It's just over a week since I started scribbling my teenage memories - SWINGING THROUGH THE SIXTIES.
Having just finished working on three books:
This was meant to simply be a bit of relaxation after working on those three books. I only intended to write a couple of pages. I showed them to my Mum who started exploring her own memories of the swinging sixties. She and my Dad are nipping through their nineties. Mum showed my writing to my Dad, both asked me to write more. I am now up to 26,340 and plan to publish SWINGING THROUGH THE SIXTIES as an e-book on Amazon on Monday 28th September.
Mum and Dad, here's my memory of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award - DRAFT VERSION - typo's eliminated later !
DEA
Better Known As The Dukes
It all began on my fourteenth birthday, 3rd
November 1964, and would be at the centre of my life for the next three years.
I only wish I had allowed it to dominate my teenage years for just a little
longer. If only I could turn back the clock.
PHYSICAL FITNESS – RESCUE AND PUBLIC SERVICE –
HOBBIES – EXPEDITIONS. Four elements making up The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
Scheme. Founded on 1st September 1956 when I was only five years old,
as I approached my fourteenth birthday I could not wait to sign up. I am a
Silver Award holder. How I wish I had not given up when I was so close to
winning Gold. Success as a management trainee in Lewis’s Department Store
overtook His Royal Highness in my list of priorities. What a mistake that was.
For some teenagers, not all, The Duke of Edinburgh’s
Award Scheme was our hobby. I achieved my Bronze Award in exactly one year. Let
me tell you what had to be done to be able to wear the tiny bronze badge which
we preferred to call our medal.
The first thing to be done, obviously, was to join
the scheme. To do this I had to part with five shillings (25p) to purchase a
record book. This was a green pocket record where different people would sign
and certify my achievements. I know I still have the book somewhere in the
house but search as I have I can not find it. With the book proudly in my
possession I could start working within the four areas of: PHYSICAL FITNESS,
RESCUE AND PUBLIC SERVICE, HOBBIES and EXPEDITIONS:
PHYSICAL FITNESS: Certain standards had to be met.
Standards was the key word, a metaphorical bar I had to clear in order to have
any given standard signed off in my record book. Such standards as running one
hundred yards in a given time, being able to long jump a prescribed distance,
throwing a cricket ball over a set line. I am trying to recall, fifty-six years
later. The standard for the one hundred yard dash, I think was fourteen seconds.
The long jump was twelve, although it could have been fourteen, feet. I do not
have a clue about the cricket ball.
As I recall you could pick and mix within three subcategories.
Running: 100 yards, 440 yards, 880 yards, one mile. Jumping: long jump,
standing long jump, triple jump, high jump. Throwing: cricket ball, shot put,
javelin, discus. I wouldn’t mind betting His Royal Highness worked out these
standards himself and I wouldn’t mind betting in 1964 when I was fourteen and
he was forty-three years of age he could have personally achieved each and
every one of them. The Duke was our hero.
RESCUE AND PUBLIC SERVICE: That was easy. I simply
attended a first aid course and passed a test. I can still remember today the
basic skills I learned, I never been called upon to render first aid at a major
incident but that I learned within my Bronze Award I have used over the years.
Thank You Duke.
HOBBIES: Music. I used to play a trumpet, I could
never have made it into The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra nor bugled with Andre
Reiu but I could bash out The Trumpet Voluntary so that qualified me. I can’t
say much here as it happened not in the swinging sixties but I did meet the
Duke early in the Disco Seventies. He and I talked about a trumpet band he had
listened to in Mexico.
EXPEDITIONS:
It’s A Long Way To Tipperary. It is also a long way to Waterhouses,
Waterhouses is a small hamlet in the Dovedale area of Derbyshire. That was
where my expedition ended. Fifteen miles across two days with everything in a
rucksack on my back. Six of us all with tents, sleeping bags, a primus stove to
cook, billy cans to cook in and to eat from. All food, no purchases allowed
along the way.
The route began at Ilam, went via Thorpe and
Dovedale to our overnight camp, I remember we camped at Uppermoor Farm. Then
off again in the morning for the expedition to end at Waterhouses. Fifteen
miles and it rained for every yard of the way.
That was just the practice expedition, we had to do
it all again a month or so later. The expedition section was the best part, for
me, of The Dukes.
And so I gained my Duke of Edinburgh’s Bronze
Award. On to the Silver.
The standards for physical fitness became harder,
thank you Mr Duke, thank you said with a note of sarcasm in my voice, I hope
you picked up on that. Hobbies ? I just kept on playing my trumpet. Rescue and
public service ? More first aid together
with my mates and I going along every week for six weeks to Sutton Coldfield
Fire Station where we attended lectures on fire safety and prevention. On the
last night we were all allowed to slide down the fireman’s pole (Note the
position of the apostrophe – only one fireman could slide down at any one time
so it is singular and not plural – firemans’) from the first floor recreation
room to the ground floor fire engine garage. Given my discomfort with high
places I am not sure how I managed to do that.
I think I can speak for my mates: Jim, Buggs, Parkey and Dog Biscuits
– they all had nicknames, I didn’t and if I did then nobody told me anything
about it, I think I can speak for my mates when I say the expedition section
was the exciting thing with the other three parts of The Dukes semi boring at
Silver level.
We made it an excuse by saying we were in training
for a series of Saturdays walking from The Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield to
Chasewater and back. We used to say that was a distance of twenty-five miles in
each direction. Typing these words now decades later I am guessing I have got
that wrong ! Let me check. A slight exaggeration,
twenty-two miles in each direction but still a round trip of forty-four miles
is no minor achievement is it ?
The distance for a Silver expedition was 30 miles,
camping for two nights and carrying everything on our backs. Expeditions had
within those taking part a leader. I do not remember who was leader for the Bronze
expeditions but for Silver it was Yours Truly.
On the practice expedition I was faced with a
difficulty which, fortunately, everyone supported me with. I am not sure I and
my friends were right in what we did. Night one and we were walking to the farm
where we hoped we could camp for the night. We could see the farm away on the
hill, a hill somewhere in the Peak District of Derbyshire. There was a thunder
storm raging. Suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of the storm. Lightning
bolts crashed down, hitting the ground around us. The crack of each explosion
was scary. Steam arose from the ground where the lighting hit. This was
dangerous and I was in charge. No matter what I said we should do we were all
in danger. We had rucksacks on our back
with metal frames ! My decision was to walk as fast as we could to the farm.
Arriving at the farm I knocked on the door.
“We are on a Duke of Edinburgh’s Expedition,” I
explained.
“The Duke of Edinburgh,” the farmer smiled. “Have you
brought him with you ?”
I explained about needing somewhere to put up our
tent for the night.
The family invited us in, sat us round a warm open
fire then gave us something to eat and drink. Strictly speaking we were only
allowed to accept water as a drink but rules were set aside as we accepted the
hospitality of this lovely family. No, we did not put up our tents in a field
even though the thunder storm had abated. We slept in a barn.
The test expedition was held in The Long Mynd area
of Shropshire. No thunder storm, as I remember
it was a warm sunny week end. On this expedition I had to exercise my right to
be in charge. Using a Silva Compass, do you know what one of those is, we had
to navigate a distance of about three miles. A hill stood in front of us with
the compass saying the destination lay on the other side. Some of the team
wanted to walk around the side of the hill but I insisted we follow the compass
bearing and go over the top. That was a shorter distance but the hill had to be
climbed. That was the way the Silva Compass said we should go and that was the
way the expedition’s arrogant teenager insisted we would go.
All finished. Physical Fitness, Rescue and Public
Service, Hobbies and two Expeditions each with its own event. I now was the
proud holder of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Silver Award.
In the swinging sixties The Dukes was available to
teenagers from our fourteenth birthday to our eighteenth birthday. I began
working on Gold. I almost completed it, just the expedition section to be
invited to Buckingham Palace and receive my medal from His Royal Highness
himself. But I quit.
The prospect of becoming a retail giant following
in the steps of Charlie Clore who controlled The Lewis’s Department Store Group
took precedence. Duke, you and your missus never did shop at Lewis’s did you ?
I should have continued, I could have continued but I did not. Perhaps that was
the greatest teenage folly as I swung my way through the 1960’s
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