BRIGADE OF HAIRY ARSES

Though never much of a joiner I'd have been a hippie if I'd had the money. Was never in the Scouts even, and when the Boys' Brigade offered it seemed as if at eighteen years of age it might be my last chance. Col and Barry brought their persuasive powers to bear, saying I'd make a good Irregular, and Mr Gifford the 'Skipper' gave the OK. I was allowed to go with the Company for a week's holiday in Devon, at Woolacombe Camp.

So there I was in the Boogies with a borrowed cap and belt -- which was as far as my uniform went.   Sunday would see an Apache warrior marching behind the bugle with the rest in full kit towards Church Parade at the local West Country place of worship.

Good grub was served up in the hut on the campsite, all paid for, and we had a Beano Night coming on the Thursday. Chips and steakettes, Mars bars, custard tarts, Viennese whirls and Coke galore.    (That week we also gathered round the hut radio to hear the account of Neil Armstrong treading the moon. We caught up with the TV coverage later.)

In the bell tent amongst my stuff (where I'd proudly stowed a razor) was Catullus' poems, Marc Bolan's The Warlock of Love and the Penguin of the Mersey Scene poets.

Though church lads we were for all that yeasty, hairy-arsed young men. There was talk of blanket drilling going on. One guy, to save his fleabag, was said to have jerked off into a paper contraption.

Spiritually, it wasn't so much the ministries of the Reverend Gough, the dog collar we had in tow, as those of old Gifford that were the real hit.  He could bring it alive the way the cliché-spouting scrote who'd been through Ordination School couldn't.   Gifford's approach was more on our own level.   'Imagine, boys,' he'd say, 'what an immune system this Christ must have had.   There was about the bloke such an air of invincibility, like, that someone just had to see him to recover from a minor illness.  And if he laid on hands and closed the circuit, like, it's been well documented that he raised the dead.'

The Reverend Gough tended not to approve of me at first, thought I was slovenly, though when he saw me digging the latrines he mellowed.   The worst thing about Gough was the hackneyed prayers of his own invention in which he gave thanks for our 'limbs bronzed with the sun.'   ('Is he queer or something?' sniggered Col.   Even Barry grinned.  Barry was an agnostic known to shed an odd tear during silent moments offered up in prayer.)

The very first night of the camp Col Stacey was out late no one knew where. We lads guessed he must be in Ilfracombe looking for a fleshpot and we didn't judge him for it.   Old Gifford caught him prowling around the tents after lights out trying to find his own berth.   Our only chance during that long seven days was going to be to forage for what we could get -- while thinking back on Suffolk sweethearts even more unattainable from this land of sea and sun than they were before.

When it came to females Gifford was all right, he was catered for, because he 'had his' -- his wife, a good dishwasher amongst other things, was of course sleeping in the biggest bell tent with him every night. Col Stacey though, that long-haired stud who was a ringer for Scott Walker, obviously had to find something in town to keep him occupied.  I soon started to go out looking with him. 

Along with Barry I went with Col to meet this Tanya he'd chatted up in town. She had a friend called Eileen and I ended up escorting her.   They had a room in a hotel. They were student types from St Helens near Liverpool.   All this stuff about a big cultural stint up North seemed to be true.   They some of the poems in the Mersey Scene collection.   Yes, it was all true about the Beatles and the Mersey Beats -- a talent explosion, and possibly a revolution in consciousness. Tanya and Eileen were singing the praises of a jazz-influenced local band called the Pedlars --apparently they had a single out called 'Birth'.   We never heard it. But these girls had some culture and they were Catholics to boot.   Boy, this went back way before Elizabethan England.   Actually Col and I ended up visiting the girls a few months later, dossing on a park bench (in Kerouac mode, even getting awakened by the friendly toe of a copper's boot) and also on the living room carpet in the front room of the parents of one of them.

It wasn't the only time I'd found a girlfriend with Col's help. I often inherited a cast-off, and sometimes he'd inform me about such-and-such a likely prospect. Jean Runnacles was one. He'd told her about this bloke Keith Dersley:   'You ought to get to know him, he's a Surrealist.' He really expected her to find that an added attraction. As for Tanya and Eileen, we had quite a postal correspondence with them for a while but it withered.

Some years later Col had finally ended up marrying one of the girls we'd left back home to go camping with the Boogies.  His mum got the job as live-in caretaker of the Wallingworth Baptist Chapel, and when things went wrong with Karen Col first of all moved to an NHS hostel, then to his mum's.  He'd stay with her in the nice detached Caretaker's House and help with the tasks. Some mornings he'd be the one to get up and turn the heating on for the chapel, etc.

I rejoiced too, it being a long tradition with me and Col that I'd go and spend the odd weekend with him. We'd discuss tactics and women, listen to Dylan, watch a Bronson. And now at his mother's there was a great big colour TV.  (Before, when Col, a fully qualified psychiatric State Enrolled Nurse, lived at the Nurses' Home at Tattingstone, I'd got to know the place quite well, as also the bedroom of one of the nurses staying there, but that's another tale.)

The people of Wallingworth were typical Baptists, solid chunks of the earth. One afternoon Col and I came back from a walk through the signposted nature reserve which was on his doorstep and we were soaked to the skin. A little later I was cooking some curry rice and only wearing a T-shirt and shorts when one of the Elders knocked at the door. Col was actually at the corner shop buying cigs at the time and as he returned I shocked the Elder (I thought) by putting hand on hip and lisping: 'Ooh, he's BACK is he? This should be ready soon, don't be surprised if it's CINDERS.'

Col laughed afterwards, though secretly scared of what it might do for his mother's prospects. Val was pretty devout but a good egg and interested in writing.   (She later had an involvement with a vanity publisher that I thought was disastrous. Col said good luck to her if she's HAPPY.)

Val kowtowed to Usborne, the Wallingworth Minister.   What Col didn't like about him was that he was standing there every week preaching about going without while still making sure his salary (which they were all paying) provided him with a shiny new Datsun while Col had shifted his horizons to a second hand motorbike.

One thing about Usborne though was that he could preach. They say why should the devil have all the good music -- Usborne must have picked up some tricks from the rousing orators and rabble baiters of the pagan world.

At this time I'd had a revival of the religious spirit. After a few downfalls I'd reconciled myself to the defection of the one I'd regarded as a partner for life for close on ten years. So instead of sinking deeper into Buddhism I thought I'd return to the source of British spirituality as there was a living spring of it near to hand. (After all, you don't go to a wine country and insist on Guinness.) It worked all right, for a time.

Usborne didn't even decry it out of hand when at one of his Bible classes I said if God had wanted he could have made the world in one day instead of seven, or for that matter could have expended just a single second on the job -- or less. He said he'd have to think it over and do quite a bit more reading before he gave his opinion.

Col had made the mistake of confiding some of the troubles he'd been having with women. Usborne ludicrously urged him to return to his wife, the cause of all the difficulties, and show compassion even if she didn't want to satisfy his needs.   Understandably Col didn't like the idea; he considered he'd suffered enough. When he mentioned the strength of what 'Old Harry' or the Evil One led him to, Usborne suggested there were tablets you could take that would tone down or eradicate this pagan sex drive.   You'd have thought Col was walking about with cloven hooves.   The fact that if he'd taken these tablets for long he'd probably have needed a Living Bra as well was regarded by Usborne as trivial.

There were naturally close ties between the Baptist outpost at Wallingworth and Mount Pleasant in Gippeswyk.   During a visit Val arranged for the Mount Pleasant Minister, Mr Povey, to have lunch at hers the following week. Col and I would be present too.   There'd be Claude Hartill as well, a lay reader. This chap, after the deliberations of various boards and bodies, was going to be taken on (for a period of a year in the first instance) at a salary that Col and I secretly regarded as enormous.

At one point during the meal Col told Hartill that during his probationary time he'd do well to study Mr Usborne (Usborne wasn't present, of course) as he was a speaker with coals of fire in his belly. Hartill had stumbled a bit with his sermon the week before, so this was rather tactless.   'Some people are good at "pastoral" and some are good on the Platform,' he snapped.

Hartill only lasted a month or two then went back to Insurance I believe it was.   Col had doubted all along if the man was a Christian.  But his claim that he was a swindler and total villain seemed over the top.   It had to be faced up to: the bloke was simply a mediocrity.

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