Scrapbook memories remind me when I was one of the Young Ones
MY continuing enforced lockdown has generated a start on spring jobs for 2021. I admit I missed the first sunny warm spell as I anticipated it would continue. Last weekend was sunny, but the wind soon got the better of me and I retreated indoors to the warm again.
I decided to try sorting out much of my collection of past press cuttings ready to clear out the excess. I was both surprised and delighted to find an old scrapbook that my mother had compiled many years ago. Some of the content I could remember, but some were fresh to me and I had a task to recall the time when the photographs and clippings had been glued into the scrapbook.
Mum was not a great one for adding some titling to any additions to the book.
Clearly she remembered the pieces so did not see a need for any dating.
If she was still with us she would be 111, so I am in need of some help in dating the content of the collected items and personal photographs.
One of the first cuttings was a press photograph of me in full cub uniform carrying the flag at what I
think was the St George’s Day Parade. Guesswork suggests this was taken when I was 10 years old, but I cannot remember it and therefore do not recall why I was trusted as the flagbearer. It was certainly before we left Peterborough for fresh beginnings
and my transfer to the Scout Troop in Watford.
Again it is a press photograph showing me with friends pitching our tent for what was probably a weekend camp. Possibly at Whitsun, but I cannot work out what year. Press cuttings do appear regularly, covering one of our jumble sales or a photograph showing three scouts painting the walls of our new headquarters! Again there is no ready clues to provide a date for these clippings.
Throughout my time in the scouts, I was a regular cast member in the annual Gang Show. The producer of this show was a close friend of Ralph Reader who both wrote and staged the London Gang Show each year at the Golders Green Hippodrome.
Our show was the reprise of the London show and was staged the following year. Ralph Reader graced our show with his attendance before to set the lighting and ensure the show was staged to best advantage.
My mother also attended, sitting in the front row on the final night, but also keeping just about every press cutting for her scrapbook. I am not sure of the dates, but I do recognise many of my colleagues in the casts from those years. So many would now be well into their 70s and a few may be older still.
I know some will no longer be with us; but it is now more than 30 years since I have left Watford and I am ashamed to admit I have lost touch with most of them.
One photograph is nothing to do with my scouting past, but is a front page from the election count in 1972 when I was first elected to the borough council. There were seven new councillors that night as our party took control of the council. Six of us were in our twenties and the local paper titled us “the young ones”. I stayed longer than most of them and eventually served for 11 years.
My employment eventually brought me to Derby some five years later and I have not been seriously tempted to enter local council politics again. But I do sometimes wonder if a similar group of youngsters might well invigorate any of our local councils if they were to stand for election. A few years in the role might well generate a youthful spark to proceedings and reflect the views of the younger electors.
I was both surprised and delighted to find an old scrapbook that my mother had compiled many years ago.