Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle...

I've said before I didn't spend my entire social life at school, I had myriad activities outside school. Walking by myself. Whistling. Riding my bike around the streets on my own. Humming. Writing letters to girls I liked. Destroying letters to girls I liked. Writing terrible poetry that always, always, always rhymed, no matter how hard I tried to be artistic and deep. Drawing interesting and bloody ways to kill my enemies, all of whom were among my best friends, and my personal list of arch nemeses changed on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

And once a week I would go to Scouts. Which was entertaining in an old fashioned "Huzzah lads! Let's see who can run around the hall five times and get back in here with a pine cone before I blow this whistle" kind of way. We wore uniforms. We wore scarves. I know exactly what a woggle is, and indeed, how to make one from rope or leather thong. I can tie a variety of life saving and decorative knots; read maps with or without a compass; light a fire with four pieces of newspaper and a single match; track various types of native and domestic animals; cook in a gigantic cast iron pot as well as on a large bean-tin over a candle (though this is restricted only to pancakes) and various other impressive yet useless skills for a boy living in a major capital city.

One other thing which people may (or may not) know about Scouts is: they love to sing. Every meeting, there were songs to be sung, and every camp, there was a campfire "concert" which consisted of various heart stirring pseudo-Christian, pro-Imperial songs, a few mildly bawdy ditties, and a whole bunch of terrible skits based on the worst dad-jokes imaginable. If you ever wondered where the father of your children learned all those terrible jokes that erupt as soon as he has signed the birth certificate, chances are he knows what a left handed handshake means, and somewhere has a strange pointy four sided hat with his name emblazoned on the inner band.

This was all jolly good fun (what?), and honestly, it was. But even better than regular scout meetings was an annual event which combined the local scouts of the whole local area, and when I was a young teen, that was actually hundreds of kids. It pushed all these boys together, ranging in age from about thirteen to about seventeen. And it brought in another large group of kids, too. But these kids wore blue uniforms, and were shaped in such a way they made the scouts do very strange things, especially to each other, in order to gain their attention. The Girl Guides were also in our Gang Show.

A Gang Show is like a University revue. Only, possibly slightly less sophisticated. So while every ten years or so, a popular, intelligent, hilarious and biting revue comes out of a major University in this country, we are still waiting for a major television network to give a regular series to any Scout-based production. This is in part because the material in most of the shows had worn thin when Victoria was still on the throne, and probably gave rise to her infamous "We are not amused". That which wasn't older than any of my living relatives was penned by older memebrs of the scouting movement involved in the production, whose talent was generally inversely proportional to their enthusiasm. But this was fine. It was indeed encouraged, as after all, we were just here to have fun, and everyone had to put in as best they could in the areas they had some inclination.

While all the acting and singing and costumes and lights and music and dancing and the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were very exciting, it was still probably the girls that kept me coming back every year. In fact, it was in the rehearsals and show of my second year in the show that I got a steady girlfriend for the first time ever. It was also around this time that I learned how to make relationships very complicated very quickly. But I shall return to that story, anon.

Emily Harris was a girl of my age, around my height, with a broad smile and tight ringlets that would not sit flat ever. She was fresh faced and always laughed at my jokes, which was a bonus, as I felt that was pretty much all I had. The cast would be split up to rehearse different individual acts for the show, people having been cast according to their relative competencies in each area of performance: Acting, Dancing and Singing. There was always a large chorus who would always have massed singing and basic dance routines to practise.

I seemed to always get chosen for acting parts, and often for small group singing, where three or four singers would sing small parts together in the hope of masking each others deficiencies. I suppose it was a step up from the massed chorals of the rest of the group. I was placed in one such small group with Emily, and having been in rehearsal for a couple of weeks, and getting to know her a little better, I decided I liked her enough to "pop the big one" Okay, but remember I was only fourteen, it doesn't get much bigger than asking a girl to be your girlfriend. So, when we were finishing up away from the rest of the cast in a meeting room of the local church where rehearsals were held, I stopped her and eloquently expressed my feelings for her in a way I can only dream of reproducing today.

"Hey Em"

"Yeah?"

"Umm... wanna go with me?"

She giggled "Ah... okay"

Then skipped off. Literally. Guides were a bit like that.

That may well have been the high point of the relationship. Still, I went home happy that night.