Dinner camp was generally a casual affair.

1786: Father Daniel defines a Salet to be a sort of light casque, without a crest, sometimes having a visor, and sometimes without one. — Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 11.

A man to roll rubber off from that, I think, would find rather an uphand business — pushing his hands against the rubber.

Perhaps if I'd been dressed in conventional clothes and carried a suitcase they would have been more sure of themselves, but right up until the time that I reached my final destination, a transit camp outside Liverpool, I was handled with kid gloves, as if they suspected my present tractability were transient and that if they made a false move I would show my claws.