This shall be for a bond between us... *

Looking back I can't quite believe in Woodcraft, though it's still going strong. My school friend Claire used to disappear off every Friday evening, she asked if I wanted to come to her... group. There had been a gap in my life ever since leaving the Brownies (nobody in their right minds continued into the Guides. I'd first joined the Brownies because Madeleine went there, her mum Yvonne said that "they all run round the place screaming like a load of loonies" and at the time this sounded immensely appealing. But Guides started when you were just getting into your teens and becoming aware of notions of cool).

"What do you do at Woodcraft?" Everybody assumed it was woodwork but the name came from being aware of the ways of nature, living harmoniously in the wood like a Red Indian (excuse me, native American) would, though in practice this translated into more urban skills such as lighting the campfire with a Zippo. Oh yes, there were campfires... there were also bivouacs, known as "bivvis" which to my horror meant going into the wilds of the English countryside, WITHOUT EVEN A TENT, just a kind of plastic bag to sleep in. Okay maybe in any Mediterranean country, but in this climate?

I got very good at weaselling out of this. Yomping heartily up mountains with rucksacks filled with calor gas stoves was one thing, but risking hypothermia held no appeal for a coward like me. Plus I was a lazy bastard & preferred lurking around the kitchen tent and schmoozing the grownups for extra food.

Bivouacking was a bit later on, when you reached your teens... I've forgotten all the names for the different age groups, the little ones were called Elfins (shades of Cold Comfort Farm) and activities involved mucho tie-dye, apparently. I believe our age group was the Wayfarers, or possibly the Pioneers, and the oldest group was the District Fellows - they didn't really come to the group (held in Claire's old primary school hall) but used to just convene directly at the pub.

But I've forgotten to mention the most important thing about it - it was mixed, that is to say, unlike scouts, brownies etc, both boys and girls went, which I still think is a Good Thing - it especially seemed a good deal in your teens. Basically, it was a chance to spread your social wings & practice essentials such as cigarette rolling, flirting and snogging in a safe environment. (Unlike school, where there still operated a kind of sexual apartheid).

And though we mercilessly took the piss out of the grownups who ran the group, I look back and think they must have been saints to offer up their Friday nights, after a full working week, to 15 moody, argumentative, hormonally supercharged teenagers.

The woman responsible for running our group, let's call her Bea, was a force of nature. She was a lecturer at a London tech and tried her damndest to indoctrinate us with Marxist theory, (many a fun evening spent watching documentaries on the struggles of the Sandanistas or the tragic fate of Rosa Luxembourg, and singing cheery songs like "Child of Hiroshima". )

We used to have "heated debates" - for example, Bea couldn't stand her son's best friend. They were into hip hop from the word go and Shane's speciality was the human beatbox.
"Nick nack paddy wack give a dog a bone, BOOM boom boom, BOOM boom boom , boom boom BOOM BOOM." (imagine human beatbox noises).
"I WON'T HAVE THAT! IT'S RACIST TO WELSH PEOPLE!"
A heated debate would follow over a) whether Paddy could be said to refer to Welsh or Irish people, and b) whether Bea herself was oppressing Shane in his creative efforts.

Ah, happy days. Eventually we left the group behind and graduated straight to the pub, the now defunct Moss Hall Tavern, where the trick was to pile on enough eye makeup to convince them you were eighteen.

But it definitely left its mark on us. There's something about people who went to Woodcraft (or "Powwow", as my Canadian friend Sarah dubs it, after hearing the pledge we used to say ended, Red Indian style, in "How").

My friend Emma tells of how she was in Leeds years later, and after a long drunken night out with a new friend from up north, the girl leaned over and apropos of nothing, said, "You went to Woodcraft, didn't you." Emma was amazed, not to say disconcerted. "How did you know?"
"I did, too. I could just tell."

* * *
* This shall be for a bond between us

that we are of one blood, you and I

that we have cried peace to all

and claimed kinship with every living thing

that we hate war, and sloth, and greed,

and love fellowship

and that we shall go singing to the fashioning of a new world.

How.