The Daily Bread

 The Daily Bread

It was about 1949 when I joined the Albury Scout Group as a twelve year old . Albury New Zealand that is.  Yeah, I had a green jersey; at least I think it was green.  Bloomin heck, that’s over 70 years ago, I can’t remember some things back that far.            I had a scarf, I think it was yellow, and the toggle, can’t forget the toggle.  For those who have not the slightest idea what a toggle was, it was a round wooden thingamajig with a hole through the middle.  I had a bone thingy, a piece off the leg bone of a grumpy old ram, it looked good all cleaned up with the gooey stuff in the centre removed.  It was a real classic part of my scouting attire.  With Dad’s small soldering iron, I burnt the scout monogram into it.   The idea was, you slipped two ends of the triangular scarf through the hole, sliding the toggle up the scarf to hold the whole thing in position around my neck.  I even had a leather belt with one of the fancy scout coat of arms embedded in the buckle.

If my recollections are correct our Den was in part of the old Albury Library on the north side of the Albury Hall in Duke Street.   We were taught all sorts of things, like tying knots in rope.  The Scoutmaster, he showed us how to make some sort of bread.  There was correct name it, but I can't remember.  From what I can remember, we mixed up a mixture of flour and water in a tin biIly until it became a sticky stiff lump.  Then we thrust the end of a stick into this mixture and winding it around the end of the stick, each scout held their masterpiece in the flames of a little fire. In no time at all, each had a little ball of bread.  The crust was a light brown and crackly, the inside was pure bliss, never tasted such wonderful bread, or whatever this mess was called.

With my mate we decided, one weekend we were going to spend a night down the riverbed and cook ourselves a batch of bread on the end of a stick.  With a spare blanket, we trudged off down the Opawa Stream, under an abandoned single lane wooden bridge along an old roadway.  Finding a suitable spot before it got dark, we built ourselves a suitable fire in a ring of rocks, where we were going to bake our bread on the end of a stick.  By the time we got all organized, darkness was coming in.  With enough light from the moon and our fire, we mixed our brew ready to bake.  We hoped everything was going to be ok, for we were both getting hungry and it was starting to get cold.  At last we reckoned everything was ready and we pulled our baking off the heat, yum.  You know what, that was the worst bit of baking I had ever tasted and we were still hungry.  

We were boy scouts and our motto was to stick with it to very end.  So we rolled up in our blanket amongst the rocks and dirt and spiders and other creepy crawly things and tried to sleep until morning.  By about two o'clock  our motto went out the window, to hell with it, we were going home for a feed.  Next morning dad asked how the party went?  He smiled, and then belted his hat on his leg, he couldn’t stop laughing.   I didn’t think he was the least bit funny.   

At the next meeting we told the scoutmaster, he had the audacity to laugh as well.   “What did you mix up, did you do like I told you with all the ingredients. ”   “Yep, we echoed.  Flour and water and mix it into a thick paste and wrap it around a stick and put it on the fire to bake.  What do you mean ingredients, can't remember those things.”

“No, no, no.  That’s not what I showed you.  Silly boys, you just made up an old recipe for wallpaper paste, and cooked it.”!!!!

Bugger!!