Cirrhosis of the River*

Rowing Regattas take place in the sunshine. Everybody knows that. Men in striped blazers stroll along the river bank next to women carrying parasols that maintain their English rose complexion. The races are the physical exertion equivalent to a sonnet, graceful, rhythmic and honourable. It is all very respectable but has sufficient underlying sexual tension to fill a novel, be made into a BBC costume drama and launch the career of a couple of plum mouthed thespians.

So, what was I doing just after 11am in the pouring rain kneeling 5th back in an adapted rowing boat (a dongola) wearing a light blue polo shirt emblazoned with images of alcohol and being glared at ferociously by the man who had just been thrown from his dongola into the Thames after it had cut directly across us whilst his crew claimed the crash was our fault?

Dongoling is a pretty simple concept. Think mini dragon boat racing and you get pretty close. Two or three crews of 6 people, at least 2 of whom have to be women, kneel behind each other on alternate sides of the boat and paddle with (in theory) powerful, well-timed strokes over a course of about 100 metres. The person at the front of the boat times the strokes, everybody else follow his lead and the person at the back steers when necessary. First across the line wins.

We were The Weekenders, from the front of the boat we were Paul, Jo, Chris, Kirstie, Denzil and Hal (our expert and captain). We had practiced. We had got somewhere towards the technique Hal had described. We had developed a rhythm and, I would suggest, almost achieved a level of adequacy. We had got a bye to the semi-finals. We had gone to pieces. We had lost our timing. We had been knocked out after our first race.

I can try to rationalise it - we were beaten by the eventual winner of the Regatta, when we had got our timing together we had been closing on them and those bastards cut us up – but it didn’t take away the frustration of losing. My participation in the regatta, my competitive dongoling career comprised maybe 2 minutes of (on my part) frenetic, talentless splashing and a crash. More “Spot Goes Dongoling” than “Dongoling and Dongolability”

Still, unlike the weather, the circumstances had a bright side. When you have written a day off for a regatta and nature cheats you and makes it cold and wet, when you have been knocked out of a regatta early in irritating circumstances but you planned provisions for the day, when you are with a good group of people and there is a pub just across the river…….I’ll leave you to work out the rest, your imagination is probably more reliable than my memory on this one.


*I can’t claim credit for this pun – it was the name of another dongoling team.