Centenary Dinner - Reply on Behalf of the Ninth
Professor Michael Steel replied on behalf of the Ninth.
Thanks to Chris for his reminiscences, a thoughtful and entertaining speech.
100 years is a remarkable achievement, an occasion for well-earned celebration and an incontestable excuse for nostalgia.
Many here, including myself, can remember clearly the 50th anniversary celebrations and we all still look just the same! On that occasion, we put on a “Gang Show” in the school hall. Sandie led the cast and audience in a con amore rendition of that great classic “There was a bloomin’ sparrow lived up a bloomin’ spout”. David Dunlop and Donald Easton performed the “Sheep’s heid” sketch as captured in the photograph on the display board by the front door. David was the English visitor enticed into a rural Scottish hostelry (prop. D Easton) and persuaded to try the local delicacy of sheep’s heid. He insists that it must be an “English” sheep’s heid, prompting the punch-line from Donald, which he calls through to the kitchen, and which I’m sure he still remembers. (Instant response from Donald) “Tak oot the brains!”. It just goes to show the jokes were old even then.
In fact my memories of the Ninth go back even earlier to the Spring of 1953 when I arrived at Watson’s fresh from East Africa and headed for the gym block on my first Friday evening. There seemed to be endless hordes of cubs pouring down the steps like the Punch cartoons of lemmings hurtling over cliffs. Inside about seventy Scouts were forming up in patrols for “flag”. I was welcomed by the leaders who included Sandie himself, Robin Ritchie and his brother Alistair and George Bauermeister. They were impressive in their obvious authority but approachable and kindly. I was amazed to find the boys addressed all of them by their first names -– unheard of in my colonial experience, where it seemed anyone over 18 was addressed as “sir”.
The Troop leader was Geoff Bulmer and among the other very senior scouts were Douglas Christie, “Twink” Wyllie and Victor Burton. My first PL was Alastair Marr. Again, I was astonished at how non-intimidating they all were, despite their exalted status. The ethos of care and support was very evident –- throughout the school as well as in the 9th. It was very different from my schooldays in East Africa where many of the prefects were Afrikaaners whose exercise of authority tended to follow a rather different course. Like many thousands of boys, before and since, I very quickly found myself ‘at home’ in the Ninth.
The Group history reminds us that our origins, like those of the Scout movement itself, were military. Virtually all of the original leaders and PLs were drawn from the ranks of the School OTC –- Sandie Somerville was a case in point -– and within all too short a time the First World War was upon us. Many of these founders of the Ninth died in Flanders fields –- Graham Burge was one of them. Sandie was severely wounded and, as Chris Smith noted, he bore the consequences for the next fifty years. Perhaps as a result of these terrible experiences, Scouting (and the Ninth) moved away from militarism. We never made a great issue of drill or warlike tactics while continuing to draw inspiration from the most positive aspects of the service ethos. The one aspect of our activities totally founded on military campaigns was Alan Flowers’ annual Cub summer camps, as anyone who participated will testify.
Of course, in years past, virtually all of our equipment was ex-army: the heavy canvas bell tents used at Jophie’s Neuk; the troop cooking pots, and primus stoves. Our personal equipment -- hiking boots, sleeping bags and rucksacks -- were mostly supplied by one of several army surplus stores dotted around Edinburgh. Even in the 1950’s at camp, many of the individual groundsheets were First World War gas capes. My own very first sleeping bag was ex army, made of cotton and filled with Kapok. Its (presumably chemical) decontamination process before resale had reduced the filling to the consistency of pebbles and its thermal insulation value to that of tissue paper. The technique for getting a good night’s sleep was to don every single item of clothing available and squeeze the sleeping bag over the whole Michelin-man ensemble like a sausage skin.
Long before quilted anoraks in waterproof but “breathable” fabrics came on the market, we hiked in shapeless garments of heavy cotton which could (allegedly) be rendered rainproof by soaking in a waxy liquid substance called “Nev”. When wet, this gave off a distinctive aroma. Whether it repelled rain was debatable but it certainly repelled all animal life for several hundred yards downwind.
The Troop had a collection of large Primus stoves that fitted conveniently into McVittie’s deep biscuit tins. Each stove had acquired, in the course of long and arduous military service, its own particular foibles. Some emitted a sideways tongue of flame to augment the standard circular pattern. Others would behave impeccably for several minutes then, without evident provocation, send an eruption of orange paraffin-smelling flame several feet into the air. Old hands learned to recognise the individual culprits and position themselves appropriately when operating them.
There was one memorable summer camp at Gullane when communication by morse code became all the rage. Several patrol tents, equipped with ancient (Royal Corps of Signals) wooden morse key buzz boxes, were linked by miles of frayed cable. Gradually we became proficient at sending and receiving vital messages. The learning process was helped by the fact that you could stick your head out of the tent and shout “was that dot-dot-dash-dot or dot-dash-dot-dot?” You can imagine the intensity with which the patrol would huddle round the box and tap out the query “W…H…A…T…I…S…F…O…R…S…U…P…P…E…R…” then the breathless wait for the reply “D…O…N…T…K…N…O…W”, whose successful decipherment would be greeted with wild applause.
But Scouting has evolved and advances in equipment technology have contributed massively to the process. Canvas was replaced with lightweight fabrics and wooden poles with aluminium or even carbon fibre. Wood and canvas canoes were replaced with fibreglass, ergonomic rucksacks replaced instruments of chafing torture. Stoves and lanterns powered by gas cylinders rendered paraffin obsolete and the youngest pleb was no longer required to sit below the Tilley lamp and pump every ten seconds to compensate for the slow pressure leak. We travel increasingly by mini-bus and rarely, if ever, by train. Mobile phones supplanted the buzz box and, I wonder, will gps replace the old map-reading skills? The opportunities for exploring the British countryside have expanded enormously and the Ninth has exploited them to the full.
Of course our explorations have not been confined to Scotland or even to Britain. The international dimension of Scouting, which has always been prominent, has become much easier to translate into reality. The Ninth, as ever, was quick to take advantage of greater mobility and for over 40 years has had a special link with the 4th Frederiksburg group from Denmark. It happens that this very day is the 40th wedding anniversary of Ian and Viebeke Turnbull who met at our first joint camp with the Danes in 1966. We toast their health and wish them many more happy years together.
At home and abroad, the spirit of adventure, inculcated by Scouting, remains and evolves with the times. But evolution must not be at the expense of our traditions. On this hundredth anniversary I am happy to report that the Ninth does not dismiss its past lightly. Almost fifty years ago, we launched the junior hike, for boys of twelve and thirteen who might find tent-based hiking rather arduous. We followed a route that linked several youth hostels. The event, in the Easter holidays, proved enormously popular and I recall being involved in drawing up the very first menu and provisions list. It was documented in a George Watson’s College French exercise book. Some twenty-four years later, I rejoined the hike for a few days and was touched to discover the menu was still exactly the same and was solemnly followed from the same (now very dog-eared) exercise book!
These are just a few of my own memories and I thank you for indulging me as I recall them. Everyone here will have their own favourite memories and of course we shall exchange and re-live them well into the night. But I have been reflecting on what it was (and is) about the Ninth that has contributed to its survival and the presence of so many here to-night –- and the many more who are with us in spirit. I have come to the conclusion that the Ninth created a community where everyone was encouraged to discover their strengths –- the strong man, the intellectual, the joker, the one with the bright ideas, the one who could remember and sing the camp fire song, the one who could rustle up a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich even in the rain. Everyone could contribute something to the happiness of the patrol and everyone found their niche. At the same time, it was acknowledged without censure that everyone had weaknesses – things at which they were mediocre or spectacularly bad. These were tolerated with good humour because as a team the strengths and weaknesses balanced out. Mutual dependence was a fact of life –- rarely if ever articulated but recognised at a deep level.
One particular manifestation of this that only occurred to me when I was preparing these remarks, but which goes right back to our roots, is the fact that Sandie Somerville was blind (a result of his First World War wounds). This was hardly ever commented upon because it never prevented him from being a great leader and inspiration to others. He did not have a white stick or a guide dog. He could find his way easily about his house and from there to the School. He could make out shapes and knew who was about by their voices so when you were in the room with him, his blindness was not an issue. He had a huge magnifying glass with which he could sometimes recognise a feature from a photograph or large print letters on a page but essentially, from his early twenties, he had little if any useful vision. He was an inveterate writer of notes and even used a typewriter but because he could not see what he was writing the former would be passed from hand to hand in a collective attempt at decipherment, while his typescript sometimes resembled Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem in its imaginative creation of new words. Sandie’s attitude was “so what if I’m blind? Others can be my eyes and I will continue to do what I do best -– no point in making a fuss about it”.
So for 100 years the Ninth has helped boys to be boys and to become men. I am immensely grateful, as I am sure we all are, to have had the opportunity to be part of this continuing adventure.
Back to Centenary Dinner