Scouts

I was once used as a slave labour by the Scouts. Really.

At a Jamboree in Melbourne we were forced into making concrete bricks for days on end. When we should have been climbing ropes and swimming through mud.

I think they were putting up a building and saw the opportunity to save some costs on building materials.

I really didn’t like making bricks in the forty degree heat and now I wonder if shouldn’t ask them for back pay plus interest.

And this was after spending over 24 hours on a train getting there – our scout-filled special had the lowest priority on the track.

Actually there was very little about the Scout movement I liked – all knots, uniforms, chanting and other madness of the punishing super-egos.

Fortunately my local troop used the movement as an excuse to have some very un-Scout like fun. Even so, the mad hand of Baden-Powell lurked in every corner, urging us to excel at all things military, short of actual killing.

I got into the thing by the usual nefarious means of my parents – attempting to get rid of me.

How I got out of it, I cannot remember. I think I just forgot to turn up one year.

As Mark Viduka memorably said ‘I didn’t announce the start of my career so why should I announce the end of it?’