The story behind the running of Sudbury Regatta, by Andrew Blit.
A tale of life's mysteries and ingenuities. Please enjoy and reply suitably abusively as you feel appropriate!
Herewith a sad tale of rowing folk
Saturday morning dawned bright, and for a select few, early too! All who could had been asked to show up at 8 am cos there was lots to do! So about 10 people show, which aint too bad. But 5 of them are down there to 'have a quick outing first'. Taking an hour. Bastards. We load the marquees onto the tralier. We fill the transit van with chairs, bouys, fenceing, pipe and electric cable. We trundle around to the meadow (only about 50 yards as the crow flies but river and disused railwya intervene, bit like some rather old-fashioned assault course)
Three people decide they know how to put up the 2 tents. This is just one too many but never mind, it's marginally better than one too few. Or is it?. But it was early in the day and tempers were still just about under control. The canvas was laid out. The wrong pegs were found. The wrong pegs were moveds to the right tent. The right pegs were found. The smaller tent was worked on (cos if we can remember how to put this up then the big one will be easier, and in any case more people will show later. Wont they? WONT THEY???) We put pegs in for the main guys. A discusssion is held on EXACTLY where the finish is and how far down the course the judge will need to see and how close to the river the canvas needs to be as a consequence. A consensus is reached but we stick the tent up where we first thought of instead. NO PROBLEMS. The sun is shining, the first marquee is well on the way and it is only 9 am.
Sure enough the 5 rowing suckers now reappear, and as they number 307 years between them (and one is 7 - the cox) we have at least gained some practical experience. Except it seems that what we have most picked up is some old time musical songs. Yes it's singalong-a-the- crumblies!!!
Actually things are looking up, there are now almost 12 of us including 2 more who are just dying to let us know how to erect the big marquee. Much good-humoured banter follows ("pull on that rope" "I AM pulling" "not THAT rope" "which rope?" "that rope" "that's the one I'm pulling on" etc etc). But much to my surprise it does indeed go straight up!
Much hammering in of pegs follows. I rather enjoy this. It's quite unlike camping as I remember it. None of this aluminium pegs with a rubber hammer lark. No no no. You get dirty great big (70cm) iron beasts to plant and nice sized sledgehammers to go with them! Hard work, but it's in the open and if you're doing something then you don';t have to get involved in diuscussions as to exactly wehere the portable loos SHOULD have gone (why is it that there is a class of people whowill insists on having 10 minutes discussions on minutiae when there's work to be done???)
So now both marquees have rooves and the wall posts have gone in (no no you should have waited to put the pegs in first, oh never mind it seems to have worked " "then why did you say that?"). It's only about 10.30 and the general consensus is that we're ahead of the game (except for Tony, that is, who has taken most of the organisation upon himself and knows, therefore, just what remains!) So we tackle the walls. This involves a great deal of unrolling of canvas and arguing about which panel should be started from where, where the door is going to be and how many of the pegs that are now sunk into the soil will therefore have to be moved. But, we STILL keep our tempers, and hang the walls to the strains of 'The Old Dun Cow' (the only ditty so far, that I've recognised, but then it is about a whole load of people getting drunk in a burning pub so it's fun!). And God saw our work and laughed. It was THAT good. THAT good that we had to take it down again and start over. We had hung the wretched material the wrong side of the wall-posts. Ha ha. That's what we said. Actually I;'m not sure that there were vowels in our speech at that moment.
By now it is most definitely lunch time for those of us who started early (it's now 12.30) and I leave to get myself something from home while the (relative) latecomers tuck into the task of building a landing stage with scaffolding poles, some planks and 2 pairs of waders, one of which is split right up the back.
I come back to find that half the party has ensconced themselves in the marquee and is tucking into giant portions of haddocks and chips. Not a bad idea really, except that the water refused to work. Every now and then someone would come in, carrying as spanner and say "Well I have been to the standpipe and it's definitely on NOW" and they'd go over to the faucett (set in an aluminium sink resting on 2 chairs that are too nasty to sit on). And the water would refuse to flow and they'd sit down and say "Well I don't know". And then someone else would stand up and say "well I'd better go and fix it then" and walk off. Repeat the process every 10 minutes and you'lll get a picture.
Taking matters firmly in hand I sidle off WITHOUT the spanner (didn't do any of the other suckers any good did it?). I discover thsat, sure enough there is water flowing from the standpipe, but I have taken the precaution of feeling the pipe as I walked up to it so I KNOW that there's a break somewhere cos there's damn all pressure further down. I find the break at a join. After struggling with it and a screwdrive for a wet half hour I come to the conclusion that the jubilee clip in KNACKERED. I use my initiative. I buy 4. I fix the join with 2.
Then it's off to the Control tent to set myself up for the morrow, for I am to be deputy Hitler on the Sunday. But as I sit there filling envelopes with Steve (senior Hitler and massive control freak) someone comes in and says "Do you have any spare jubilee clips?" "Yes" I say " I bought 2 spares just in case, do you want them?" "No, she replies, but you can come and fix the leak we have generated in the tent". Bloody HELL. I'm a plumber (Diane was surprised too, I can tell you). Well, this is a spectator sport now, maybe a demonstraton event at the next Olympiad. And amidst much helpful advice and significant dampness I slam on the 2 jubilee clips over the join that is supposed to be a screw fitting but is actually forced into the end of a pipe AND IT WORKS (much to my surprise)
I also play with the strimmer (you ever strimmed? from a boat? a boat designed by a whisk manufacturer and piloted by a 10 year old geek?) And I belted in the pegs that were still sticking out after everyone else had admired them with THEIR sledgehammers.
It was now evening time. Tony had come back with his party from building the start and laying the course (not very accurately but still...) And yet no-one had volunteered to sleep in the tent with the beer that had just been delivered.
It wasn't that cold, and having gotten quite drunk with my mate John I slept pretty well until about 5 am when a duck woke me by bellowing out his presence. Bastard thing. Didn't perturb the fishermen who were camping out too, though I was surprised to see them when I was having an early morning wee (as you do when all the portaloos are locked).
Back home, clothes change. Switch to Adolf mode. Back to the regatta. Overhear conversation from party of five who have just arrived. "Where's the boat?" "I don't know" "Well, weren't you bringing it?" "No....." Off to a cracking start methinks, and sure enough as soon as Steve and myself are esconced in our tent (no view of the course but a wonderful view of a whole load of people milling around doing nothing when they should be) with our walkie-talkies and our computer then in they walk - "er our boat may be a bit late. Can we re-arrange our race by 2 hours?"
It's like this all morning, during which time Steve completely loses it as he sees his fellow club memebers wandering around, taking the air while they SHOULD be boat marshalling or something. I keep my head down and decide to play the nice one to Steve's nasty one. This works out just fine until a crew from the Lea COMPLETELY banjax us. First half of their crew don't show. Then they're going to show but 2 hours after their race time. Thenm they borrow 4 from another crew and race and win. Then their original people turn up and want to row. AND WE SAY NO THAT'S AGAINST THE RULES. And they throw a predictable wobbly and ostentaioulsy play very loud volleyball directly outside the tent for an hour. Eventually they decide to row with the 4 subs after all but are comprehensively disqualfied for going directly into their opponents off the start, to general joy for EVERYONE hates the Lea.
And so the regatta ended, amidst rejoicing, beer and sunburn! Rather good fun really, except our crew had to race and did so APPALLINGLY which was all a bit depressing! But never mind, there's always NEXT year eh?
Andrew B.