This is why I am a Guide leader‏

There’s been a lot in the news recently about the Girl Guides. Our newly appointed CEO, Julie Bentley, has controversially proclaimed in a press release that Girlguiding UK is “the ultimate feminist organisation”. This has provoked a mixture of reactions, both from Guide leaders themselves, many of whom take it for granted that this is the case (whilst others seem inexplicably repelled by the label, as if it means we’ll be offering a Bra Burner badge any day soon), to the press, some of whom have published some frankly ignorant, lazy and offensive journalism on the subject that made my blood boil rather (this fluff piece from the Torygraph is the main offender, replete with a geeky-looking photo of a Guide that I can guarantee is at least 20 years out of date). And now there’s the promise consultation – the start of a process that may lead to some of the stuff about God and the Queen being taken out of the promise we all make as Guiding members – or at least reworded to make the promise more inclusive for atheists and republicans.

Unfortunately the image of Guiding as a tally-ho, middle class sort of institution is the one that is prevalent – as well as its rep amongst those ignorant of GGUK’s branding, messaging, PR and actual work as a bunch of gimpy God-squadders. The media persists in portraying us as a place where girls are sent to learn to be good housewives and mothers, doing nothing but sew and bake cakes, whilst wearing a pseudo-military get-up and parading around with flags, all of it with a vague implication of hairy-legged lesbianism perpetuated by seedy journos. I also sometimes hear women boast that they were Brownies, but got chucked out of Guides for being too naughty – as if Guiding was about trying to quash their free-spiritedness and individuality. When I wanted to join the Guides as a kid, my mum was worried that I would be indoctrinated into some kind of secty, old-fashioned dogma that would do just that.

As someone who spends an awful lot of time volunteering within Girlguiding, I find it difficult to reconcile these stereotypes with the work I do. Each week before Guides, I feel the burden of responsibility; I don’t want to run a session on domestic violence or challenge the girls to a Ready Steady Cook-a-thon – I can’t be bothered to teach them how to wire a plug because I’ve had a long day in the office and I want to go home and veg out in front of the telly and not think about anyone else’s needs. Then I get there, and experience the enthusiasm and vitality, surreal sense of humour and thoughtfulness of the girls – it cheers and refreshes me, and I remember what it’s all about.

What it’s not about is self-important trumpeting about God or housework or the monarchy. What it is about is getting girls to see that they are not ‘just girls’ – about counteracting the wimpy, simpering girliness that so shocks me when I see it in women of my own generation who think they need men to do DIY and light barbecues and get their Apple products to work. It’s about giving girls and the women they will become the confidence to realise they can do anything if they just put their minds to it – whether that’s getting up a climbing tower, surviving in sheets of unending British rain or becoming prime minister.

To do this, I think real girls need to be encouraged to be who they are, without being embarrassed or retiring about it, or feeling scrutinised or shouted over. That’s why, at least for now, Guides needs to be a girl-only space, without the presence of boys. I don’t believe in single sex schools, but I do believe in Guiding’s philosophy that a boy-free environment is essential to nurture girls and women with guts, and with fire in their bellies and passion in their convictions – girls and women who can use their intelligence to become something amazing.

The thing that motivates me to put in all this free work as a Guide leader is seeing this really happen in my Guides. The Guide age (between 10 and 14) is a crucial time in a woman’s life, and the transformation between a girl’s arrival at Guides fresh out of cute little Brownies to the end of her Guides career is remarkable. Possibly my favourite thing is camp. Camp is actually where we do the more traditional Guidey things (and I love the idea that even traditional within Guiding means feisty, physical outdoorsiness of the type described in How the Girl Guides Won the War) – pitching tents, making fires, grubbing around in the woods and getting thoroughly filthy.

The best thing about camp is that development process in action – seeing girls becoming strong and confident over a week and over the years they take part in camp. To start with, you ask them to bang in a wooden tent peg and they can’t hit it on the head, the peg flops around pathetically in the ground and is completely useless. After a few camps, they’re bashing it assertively on the head like it’s their worst enemy, confidently striding round the tent identifying weak spots where the rain might get in and efficiently dispatching the required peggage with gusto. A novice camper will flap disheartenedly at their groundsheet, unable to grip it or get all their bedding to stay inside it. After a week at camp, they’re wielding their authority over that bedding bundle, rolling an airtight package secured with sturdy rope that would survive a dip in a lake if we ever carried out our threat to test it. New Guides shy away from the wood fires we teach them to cook on; experienced Guides jostle over who gets to feed the fire, knowing instinctively the right balance between control over and respect for the flames.

The point is, they start to realise their strength and ability. They start to realise they can influence the world around them. The girl who flourishes in Guides knows her world is her dominion – she’ll shove her incompetent dad off the barbecue and she won’t let anyone push her around. She’ll assert her place in the world in a way that is confident but compassionate, assertive but sisterly; she’ll be equipped to be the best she can be.

And this is why, in my opinion, Girlguiding IS the ultimate feminist organisation – and this is why I am a Guide leader.

Weird dream no 5

I dreamt that all punctuation had been banned. There was a huge task to complete to remove every hyphen, inverted comma and apostrophe from all text everywhere. Missing something was a dangerous business and led to some serious reprimand by murky, invisible authority figures at the best. Editors were responsible for implementing this reign of punctuational terror, but removing the marks that signpost people's way through words was a heartbreaking endeavour for us.

Over time, tinker types would collect the unused punctuation marks and repurpose them into weapons. En dash daggers were a big thing on the post-apocalyptic black market. More sophisticated contraptions could be fashioned from semi-colons, with buttons and levers, but no-one used them for good - only to perpetrate acts of violence in an increasingly sinister state.

Words and people's faces became haggard and tired without the guiding principles of punctuation to show us the way through the opacity of language and our existences. Whispered factions reminisced about the golden days of the Oxford comma. We all lost a bit of our selves and the whole world lost hope.

The constant piling up of things

How much of our everyday is compiled of piles? Piles of bills to pay, piles of recipe cards never consulted, 'to do' piles in every corner, piles of versions of to do piles... Wodges of old log books and lost paper counterparts. A diary and real time stacked with appointments and engagements, a planned pile of timed commitments, of enthusiastic nodding and improvised inspirational talks. Allocated slots for pint-drinking and gin intake, mental schedules of things to do before work. A pile of this is who I am and a pile of self-importance.

I am gathering piles of materialism, iPhone notes of desired interior decor, Post It notes of taste piling up statements to the world about who I am through my aesthetic. Piles of dust gather on my piled-up jewellery, listlessly listing how much I like it but never wear it. A pile of existing somehow more in the world through stuff.

Acquisitively I pile up friends and acquaintances, we must do lunches and sorry I haven't been in touches. I cram my emotional space and make piles of memories recorded and forgotten. I pile on long squeezy hugs and unbridled kisses to a pile of people in closest proximity. A pile of the best stuff where none of the other shit really matters.

And as the years and the wrinkles and the grey hairs pile up, and the wisdom of piles somehow eludes me, somehow it surprises me that time passes and change happens; I look at a photo of myself at 21 and don't feel any different, despite the experiences and friends and things I knew once come and gone. And someone says "Bloody hell, you look so young, I don't even recognise you!", forgetting that beneath the palimpsest of piled up memories, possessions, diary slots and old flames, the fresh-faced Kate is still there, along with painfully introverted Kate, stick-her-hand-down-the-drain-cos-she's-no-girl Kate and vulgar Kate of pub fame.

She's there, being confident and revelling in the fact that she grew her fringe out and learnt to make jokes in public.

Prosaic thoughts interspersed with Lucy

Must get through these emails. Doing so will make me feel more in control of life, aware of my actions, able to prioritise the important tasks according to time urgency and overall importance. It seems a little bit like procrastinating sometimes but there’s some thing satisfying about responding, filing away, flagging and deleting: efficient, officious inbox reduction exercises. I will appear competent and caring.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

The cat is chasing her tail. She looks like a complete nutter. How they brighten up my life these little creatures, with their puzzled faces and their wide eyes, and their total dependence on you. With their mini personalities and their simple pleasedness. I adore them.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

Why does that bloke in the office talk to people like that? He is a bundle of mocking laughter, aggressive criticism, macho lack of self-awareness. He writes emails that read like a stream of consciousness of a computer salesman throwback from Thatcher’s Eighties. He tries to make me laugh along with him at the inconceivable stupidity of everyone who worked here up til now. I want to punch him in the face.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

Somebody has driven into the back of my car and written it off. The guy said straight away it was his fault, and you could see from one look at my vehicle that it was – the boot was all caved in and wouldn’t shut. Anyway he went into the back of me so it’s always going to be his fault. His insurance are giving me the value of my old car but if I get a new one now I don’t want an older one, so I’m going to be out of pocket even though it wasn’t my fault. I think I may have a bit of whiplash but I don’t believe in a claim-blame culture so I’m not going to try and screw him or anything. It’s just really inconvenient because I’m always so busy. I have to give the courtesy car back on Wednesday.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

I went on a date with a bloke who told me “I fancy you but I don’t think we’ve got any chemistry”. He was right. I always thought they were the same thing but they’re not – there are plenty of people I’ve had amazing chemistry with, but never fancied them (which can get you into trouble if they’re a bloke). It made me realise that when you’re looking for a partner, you need three things – chemistry, attraction and timing (CAT!). How the hell do you find this?!

Lucy Bowen is dead.

I can’t stand food pansies – people who throw stuff out after it’s been out of the fridge for a couple of hours, or stick rigidly and naively to use-by dates. Somehow they’re removed from nature, they have a warped view of it. 

Lucy Bowen is dead.

Someone at work sent me some social media guidelines. One of them made me feel sad about the world: “Chat with 3 people you already know. This will help you maintain relationships and keep you top of mind.” I said @davidblowers thanks for the mention! #thisisallbullshit. I thought it was quite witty. I get Facebook for photos and people far away; I get blogs (obv), but Twitter is too self-absorbed and covered in irritating little symbols that look like maths equations. Not pretty.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

I went on Facebook, as I thought of my friend Lucy Bowen, who I went on my gap year with in Jordan in 1999. I knew she was very ill with lung cancer. We had been in touch again before Christmas when I found this out via Facebook. We’d both written each other long letters updating the other on what had happened in our lives since we’d last been in touch ten years ago. How our paths had differed so much, but because we both remembered what pivotal characters we were for each other when we were 18, in a very foreign country, and desperately homesick. I was shy and I had a fringe. Lucy was unbelievably cool and fabulous, confident, glossy-haired, full of herself and adored universally. I grew from being intimidated by this person with whom I didn’t deserve to be friends, from being a retiring shadow trying to get to grips with doing everything with this out-of-my-league surfer chick who wore Tevas, to being her partner in crime, and me being hers. I saw her flaws and fears and vulnerabilities played out in the stark, carpetless bedroom we shared.

We smoked shisha together on our balcony and watched the sprawling, dry city teem below us, with the call to prayer our soundtrack.

We made up stories about people’s lives based on the washing on their line on the roof.

We mopped the floor to the rhythm of Belle and Sebastian.

We went to English pubs underneath hotels and drank ourselves silly, stayed out all night then went into school next day wearing each other’s clothes so that we didn’t look like dirty stop-outs.

We got drunk on beer from the local shop, only to find it was non-alcoholic.

We got addicted to cheese puffs.

We read a Chekhov play to each other in our room. We dressed up as hippies. Every time I put on eyeliner now, I think of Lucy Bowen.

We saw King Hussein’s coffin processed through the streets. We were shocked by the intrusiveness of the foreign media. We met Queen Noor and the royal princesses to pay our respects, having stood in queue of Jordanian women that turned into a crush to get through a tiny door. Christian women and Muslim women chanted at each other angrily. A Bedouin woman with a tattoo on her face showed us a picture of herself with King Hussein.

The ex-pat rugby players chucked us into the swimming pool at the British Embassy. We hung out with the Red Arrows. We were the toast of the ex-pat clique. We looked like we were from an episode of Friends.

We shared tastes and strengths and weaknesses. I cried in the mornings when she was strong and she cried in the evenings when I was strong. We both said we were turning into each other. I grew my fringe out and became tanned.

I went to university and I was Lucy Bowen. I was confident, occasionally crude, cool, wise, popular, well dressed, attractive. Lucy went to university and made friends with a girl with a fringe. I went to visit and watched her rehearse Waiting for Godot under a tree.

I looked on Facebook to see how Lucy was. I found out she was dead.

My morning alarm goes off. I remember afresh that Lucy Bowen is dead.

I walk into a new room.

I remember afresh that Lucy Bowen is dead.

I can’t get my head round it at all.

The view from my eyes this morning

Through the French window, a white apple blossom is backdropped by vivid blue sky, reminiscent of some Japanese tableau. Signs of burgeoning spring are sprouting in the garden; clematis plants casting languishing shadows over the wall as delicious sunlight peppers the outside with its optimism. My fingers smell like eggy bread and music I love reverberates round my walls and the inside of my head. I sink into a crook I am nurturing in the new sofa and experience the curious effect of the blossom image coming to me through a distorting heat mirage, just as fresh, cold, crisp air cools my extremities and nose. I am a panther, or a sloth, or an animal without obligations, away from the emails planning timings perfectionist hum drum rat race corporate bullshit impression managing diarised responsibility fest.

A half hour to just exist, and not live.