Like a Victorian grotesque, Mrs Greasby could have graced any page of a Dickens’ novel. Wiggy, on the other hand, was another kettle of fish. Stranger still, he wouldn’t have been out of place in a Beckett play. He was in charge of the 2nd Boston Air Scouts, the bizarre leader I inherited when I gained promotion from the cubs. Lord Baden-Powell must have been turning somersaults in his grave on the day Wiggy took over the troop.

Take his appearance for a start. He was one of the unhealthiest looking men I had ever seen; the kind of man who should have been fined for wearing a pair of shorts. It was impossible to imagine his thin, anaemic body springing up a mountainside or taking the anchor role in a game of tug of war. Weather beaten and sinewy he was not. Knobbly he was. I pitied his wife. She must have spent hours of broken sleep trying to avoid the hard protuberances which adorned his body. Firstly, there were his knees. Sandwiched between his crinkled, khaki shorts and a pair of woollen hiking socks, they sprouted from his legs like a couple of donkey hooves. Then there were his elbows. As sharp as Native American stone axes, they were odds on favourites to shred an Aran sweater in a matter of days. Equally disturbing was his nose. Beaked and bulbous, it looked as if it had been modelled out of Play Dough by a three-year old. By far his most notable feature, however, was his hair. As if reacting in shock to the body beneath it, it sprang chaotically from his skull in an eruption of grey, frizzy peaks. It was what had led to his nickname.

Aesthetically speaking, then, it could be stated quite categorically that Wiggy did not inspire confidence. Likewise, his personality was to prove unequal to the task of leadership. Although his Einstein coiffure accurately reflected an intellect the size of Western Europe, he was so practically inept that he was soon sidelined to the position of ineffectual figurehead. In short, he became a kind of mascot and, as such, he was affectionately humoured and protected. With a mind stuck in the Scouting world of the 1930’s, Wiggy had little inkling of how to respond to the challenges posed by the modern teenager. For a start he was too innocent and trusting.

At our first summer camp close to Catterick, North Yorkshire, we had pinched a pair of his pants and stuck them up the flagpole. When at last he noticed the absence of the Union Jack, he flew into a rage.

‘Which of you boys has had the audacity to violate the sanctity of our flagpole with a dirty old rag? Get it down immediately, I say. With the utmost dispatch. Tout suite.’

The joke was lost on him. Even if anybody had tried to convince him that the substitute flag was an intimate part of his wardrobe, he wouldn’t have believed them.

The task of moulding our troop into something approaching a presentable and purposeful scouting unit fell to two men. Mr Finch was a no-nonsense Yorkshireman with an undernourished sense of humour but a fierce affection for order and discipline. He owned a local newsagents and in later years became a Liberal Town Councillor. Relying upon Wiggy to sanction his every decision, he organised our weekly sessions with military precision.

‘Quite right, John. Indubitably. Carry on.’

Jim, on the other hand, joined us on the occasional Jamboree and was the mainstay during the summer camps. He was a middle-aged bachelor who spent his days running a handyman business and his nights caring for an infirm mother. As an ex-commando, he was a hardy individual, capable of rustling up a meal from the forest floor or constructing a weather-proof shelter from a dead sheep. His only problem, as far as I was concerned, was a propensity to over-salivate whenever he got excited. It was impossible to avoid a thorough drenching whenever he waxed lyrical about his preparations for jugged hare.

Following a general troop assembly on Monday evenings, we would repair to our respective patrol huts. I was in Falcon patrol. The hut was a time-capsule strewn with the trophies of a forgotten age. The work top was scattered with curling manuals from the 1950s and dust covered balsa wood gliders. Hanging from the ceiling, Messerschmitts and Lancaster Bombers, Spitfires and Stukas were locked in an eternal battle of the skies. On the wall at the end of the hut, an old wooden propeller had been fixed below a pair of buffalo horns. Nailed to the back of the door was a chart depicting a bewildering array of knots. Just like the shipping forecast, they achieved a peculiar poetry when read out loud:

‘Reef knot, Bowline, Clove Hitch, Turk’s Head, Round Turn with Two Half Hitches, Fisherman’s Knot, Sheet Bend, Monkey’s Paw, Butterfly Knot, Timber Hitch, Flemish Knot, Lanyard Hitch, Trumpet Knot and the Sheepshank.’

As if confirming a seismic shift in the social climate since those halcyon days of the late 1950’s, someone had drawn a line through the second syllable of sheepshank and scrawled ‘shagger’ above it. More than likely, it had been Sid, our patrol leader, who used the hut as a kind of squat where he could play his Cream albums on an old, beaten up record player and smoke his reed thin rollies. He was engaged in a permanent war of attrition with his parents, both of whom were stalwarts of the local community. His father, an accountant, was President of the Skirbeck Sweet Pea Society while his mother was a coffee morning regular and Secretary of the Town’s Women’s Guild.

‘Man, they are so heavy. They scramble my brain. I mean, it’s like I have no space. Always, yer know, checking up on me. It’s such a downer.’

Fantasising a future of hippy excess, he was trying to grow his hair and refused to wear a beret unless ordered to by Mr Finch. We knew that his days were numbered so carried on with our weekly activities despite his increasingly annoying attempts to convert our patrol into an anarchist cell.

Whenever it was possible, Mr Finch, with a nodding Wiggy in attendance, arranged for our practical sessions to be conducted in the grounds of Skirbeck Hall. It was here that we learned to erect a tent, track a trail of broken twigs, construct a billy-can rack, and to cook stodgy porridge for thirty reluctant stomachs. At such times, Sid could have been found thrashing his recently barbered locks in our patrol hut, practising air guitar licks to ‘Full Cream’ or ‘Disraeli Gears’. You had to give him credit. He never once used the same excuse. Headache, toothache, earache…. Stomach cramps, hayfever, sunstroke… ingrowing toenail, torn ligament, groin strain. We could see that Mr Finch was not convinced and was rapidly losing patience. News of Sid’s latest ailment was greeted by a deep throated growl and a slow shaking of the head. Like an active volcano, he was ready to erupt at any moment. As it turned out, he never got the chance.

Within a matter of weeks, Sid was apprehended smoking illegal substances in the belfry by the Church Warden, who also happened to be a Special Constable. With a keen nose for trouble, Special PC Bradford soon picked up the scent. Nursing a stack of Prayer Books, he tip-toed towards the back of the church and flung open the curtains. Resting against the bell-pulls was Sid, obscured in a cloud of aromatic smoke. Declining the offer of a toke, Special PC Bradford hauled a giggling Sid out of the church and was soon phoning the police station from a call box.

It had happened on a Monday evening and by Thursday was featuring in the national press, albeit a square inch at the bottom of Page 15 of the Daily Express. Locally, however, it was a huge scandal.

We were constructing storm shelters when the Panda car skidded to a stop on the drive of Skirbeck Hall. It soon became apparent that something was seriously amiss when Mr Finch and Wiggy were driven away two minutes later. We all knew it had to be Sid, a fact which was confirmed at ten o’clock that night when I was awoken in my bed to a loud knock on the front door. This was quickly followed by a chorus of hushed voices which rose in volume whenever my mum punctuated the conversation with a gasp of disbelief.

We were summoned to a troop meeting on the Wednesday evening where we received a lecture on the dangers of drug abuse from a burly detective with ice blue eyes. Although his voice was soft and reassuring, his unblinking stare paralysed us in our seats. After the lecture, members of Falcon patrol were required to stay behind for an interview. Feeling guilty by association, I stuttered my responses, imagining the pair of handcuffs that would soon be clicking around my wrists.

Dry mouthed, I left the main hall. I glanced towards our patrol hut. The swathe of blue and white tape was no longer decorating the door. I wandered over and looked through the window. The room was almost bare. They had even taken the propeller and the buffalo horns. We never saw Sid again. Lucky to escape a custodial sentence, he was heavily fined and whisked away to a boarding school situated on a barren stretch of coastline somewhere in the north of Scotland. I felt sorry for the guillemots.