Lisa : It’s the 14th February 2019 and this is an interview with Geoff Brown at the Headquarters of the 2nd Cowes St Mary’s Sea Scouts. Thank you for being interviewed Geoff, can you tell me your full name please?
Geoff : Geoffrey Stephen Brown
Lisa : And, your date of birth?
Geoff : 1945
Lisa : And, where were you born?
Geoff : Cowes. I’m an Isle of Wight lad, a ‘Caulkhead’
Lisa : Is your family on both sides Islanders?
Geoff : Er no, my father wasn’t but my mother’s clan goes back years. My father came from Portsmouth.
Lisa : And, I’m here today specifically to talk to you about the Sea Scouts and your involvement in the Sea Scouts through your lifetime. So, could you perhaps start by telling me a bit about your first experiences of scouting as a boy?
Geoff : Well I joined 2nd Cowes as a ‘Wolf Cub’ then, the name got changed in ’67 to Cub Scouts but was Wolf Cub at 8 through a friend of mine who belonged to the cub pack and I’ve stayed with 2nd Cowes ever since, (laughing).
Lisa : So, back the when you were, did you say 8 years old?
Geoff : Yeah
Lisa : Where was the 2nd Cowes based?
Geoff : 2nd Cowes was in the District Headquarters, which is in Union Road, it’s now a private dwelling that’s opposite the St Mary’s Church.
Lisa : And, can you describe it to me, the old building?
Geoff : I can’t remember much about it, it was two-storey and downstairs was split into small rooms and upstairs was just a main hall. I think it then went to a builder’s afterwards and then it’s been developed into a nice posh house. We then moved to the St Mary’s Guild which was a defunct building in Cross Street, attached to Cross Street School and when we moved here in ’77 the Cross Street…the building was actually then knocked down; it’s now under the Marks & Spencer’s car park in Cross Street. They’d already knocked down all the buildings round it as slum clearance but being a hall, the Council couldn’t knock it down because it wasn’t habitable. So, we moved here because we wanted our own building and closer to the water. ‘Cos when we bought our own boats back in the mid/late 60’s we kept them at the back of the Cowes Youth Club which then became IYWAC of course, which is now gone…and so we wanted something close to the water
Lisa : Ok, Let’s just go back to when you were 8 years old and you just joined as a Wolf Cub. At that time then, can you tell me the sorts of activities that you would do as a Wolf Cub.
Geoff : Basically, it was games and basic training, knots, knotting and various other bits. We didn’t do as much as the Cubs do nowadays. We didn’t camp, so I didn’t camp, start camping until I was 11. So, Cubs didn’t do much, it was more of a large playschool in effect. Say, things that you would have learnt drastically since then but yes, its basically, as I say, it was just the monthly Church parades and just fun activities.
Lisa : So you weren’t at that point having many opportunities to get out onto the water at that age.
Geoff : None at all. The Scout group didn’t own any boats then.
Lisa : Was it actually a Sea Scout group at that point?
Geoff : Yes.
Lisa : It was.
Geoff : When the group was started in 1928, it was a Land Scout group. During the War when our leaders had gone away to fight, a leader came from the Mainland to work at J S White Shipyard and helped run the group and I think it was 1941 he said, “You’re in Cowes, why are you Land Scouts?” and he changed it to Sea Scouts. And so that’s why we became Sea Scouts. It was a year later when we joined the Royal Naval Recognition Scheme for Sea Scouts which we still are part of.
Lisa : Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Geoff : Well basically, about a quarter of the Sea Scout groups in the country are recognised by the Navy as being up to a certain standard. At that time, you’re inspected once a year then it got to 18 months by the Staff Officer’s Scouts come along and see what you were up to and the privileges we get now are grants from the Navy through Scout Headquarters. We have four big events available to our end groups. Three are based at HMS Bristol on Whale Island, HMS Bristol being a type
82 Destroyer which is a Headquarters training ship. It doesn’t go anywhere; it’s attached to the land; it’s big. And we have camps for Scouts 12-14, we have a week for the 14-18yr old Explorer Scouts, we have six-aside football, we have a swimming gala down at HMS Raleigh at Plymouth because that’s where the swimming pool is. So, it’s our end groups that have a chance to do that. We do get a few other perks as well, plus a bit of you know one-upmanship on others. We’re the only, our end group on the Island at the moment. There were two groups that started up, us and East Cowes, then East Cowes dropped out. Sandown Scouts came in for a while and then dropped out. We’ve been in it ever since 1942 when it started and we’re quite proud of that. And, I’m now part of the team that organises events over at HMS Bristol. So, it’s good fun.
6 minutes 10 seconds
Lisa : So, how did things change then moving up from the Wolf Cubs into Scouts at, did you say 11 year’s old?
Geoff : Yeah, 11 years old.
Lisa : You moved to Scouts.
Geoff : That’s right. Well, then we were still based at Cross Street. We didn’t have any boats, again, we used to occasionally borrow the boat from the Sea Rangers which was the female part of the sort of upper teenagers, but we didn’t really do much boating at all. Our training was sea orientated, we learned … did a lot of seamanship but without going afloat, except on Red Funnel. A fun thing we used to do with Red Funnel, the old Ferries they used to use a heaving line, which is the light rope, to throw that ashore and then put the main mooring line on. Well, they used to take the heaving line off and just coil it up on the deck. It’s got a big monkey’s fist on the end, which is just like a big knot, for weight. When they come to tie it on at Southampton there’s a ‘monkeys fist’ in both ends. ‘Cos we used to put one in it; that confused them somewhat. That was our trick on that one.
Lisa : So, when you moved up into Scouts, then, tell me a bit about camps
Geoff : Well, we… the Isle of Wight Scouts own a campsite at Corf Scout Camp, near Shalfleet and they’ve owned that since just before the War. And, we’ve got a site out there that we still use. Each group has its own sort of nominal site which we do our own maintenance on and what have you and developed the site over the years and that’s lovely. It’s 23 acres of ‘scout-proof’ land. It’s a bit wet in places when we have this heavy rain, but it’s lovely. We own it, we developed it over the years, we’re putting extra buildings up, it’s now our training centre for leaders. We need to replace the pack holiday, the indoor accommodation because Cubs at one time couldn’t camp, they went into indoor accommodation. We need to replace that building because it’s a bit old. The toilets need replacing. You can’t get Grants for replacing toilets (laughing). It’s lovely, but we haven’t over-developed it. We haven’t got all the mod cons there, basically, it’s a case of it’s rural. People can go out there and do basic camping. Whereas a lot of the sites have been turned into almost like Butlins. We’re very, very pleased for that. For a long time, I was on the Committee out there, so it’s a lovely site and that’s where I did my first camping. And, a lot of Scouts even now, they don’t camp anywhere else, they always camp at Corf and nowhere else. And because Cub Scouts can camp there now, they have their annual camp every June/July. So yes, you hear three hundred/four hundred little hooligans hurtling around there, it’s lovely (laughing).
Lisa : And as a Scout, did you have any opportunities to go to the Mainland?
Geoff : Yeah, we did a few trips, sort of outings. The only trouble is, I can’t remember, it all merges into one at the moment. I think the thing is when I became older and went up to what we call Senior Scouts, which was the 15 to 18 bracket, our Group Scout Leader, Peter Eden, was Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve based in Southampton and we had a chance when he took HMS Warsash which was an old coastal minesweeper, very old, when he took that out, occasionally we had a chance to go out as part of the crew on that. And, we often upset the normal reserve crew because our seamanship skills were better than them. We used to put the ropes ashore ‘cos we could throw heaving lines and they couldn’t. One of our team used to steer the ship often, because especially out of the Inner Dock at Southampton because it was a bit complicated. There’s no Ocean Village, there’s no Dock gates. At that time, it was kept inside the Dock; Friday nights you had to get it out through a lock, and he did all the steering because he was better than the regular reserve crews. So yes, we did upset the normal sailors because our seamanship…that was good fun because we used to do sweeping exercises, set out… stuff out over the stern and look for mines and what have you. We did one sweeping exercise off the French coast in Boulogne and three Mine Sweepers, we were the last one. The idea was if the other two had popped a mine up, the one behind was meant to shoot at it and set it off. We did a straw poll on the Warsash, there was nobody who could actually shoot, so we said, “Hope they don’t pick anything up”, but at the end of that exercise two of us went in and the third one had to go back to London ‘cos there was only an official visit for two. But, that was the good experience. Another weekend we got as far as Sandown Bay and moored in there. I can remember lunchtime, peeling the potatoes on the sweep deck there watching the pleasure boats coming out from Sandown pier…”trips round the war ships, trips round the war ship” We thought we could do a lot of things with these potatoes, there was a few targets out there, but we didn’t dare. But those are the sort …gives you a great experience. But again, it was just shear luck that we had the chance to let us on there…Warsash. We did that for a few years.
11 minutes 35 seconds
Lisa : So, were there more opportunities to get out on the water as you got older and worked your way through?
Geoff : I suppose, eventually, I suppose when I was probably about 16/17 the group was actually, obtained some money, it was given a grant from somebody in their will and basically we had a boat built for us out at Forelands at Bembridge, 18ft long, Clinker which is wooden planks overlapping, both rowing and sailing. It was a plank too high for rowing and it was also for sailing the centre board which the drop board…centre board comes down for sailing; it was too short (laughing) so it wasn’t a very good boat either way. We had that for a long, long time and we also bought a 12ft clinker sailing boat which we used to use as well. But you know, they were good fun, but it was enough to get us afloat and what have you and we’d take it in turns, and we used to go out weekends. Never did at troop night, it was always done at weekends because being based in Cross Street it wasn’t easy sort of suddenly doing anything to get afloat on a 2hrs Wednesday night.
Lisa : Where did you go down into the water?
Geoff : Both boats were kept afloat just off… opposite the Whitegates pontoon and we kept a dinghy on the pontoon lashed to the seat down there and just rowed out to it and they were on what was known as half-tide moorings which meant they sat on the mud at low tide and at high tide, after a lot of heavy rain, they were full of water so (laughing) yes, it wasn’t ideal. And, then in the winter we used to bring them up the back of the Cowes Youth Club alongside Whitegates pier and they were left outside so by the time we finished doing them up in the Spring, it’s probably mid-summer and we probably kept boating ‘til about January or February. It was lovely then, because the river was empty. And then, when we built this hall in ’77 we designed out boat workshop round the 18ft and the 12ft boat. They went in there for about three months then we sold them both (laughing).
Lisa : So, at that point then, were your Leaders experienced sailors, did they instruct you in how to…
Geoff : Yes, in Scouting, any leader has to have a permit to take you afloat. I can remember, I was…when I was in my Senior Scouts, I would have been about 16, 17, I was being examined for a Rowing Permit, or Pullingness we call it in the Scouts, for rowing basically in the river. We were allowed one mile off the shore and we were up at Cement Mills, we camped up there every September in amongst the old cement mills and the old railway carriages that they were dismantling and what have you which was good because one carriage we actually slept in it, in a railway carriage which was lovely save putting the tent up. The Water Activities Adviser for the County came up in his boat, moored in the middle of the river and I was rowed out by my crew, left on board and he started asking me theoretical questions. “Right, you’re coming out of Southampton Water and fog comes down. What do you do you see?” And the way, of course, the trick was to work out which way the tide’s going, go with the tide so that if the tide was flowing, it was flooding, you actually aimed for Osborne Bay so to speak ‘cos you know that when you hit the shore it didn’t matter where it was you could then work your way back along the shore. Whereas if you just tried to aim the other way you didn’t quite sure where the tide would take you. So, the first thing I said was “I wouldn’t be allowed over I’m only allowed one mile off the shore.” He didn’t ask me any more questions after that because he thought I was a clever dick (chuckling). But you know that’s the sort of things that…nowadays, of course, being an experienced Leader, you can deal with, but no, at that time, yep, even now it has to be a permit for something. Now it’s all linked in with the Royal Yachting Association and the Amateur Rowing Association. All our permits now are all, and the canoeing, they’re all controlled by external assessments rather than being done in-house like they used to be done. So, every activity we do is risk assessed, but now it’s even tighter than it used to be. It’s almost a case of, you can’t even blow your nose without permission, you know.
16 minutes 32 seconds
Lisa : So when you were that age then, 16, and you were going out on the water, what kind of safety equipment did you have?
Geoff : At that time very little. When you were sailing you wore a buoyancy aid, when you were rowing you didn’t bother. We had Board of Trade Lifejackets which were like two foam pads which you wore one on your chest and one on your back over your shoulders and to be honest, they were ok, but you only wore them if you were out in the Solent in deeper water. But in the river here, no you didn’t bother at all. When you were sailing you often wore a buoyancy aid. There weren’t the restrictions that we have nowadays. Our Scout Group now, we’ve got about 40 odd buoyancy aids and as they cost £20 to £30 a time, you probably saw them all hanging up there, you know, that’s a lot of money invested and trying to stop the children chucking them on the ground outside, is difficult, but you know, we’ve got to have them.
Lisa : Were there ever any accidents that happened when you were younger?
Geoff : No, no, it’s like I think it’s like everything. When I was young, I used to … the parents had a beach hut out at Gurnard. And that’s where I started, we had canoes at the…we kept in the Sailing Club. Then I went over to a 9ft rowing boat. And then eventually I went over to sailing. But when you were young you disappeared, climbing up the trees up the back of the huts there. Sometimes take the boat out. Your parents knew you were going to turn up for lunch. There was no control, not like there is nowadays. Because, there again, if anything happened you were with a load of other mates so of course they would suddenly report if something had happened. I think that’s the thing about nowadays, things are so much tighter whereas in our days it was…you got away with it.
Lisa : So about how many Scouts were there then when you were a Scout yourself?
Geoff : Well, it varied, the numbers are normally, sort of, in a Troop are between sort of 20 and 30, sort of thing; it varies, goes up and down. But that’s the sort of thing, ‘cos your patrols are nominally 6, so we normally work with 4 patrols, occasionally go to 5 and at one time it went up to 6 patrols when the numbers got large because we went over 40 at one time over the years. But no, it fluctuates and obviously peoples’…, as you grow up, peoples’ ideas change but at that time our boating was progressive so if you joined the Scouts at 11 you start off the progressive scheme. If you came in at 12 or 13 you still had to start at the bottom. Nowadays, things are different, it’s all parallel stuff, so you do activities and from that you get your badges, so we’ve changed over the years. But, in those days you did, you say… got very few people coming in other than at 11, normally coming up from the Cubs. If somebody, say, came in at 12 or 13, cos at that time the Scouts went up to 15, you wouldn’t get many because they’d have to do what the 11 year olds were doing, so that’s where things have changed.
20 minutes 1 second
Lisa : Were they all local boys at that time, they were all from Cowes?
Geoff : Yes, they were all from Cowes. We occasionally had one from Newport because they wanted to do boating. We had, later on, we had about 4 or 5 from Parkhurst in Camp Hill when I was Scout Leader and that was some fun and games when you had to drop notes off. One day, I actually was parked up by the wall of Parkhurst Prison because, where the Scout lived, it was down a little road and you couldn’t really get the car in there. So, I dropped stuff off and when I came back there was a dog guarding my car and they picked it up on the camera and the dog got there before the Handler did (laughing). When the Handler got there, I then got my knuckles wrapped. Because security had tightened up then. But I’d done that before, parked there, no problems with that time and so I was a bit worried when I saw the dog guarding my car (laughing), and I suddenly saw the handler coming, so I waited. But….like a lot of things on the Island you get a group’s that got a reputation. We were doing boating, started to do boating and, therefore, they wanted to do Sea Scouting, they a came to us. ‘Cos, we don’t call them Land Scouts we call them Agricultural Scouts which is a bit…and some of them call us web-footed so…it’s friendly rivalry.
Lisa : Can you tell me about your uniform when you were young?
Geoff : Shorts. Summer and winter and you wore thick jumpers and we all wore our uniform when we were afloat as well. Nowadays, they change, they don’t wear the uniforms when they’re afloat. But yes, we wore our uniforms at all times. But as I say it was the shorts and we wore shorts till ’67 and then we went into long trousers so yes, it’s quite nice in the snow wearing your shorts (laughing).
Lisa : Did you wear hats?
Geoff : Yes, we wore white hats and at that time all Scouts wore hats and then when the uniforms were…well ’67 when the whole of the scouting was changed they got rid of the hats, but Sea Scouts didn’t get rid of hats. They still kept their sailors’ caps and the…after a few years the Headquarters were talking about getting rid of them. But the Navy, because of the RN scheme says, “If you get rid of the Sea Scouts’ hats, like that, we will stop the Grants.” So, in other words, they blackmailed them. And not all Scouts use hats. We don’t here, wear our Sea Scout hats regularly, we wear baseball caps with our RN number on, RN09, which we use all the year round and the group actually own hats so for special occasions like St George’s Day Parade or the Remembrance Day Parade, we hire them out so to speak . Some of them are quite old and we’ve had to buy some new ones because some of the Scouts have got big heads. But, we’ve got a lot of hats … and also if they go over to HMS Bristol camps they have to wear white hats for them. But as I say, they’re so expensive, the hats, that we say we don’t do it … but a lot of groups still use the hats all the time and a lot of Sea Scouts that aren’t RN recognised don’t wear any hats. Because the funny thing is if you go on a Scout Parade and it starts to rain, we’ve got hats (laughing).
Lisa : Can you tell me if you took part in any Regattas or events like that or Cowes Week when you were a young Scout?
Geoff : Yes, I can remember one Cowes Week, after we’d got our 18-footer, dinghies …. Cowes Week, the dinghies used to race in the afternoon off Cowes Green and it was in later years when the main clubs bribed the dinghies to go away because they were getting in the way, so they were moved around to Gurnard for Dinghy week. But at that time, we were racing off the Green and I can remember we were coming off the Royal Yacht Squadron and coming across on the tide and getting the boat wrapped up on the anchor chain of a Belgian Minesweeper. There was quite a strong tide off the entrance to the Harbour. We were pushed more and more onto this chain, and we couldn’t get our centre board up because the chain was actually in the space where the centre board come up. If we pushed ourselves off we would probably have got smashed on the bow of the Minesweeper. So, we’re sitting there trying to work out what to do. East Cowes Sailing Club rescue boat came near us but didn’t want to come too close and while this was going on the Belgian sailor on anchor watch took one look at us and started looking the other way; he didn’t want to know. In the end, the East Cowes Rescue Boat managed to get a line across to us and managed to drag us off. But, it was quite an interesting thing and our Leader at the time was “what do we do now” mode (laughing). We hadn’t come across that before and I don’t want to again either. Because it could have been very serious, but we got away with it. But, no, we didn’t really get involved too much ‘cos that was a fun event and again, it’s like everything else, Leaders have to give up their time to do it at that time most of our Leaders were on just a 2 weeks holiday a year so we didn’t do any summer camps either for a long time, because again; and then we had one Leader came along that had more time, had more holiday, and we started doing Mainland Camps. But that’s the thing with this, all Scout Leaders are volunteers and you’ve got to give up your own holiday to do things.
26 minutes 19 seconds
Lisa : Tell me a bit about the transition from being a Scout to becoming a Leader
Geoff : Well I was … at 18 I went to what was then known as Rover Scouts, 18-24, and they were attached to Scout groups and the Headquarters got rid of them eventually ‘cos they said they were more drinking clubs – true. Friday nights after our meeting down Cross Street we used to go down to the Solent, which was at the end of St Mary’s road and we had our own table in the back bar of this thing. But again, we were over 18 and the … but we were a good support, we were supportive and I what was known as a Rover Scout Instructor, so I used to instruct the Troop. But at that time just before I became 18 I joined what was then Decca Radar, which is now BA Systems and that’s before all main buildings were built. And I joined Decca, was sent up to Weybridge initially for training and then when I moved back to the Island I then got talked into becoming a Scout Leader. That was in 1964. So, I’ve been a Scout Leader, what now, 54 years. At that time, Leader training was very random, you didn’t have to do much training basically because we had the experience of coming up through as a Scout, you knew everything so to speak. You don’t, but you thought you knew everything. It’s over the years when Headquarters started going … ‘cos a lot of the training was optional then, but the … you then had a sort of “well I think you need to know a bit more about this, and you need a bit of this and if you were an Assistant Leader when they brought the training in compulsory, the Assistant Leader, you only did so much training and if you became a full Scout Leader running the Section you had to do a lot more training. And then over the years they said, “Well why should one leader have a lot more knowledge, training knowledge? When that person’s not around the others had to step in” so then all the training became compulsory over the years for everybody and eventually you had all to do the same sort of training. There’s no difference between running a Section and being an Assistant Leader. Basically, you’re doing the same role. And, for a long time I was actually County Training Manager. I was responsible for training Leaders on the Island and I did that for about 10 years. Again, the system kept changing but again people came in … “I know all this”, but not as an adult point of view and also how to put it over to young people. A lot of people knew the subject they were very clever and if you think of a fantastic scientist who hadn’t a clue how to put the information over to the ‘joe public’ and that we had Leaders like that who knew all about it but couldn’t put it over to young people, couldn’t understand young people. And of course, young people are all different. You’ve got one person who’s ideal and then you’ve got an autistic kid, you’ve got to do everything for everybody and that’s the … I can remember as a Leader before I took over Training, we had one of the Headquarters people came down to do a training course for us and he was talking about diversity. “What coloured people have you got on the Isle of Wight?” – “none.” ‘Cos this is before … obviously things have changed. “Have you got any Chinese takeaways, or Indian takeaways?” – “Well yes, oh yes.” And we had Mac who was the Southern Vectis driver, who was a Jamaican, who was a JP but people didn’t think of them as being coloured because he fitted in and he was just a one-off. And, over the years, Scouting has to look at diversity because obviously things like Bradford and what have you where it’s got really bad and where the Head Teacher years ago got sacked because he happened to refer to the white’s as the minority. But, the thing is, we don’t have this. I mean here on the Isle of Wight it’s all ‘Poles’, but the thing is we don’t have this problem here that other people have and we’re lucky we don’t have this situation. But, at that time, you didn’t think of people being different, people were just Scouts and the trouble was you then did everything for the standard Scout, you didn’t think about the ones that were, that had medical problems and I think….and we didn’t have girls then. So, I can remember when we took the first girl into the Troop I gave her a lift home from Camp because her mother lived up the road from me and normally we’re not allowed to have young people in a car with one adult but the mother contacted me and said, the grandmother was ill, “Could I run Holly home?” So, I said, “Ok.” I asked her when we were going home about how she fitted in with the Troop etc and she couldn’t understand the question because as far as she was concerned, she was a Scout, she wasn’t a female. I think it’s the Leaders that were thinking of more problems with the young people. I mean, now the Scout rules say we can sleep young people together as long as they’ve got separate changing facilities. If we have a sleep-over in the hall here, all the kids would be in the main hall. Leaders have to go in separate rooms because at one time we used to have boys in the main hall and the girls were in the Committee Room at the far end. But the girls have to come through the main hall to get to the toilets and showers. And, now, obviously you’ve got a situation where you wouldn’t have a one-to-one. But I can remember when I was Training Manager, I used to ask Leaders, “You’ve got three 16-17-year olds hiking across Dartmoor; two guys and a girl. Two small hike tents, how do you sleep them?” “Oh, two boys in one and the girl in the other.” “Do you like your daughter to be in a tent on her own in the middle of Dartmoor?” “Oh, er.” Three people in one tent and all the kit in the other.” “Oh yeah.” And this is the sort of thing that it’s the adult that are actually need converting and not the young people. That’s where things have changed over the years. Whereas when I was younger, when I first became a Leader, we were only male orientated anyway, and you didn’t even think at the time about this problem about an adult and a kid. Obviously, nowadays you’ve got this, we’ve you’ve got what’s known as the ‘yellow card’; all the do’s and don’ts. Don’t get yourself into a situation which could be … someone could actually accuse you of something. But the thing is in those days, nobody thought anything about it, it’s one of those things. And of course, as in any youth organisation over the years you suddenly have a ‘bad egg’ suddenly that comes to the surface which the Press suddenly have huge headlines. But, very, very…
33 minutes 33 seconds
Lisa : Was there specialist training for Sea Scout Leaders?
Geoff : Not in the normal scheme. We do for the RN Scheme, we do run weekends for training up over at HMS Bristol or in London, at the London Docklands. We run courses for Leaders. The basic training, we are Scout Leaders, so the basic training’s the same. The specialised bit is actually what is the boating-wise, which I obviously have to work towards your boating permits. Now I’ve got permits in … well I’m actually the County Assessor for rowing or pulling and I did the Pilot course up in Bris… Birmingham rather when they were trying to work out with the Amateur Rowing Association how we could control it. I also got, through my sailing I used to teach down at the National Sailing Centre which is now the UKSA. I was what was known as a Visiting Instructor down there. And, I was a Senior Instructor there and from that I got a sailing…dinghy sailing and also power boating ‘cos when you’re an Instructor you have to drive safety boats as well. So that’s come from there and I had my own … I went from dinghy sailing up to cruising boats, so I got my training for that but the … so I do cover every bit of boating except paddle sports. I don’t like canoes. I don’t like sitting in a canoe. I’ve done it a few times, but literally… and our Group don’t do paddle sports here because we’ve got no Leaders qualified in paddle sports but we can do it out at our Corf Scout Camp because we managed to get the … inner part of the Corf Lake alongside our New Town Creek which is tidal, we managed to get it registered as non-tidal ‘cos there’s no tidal flow. It either goes in or out. There’s water there or not water, the only times of flow is when there’s about a foot of water in the gully. So, therefore, we can do canoeing out there which we hire canoes from the campsite, so we do canoeing out there. But we’ve got no Leaders here that trained in that because all our boating’s come through different sources. We’ve had people that come from the Merchant Navy. We’ve had … one of our former Leaders was in charge of the Police Marine Division, a very experienced sailor, our Group Scout Leader at the moment is actually a Master Mariner. So, you know, it’s basically… all our training has come from experience. In the old days it was usually our Leaders were all trained through the Royal Navy from National Service. So, of course all their seamanship skills were that way. ‘Cos the other advantage is, if you were an RN group if you were called up for National Service you went into the Navy whereas in the old days it was very much a case of random. But being an RN recognised group, you were all, “Oh, you’re obviously interested in the Navy”, you’d go in the Navy. So that’s when I was a Scout. All the Leaders came through the National Service and that’s where…it was that sort of seamanship skills you were learning. Now, our boat training we’re doing with young people now it’s more lightweight stuff but good fun.
Lisa : Can you tell me a bit about when you moved to the building that we’re in now?
Geoff : We were in Cross Street in the mid-70’s, early 70’s. The building we knew was going to disappear, so we looked at where we’re doing out boating based down at Whitegates off Arctic Road. We looked at land round here to develop, put our own building up, and we were looking at a piece of land close to here but there was a dispute on what the land was worth and about three or four Solicitors down the line to get to the owner. And, then this land which was an old coal siding for Cowes to Newport Railway. When British Rail transferred all the land on the Island, railway land to the Isle of Wight Council, the following Monday we stepped in and said, “Can we have this bit of land? It’s flat, very close to the water, it’s an old coal siding.” And they’d already knocked down the Crossing-Keepers house so it was just completely flat, and we looked at the Council and said, “Now, can we have this?” “Yes, yes, yes, we get rid of some of the land.” “How much for?” Well, they’d already been looking at some Grand Aids, some from the Medina Borough Council and then some from the County Council. So, they said, “Well, these Grants are all earmarked towards … you, you can have it for £2,000” which is what the other bit of land we were looking at was worth. And we put a bit of wire across the front and several years later, we had to raise a lot of money, and several years later whilst it was just a jungle, people were applying for planning permission. The Council said, “Don’t you want this land?” “Yeah, we just haven’t got the money to put the building up.” When we eventually put the building up we had a … it was 40ft wide which was the maximum we could fit in with the road alongside and we went back 106ft because that’s what we could afford. When Lord Mountbatten, who was then Governor of the Isle of Wight, but was also Commodore of Sea Scouts, when he opened the building for us it was unlined; it was just a bare shell. It was completely unlined and over the years we obviously did a lot more work on it and the major bit was in 2002 we took 8 foot off the main hall and converted the toilets and put showers in and what have you. And then in 2012 we did a major refurbishment because we had a leaky asbestos roof. So, we had to get rid of the asbestos which meant that once the roof was missing, obviously the water got in so eventually we had to completely re-do the hall. And, that was a major, major work. Then Dame Ellen McArthur came back and reopened the hall, so to speak, after refurbishment and, of course, in the meantime we bought a pre-fab just after the late 70’s, we bought a pre-fab from the old Seaview Road Estate at the top of Cowes. We bought one for, ten quid it cost us. We knocked it down, sold the innards for £30 scrap, knocked it down and put it back up exactly as it was. Every panel was numbered, and we put an up and over garage door in the end. We used a 3rd of it for newspaper storage, the rest to put boats in, ‘cos we used to collect newspapers then for selling and then of course it’s now, it’s over-full ‘cos it’s winter because a lot of the boats are stored undercover anyway. It’s over-full and six of our boats are outside (laughing) at the moment. And we still have, in the main hall here, we have a boat workshop which was originally designed around the two boats we had in the mid 70’s, a 12 foot boat and an 18 foot boat, which stayed in here for about a month before we sold them because they were wood and we’ve gone over to completely now to plastic boats now, less maintenance. But, yeah, over the years we’ve just developed things as we’ve gone along. But I say, in 2012 when we had to replace the asbestos roof here, the old boat store which was pre-fab, we got rid of the asbestos in that as well ‘cos of the Asbestos Licence and it’s now, looks like a palace and that’s what a lot of people in Terminus Road call it when they look down on it now; it looks quite smart. So, the only thing left is the old metal frame, ‘cos even the wooden floor we replaced; put a concrete floor in ‘cos that was sagging in places. At one time we couldn’t do any development there because we had a badger set underneath. We still have foxes round here now. It’s quite funny because we’re on a railway ballast on a railway track there’s quite a lot of railway ballast and what-have-you and coal dust from the coal siding. And, one time we came in here there, there were lots of little holes everywhere. Fox cubs had been digging in…trying to dig into it but of course didn’t get very far but they’d managed to find the soft soil round the ramps into the buildings from our up and over doors. So, they had some fun there. It looked quite funny looking at what they managed to do here.
42 minutes 54 seconds
Lisa : Can you tell me a bit about the … during your time as a Leader, how you’ve managed to acquire all these boats that you have now? Because you said that when you were a Scout yourself, there was only one boat that you had, and now you have lots.
Geoff : That’s right, when I was a Scout we didn’t have any, but then we gradually…well our first boat we bought in actual fact we actually were be-quested a what was then what’s known as an Itchen Ferry it was just about 20 foot long, converted fishing boat with a bowsprit about a mile and a half long when we went out in it. But that wasn’t very suitable, 7-foot draught, sailing it in the river here was interesting. So, we sold that and got the money to build an 18-foot pulling and sailing boat; 12-foot boat we were given and then over the years, we sold them when we moved in here late 70’s. Over a period of time we’ve been given some, we’ve bought … I mean most of our sailing boats, the Pico’s, we bought from the UKSA when they sell their fleet off every 4 years, we get them second hand. They’re still suitable for us, they’re not suitable for UK sailing any more ‘cos they go out daily, but they’re good enough for us and we’ve obviously had to do repairs and what have you on them, like that. But having identical boats helps because if you’re trying to teach Scouts sailing it’s no good having a completely different type of boat because one week they go in one boat and a different week they’re in a different boat and it’s confusing. To have them all identical boats. Now sailing, I can still teach sailing, but I teach it from the Safety Boat because I’ve got a bad knee and I can’t jump around in a Pico anymore’ like that. But I’d quite happily sit alongside in the Safety Boat alongside them telling them what to do and then send them on their way. Quite funny, up the river it’s no problem ‘cos basically if they get it wrong they just run up into the mud. If they’re going, if they’re … getting them up the river we either tow them or they’ll sail up, but we can always use the RIB, that’s our rigid inflatable Safety Boat as a mobile fender. We just get in between them and either grab them or kick ‘em round. Whereas up the river, there’s no problem, they just, off Kingston Wharf they’ve got plenty of water to mess around in. Our rowing boats, smaller ones we can use as what’s known as the ‘pool’ if UKSA are at high tide they can just work inside a little square inside so they can’t go anywhere. The younger ones initially do because they’ve not … getting them to row in one direction helps. But before they become part of a boats crew where four people are rowing. Once they’ve got a bit of experience, they’re ok to take them out in the river. The biggest problem is sometimes there’s a lot of traffic in the river. It’s like at Cowes Week, we can’t go boating because there’s no water in the river for a start, it’s full of boats. But we have to be very tight on what we can do with them because obviously there’s a lot of boats around for them to hit. Any larger boats, we’ve either got to make sure a Leader’s in when they’re rowing, or ‘gotta make sure that we’ve got an experienced Scout, an older Scout, in charge depending on the size of the boat cos our boats vary. We start off about 6’6 our smallest dinghy and they go up to 16 foot for rowing and they’re various sizes. And, a lot of those we can put an outboard engine on and you do it for powerboat training as well. We’ve just converted our safety RIB and a dory we’ve got here now. We’ve converting them to centre steering with console whereas before they were tiller steered. Because, again we wanted a different variety of boat and one of our Leaders is a Powerboat Instructor at Gurnard Sailing Club and he runs powerboat courses for the older Scouts, and they get certificates from that. So, we need to give them a variety of different craft. So, it’s…this is the thing, as I say, a lot of the boats, as I say, we bought, others we acquired them very cheaply and quite often I can remember when we bought our first plastic pulling boat, a 14 footer, we went up to the … the guy said, “Oh, it’s at Folly’s.” So, we looked in at Folly, we went back up to Carisbrooke and said, “Yes, we’re interested in it.” “Oh, by the way” he said, “I’ve got all this lot, I’m giving up boating.” When we opened his garage, it was solid of come in handy boating gear. It lived out in our entrance hall I think for a long time ‘till we worked out what to do with it. It was everything that you could think of which was useful. That’s the thing is …but most of the boats, we’ve actually bought over a period of time. Some with Grants, we get Grants through from the RN scheme and that’s a 50/50 thing. We’ve had a few small Grants off the Cowes Council for things like launching trolleys and the odd outboard engine. We go in every 2 or 3 years, we apply for a Grant towards something. But, as I say, we’re looking at … because the Group also own a minibus and a big box trolley that we use for camp. So again, we’ve got Grants towards that. But, like the minibus, it was up for sale, one of our Leaders happened to work close to the guy that was selling it, looked at it and because it was Scouts he gave us a big discount on it. This is the sort of thing that the Scouts don’t get everything given to them, but we do get supported quite well. Again, you’ve got to be doing things. Its no-good saying go to the begging bowl. We’ve actually got to do something about raising money. That’s the thing is, we’ve got to what’s known as the Gilwell Winter Camp which is held in January each year up in Essex, a Headquarters camp in Essex. And, every year they go up and most of our small tents, we’ve got from ‘festival’, the Isle of Wight Festival, we go out clearing tents on the Monday. They’re not suitable, and a bit of a mess. This year, or last year, the Scouts decided … they said, “Well we need proper tents, small tents.” And, we said to the Parents Committee, “You know, we want some money towards this. If the Scouts raise some money towards these tents can you match fund it from the Group funds?” “Yes, ok.” So, the Scouts in actual fact, made a lot of Christmas goodies, because just before Christmas they had a Wednesday night Christmas Fayre here. All the parents and locals came in. They raised nearly £1,000. Spent the lot on tents in January, fantastic site, again at discount ‘cos it’s for Scouts.
50 minutes, 22 seconds
Lisa : Can you tell me about how you look after and maintain the boats and if the Scouts are involved in that?
Geoff : Yes, well we’ve got the Workshop at the end of the building here and every, end of every season we know which boats need work on. Some boats need repair, others we need some mods, like our Safety Boats this winter we’ve been doing some mods on. We’ve got another sailing boat we’ve been given, but we haven’t done anything with it yet. That’s meant to be coming into the Workshop to do some work on it. With a hole in it at the moment, that’s why we were given it. But being glass fibre, the Scouts will do the work on it. We will get them doing glass fibre repairs. Any painting that’s got to be done; they will do the work. Where we’ve just converted one boat of the moment, one of our Rescue Boats has gone from tiller steering to centre console wheel steering, we’ve had to do a lot of work on converting that. We’ve had 2 or 3 Scouts a week working on that, sawing things down, screwing things and even the engines they will maintain, stripped every winter, like that. The Scouts do that, take them apart.
Lisa : And, has that tradition continued so when you were younger and you had those wooden boats, were you involved in maintenance work on those?
Geoff : Yeah, we were then because of course at that time they were kept outside and being wooden they were painted and varnished and of course, yes you had to have Scouts do that work. Varnishing boats outside’s not very good so all our original 18-foot boat was varnished inside. By the time we sold it, it was painted inside, gradually we brought the paint line up, got rid of less varnish. But yes, we’ve always had to use Scouts because to be honest we needed the labour. I mean with glass fibre boats we can do it ourselves, but we will use the Scouts as part of their training and they’ve got more respect, especially when some of the younger ones stripping an outboard down that needs work on because it’s not working properly or it’s got a bent shaft or something like that we have to replace bits on it. That’s part of the instruction. Yes, it’s part of owning boats so to speak, not just a case of going out and wrecking them, they’ve got to repair them.
Lisa : And things must have changed now with regard to safety and the buoyancy aids that they need to wear compared to when you were younger?
Geoff : Ah yes, I mean when I started young, we didn’t have anything. Now, if we’re sailing in the Solent or in the river, we have to wear buoyancy aids. Now a buoyancy aid is designed to keep you afloat and your head above the water if you’re conscious. If you go in the water unconscious with a buoyancy aid your head can fall below the water so you have to wear a full lifejacket which keeps your head out of the water. Now back in 2012 when we rowed round the Island on a sponsored row, again we were raising money for replacing our roof here, we had to use lifejackets and luckily our Group Scout Leader, who’s in the marine business, just before the Southampton Boat Show talked to a contact of his and we borrowed a load of lifejackets from this company to go round the Isle of Wight. Now the Scouts were rowing in sections, like from Cowes to Thorness, Thorness to Yarmouth, Yarmouth round to Freshwater. Luckily the weather was absolutely superb but the … we had two escort boats with us, but a 14-foot pulling boat. It’s interesting when we came round by St Catherine’s it was getting dark and very, very lumpy and I was in one of the escort boats and it was very, very difficult to actually see what we were doing. But anyway, we got into Ventnor Yacht Haven and tied up there overnight and camped at the South Wight camp site which also belongs to the Isle of Wight Scouts and the following morning, flat calm and there wasn’t enough water in actual fact in the Ventnor Yacht Haven for us to get out. They got the pulling boat out, the one that the 14-foot boat that we were rowing and the rigid inflatable but the launch we couldn’t get out at the time, we had to wait for it to come up a bit and we managed to tow it out. But across Sandown Bay we actually had 4 Cubs rowing with their leader, 10-year olds, on the flat, part of the sponsorship, and when we came into the Royal Yacht Squadron at the end, we got cannoned by the Royal Yacht Squadron and the parents that supported us there was fantastic. And, we had a lot of support from people that were sailing down, they turned on the Isle of Wight Radio. Isle of Wight Radio were ringing us up about every hour to find out what was going on. And, a lot of support from yachtsmen came past. But the interesting thing is, I collapsed at the end; it was on my permit I’m the only one with a rowing permit for round the back of the Wight. And I literally… it was one of those things.
55 minutes, 57 seconds
Lisa : Whilst we were talking about, mentioning about safety, can you tell me about the relationship that the Scouts have had with the RNLI over the years?
Geoff : Basically, the RNLI courses trained … it’s actually more interested in training people not to be rescued and I think the thing is we took the Scouts down, which often youth organisations schools go to the local Lifeboat Station and basically they have a look round but at the same time they’re getting a bit educated as well. It was after one of those visits about 5 years when we took the Scouts down to have a look at Cowes Lifeboat that I got talked into, by the Station Manager, into getting involved with the visits and education team. He said, “Well, you know enough about boating and various other things and young people” and that’s developed over a period of time. And we got quite a good education team and some of our ideas we’ve invented have been adopted nationally. We got an award two years ago for the achievements that we were doing and end up going to the Guildhall in London for a reception. But the thing is, it’s great working in parallel because a lot of the ideas that I’ve used on cold water shock and all the models and everything we’ve used, I’ve developed for Scouting here so it works in parallel like that. And I think this is the thing again, everything we do with Scouting, the Leaders have their own experience. Now I’ve got boating experience, I’m now getting the safety experience through the back door so to speak. And again, we can develop to our young people and they say, the professionals in the RNLI, say you need to get hold of kids three times before they become teenagers. Well we all know teenagers don’t listen to anything. But if you get hold of them…Cowes RNL, we start Reception Classes from the local school; they come along. And surprising you hear the kids going down the stairs afterwards, their teachers ask them questions; it’s surprising what they’ve picked up. The young people, in actual fact, pick up a lot more than we think, and I think it’s the thing … so we are … Sea Scouts looking at teaching young people to do activities but safely which is basically what RNLI’s interested in doing. RNLI are more interested in not rescuing them than having to go and rescue them.
Lisa : You mentioned to me about some members of the Royal Family that you’ve met during your time in Scouting. Do you want to tell me a bit more about that?
Geoff : Probably, I mean I used to do my Cowes Week, I’ve come across the Duke of Edinburgh umpteen times. I had him for an hour alongside me one day. He was killing time before he went off to do something. Well I worked up at the Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes Week, and I forgot who I was talking to. That’s the thing about it .. all Royals, I can remember Princess Royal came out to Scout Camp at Corf to open one of our buildings beginning of Cowes Week and being Deputy County Commissioner I was introduced to her. She said, “What’s the toilets like here?” I sort of thought and my County Commissioner started panicking, “No, no, don’t want to use the toilet, I just want to know what the situation’s here, being a natural campsite.” I said, “Put it this way, when I was a Scout you didn’t dig the hole in the same place the following year.” Now of course, it’s all plumbed in although we’ve had a problem with that. But the Duke of Kent, of course, is National Scout President and again our County Commissioner at the time knew him privately. So, whenever the Duke of Kent came to the Island we used to have a fund-raising lunch out at Haseley Manor and ‘cos he’s now got on a bit now so like everybody we’re getting a bit older. His brother, Prince Michael came to a spell around the Island race a couple of years ago and he came along to Cowes RNLI because he’s President of the Royal Life Saving Society. He wanted to speak to the Education team, how it put it over. He wasn’t interested in the Lifeboat Crew, he more or less walked past them. He wanted to come and see the Education Team how we put over the beach safety and various other bits and pieces. And of course, the ‘piece de resistance’ of course was 2012 Diamond Jubilee Year when the Queen was doing, going round the country and she came to Cowes as Maritime Britain and the Lord Lieutenant asked me to sort out something. One of the 7 marine charities in Cowes Yacht Haven that the Queen was going to look at, and I had to have six sea scouts on a stand doing something. So, I had three making ropes with a rope making machine I’ve got here and three doing things with the ropes. And the Queen was meant to be with us four minutes and she stayed with us 10. I was told afterwards by a Lady in Waiting that we had the best stand because we had kids doing something, rather than just stood up shaking hands, which was good. So, as I say, I’ve been a bit of luck, it’s one of those things. It’s lucky, I mean to say the most times it’s the Duke of Edinburgh and you forget who you’re speaking to, to be honest. I can remember, in fact I got told off by the Cowes Commissioner because the Duke of Edinburgh had come round the opposite way to the Queen in the Yacht Haven and the Duke says, “You’re stalling.” “Yes Sir, because we haven’t got time to re-set our rope making machine up before your wife comes along”. And I got told off by the County Commissioner as referring to the Queen as ‘his wife’ because having spoken to the Duke then for so many times off the record Cowes Week, I just automatically went into that sort of speak. Because the Duke wants to be, all Royals want to be treated as human beings. Once you’ve got them through the ‘bowing and scraping’ and his daughter, Princess Royal, she’s exactly the same as her father. She’s got the same manner. I’ve noticed the Duke at Receptions, he sees people dodging getting into line just so that when he comes along, so he’ll speak to them; he automatically goes round them. And one year, this was years ago at the Cowes Week Reception Squadron, I was there with a work colleague as it happens and I was wearing a Scout tie not a yachting tie and the Duke suddenly saw that tie, came across to speak to me and says, “Scouting great, I can speak to someone else other than bloody sailing”. I think it’s the thing here, all the Royals are the same, but the Duke and his daughter are basically are the same. They don’t like all these people that are posing and want you know; they want to find the real human side of it. And I think this is the thing.
1 hour 3 minutes
Lisa : And, what have the children thought over the years about meeting people; you know dignitaries and members of the Royal Family?
Geoff : I don’t know, it’s just one of those things I think. I can remember we … the Duke of Kent was going to Osborne House on a private visit to see where Queen Victoria, one of his relations, a distant relation, I can’t remember how many times removed it is now, but he wanted to see a private house and they’d just opened the Durbar Room so English Heritage had it all sorted out. Our County Commissioner having known the Duke privately suddenly had a Scout guide of honour outside. It was lunchtime so we managed to get them out of school. The Duke came along and shook hands with everybody, and he’s got a very tight handshake which is unusual for Royals because they shake hands so many times they’re usually limp handshakes, you know. And, he spoke to every Scout and then it was going to be 2hrs before he went again, because he came in by helicopter. So, we sent the Scouts all round, loose around the grounds and then we got a message that he was going to leave a half-hour early. I had to hurtle round and find all the Scouts and it started to rain. We were stood outside, and the Duke was inside talking to all these English Heritage people and all the hierarchy that had just come down to the Island and the Duke said apparently, “Excuse me, I’ve got to leave, the Scouts are outside. I want to go to speak to them as it’s raining.” And, he left them. We’d hijacked the event in effect because of him being National President and upsetting the Heritage on that one (laughing). But again, I think the Royals do a fantastic job, you know, and I think this sort of this, sometimes it’s the standard plastic smile, you know, but this is the thing that er …
Lisa : So, just looking back on your time as a Leader. You started in 1964, it sounds to me like you’ve got no plans to retire from Scouting?
Geoff : No.
Lisa : (laughing) You’re still enjoying it just as much now.
Geoff : Yeah, things are different, I’m obviously not as fit as I was when I was younger. I’ve got a bad back and a bad knee. But the kids have changed because society has changed. Young people, I mean we’ve got girls in the movement now, in fact I think we’re probably about 50/50 in our Troop at the moment. But the girls came across originally, well originally, we got girls into the movement what was then Venture Scouts which was the 16, sorry the 15 to 20. They came in then and then gradually got introduced to the other sections and girls joined us because we were doing more activities, adventure activities than Guides were. The Guides have changed their outlook but a lot of the activities you do depends on your Leaders. Because a lot of the guide leaders were still the’ tweed and twin-set’ type Leaders I think who weren’t really active. They’ve got a lot of good leaders now, and they’ve changed, they’ve had to reinvent themselves. The thing is because you got brothers and sisters in families, the same thing goes through the Scouting. It doesn’t matter which section they’re in, they still come through doing the same sort of activities and the young people, they seem to have more ailments. I mean the number of people with asthma and various other things with their puffers and epi-pens. We have epi-pens sitting on top of the cabinet there and we have permission from parents, written permission from parents to use the epi-pen on a young person to cover ourselves. But the, when I was young, we didn’t have that sort of problem. I was born at the end of the War. We didn’t have central heating, you had two coal fires in the house, coal dust, parent smoked alongside you and you played in the garden and messed around and went out on your bike for the morning and came back with cut knees because you were riding around in an old bomb site and you’d fallen over, things like that. We didn’t have the diseases; we became immune to all these situations. I think society now where it’s living in the central heating, tv’s, all the electronic gadgets they’ve got etc. We have, we’ve given them activities they don’t get at home. Where you’ve got a lot of single-parent families now than you used to have. Quite often the only male they see will be down here so, of course, often you’re the father-figure to them, so you’ve got to be careful anyway. And things have changed like that. A lot of the Scouting stuff we do is … quite a lot of it is technical stuff, it’s not all practical seamanship stuff now. I’ve just been working on the communicators badge with some of our Scouts last night, but I’ve modified it from the official one which it’s doing normal … I forget what it’s called now. What I’m doing now is marine radio stuff, I’ve got some ordinary short range phones, radios which they can use around the hall, that we use at camp and what-have-you so they can mess around with them because they’re private channels; but we’re actually going through teaching them how to use a marine radio and the various frequencies they can use for emergencies and things, and how to call up in an emergency and all the other things, and we monitor channel 69 here which is the Cowes Harbour frequency so you can hear the Ferries coming in where they have to ask permission to come in, even the Floating Bridge has to ask permission to go across the river and all this sort of thing. So, they’re starting to pick things, which is completely different to when I was young. So, we’re looking at more modern things. Some of them last night were cooking cakes which is … no way. See, when you go to camp, they’ve got their camp at the end of May, the County Scout Camp out at Corf, and they will do their own cooking there, under supervision obviously, but at home? A lot of the kids are not allowed near the kitchen, obviously depends again on the mother. Because you’ve got working Mum’s and they haven’t got the time to give to their children. When I was young, your Mum didn’t work, not when you were in your formative years. The parents seemed to have more time for their kids, children. Nowadays a lot of them are latch-key children and the parents get home after they get back from school and they’re so shattered at the end of the day they haven’t got time to give to the young people. But I remember one of the first camps with a female, she was in charge of the Patrol and I was shadowing their Patrol to make sure they did the right, cooked things right. It was breakfast time and they decided they wanted scrambled eggs. So, they mixed it all up then this girl was looking round, “What’s up, you looking for a microwave?” “Yeah, I’d….” and I had to teach her how to cook scrambled eggs the old-fashioned way and getting a fork in the corner of the container because it burns in there. And that’s the thing, we are getting away from everything being electric. I think this is the thing, we’re getting back to basics, but we have to modernise as things have changed.
1 hour 11 minutes 25 seconds
Lisa : Would you say that you are playing an important role in the community here in giving opportunities to children that they might not have otherwise?
Geoff : Well yes, I think that any youth organisation is helping develop young people. I think the Section, the Scouts Section that I work with the 10 and a half to 14 year olds is probably the most informative Section where they’re developing themselves. By the time they become 13-14 they know what they want to do so to speak, but the difference between a 10-year-old coming in and a 14year old going out, it’s very different. It’s interesting to see how the older ones will help the younger ones especially when they’re at Camp. The way Scouting works, it’s used to actually support each other, and I think that’s the thing about it. It surprises when I’ve seen some kids come in and you think, you know, they’re not ‘gonna survive until they get adult and I can remember there’s a long, long time ago a Scout who’s a pain in the proverbial, when he left the Troop he came up, thanked us for helping him and we thought how the hell did we help him. It turned out, we didn’t know at the time, but the family life he had at home with an abusive father and a missing mum, the only time he could come out and have some fun was with us.
Lisa : So, what do you think, just to kind of draw things together now, looking back what are the most memorable times?
Geoff : It’s difficult to think because things have changed so much over the years. In ’79 I went over to the States, I was … every 4 years we held an International Jamboree, and in ’79 I was the (…inaudible…) Leader for the Isle of Wight for the Iranian Jamboree. And, that didn’t happen. It was just when the Ayatollah got, came in … we knew something was going to happen so we were … all the Leaders were switched on that something might happen and our Jamboree Troop, we were linked in with several other counties and British Scouts in Western Europe, and our Jamboree troop of 36 boys and 4 leaders…32 boys with 4 leaders, we actually went canoeing in Maine, north of Maine in the States and thinking we were meant to be camping with thousands of others at a big camp and all the various activities and badge swapping and what have you. We ended up with eight boys, an American guide from the Base and the British Leader in the wilds of nowhere. And, when I think of that, with that, you weren’t even allowed to take soap because it would attract the bears, you had to clean your teeth at least 100 yards away from the riverbank so that it … the toothpaste would filter through, so it wouldn’t go into the pure water, we were drinking … the water came out of the stream, no purification or anything. When I think of that … and that’s through Scouting.
1 hour 15 minutes 6 seconds
Lisa : And, what about this place that we live, we live on, this Island, the Isle of Wight. Would you live anywhere else?
Geoff : No, the only time I’ve been off the Island was when I went to College when I joined Decca. I’ve a brother, he’s three years younger than me. He left the Island to go to Manchester University and hasn’t come back. He lives in Reading now. But, the thing is it’s because of my … the environment. I love the sea. I mean I taught myself to sail round in Gurnard and I can remember at College if we came back at weekends, you’d get back to about Petersfield on the train and you’d start to smell the salt air. I remember we were … one weekend we were still stuck up in Surrey and we walked along to find the river, literally because of the dampness we wanted; it’s the atmosphere. So, I’ve lived on the Island all my life other than that. Ok, there’s all the arguments about we want a bridge and this and that, having seen Hayling Island, no way. ‘Cos we like to be separated from the Mainland; we’ve got a different way of life over here. Things are getting diluted but we’ve still got this slight, what I’d say rural type of thing, but I mean, for 17 years, when I worked for Plessey they were by then, 17 years I was working up at the Test Range on the south of the Island above Shorwell, where you had wild animals walking round the compound, stoats living under your building. I do belong to the Isle of Wight Ramblers and it’s the natural side of the Isle of Wight I think. You’ve got the industrial side but it doesn’t take long to get away and get onto the footpaths and get on top of the Downs and something. And the views from the top of the Downs across the sea and what have you. Having been dragged up at Gurnard at a beach hut there I’m always used to having Hurn horizon and the New Forest the other side. I can’t quite get used to the back of the Wight where you’ve got no horizon. I mean I’ve sailed obviously down to what’s … Dorset coast and in the Poole Harbour a lot but the thing is it’s the Solent. Once you’ve come back into the Solent you feel happy, you’ve got this natural boundary, there’s always something to look at and it’s a way of life. I mean my brother lives in Reading and it’s almost like living in London in some respects. You know, it’s busy, busy, busy. Whereas over here it’s not. I used to like the sign which they removed a few years ago, at the Ferry Terminals. Drive carefully, our Isle of Wight roads are different. It got removed because someone said it wasn’t the…someone on the Council said it wasn’t the done thing, But to be honest it is true, you know, we’ve got a slower pace of life over here and we’ve got a lot of people that want to come over here and change it. But I think the fact is, as I say, being born and bred on the Island, that’s the thing, I would say all my hobbies I’ve retired, I took early retirement at 60 because of the job I was doing I was getting a bit fed up with anyway and also they suddenly announced 100 odd voluntary redundancies so I left quickly, so I left at 60. And, I’m busier now than I ever was but the thing is I’m doing what I want to do, the scouting with the RNLI and of course I’m now one of the Tour Guides over the Inshore Lifeboat Centre across the other side of the water anyway. So yeah, it’s all linked with the sea and it’s you know, I’m happy.
Lisa : Thank you very ,very much Geoff.
Geoff : You’re welcome.
Lisa : It’s been a pleasure.
Interview ends
1 hour 19 minutes 18 seconds
Transcribed May 2019
Chris Litton