was funny and partly because it made me think. We had taken a group of children camping only a short distance from their homes, yet one of them had encountered something entirely new. It was a reminder that opportunities which seem perfectly ordinary to one child may be quite extraordinary to another.
I don’t imagine Jake went home thinking that his horizons had been broadened. He had been away with his friends, enjoyed himself and met a cow. But the experience stayed with me.
Around the Campfire
Evenings at camp meant gathering around the campfire to sing. I have always loved campfire singing, although I should make one thing clear: I have never been a great enthusiast for Kumbaya. There were plenty of other songs to choose from, and I enjoyed teaching the Cubs a mixture of the gloriously silly and the rather more thoughtful. Little Rabbit Foo Foo was a particular favourite, with its increasingly ridiculous story and plenty of opportunity for everyone to join in.
But there were other songs, too, which spoke of peace, justice and the sort of world we might hope to create. I remember teaching the words about everyone being able to sit beneath their own vine and fig tree, living in peace and unafraid. The image comes from the Bible, although it has travelled far beyond its original setting, and I liked the simplicity of its message. It was possible to sing something meaningful without turning a campfire into a sermon.
I don’t suppose the Cubs gave much thought to the distinction between the two sorts of songs. They enjoyed singing, and so did I. But I hoped that, alongside the nonsense about rabbits and field mice, a few of those other words might stay with them. They certainly stayed with me. There was something rather pleasing about sitting around a fire with a group of children from inner-city Bristol, singing about a world in which everyone might live without fear. And if we followed it with another verse of Little Rabbit Foo Foo, so much the better.
Those camps were among the most enjoyable parts of my early years as a leader. They demanded organisation, patience and a willingness to deal with whatever happened, but they also offered the chance to get to know the Cubs in a way that wasn’t always possible during a weekly meeting.
A Little Light Entertainment at the Bristol Hippodrome
My Scouting life in Bristol wasn’t confined to Cub packs, camps and training courses. I also joined the cast of the Avon County Scout Gang Show, performing at the Bristol Hippodrome throughout my three years at university. It was a wonderful opportunity to experience a quite different side of Scouting, and one that I enjoyed enormously.
Gang Shows have a long tradition in Scouting, combining songs, sketches, comedy and musical numbers, all performed by members of the Movement. There was something rather special about taking to the stage of the Hippodrome, with its professional theatrical setting and an audience expecting to be entertained. Rehearsals demanded commitment, performances required concentration, and there was the considerable satisfaction of being part of a cast working together to put on a proper show.
I was fortunate enough to have some memorable solos. One involved appearing in drag as Dolly in Hello, Dolly!, a rather different look from my usual Scout Leader uniform. There were also some wonderful, belting anthemic numbers that gave us the opportunity to sing our hearts out. I loved the music, the performance and the atmosphere of being part of the company, both on stage and behind the scenes.
The Gang Show also gave me friendships that extended well beyond the theatre. Some of my fellow cast members were around Venture Scout age, and at Easter 1984 a group of us undertook the expedition that would complete my Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. We walked along Hadrian’s Wall and then headed north into Kielder Forest and the Cheviots, exchanging stage lights and rehearsals for rucksacks, walking boots and the countryside of northern England.
It was the last requirement I needed to complete for the Award. I had been fortunate to have the encouragement of Doc Grimaldi, the Chair of Bristol Central District, who had taken an interest in my progress and urged me to see it through. His encouragement mattered, especially as my life had become increasingly busy with university, Scouting and the Gang Show.
There was something rather pleasing about completing the Award with friends I had made through the very Movement to which I had returned to fulfil its service requirement. By then, of course, Scouting had become far more than a means to an end.
Hadrian’s Wall, a Bog and a Few Home Truths
We were friends from the Gang Show, accustomed to sharing rehearsals, backstage nerves and the occasional theatrical indignity. A Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition was a rather different proposition. In Easter 1984 we swapped the Bristol Hippodrome for Hadrian’s Wall, carrying our kit, pitching tents and making our way east to west before turning north from Greenhead towards Kielder Forest and the Cheviots. There were no stage lights, no orchestra and, rather regrettably, no interval refreshments.
I know rather more about what happened than I might reasonably expect to remember after four decades, because I kept a logbook. In 2017, I retraced much of our route along the Wall and wrote about the experience on my blog, comparing the impressions of my younger self with those of a considerably older walker who had developed an appreciation of comfortable inns and a proper dinner. The 1984 version of me was sleeping in a tent and eating corned beef hash. I think it is fair to say that some aspects of my expedition technique have improved.
The landscape made an enormous impression. Approaching Housesteads, I recorded how much happier I felt as the Wall became more visible and the ground rose around us, even with the wind blowing hard into my face. We stopped for lunch among the Roman remains and managed a discussion about central heating and the Romans’ arrangements for lavatories. Some conversations, it seems, have always been better conducted away from the dining table.
Beyond Housesteads the route climbed and dipped sharply, passing Crag Lough and the spectacular crags of the central Wall. Paul disliked losing height after having worked so hard to gain it, which is understandable but not an especially useful objection when the path insists on going downhill. We eventually spotted George, our expedition supervisor, calling to us from below. We reached the day’s destination at Twice Brewed at half past three, precisely on schedule, and put up the tent. The logbook is satisfyingly brisk on that last point. After a long day’s walking, tents were evidently something to be erected rather than discussed.
Not everything went according to plan. One of our number, Shep, had to withdraw. My contemporary description of his difficulties was less sympathetic than I would write today, and reading it again made me wince. We had spent the previous evening talking late into the night about our worries, including some of my own, yet we had failed to notice quite how badly he was struggling. His departure left us feeling thoroughly miserable. It was an early reminder that being part of a team involves rather more than keeping to the route and arriving at the campsite on time. You have to notice how the other people are doing, too.
There were lighter moments. Mike succeeded in falling into a bog up to his groin, an achievement recorded in the logbook with the economy of language that such an event probably deserved. Later, as we headed north from Greenhead, the countryside seemed almost entirely devoid of civilisation. Curly and I talked about the Queen’s Scout Award and the Gold DofE, and what achieving them meant to us. Ahead of us, Mike and Paul were making their way across the open country. I remember describing the sight of two hikers in the middle of nowhere as a wonderful picture. There was something exhilarating about the space, the companionship and the simple business of walking.
But the most interesting part of that logbook, reading it now, is the conclusion. I wrote about the stronger bonds between us, the irritation we had occasionally caused one another and the impossibility of keeping up appearances when tired, wet and sharing a tent. I was pleased to discover that I was more resilient than I had thought, while recognising that tiredness made me distinctly short-tempered. More revealingly, I admitted that I found following difficult, and that even when I tried not to take charge I couldn’t quite stop myself. Apparently I also had a tendency to express political opinions at excessive length. Some readers may be surprised to learn that this was already a recognised problem in 1984.
When I walked the Wall again in 2017, I found myself enjoying the company of that younger version of me, preserved in the pages of a battered expedition log. He was earnest, occasionally pompous, sometimes rather hard on his companions and already trying to work out what leadership meant. He also loved walking, and was beginning to understand how much friendship could grow through a shared challenge. Completing the expedition mattered because it brought me closer to my Gold Award. What has stayed with me rather longer is what it taught me about other people, and about myself.
Learning the Craft
Alongside the weekly meetings, camps and Gang Shows, I was learning the more formal aspects of being a Scout leader. One of the people who made an enormous difference to me during those Bristol years was Paul Neal, who was responsible for leader training in Bristol Central District.
Paul took an interest in me as a young leader, encouraged me and, perhaps most importantly, seemed to have rather more confidence in my abilities than I had myself. He believed I should undertake my Wood Badge training and made sure I understood that being young and relatively inexperienced was no reason not to take my development as a leader seriously.
I completed my Cub Scout Leader Wood Badge on 18 December 1984. The training itself was valuable, combining practical skills with an understanding of Scouting’s educational purpose, but looking back, I think Paul’s encouragement mattered every bit as much as the qualification. He helped me see that leadership was something I could learn and develop, rather than a mysterious quality possessed by older and more experienced people.
Training also encouraged me to think beyond the next week’s meeting. Were we giving the children opportunities to try new things, develop confidence and learn to work together? Were we listening to them, or simply delivering a programme that suited the adults? These were not questions that I necessarily articulated in quite those terms in 1984, but they were beginning to influence the way I approached the role.
I particularly enjoyed the fact that Scouting brought together people whose lives might otherwise never have intersected. University students, parents, people in full-time employment and older volunteers worked alongside one another because they shared an interest in giving young people opportunities. There was no obvious professional advantage in spending an evening in a Scout hut, and very little prospect of public recognition. People did it because they thought it mattered, and because, on the whole, they enjoyed themselves.
Grown-ups Behaving Like Cubs
Leader training in the early 1980s was a rather different affair from today. My basic training took place at Woodhouse Park, near the Severn Bridge outside Bristol, which is still a Scout activity centre. For an entire weekend, a group of supposedly responsible adults were treated, for all practical purposes, as Cub Scouts. We were divided into Sixes, played games, put up tents and performed the Grand Howl. There is something faintly ridiculous about grown men and women enthusiastically pretending to be eight-year-olds, although I don’t recall that any of us needed much persuading.
There was, of course, a serious purpose behind it. We were learning to lead Cubs by experiencing Scouting as they experienced it. We discovered how games worked, how quickly a carefully prepared activity could descend into chaos, and how much depended on the enthusiasm, patience and imagination of the adults running it. It was learning by doing, and occasionally by getting things spectacularly wrong.
Our course director was the wonderful Sue Gillett, something of a legend in Avon Scouting and one of those people whose influence extended well beyond the training weekends she ran. Sue was an inspiration to me, not simply because she understood how to develop young leaders, but because she understood what Scouting was really for.
Many of the Cubs in my Bristol Pack came from families who couldn’t possibly afford new uniforms. The traditional green jumpers, school shorts and caps represented a considerable expense. Sue quietly used her contacts among rather more prosperous Scouting circles to find donated uniforms for my boys. It was a practical act of kindness, undertaken without fuss, that helped children feel every bit as much part of the Pack as anyone else.
Sue has sadly Gone Home, as we say in Scouting, but I remember her with enormous affection and gratitude. She was one of those people who made you want to be a better leader, largely because she demonstrated what that meant through her own actions.
Today, much of the learning required of Scout volunteers can be undertaken online. There are considerable advantages to that, particularly for people juggling work, family and volunteering. But I do wonder whether something is lost when adults no longer routinely spend a weekend playing at being Cubs, learning together, making mistakes and forming friendships. I certainly learned a great deal at Woodhouse Park, and not all of it was on the course programme.
Beyond the Scout Hut
My time in Bristol also coincided with the beginning of my interest in Scouting beyond the local group. Until then, my experience had largely been confined to the troops and packs to which I belonged. I was starting to become curious about how the wider Movement worked, how decisions were made and how young people’s views might be represented.
In 1984, I attended an international gathering in Cardiff concerned with alcohol and substance misuse among young people. It brought me into contact with people thinking about youth issues beyond the immediate concerns of their own organisations. That experience deserves a fuller account elsewhere, but it was an early glimpse of a much wider world.
Another person who took an interest in what I was doing was Tony Allen, a Field Commissioner employed by Scout Headquarters. Tony was working on the development of Scouting in inner-city communities, and something about our work with the 226th Bristol, drawing Cubs from Easton and St Paul’s, caught his attention.
I was still a university student, running a Cub pack just off Old Market Street, and hadn’t imagined that anybody at Headquarters would be particularly interested in our activities. Tony evidently thought otherwise. He ‘talent spotted’ me, as I have always rather enjoyed describing it, and I was invited to join the Scout Association’s delegation to the British Youth Council.
It was quite a leap from organising Cub meetings and taking children camping on Minchinhampton Common to representing Scouting alongside young people from other national organisations. I was delighted by the invitation, even if I had little idea at the time of the opportunities it might open up.
What mattered was that Tony had seen something worthwhile in the work we were doing in Easton. Scouting in an inner-city setting was not necessarily the image that sprang to mind when people thought about the Movement in the mid-1980s. Yet I was discovering just how much it could offer children who might otherwise have limited opportunities to explore the world beyond their immediate neighbourhoods.
The British Youth Council would introduce me to a much wider world of youth representation and national organisations. That deserves a story of its own, but the invitation itself belonged firmly to my Bristol years.
Looking back, I can see how fortunate I was to encounter people like Doc Grimaldi, Paul Neal and Tony Allen at that stage of my life. Each helped in a different way: Doc encouraged me to finish something I had started, Paul helped me develop as a leader, and Tony opened a door I hadn’t even known was there. None of them could have known where those opportunities might lead, and neither could I.
From Bristol to Oxford
In 1985, I moved to Oxford to undertake my Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), training to become a teacher. My decision had been influenced, at least in part, by the youth work I had enjoyed during my years in Bristol. Working with the Cubs had shown me how rewarding it could be to help young people develop their confidence, discover new interests and achieve things they might not have thought possible. Teaching seemed a natural way of building on those experiences.
I also wanted to continue my involvement in Scouting, and in October 1985 I joined the 5th St Michael’s Scout Group in Oxford, where I remained until May 1986. By then, Scouting had become a regular part of my life, something I was keen to maintain even as I adjusted to a new city and the demands of teacher training.
There was an interesting relationship between the two. My PGCE was introducing me to the theory and practice of education, while Scouting had already given me several years of experience working with young people in a rather different setting. I was beginning to appreciate that education didn’t happen only in classrooms, and that some of the most valuable learning could take place around a campfire, on an expedition or through the simple business of belonging to a group.
I don’t want to overstate the influence of Scouting on my decision to become a teacher. There were other considerations, and my career would eventually take me in directions quite different from those I imagined in 1985. But the years in Bristol had certainly played their part.
From Oxford to Lichfield
After completing my PGCE in Oxford, I moved to Lichfield to begin my teaching career at Chadsmead Junior School, working with third- and fourth-year juniors, now known as Years 5 and 6. It was an exciting prospect, although rather different from running a Cub pack. I was now responsible for children’s education throughout the school day, rather than organising activities for an hour or two each week.
The Cubs had given me considerable experience of working with children, organising activities and trying to make learning enjoyable. I was keen to discover how much of that experience would prove useful in a classroom, although I was conscious that teaching was a profession in its own right and that I still had an enormous amount to learn.
I also intended to continue volunteering with Scouting. By then, it had become such a regular part of my life that I could hardly imagine moving somewhere new without finding a local Scout group. In Lichfield, however, I would find myself working with a different age group altogether. Beaver Scouts, the youngest section of the Movement, had only recently been introduced, and I was about to become involved in helping it develop locally.
I had gone to Bristol intending to complete the service requirement for my Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Four years later, I was beginning a career in education, had led a Cub pack, performed at the Bristol Hippodrome, completed my Wood Badge and discovered that Scouting offered rather more opportunities than I had originally appreciated.
And somewhere in all of this, of course, was Jake, who had met his first cow on Minchinhampton Common and subsequently developed serious reservations about milk. I sometimes wonder what became of him. I hope he remembers the camp as fondly as I do.