Be Prepared

When I was eight or nine, my parents mistakenly thought it would be a good idea for me to join the cub scouts.

This seemed like a great idea at the time - I largely pictured myself on a flying fox like at the end of the Krypton Factor assault course - but I didn't bank on the fact that the cub scouts are instead just about hierarchies of authority and honouring the queen and god. In fact, I quickly realised that there was utterly nothing to hold my interest each Wednesday evening at all. My dad would drive me down to Farnley Church Hall and all through the journey I'd plead with him to be able to stay at home, but my parents felt it was good for me and so they insisted. Once I'd been dropped off, I iterally looked at the clock every two minutes, counting down to my father's return.

I've always been happier in my own company, and cannot stand official organised fun. The cubs only reinforced that. Each session was attended by three types of people: poncy posh-a-lots with expensive woggles trying to show off, rough toughies with no respect for cubs, and me on my own making no friends. There was a boy called Lloyd there who was very proper and who I assumed - illogically, as I can now see - was an heir to the Lloyd's Bank fortune. He had the irritating habit of only moving his eyes while his eyelids were closed, and so to look over at the window he would have to close his eyes, look in the new direction, and then open again. I think my arch nemesis was there too - Colin Gibbon - a creature for whom I still feel an incredible amount of hate, and who one day I hope to destroy. Maybe I will save him for a separate memory of his own.

Key memories from this period are: having to play French cricket in the field outside the church hall (I hate team games); winning a badge for succesfully poaching an egg (even at 8 years old, this did not strike me as an achievement); dancing around a bonfire at a Halloween party where I wore a Frankenstein mask (a moment still immeditately evoked whenever I smell cheap plastic); the 5p's I was given by my mum under strict cub rules that I always carry a coin in case I needed to make an emergency phonecall, which I always pretended to have lost but which I was actually hoarding for sweets, in what must have struck my mum as a very obvious asset-tunnelling exercise; and wetting myself while pretending to pray because I was too embarrassed to ask to leave the room while Arkala had an open channel to God (this horrifying event in my past was still remembered by my peers five years later as a teenager, but thankfully with the passage of time they mistakenly thought it had been Christopher Burroughs who pissed himself in the prayer circle and so - peversely - I got to taunt him instead).

Matters came to a head with the Cub Scouts when we were sent on a weekend trip to the Yorkshire Dales. There were dozens of us there - all dressed up in our cub-boy fetish gear, woggles askew - trapped in the drabbest farm house you can imagine. Only one of my actual friends had come along too - Adrian Bird I think it was - and I don't really recall how we passed an entire weekend there. Clear memories are:

1. The boys who misbehaved were forced to strip naked and stand in the farmyard. Mr [X] then hosed them down with cold water while the other boys watched. If this homoerotic imagery is insufficient to alert the authorities, I also recall he insisted on supervising the boys in the shower. All boys had to strip naked and he would watch them lather up. Even as an eight year old I knew this was totally wrong (I mean, I bathed myself unsupervised at home) and I absolutely refused to take off my clothes at any point during the weekend. I had no idea what a paedophile was at the time, but I still somehow seemed to understand Mr [X] probably was one.

2. After dinner - which was something drab and grey - we all retired to the horrible great hall, a dirty room overseen by ancient stuffed animals (particularly horrifying to my childhood mind was a stuffed bear's head which oversaw the stairs, its decaying tongue hanging out of its roaring mouth). As a 'treat' we were given cocoa and penguin biscuits, but I'd never had cocoa before and my efforts to drink it were hampered by the fact it tasted like dishwater. I refused, and was told by a moon-faced female supervisor that I couldn't have a penguin biscuit if I didn't drink my cocoa. "Then I don't want a bloody penguin biscuit!" I bellowed, storming from the room, in what was on reflection my first hissy fit.

3. Other entertainments were: walking in the countryside, which I would probably have been doing with my parents anyway; listening to the worst ghost stories ever, including one about the Ghost of the Flying Dutchman, which might have had more impact if it were made clearer whether it was a boat or an aeroplane; sleeping in a real dormitory, which was horrible but was cheered up by one boy who wanted to show off his boner; being the target of attempted bullying, which never worked with me because I was prone to random outbursts of violence when cornered; and playing dusty and old fashioned board games, which I have maintained from a young age are better described as boring games.

And so, while I had previously been banned from quitting the cubs, upon my return my parents heard from the organiser various tales of my cocoa outburst and my general disobedience, while I provided tales of the hosing downs and Mr [X]'s showertime activities, and thus my parents pemamently withdrew me from the group shortly after my return. I never looked back.

[Estimate of date: 1985]