You’d think that this would automatically confer on me a bit of respect and obedience from others in the patrol. Sadly, many in the troop felt the Scouting hierarchy only applied during our weekly meetings. One member of the troop, Phil Wiley, was in my class at school – and his behaviour towards me, a superior officer, was quite, quite shameful.
On one occasion, he stole my swimming trunks, dropped them in a urinal and laughed. This was in front of the whole class, many of who(m) were in my troop. Of course, I couldn’t let this slide, and ordered him to rescue and wash them. He sniggered. I took a breath.
‘Do as I say,’ I said calmly.
He began to walk away.
‘Do as I say, Scout Wiley,’ I boomed.
‘What did you call me? Scout Wiley?’
He laughed again and indicated to the rest of the class that I was mentally defective, by twirling a finger by the side of his head. Well, this was rank insubordination.
‘Do as I say. I’m your Patrol Leader!’
‘Oh my god …’ he attempted, weakly.
‘I am your Patrol Leader.’
‘You are such a tit.’
‘I am your Patrol Leader!’
‘Fuck off.’ He actually said that to me.
‘I am your Patrol Leader! I am your Patrol Leader! I am your Patrol Leader! I am your Patrol Leader!’
I continued to shout this until I was the only person left in the changing rooms, and then I fished my trunks from the well of piss with a fountain pen, and showered them off for a few minutes before repeatedly hurling them against a wall to release the excess liquid. Yes, I’d had to save my trunks from someone else’s urine, but I’d left my class colleagues certain of one thing: I was the Patrol Leader.
The following week, I reported Wiley to Scout Leader Dave and was told not to tell tales, which didn’t really bother me much at all. (Wiley left the troop shortly after and his school work began to decline markedly. Without the discipline and brotherhood of the Scouting Movement, he drifted into a spiral of underachievement, culminating in his having sex with a lab technician. Because of pregnancy, she gave birth to a child, although Wiley has as close a relationship with it as you or I do.)
I treasured my involvement with the Scouts – of course I did. But it didn’t compensate for the absence of love and affection I received in my home life. That is a fact.
Do you believe in guardian angels? I do.24 Not the winged ones you see in films. As I’ve often explained to my assistant (a Christian female), as well as being aerodynamically unfeasible, wings sprouting from the shoulder blades would pull the ribcage backwards and gradually suffocate the angel – a cause of death that’s similar, ironically, to that of crucifixion.
No, by guardian angels I mean ‘nice people’. And I do believe in them. (Although I reserve the right to be deeply suspicious of anyone who is unilaterally kind to me.)
My guardian angels were the Lambert family. They took me in when I had nowhere to go. They gave me food and shelter and love when my own parents had deserted me. I remain forever in their debt.25
I was temporarily fostered by this kindly family in 1961. As family friends who were friends with our family, theirs was a loving home and I stayed for more than three weeks, returning home only because Mum and Dad had come back from their holiday in Brittany and it was time to go.
This was the first time I’d experienced the warmth of a caring family. Not for them the bickering over VAT receipts or making their children pick up privet cuttings in the rain. Instead, I was treated like a human being.
The father, Trevor, was an asthmatic, but what he lacked in being able to breathe quietly, he more than made up for with his parental skills. He always found time to not hit his children and I remember thinking that was tremendous.
‘Got to say, Trevor,’ I remember announcing, on my second day there, ‘you have a wonderful way with your kids. You’re a credit to yourself. I for one am impressed.’
‘Thanks, Alan,’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s lovely of you, Alan.’
I turned to see Mother Lambert, better known as Fran, handing out fresh milk and cooked cookies to her three children: Kenneth, Emma and Sheila. The children were marginally older than I was (and remain so to this day) but they reached across the age divide to show me friendship and good will.
But it was Fran who was the chief supplier of love. From day one, I was clasped to her bosom – not literally. Not literally at all. There was no suggestion of any sordid behaviour. Please don’t think there was, just because I’ve created the image of my face being pulled towards an older woman’s breasts. No, I don’t want you to take away even a residual inkling that this was a family marred by a proclivity for child molestation. I’m in two minds now whether to keep this paragraph in at all, in case the denial of any wrongdoing makes you think there’s something that needs denying. There isn’t. They were a lovely family. Kept themselves to themselves and neighbours have said they seemed perfectly normal. Actually, that makes them sound worse.
I was happy there and saw no reason why I couldn’t stay among the Lamberts for the rest of my life. But the nature and length of my stay there hadn’t been adequately explained to me. And so it was that one cold summer’s morning, I looked up from a genuinely difficult jigsaw puzzle to see my mother and father standing there, my coat in Mum’s hands. I burst into tears.
The Lamberts cried too (inwardly) as they waved me off. Mum and Dad thanked their counterparts. ‘Say thank you, Alan,’ Mum said.
‘Thank you,’ I snivelled.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Trevor Lambert. ‘You can come and stay any time you like.’
I stopped crying. ‘Pardon?’
‘Come and stay any time you like.’
And with that, I was driven away. But my life had been touched by guardian angels – their kindness ringing in my ears like chronic tinnitus. I pressed my hand against the window like they do in films and at this point the director might like to do a slow fade to black.26
‘Smelly Alan Fartridge! Smelly Alan Fartridge!’ The words spewed from my classmates’ mouths like invisible projectile sick, landing in my ears and ending up caked all over my shattered self-esteem. My inner confidence must have reeked.
Short of doing me in with a blade (it wasn’t that sort of school), there was nothing that these educationally slow children could have done to hurt me more. But still they shouted.
‘Smelly Alan Fartridge! Smelly Alan Fartridge! He loves his mum, he lives in her bum. You think that’s bad, you should smell his dad. Smelly Alan Fartridge!’
It was agony on so many levels. For starters, they were bellowing over the sound of English teacher Mr Bevin – academically suicidal given that mock exams were just weeks away, and a personal affront of Mr Bevin who, although timid and stuttering, knew his onions, English-wise.
For mains, it was the dunderheaded wrongness of what they were saying: I did not smell. I was a keen cleanser, diligently showering each day and making sure that my body, privates, face and mouth were stench- and stain-free. If I smelt of anything, it would have been Matey (now Radox) and Colgate.
And