‘Simply messing about in boats’ … EH Shepard’s illustration of Ratty and Mole. Photograph: EH Shepard/PA
It’s the time of year that makes it all worthwhile. All those cold outings with frozen fingers and icy blades. The endless ergs. The floods and clean-ups and more floods and more clean-ups. The biting wind. The dark mornings. The thought that there are so many warmer things you could be doing.
And then suddenly it’s the spring. The clocks have changed and… hurrah! The evening rowing season begins.
Even on a evening like yesterday, with Siberian smog hanging in the air and soft rain soaking through every layer, it was still glorious. The water was glassy-smooth and my hands were warm. The swans did one of their spectacular fly-pasts and I even, fleetingly, saw a kingfisher (eyes in the boat!)
For all my tough talk through the winter, this is why I row.
I row because I love the feeling of gliding over the water. I row because the sight of the buds opening and the cattle grazing on the riverbank gives my heart a lift every time, even when the balance is all over the place and my hands are ripped to shreds. I row because on a warm evening, to quote Ratty in Wind in the Willows, “there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
Of course – and I hasten to say this in case my coach is reading – there will be strictly no “messing about” in our boats. The Monmouth women’s squad means business, and with the British Masters Champs only weeks away there’s work to be done. That means we will be a strictly faff-free zone.
Happily I love a good sprint – another reason to be cheerful. So then…
Come forward to row… attention… go!
