Here is a photo of my husband with the Tesco Delivery Man, in theory, as I am home shielding, I shouldn’t have been sleeping in the same bed as him, or enjoying baths together, or indeed eating together, for however many weeks it has been.
Lord Baden Powell’s statue has come down. My dad would be turning in his grave if his ashes hadn’t been thrown off Southend Pier. My mother’s ashes were thrown off Cromer pier where we used to go on holidays. My sister and I hoped that if they wanted to be together, they’d merge somewhere along the English Channel and the North Sea.
My parents lived for Scouting. As adults they became members of a Methodist church Scout guild and they remained members throughout their lives. Both my parents helped produce Scout Gang Shows and my father was the store’s manager every four years when 2,500 Scouts, from all over the world, descended on Belchamps, in Hockley, for the Essex Scout Jamboree. The 1980 Jamboree is documented in my blog ‘From Essex to London in 101 boyfriends’ (it is now a book called ‘Jigsaw’ which will be published soon, I hope, well, in the next two years).
As for Baden Powell and Hitler, one night I was performing at a cabaret night, wearing my Brownie Uniform (it still fits) at an Edinburgh Fringe venue (my shows were daytime and in the evenings I guested at various comedy and cabaret nights).
“You look like Hitler Youth” someone said as I got up on stage. On researching the link between Baden Powel and Hitler, it turns out that Scout groups did join up with Hitler Youth for camping trips etc. There was a play written by Glenn Chandler and put on at Edinburgh Fringe last year, “Baden-Powell instigated it. He was fooled by Hitler, who he thought was fighting communists”. Glenn Chandler says about his play “The Good Scout”.
We are all fighting the ‘Virus’, well we think we’re fighting the virus. The virus is part of nature, we are fighting much, much, more under the surface.
Perhaps the statue could be left up, with another two built either side, one of a the “Good Boy Scout” and one of a “Hitler Youth” boy, two vulnerable children with two very different ‘fathers’.
This blog is not as long or polished as the others because I am working on my artist presentation. Keep the time in your diary free, 24th June 3pm, Facebook live! With a Q and A. Can’t wait, I have a surprise guest appearance.
Here is a poem about one of the many boyfriends I had at the 1980 Essex International Jamboree. Just me and a friend were helping my father dole out the food to the 2,500 scouts. We were the only girls camping there.
Austrian Boy Scouts
Korben Rupert
Lovely
Liz Bentley 