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Chapter 229
The Rambles and Brambles

Back to nature. I don’t know where to start. How about at the very end? Picture this. A campfire. Shadows and silhouettes. Four figures. Dancing round the campfire. Ghosts dance. Spectral dub reggae plays. A skanking celebration. In the middle of nowhere. For a brief moment. Something wonderfully primitive.

The call of the wild was not often something we heeded. We belonged to The Town and The City. Back then we didn’t often leave the Capital. We got nervous away from the environs of London. We didn’t want to miss anything. It’s different now, of course. But then we only occasionally needed to get away from it all. Back to nature.

One such occasion is hard to beat. Someone The Redhead’s family had done some work for had connections out in the country. A cousin with a farm. A kindly soul who’d allow some callow campers to make their home in a corner of a field for a fortnight. The very thought of it quite put a spring in our step. We were buoyed by the thought of getting back to basics, away from the hustle and bustle. Ordinarily the thought of roughing it with the midges and combine harvesters would have us climbing the City walls, but there must have been something romantic in the air that summer. We were quite taken with the idea of independence, and two weeks in a tent fending for ourselves suddenly seemed romantic. And as the nearest town would be somewhere called Tenterden, near the Romney Marshes, there seemed to be something quite poetic and fitting.

We’d stocked up on gear at Laurence Corner. We had our army surplus stuff. The baggy shorts and enamel mugs. The sleeping bags and ground sheets. We were really going for the Baden-Powell thing. Not the fabulous Brazilian guitarist. I mean, I worship him. Play his stuff an awful lot, but back then I hardly knew the name. No, I mean the scouting guru. We were signing up for the Varsity of Life. We wanted to test out our wits in an alien environment. Orienteering. Exploring. Admiring nature in the raw. Working together. Of course considerable thought had to be given to the right haircuts for such an adventure, and necks were suitably shaved in the spirit of fans of the Pale Fountains. Quite a 1930s look. Certainly suitable for capturing the spirit of Ewan MacColl and the organised left’s mass trespasses and protests back in the ‘30s when rambling was the chosen sport of the working class youth. We wanted to recapture that stark simplicity.

It was pretty nigh on idyllic all told. Lots of fresh air. Lots of hiking. Lots of map reading and compass using. Plenty of sitting around and story-telling. Plenty of silent contemplation, and staring into flickering embers long into the night. Plenty of soul searching and battery recharging. Dining al fresco and riding on the local steam train. That sort of thing. The family that owned the farm were lovely too, and spoiled us rotten. Fresh eggs and full cream. Hot baked bread and gorgeous scones. We were putting on weight and working it off again. We were hardly even missing The Smoke.

I say nigh on idyllic because as with everything there were drawbacks. We weren’t missing our home comforts, and the weather was kind. But there were the cows and the horses. Big ugly, unsociable things. And there were the local kids. A few very vocal yokels. Plaid clad heavy metal types. Waistcoats and scrambler bikes. They didn’t like us. They hung out in the local woods, getting up to no good. They knew we were from The Smoke, and drew their own conclusions. Ooh look it’s the gay lads, they said. Fine to question our orienteering, we thought. But our orientation? Oh well. Fantastic, we said, The Gaylads were one of the great rocksteady vocal outfits. Great compliment, we said. Better than looking like ZZ Top tots. What are you up to with those guns anyway, we asked? Wouldn’t you be better off with air guitars rather than air guns? Rabbits, they said, not at all like Chas ‘n’ Dave. We’re hunting rabbits, they said like so many Elmer Fudds. It fair made you shudder.

Well, to say we were appalled would be a major understatement. One of the nicest parts of getting back to nature was seeing the wild rabbits running round. You didn’t get that sort of thing round our way. And these were wonderfully cute cotton-tailed little rabbits, and we were desperately in love with them. The idea of these oafs hunting the rabbits just for the hell of it turned our stomachs and haunted our week. So much so that walking back to our site on the penultimate evening, having been treated to a wonderful meal by our hosts in the farmhouse kitchen, we all had to admit that we had some unfinished business to sort.

We had to do something. We couldn’t go back to The Smoke unvanquished. But what to do? That night therefore we’d sat and racked our brains, staring into the flickering embers, wondering what Baden-Powell would have done, thinking back to The Varsity of Life. I like to think he would have approved of our actions, but who knows? We had a plan, and we could hardly sleep with the thrill of it. The oafs were creatures of habit. We knew where they would be and when. We knew everyone else steered clear. So early in the morning we started to act out our plan. The Redhead was our leader being the most practical among us. He was off first thing, and back before we knew it, having borrowed a couple of shovels from the farmhouse, and off to the woods we went like Snow White’s brood of bandits. Much of the morning was taken up digging a couple of sizeable trenches, bore holes we called them, which we proceeded to line with unpleasant waste products, and lightly cover with a layer of twigs, leaves and mulch. Nice. All ready for lumbering lummoxes to come tootling along to disturb the peace and tranquillity. And right on cue crashing through the undergrowth came the motorbikes and the lads themselves. Everything went according to our script, and the results I’m sure were a delight to behold. We didn’t really stick around to find out. The oafs’ oaths said it all.

That night we decided to celebrate. And as this was the last chance we would have for a long, long time to be at one with nature, there was nothing for it but to give in to our primal urges, and dance, dance, dance. The fire burned brightly. The moon was full. The ghetto blaster was turned full up. The King Tubby and the Rockers went wild in the country, and our hearts were filled to bursting. All was well with the world that night.

© 2008 John Carney
Illustration © 2008 Alistair Fitchett