Onwards, onwards, marching in a prayer Onwards, onwards, the sons and daughters share Onwards, onwards, a joyful walk we bear You'll get by, you'll get by, you'll get by
Hello, and welcome to Top Hole, the podcast about Eleanor M. Brent Dyer, the Chalet School, and anything vaguely connected.I'm Deborah Lofus, and I'm a fan.The usual provisos apply.
With respect to pronunciation, spoilers, and bonkersness, please see episode zero.It's a windy week, woo-hoo, and today we're talking about a matter dear to our hearts, Guide Camp.
From the very start of the Girl Guide movement, camping was a hugely important part of being a guide, and this is still true for many members.I knew girls who only continued coming to weekly meetings so that they could come to camp in the summer.
EBD takes us to a couple of guide camps in the Chalet School Books, but the major one is of course the two-week camp detailed in the Chalet Girls in Camp.
The Chalet Girls in Camp was first published in 1932, with a Nina K. Brisley cover showing Joey, Juliet and Griselle getting into the boat for their early morning fishing trip, and four lovely plates showing the flight from the Hornets, the King of Belsonia in the Garden of Diderotzen, Joey being hauled out of the pit, and three bedraggled girls about to have their laundry done.
In 1960, Dorothy Brooke did a new cover showing Joey being hauled out of the pit.There were seven reprints between 1932 and 1960, which suggests this was a particularly popular title.
Perhaps for this reason, Camp was one of a handful of shallow school books to be published in paperback in 1969, getting a first-style paperback cover, which is a surprisingly accurate depiction of the amateur laundresses being watched by their friends wrapped in blankets.
The background scenery shows a lake and mountains, and if you can overlook the 60s hairstyles and fashion, it's really rather good. The second style paperback cover, from the late 1970s, shows Griselle, Juliet and Joey in the boat, all in swimsuits.
Juliet is leaping to the sky, not recommended in a boat, with an expression of horror, and Joey is capering, also not recommended, and apparently hooting with laughter, while Griselle is leaning over the side, hauling on a line.
It is a very distinctive cover, but not one of the best, particularly as the lake looks quite choppy. Quinn Jones's cover from 1986 shows three guides cooking, with Rufus taking centre stage and a small ridge tent behind him.
The background is a forest, and beyond that, snow-capped mountains, easily mistaken for clouds because they are obscured by the book's title.
The guides in this picture are wearing guide uniform, which has the badges in the correct places, but has the girls wearing crossover ties, which replaced the normal tie around 1964 and were replaced by necker and woggle in the early 1980s.
The girls also appear to be wearing either long-sleeved camp dresses or tucked-in guide shirts, which weren't worn with crossover ties, with matching skirts.
The final paperback cover, because this was only one of only a few shallow books to get all four paperback covers, takes us back to Joey, Juliet and Griselle in the boat, with a background of forested mountains and a paling sky.
It's a quiet cover, not a dramatic one.I don't think the girls yet know what is on the end of the line, and one of the best in the final paperback style. At the time Camp was published, guide stories were quite the thing.
LCJ Oxenham had written several books featuring guides, and EBD herself wrote two others, Judy the Guide and Carnation of the Upper Fourth, at around the same time.And there were lots of storybooks about Girl Guides.
about girls who didn't want to join but did, girls facing obstacles to being guides, guide patrols using their skills to outwit burglars and smugglers and of course about Guide Camp.
So EBD was very much on trend with the Chalet Girls in Camp and it's a lovely addition to the Chalet School series.
Later on this term we've got an episode planned about guides at the Chalet School but for now Wendy and I are talking about the Chalet Girls in Camp in light of our own experiences of Guide Camp.
This is nice, it's been a long, not very summery summer.
It has, yeah, and so it's lovely to be back.
Yes, chatting about guide camp.Yes.Today.So you and I camped many times, I should have counted them up, but many times as guides and as leaders.Yes.We ran camps.Yes. And we got quite good at it, I think.
We honed it over the years.And so the Chalet Girls in Camp, I think, has a particular resonance for us because of that.Yes, definitely.
But also because I read it when I was about nine.So before I ever camped as a guide.So it was very aspirational for me at the time when I read it.
And I remember reading it and feeling really excited about that I might be able to sleep in a tent and go away with other girls and just have all girls on site and stuff.
So, I was slightly disappointed to hear that you didn't actually take your dog on guy camp with you.No.You didn't have a dog.But apart from that, I think, yeah, it was very aspirational reading it.
Even the shorter version that I read when I was numb.
Yeah, we didn't ever take dogs.We did take babies and young children.That's true, yeah.With us to camp.That was... Interesting.At the Esquire, my youngest had learnt to say, isn't he cute?Whenever you showed him anything by the end of the week.
And he had a bath in a bucket or one of the storage boxes.
Yes, in one of the storage boxes.Yes, he did.
He was that little.And the year after was the year he escaped.
Yes, yes, you have to have extra adult leaders when you've got extra small children with you.And I think the Chalice School were quite wise to make the fourth form the limit.Although several pages later, girls from the third form are introduced.
Classic EVD.Yes, yes.Bless her heart.And then the following term, they're talking about the camp and Joey's telling, I think, Bianca, who's at camp, all about the camp that Bianca didn't go on.
which she did yeah which she did but we'll forgive EBD for all those little slips we always do we always do because it is very much a book about guide camp yeah and that's the books about guide camp weren't unique you know there were lots of them right in those in that period when when guiding was at its height
the guidebook, storybook, was, you know, it came up quite a lot.Almost its own genre really.
It was, yes, and I had several books, I think I got rid of them actually, but I had several books about guide camps, storybooks about guide camps that stem from the 30s through to possibly the early 50s.
And usually the girls, the guides in those camps,
there was usually some sort of mystery going on a famous five-ish type thing like smuggling right lace smuggling might have been in one of the stories i know in one of the stories i read um so so they were different whereas this camp
Nothing like that.There were incidents.
Yeah, but they're all almost within the camp.It's all self contained.Yes.But then they are like in the middle of nowhere.
And that also was quite, quite exciting to sort of think that you could go and camp on the top of a mountain.I don't know if it actually because it wasn't the top of a mountain because it wasn't snowy in the place.
No, but it's higher up than the TNZ, which is several a thousand feet above sea level.So yes, yes.
So almost on the top of a mountain.Yeah.So they'd have to have had a fairly good weather to do that, I think.
Yes, yes.Well, summer though.But yeah, I hadn't thought of that.I mean, you do, wherever we went to camp, it kind of felt like you were a million miles from anywhere, didn't it?You get that feeling, it becomes a very contained environment.
You know, the boundaries of your camp.
less so on a big international camp, I think, where you're in pitches that are very clearly marked out by pegs.But if you're on your own campsite... Yes, if it's just your unit or a couple of units, it does feel very enclosed.
And I always loved that about camp, that it felt like everyone was cared for, and you wouldn't go off on your own, you'd go off in pairs, so you always knew where everyone was or where they were expected to be.
and you were never on your own so it's a different kind of family feeling being on camp and it's a different kind of being cared for as part of a group or a pack and I think a pack is a lovely way to describe being on guide camp together because you're working together in cooperative harmony most of the time.
And then we would, on our camps, we would have one day on the week-long camps where we went to civilisation, as we called it, went on a trip somewhere, usually somewhere with a swimming pool so that we could all have a swim and a hot shower, because we were often on sites that didn't have shower blocks.
I think towards the end, it was more normal to have some sort of shower block, wasn't it?But certainly in the earlier days of our camping experience, the midweek swim was an important part.
important part of self-care.Yes, yes.
Whereas of course at the Balmaisie they can just dive into the lake and have a swim there almost whenever they think of it.Or a gala if they fancy.Well I suppose they could, yes.Just quickly knock up a gala.Yes, they could have done, couldn't they?
They perhaps don't make the most of the lake.
They did, you know, like they did because it says, I can't say her name.Evadne.Yeah, Evadne.I always thought of it as Evdane in my head when I was reading it.And so Evadne, she said she went off in the wrong direction during the gala, in the relay.
So they did have a gala.You weren't given any other description of the gala, I don't think, just that.And Griselle was annoyed because her team wouldn't win because she'd gone in the wrong direction. She's very consistent with her characters.
They're very consistent in how they react to things.And I think it's quite interesting as well because that's when Griselle and Juliet are about to become teachers of the Annex.So they're not teachers, but they're not girls.
And they're kind of in the middle between being guides and being leaders.And that's where I was when I first started camping with you with your first guide unit you camped with as a leader.
because I was sort of 16, 17 so I wasn't a guide anymore but I wasn't quite a leader either so I kind of came along as an extra spare pair of hands who knew about tents and starting fires and could whip in where needed so I was quite good at spotting jobs that needed doing and getting on with them and I think Roselle and Juliet were in a similar position for that because they were old enough to whip in and say come on you need to do this or that or whatever
but they also weren't necessarily having any responsibility as leaders other than maybe taking prayers.They take prayers, don't they?
Yes, yes.I mean, it's quite a good leader to young people ratio, I think.
Oh, it's brilliant, yeah.
Because it's, what, five adults to 30 girls, and of those 30 girls, half a dozen or so are actually cadets. So that's leaders in training, or young leaders, as we would have called them.So that's a good ratio, I think.
Yeah, yeah.24 girl, effectively, guides to 11 leaders, or whatever it is.That's pretty good.Oh, I'm envious.
I don't think we ever achieved that.
We only ever had a couple of young leaders, really.Whereas some camps I know of, where they took a whole unit of rangers, who were basically self-sufficient, and then rotated in to do extra help, like supervise washing up, or whatever.
yes i remember that yeah having rangers around yeah my very first guide camp when i was a guide i was 12 i'd have been and it's a shame we didn't clock that and try and engage with local rangers to get them to come along with yeah regarding but it just never occurred to me that we could pull them into our camps yes we couldn't happen with us and they've been up for it as well yeah um but um but we did have a good time and we went to a lot of different places camping as well yeah a reasonable number if you
camp right back to when we were kids as well yeah yes there's been a fair few fields and we did a two-week camp with emu oh i don't remember that i don't know i'm not sure you were there i don't think i was there for that um but um it was at log grove right lucky oakfield whatever whichever yeah the one with the swimming pool anyway
We went to the grounds of a private school.We camped in the grounds of a private school.We were there for two weeks and we had a swimming pool that we could use.So we did swim every other day or every three days.
But one day in the middle of it it was really madly hot so they set a challenge to create a shower.
right but you see i remember that but perhaps we did that again at another camp we might have yeah and our team won because we got two big black sacks they were enormous filled them with water hoisted it up a tree poked holes in the bottom so it made a shower shape yes tied it up above the holes and refilled it so anyone who wanted to shower could just fill it up
hoist it up, tie it off, pull the cord and the shower would happen.It was a lovely gentle but fairly strong shower that you could actually wash your hair in.It was brilliant and I was really chuffed with that because it was my idea.
Everyone else did the actual doing but it was my idea and it worked perfectly and we got every single member of our patrol showered underneath it before it broke and we could have made another one because it was only two black sacks basically.
I'm not sure that the current black sacks are thick enough to do it with.You can get extra thick ones.
But if you've got extra thick ones, or rubble sacks, they'd be excellent.You see, how did the Shannon School Guides manage without black sacks?
Because we used them so much at camp, didn't we?
We'd use them for, you know, keeping your bedding extra dry.Yeah.Putting your dirty clothes in.Yeah.Rubbish, obviously.Yeah.Making showers.Well, they had an incinerator, so rubbish wasn't a problem for them.They did, didn't they?You see now?
We had an incinerator, at least one, at Glenbrook I think we had the incinerator because that's the camp where we had Penny in nappies and we discovered that disposable nappies do not incinerate in an ordinary incinerator.
I don't think I ever used the incinerator, but Glenbrook was the one where I was in charge of cooking and I was really, really ill all week and lost my voice and stuff, I think.No, that was a different camp.
I lost my voice for a different one, but I was terribly ill at that.You certainly didn't enjoy doing the catering, because after that we swapped over.
We never did it that way around again, and you were always the leader and I was always in charge of the catering, and that worked brilliantly.We were just a superb team.
Yes, absolutely. My chief memory from that count when you were in charge of the catering is just you refusing to serve food on one occasion until everybody had sorted out their plate bags and reunited themselves with the correct crockery and cutlery.
Yes.Yes, I didn't argue with her on that occasion.Listeners, her stern face came.
I didn't get stern at camp very often.
No, but when you did... Oh yes, very stern.But they don't seem to have plate bags.No.So what they have for their kit is what's called a pallias.Which I didn't know what that was, so I had to look it up.
No, whereas I'd invented it in my head, but actually accurately, so I'm quite pleased about that.So that's basically a sack, but a sack shaped so that when you stuff it with straw, it becomes a mattress.
yeah so that's quite clever that's quite clever yeah but obviously you don't take it to camp stuffed with straw no which begs the question where do you think they must have had a supply of straw at the site from the farm or something yes they must have done they must have done um so you take it empty with all your stuff in it oh okay yes and that's their pack so that's then described as a pack and each girl has a pack um and then they also have their knapsack with their
personal stuff in and presumably the day's sandwiches because they do have sandwiches from home for their first meal.Yeah.Which is, we used to do that.We used to do that.Yeah.Bring a packed lunch on the first day.
They don't have the traditional spag bowl.
For their evening dinner.
But I'm guessing that spaghetti wasn't commonly available outside Italy at that point.No, that's probably true.Yeah.
Might not even have been invented in Italy then, who knows.
And bolognese would definitely not look like ours.So.
No, it would be very different.So, they pack into their Pallias covers, pillows, changes of clothing, So that's, we didn't take pillows actually, did we?We used to take a pillowcase and stuff it with clothes for a pillow, but okay.
Horn tumblers, enameled plates.We were still using enameled plates, certainly when we camped.Not horn tumblers, that was all plastic beakers by the time we were going there.Or enamel cups.Or enamel cups.Knives and forks and spoons.
So we used to, every person used to bring a plate bag.So it was a drawstring bag that had their knife, fork, spoon, plate, bowl, cup in it.
Blankets, no mention of sleeping bags, one or two books in case of rainy days, brushes and combs and sponges and soap and all the 101 articles that would be necessary, which is, it's probably just as well she summarises it like that because otherwise it'd just be a very long list.
I mean our kit list was one, a side of A4 wasn't it, with all my explanatory notes as well on the back.And then even the Girlguiding official kit list, which in the days before home printing you could buy on a pad
then you just rip one off and give it to each person.That was A5, two columns on a sheet of A5.Yeah.So it's quite a long list of things you need to take with you.Yeah.But I think it's interesting she doesn't mention sleeping bags.It's just blankets.
Yes.And they talk about sheets as well, don't they?When they do the laundry.
It seems to be the teachers that have sheets.Oh, right.OK.Because it's Miss Stewart, is it?Yes.Who's worried about them bleaching Starching her pillowcase.
Oh is it?Something like that.
Or cotton because she can't have wool next to her skin.
So there are some sheets, I think, because they starch them.
Because in another book, Heather Leaves School, which is one of the La Rochelle series, it's Heather's dad, I think, gets for Christmas I think it's that one, or it might be Seven Scamps and the dad in that.
One of the dads, anyway, goes off on explorations from time to time, and part of his Christmas present is a portable sleeping bag.Now, I had no idea there was any other sort of sleeping bag.
It does suggest to me that EBD wasn't hugely familiar with the concept of a sleeping bag.
Yeah, what would be a not-portable sleeping bag?Well, exactly!I can't... I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like.A sleeping bag with legs?
Well, maybe a built-in bed frame.
I just... That negates the need for a sleeping bag.Yes, exactly.Because the whole point about it is that it's portable.That is a bit weird.But then EBD.Yes.Just move on. I mean, I assume the palais would be like a hemp kind of canvas-y material.
I'm thinking quite stout canvas, yes.
So, I mean, assuming it's good enough for the straw not to poke through too much, you're still going to want something soft over it like a blanket.So I'm assuming the blankets are doing the work there, really.
What do they work as sheets as well?
Yes, that would be my guess.And then they're shaking them out and whatever.I mean, they don't talk about the morning routine particularly.
But I mean, when we were at camp, if we were in the big green tents, you would have to put all the sides up and let the sod cloths dry.
You would have to shake out all the bedding and hang it out to air or drag it out to air or what have you and stuff before you could pack anything away to make the tent a usable space during the day.
They do talk about racks to keep things off the floor at some point.The bedding rack, bless.It's almost sad that we don't have to teach kids to make bedding racks anymore in a way, but in another very real way it was quite a pain.
It was a pain because they were forever collapsing.And the number of people who sat on them and broke them was just horrendous.
yeah and it is less poles to take to camp with you as well yeah take something like 60 poles oh the gadget wood yeah i'm just finding gadget wood and and we used made a lot of use of broom handles for gadget wood but that's so smooth and often you need the knobbles yes keep the height yes yes keep it sturdy and also i think we didn't quite get there in the end but we were getting to the point where we're going to use it get a turner to make points at the end we were like a huge pencil sharpener
now so that we could sharpen broom handles and pop them into the ground better because sticking straight posts into the ground is no fun either but they don't seem to make that much use of gadgets no they don't at camp they don't really mention it and it might be that gadgets were a later addition to camp
I don't know.They're certainly in the third edition guide handbook.There's quite a lot made of gadgets.What year is that?That's the 1968 one.Right.So that's after all of this.
So it would have been the second edition handbook, Girlguiding handbook, that was enforced for the whole of the Chalet School's guiding experience.
I mean, given that she sort of lifted whole chunks of descriptions of towns out of guidebooks and stuff in some of the trips that they did, it wouldn't surprise me if she got everything just out of the guide handbook.
No, she was an active guide leader at some point.
Did she do camps as a leader?She must have done.She must have been to at least one camp because there's too much that's authentic about this book.
for her not to have been you know like the smell of the wood smoke and and the evening singing around the campfire yeah yeah and and that whole thing when it rains and running out and doing all of that i just only of someone who's actually been to a camp yeah you're right would yeah would know about that yeah okay fair enough she probably had been to at least one yes and the description of them how they set out their meals as well because that's interesting so nowadays i think they're told they're not to sit on the floor to eat their meals
Yes, because of hygiene.Right, now... Sorry.I'm sure that's very sensible.
Yes, that's very sensible.
But that's not how we do it at camp.That's not how we do it at camp.
So, because one year at camp, so one year we did it differently, and we were offered, they were like the picnic tables where there are four seats at each table and it unfolds, kind of thing.So we thought, all right, that's nice, we'll use that.
And we used that, and what happened was... Hang on, hang on.
Before, can we say what we usually do?Usually what we do is we have sitters, which are half-width ground sheets, basically, that you put in a U-shape and then you sit on them and the table's in the middle.
And it's a U-shape, and then the leaders usually sit... Right, sorry, no.When you say the table's in the middle, there's not actually a table there.There's nothing in the middle.
Right, so we call that horseshoe of grass within the ground sheets the table.Yeah.Yeah, and it's a really important concept at a guide camp of the table. Kit thought we'd invented it.
It wasn't until we saw a documentary on the BBC about a guide camp and the leaders were going, don't walk on the table.Oh, does every guide leader do that?I thought you made that up.No, why would we make up something like that?It's insane.
We were told that when we were guides, don't walk on the table.
And sometimes when we were guides, one of the hostesses or whoever was laying the table, because a group of guides would set up the table, lay it out and everything. putting all the plate bags around the horseshoe.
And then have a tray at either end with salt and pepper and sugar and condiments and bread and butter to pass around the horseshoe.
And sometimes that group of people would make a display for the middle of the table, like a flower display. a flower arrangement of local flowers that they'd found or interesting grasses or whatever in a bowl or a cup or something.
And I think one time somebody put a load of people's toys that were different animals in the middle and stuff.It was quite creative.Over two weeks you had to try quite hard to reinvent it.
But it was a bit of pride that you'd done all the job and you could make it special as well and make it kind of pretty.So the table was really important.And so if you wanted to leave the table, you'd have to get off the ground sheet backwards
and then walk all the way around.
You couldn't cut across, hence the don't walk on the table.And all the leaders were on chairs, because we have weaker knees when we're leaders.You can't sit on the floor.So we would sit on chairs across the open section of the end of the horseshoe.
So that enclosed it and completed it.And usually just at one side would be the cook patrol dishing up the food.And one of the things we were very hot on was crowd management.
queue management, so we'd get people to walk all the way around to collect and they get their food and then go all the way around to sit down.
And also, before we had our meals when we were guides, we would always stand behind our space to sing, to sing grace.And we did that a lot when we were leaders, running guide units.
So we would always have this thing, everyone would be able to see everybody else, and it was three times a day where we could give notices or have a group discussion about something.
We'd go round the circle saying, what was your favourite thing that we did today?Or yesterday, or whatever.
And then we'd ask, you know, people would talk about how they slept, and we'd ask, has anyone got water in their tents, anyone's bed damp, anything like that.
So you'd get to hear the gossip and the kind of idea of what's good, what's bad, what's working, what's not.
for that feel for the camp.And we would do the secret friend thing at breakfast.Or do the reveal at dinner time or whatever, wouldn't we?
And we'd pass the bag around to pick who we got and everything.So it was a real group, there was a sense of group activity, group coming together.
And if anybody wasn't there, like when Toby went missing, we were all sitting down and it was like, where's Toby?Because he hadn't come for food and that's not like him.
So then it was quite an opportunity to check in and everyone and make sure everyone was present.
And get them all to put sunscreen on as well.
Yeah, we put sunscreen on at breakfast, keep that in your plate bag.And then remind everybody what they had to do before we went off for the day, or at the end of the day remind them what they have to do before they go to bed or whatever.
So it's a kind of communal time that's really important.So, One camp, we were offered a marquee.It was like a big, big white tent that you could fit these fold-up tables in.So you could have six or eight tables.
Cafeteria style, I think you'd say, basically.And it didn't work because some people had their backs to other people and then one table became the desirable table that everybody wanted to sit at.
And we never got, we didn't get that community feeling, did we?
No, no.And it felt horrible.Yes.It just, it was very noisy.Yes.No one had any consideration for other people because you weren't all together looking at each other and respecting each other as individuals.
But also, there was the noisy table, there was the desirable table, there was the really quiet table.Yes.
And if they'd have been mixed up throughout the group in a U-shape, they would have been pulled into the conversation or, you know, we couldn't go round and say, in order, because we didn't know what the order was, because it was all a bit random.
And we said afterwards, for communication, that was the worst camera went on, and we wouldn't do it again.
You said to me, wise words that I often quote, you said, sometimes we need to do things differently to remind ourselves why we always do them the way we do. And I have kept that close to my heart for over 20 years because you're right, that we do.
I'm not sure if the chalet school girls are described as sitting in a horseshoe shape.
They certainly have ground sheets that they sit on and they have what's described as American oil cloth that the food is on, it's their table, so they are on the ground like we were.
But I get the impression they were in rows, rather than a horseshoe.
But you see, I think two rows of girls facing each other, and leaders facing each other, actually, you could still announce to all of them... Well, and it's more reminiscent of a school dining room, isn't it?
They were replicating what they had at school, and that works at school.So because they're all at the same school, that works then at camp.So I can see how that worked.
When I re-read it recently, I could visualise it working because it worked like school. But I would always, always recommend to people to do the horseshoe.And that's reminiscent of a guide meeting.Yes, when you have your horseshoe.
At the beginning and end.So I think that's a really important thing.
As you may have guessed, this is only part of our conversation.You'll get the rest in the next episode, where we talk about food, clothes and toilets, among other things.
You've been listening to Top Hole, written and presented by Deborah Lofus with Wendy Norford.Music and production by Kit Lofus.You can find Top Hole on Facebook or email us at topholepodcast at gmail.com.Top Hole is a Lofus Towers production.
