Extracts from Bob’s 1984 Diary… Volume 90

March 30, 2009 at 12:16 am · Filed under Bob's Bits And Bobs

Friday 30th March 1984

CARLTON CAMP

Woke up at 7.50 and got up at 8.00. Then I rang Grandma and then I went to school. I did my  brochure and then we went in about Carlton. Had dinner at 12.00 and at 1.15 We set off for Carlton.

Arrived at 2.00 and got our cagools and boots in the barn, Then we went out in the playground, then we went for a walk around a farm and some manky paths. Arrived back about an hour later and cleaned our boots, then we had tea with two Seaton Carew girls called Amanda and Karen.

Then we had to be shown how to make our beds. Then we unpacked and me and Gazzie made our beds, then we wrote our diaries, and after that it was supper. Then we went to bed.

Right, a little change of format required here… the above is, of course, my OFFICIAL diary entry, written in the WH Smiths Desk Diary that I used every day in 1984. However, every day of our week at Carlton Camp, we were taken into the centre’s musty-smelling classroom as a group, and (ahem) ‘encouraged’ to write our ‘Carlton Diaries’ in an exercise book, detailing our days activities complete with illustrations and vaguely amusing captions!

Naturally I’ve still got mine, so for the next week we’ll have two entries for the price of one! So here you go (and yes, these are the actual illustrations…)

Friday 30th March 1984

We left school at about 1.30 and when we arrived at Carlton it was raining. Everybody staggered up the path with their cases but Huggy gave in and splattered a box full of paper in the mud. Then we dumped our cases outside the building and went into the barn to be put into our groups.

Me and my partner Gazzie (Gareth Jones) were put into the blue group by Miss Burnett, then after showing our boots and getting changed we all got our cagouls. After that we went into the playground for a muck about, and then we set off for a short walk.

We went along the coach road to Busby Manor, which was all manky and muddy and on the farm we went through, everyone was up to thier ankles in cow ****. When we got back to the camp we had to clean our hiking boots with some yellow stuff called Dubbin, which looked rather like school custard, then we had tea, which was Beans on toast.

Me and Gaz had to sit with two girls called Amanda and Karen. After tea Miss Burnett showed us how to make our bed, then me and Gaz went and made ours frantically because it was inspection soon. After inspection, everyone went in for supper, which was a biscuit that wouldn’t come out of the wrapper and some Drinking chocolate.

When we’d finished, we went to bed but didn’t get to sleep till about midnight because everyone in the other dormitories were making rude noises, and I hope they weren’t real. The best bit was getting through the mud in the farm, and the worst was sitting with them two girls.

Blimey, where to start…?

OK, for newcomers, this was the first day of my school’s week at Carlton Outdoor Education Centre, an Outward Bound camp at the foot of the North Yorkshire Moors. It looked (and still looks) like this…

I love the fact that I phoned my Gran before I left for school in the morning. I guess a little context might help here…. I was eleven years old, and I’d never been away from my parents for more than a single day before – and even that was just a night at my Gran’s house, or a stopover at Paul Frank’s farm.

The prospect of spending a full week away from my parents, Poggy Doggy and all of my usual home comforts filled me with a mixture of excitement, trepidation and downright terror.

On the plus side… Doug was going, and so was my mate Gareth ‘Gazzie’ Jones, who had the misfortune to be saddled with me as his official partner for the week. Our teachers Mr Hirst and Mrs Keasey were coming too, and the plan was to spend as much time as possible yomping around the North Yorkshire Moors getting cold, wet, dirty and… well, fit I suppose.

For reference (and remember this face) here’s Gareth ‘Gazzie’ Jones in the mid 1980s…

The centre itself is based in the picturesque village of Carlton, a mere ten miles from my parents house at the time, although it may as well have been ten thousand, so remote and isolated did it feel. So who could resist, exactly 25 years on, a little trip back there?

Not me and Gazzie for a start…

We were at a bit of an advantage as the camp manager Miss Burnett was a distant auntie of Gazzie’s, although she still had a slightly scary air of strictness to go with her friendly welcome. The ‘cagools’ meanwhile, were burnished orange affairs that looked like this…

…and yes, that’s Gazzie Jones himself, ‘mucking about’ in the playground on this very day! (Apologies for the rubbish picture by the way… I borrowed my Gran’s ancient 1960s camera for the week, and managed to load the film into it completely wonky)

Back to the site itself for a cheeky shuftie, then…

Our walk that afternoon took us on a little two-mile loop around Carlton village, down the old coach road and through Busby Manor. Our teacher Mr Hirst was a great guide. He was only (I guess) in his mid twenties at the time, and he was full of youthful enthusiasm, loud-mouthed vigour and an irresistable desire to scare the screaming habdabs out of us with terrifying ghost stories.

As Gazzie Jones will testify, as we revisit the coach road to Busby Manor 25 years on!

Amanda and Karen, meanwhile, weren’t from our school. Carlton Camp is a big old place, and the usual practice was for two schools to use it simultaneously. Namely us, and Seaton Carew Primary School, based in a tiny seaside resort on the watery edges of Hartlepool.

 We only mixed in the dormitories and at mealtimes, but  I still remember the outright terror at discovering that I would have to munch my beans-on-toast in the company of (gasp!) GIRLS. Amanda and Karen were perfectly pleasant, but I was never entirely comfortable sitting at that table.

This table, in fact…

And so to bed! I remember being utterly exhausted as I climbed into the bottom half of mine and Gazzie’s bunk bed. He had a teddy bear called Freddy Teddy. I had my three Alan Garner books. And we were sharing our ‘Blue Group’ dormitory with sandy-haired joker Jason ‘Tucker’ Tuck and sporty skinhead Robert ‘Harry’ Harrison… along with two duos from Seaton Carew who, as I remember, were…

1. A quiet bespectacled lad nicknamed ‘Luppy’ because his second name was Lupton. His first name, sadly, has been stolen from my mind by The Ghost Of The Grey Lady.

2. A tall, dark-haired lad called Davey Fountain who did a cracking Jimmy Cricket impersonation.

3. A well-built lad called David Davies who – no surprise to anyone – played rugby.

4. A cheeky skinhead called Lee who boasted, shaved into his all-over No 1 haircut, two completely bald tramlines that circumnavigated his ears. I made Gazzie Jones laugh into his ‘drinking chocolate’ by quipping at the supper table that he ‘looked like a tennis ball’.

In my fevered nightmares before coming to Carlton, I’d imagined lying in bed in a creaking, cobweb-strewn dormitory, the wind howling through shuttered windows and the skeletal fingers of the Grey Lady peeling back my blankets to take my mortal soul…

What actually kept me awake was the sound of fifty 11-year-old boys farting, giggling, slamming doors, singing filthy songs and throwing things at each others bunk beds in the pitch black until the early hours of the morning. If the Grey Lady had dared to put in an appearance, I think she’d have quickly backed off once Philip Slack had stuck a whoopee cushion up her cassock.

(NB If anyone from Carlton Outdoor Centre chances upon this and wonders how I broke in to take that ‘dinner table’ picture… I didn’t,  honest! A teacher friend of mine took his class to Carlton in 2007, and kindly invited me to come up and have a look round for old times sake… and all necessary permissions were obtained. Phew!)

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