Thank God for the clocks going back. If I ever needed an extra hour it was this weekend. I got up at 7.30 so that me and humble Dave Taylor could get on the road. I had to be back asap as I was having a victory lunch with the Oxford crew to celebrate our victory in the Other Boat Race.
We were back by 3.30pm which wasn't too bad and I got round to the lunch location by 4. I had expected to get left-overs but luckily everyone was just sitting down to eat. Perfect timing. I didn't even have to help preparing or anything. Ha ha ha.
Although not everyone had made it, it was great to see the old gang again. And best of all our blades had arrived.
This is an oar with the end painted dark blue and with all our names and the race details painted on to it. I used to see these all over the walls of pubs and colleges in Oxford and I never dreamed that one day my name would grace one. In the past I always hated the names -sporty idiot rowers, who cares about them? - but now I am one I quite like it. That's fairly typical of human nature I suppose.
They blades are stupidly big and unwieldy, being as they are the length of a proper oar (being as they are a proper oar), but they are divided into two pieces for ease of transportation. Not that that really makes them much easier to transport. Emma gave me a lift home in her sports car with her and my blade wedging me into my seat. I think it looked like some strange attempt at a Halloween costume. The man with two oars cut in half. As we parked up outside my house in the semi darkness, I heard two teenage girls gasp. One said "Look at what he's holding", as if I was some serial killer who clubbed my victims to death with an oar with my name on it. Though maybe it makes sense. I got a taste of it during the race when I hit the Cambridge stroke in the face. Maybe things might build from there. If there is a spate of bludgeonings in the Shepherd's Bush area and the victims are left with strange oar shaped marks on their body and a man was seen lumbering away carrying an unwieldy 12 foot long bit of wood then you will know what to tell the police.
