Charlie Don’t Surf

Jeremy Clarkson made me giggle again. He might be to the right of Genghis Kahn politically speaking, but he is a funny chappy. This is what he had to say about Britain:

Perhaps you’re saying that you’re proud to be British? But what does this mean exactly; what are you proud of? Our provincial town centres with their Styrofoam carpets or those pastry-faced people who work in petrol stations; our National Health Service, our trains, our cricket team, our roads, our government, our wobbly bridges, our Millennium Dome, Rover, our Hutton inquiry, the British Library, British Airways, Britart, our education system, Will Young — what? 

Had we been around between 1850 and 1875, when Britain was the workshop and the engine of the world, then maybe you could wake up every morning and bask in the hope and the glory and the pomp and the circumstance. Maybe then you could have put a sign in your garden saying, “Support our troops and Lord Palmerston”.  But now?

All we have is our world-renowned sense of humour and I’m sorry, good though it is, I’m not going to spend £500 on a flagpole to celebrate Richard Curtis’s dab hand with a metaphor.

Living in a small town was always a compromise for me and my family. If the missus had her way, we’d live on acreage in the arse end of nowhere and if I had my way we’d live in a city. So the compromise we arrived at was to live in a small town so I at least get the feeling of having some other people about and she gets the rural vistas that make her happy. When we lived in the UK we lived in Nailsworth, which is a fab little town in Gloucestershire. We moved to a similarly sized town here in Oz.

Anyway – people get to know you and you get to know people. You learn the names of the petrol station attendants, the lady in the chip shop, the local copper and the bloke in the bottle shop. This has advantages and disadvantages – it feels friendly on the one hand, but it also means that people often know your private business. Not that we’re running a knocking shop in our garden shed or anything. Just that if you like privacy then small towns probably aren’t for you.

Most of the shop are great, there’s a couple however that I only go to if I’ve got no other option. The chemists is one such shop. There are two things that annoy the living shit out of me in our little pharmacy. Firstly, they jump on you like half-starved jackals the second you walk through the door and ask if you want any help. “Yes, I’d like a jumbo-sized tube of KY Jelly and some extra-strong Canestan,” I always have the urge to shout. But instead, I just say no thanks. Why have your goods on shelves if you don’t want anyone to browse your fine collection of haemorrhoid creams, vaginal douches and Sunspirit Thuja wart ointments? You could save yourself a fortune by just having a counter and ticket system like Argos.

However even worse than the “Can I help you?” the moment you graze the door entry infrared beam buzzer – is the nosey trout of a pharmacist behind the counter. I suffer from gastric reflux which is when stoumach acid passes up your throat, usually when sleeping, meaning you wake up gasping for breath and gagging on your own bile. I don’t get it every night, but it’s such an upleasant experience that I take medication every night ‘in case’. I’ve been to the doctors about it and was prescribed a Ranitidine based pill which I used to get on prescription here until I found out that it was cheaper to buy over the counter.

So I get a couple of packets of Zantac off the shelf and go up to the till. The pharmacists eyes light up. “Zantac?” she says, “Yes, I say – for the control of gastric reflux.” She emerges from behind her prescribing counter.

“You have two different strengths there, 150Mg 12 hour and 300Mg 24 hour.”

“Yes,” I say, “I realise that. I take the ordinary 150Mg dose on normal nights and the 300Mg when the reflux feels particularly bad, for instance if ate late and then got drunk.” She frowns.

“You do know there are alternatives,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen a doctor about this?”

“Yes. Both here and in the UK.”

“And they didn’t suggest alternatives.”

“They did. I prefer to just buy my Zantac over the counter.”

“You’re happy with that.”

“No. Ultimately I need to lose some of this weight,” I pinch my beer belly, “and eat a more sensible diet, but in the mean time I’m happy keeping the drugs companies and you in business.” I say. She holds her hands up as if to surrender and returns to her potions counter. I offer the sales assistant my EFTPOS card and she grins embarassedly.

The only time I’m going back in there is if I contract Ebola and know I’m still contagious.

Mind you, the chemists in nearby Broughton isn’t much better. In there they don’t jump on you the second you walk through the door and they don’t give you an Abu Grahid style interogation everytime you buy a packet of Nurofen. No, what they do is gossip. The wife of the chemist is on the P&C at my son’s school and she’s the biggest loose-lipped gossip-monger in New South Wales. Take, for instance, the following incident.

Friend of ours (we’ll call her Sara) was recently seperated from her husband who’d shacked up with their Filipino nanny. Sara had been romantically connected with another friend of ours (himself recently seperated) who I’ll call Martin. There probably had been a drunken snog at some point, but there had been no jiggy-jiggy and they certainly weren’t an item (apart from anything else, Sara was returning to her native New Zealand). Anyway, Sara’s married sister comes over from NZ to visit and, having missed her period, asks Sara to pick up a pregnancy test kit from the chemist. Sara obliges. About a week later, Sara bumps into the chemist’s wife and she says, “So have you cancelled your planned return to New Zealand then?” Sara looks at here with a confused look on her face. “No, why would I do that?” She says. “On account of your being pregnant,” she says.

Sara puts the chemists’s wife straight, but over the next few weeks loads of other mums at school come up and ask her if she plans to settle down with Martin! All thanks to some pharmacist’s wife who put two and two together and got 69. Of course once Sara explained the situation it was the nosey cow who ended up looking stupid, but I doubt she’s learnt. I’ve since heard from loads of people that they choose to go to nearby Nowra to get their presciptions for precisely the reasons I’ve mentioned above.

So. Shortest day here in the southern hemisphere. Longest day in the northern hemisphere. Which means that from here on out the days get longer down under and shorter up over. Gather you’re all having a pleasant summer after last year’s wash-out – shame our plans for a trip back never panned out – would far rather visit England in summer than winter.

I was glancing back at previous blog entries from around this time of year and it hit me that so far we’ve had a very uneventful winter. Admittedly it’s only one month in, but by this time in 2007 we’d had two major storms and some very serious flooding. Oh and an eclipse. So winter here runs, I guess from June through to August and the main thing that gets to me is how quickly the cooler temperatures, lack of flies and closed kitchen window become normal. That kitchen window is the ultimate barometer I think. It stays open from September through to May and when it opens again in a few months, you’ll know summer’s on the way.

Was driving the sprog to school the other morning and noticed this lick of cloud over the top of the escarpment west of Broughton.

On the ‘Moving back …’ section of the British Expats website, someone posted the following poem. I was sick a little bit in my mouth when I read it, I’m not sure whether that’s due to its content or the Madras chicken I had for lunch. Anyway – I was struck by the poem in more ways than one and decided to pen my own little response. First the original which was apparently printed in This England magazine.

Mother England
By Gillian Parker

If you plan to leave My shores
Do it when you’re very young,
Leave before your memory stores
Knowledge of your mother tongue.
Leave before you call Me “ Home”
And before your Heart is given
Because , if after that You roam,
Then forever you are riven.
though your eyes may seek and find
wondrous sights on land and sea
you will always find your mind
Turning homeward back to Me.
You will hunger ,you will thirst,
You will suffer all your days ,
Yearning for what you knew first,
English folk and English ways.

English lanes with hedges high,
English gardens all in bloom.
English earth English sky,
English fields and English coomb.
English habits ,
Eyes that smile,
English jokes I think are funny
English clothing worn with style,
English weather , damp or sunny.
And in your rememberings,
Let the pride blot out the pain.
Pride in England’s Kings and Queens.
Pride in speaking England’s name.
Pride in all that made me great ,
Pride in my illustrious past.
Pride in that I played the game
And shall until the very last .

Wasn’t that lovely? I think the images that conjures up of olde englande, ploughmans lunches, cricket greens on hazy Sunday afternoons in July and the changing of the guard are just excllent. Here’s my version.

Motherfucking England
By Hutch

If you plan to leave My shores
Do it when you’ve earnt the cash,
Leave before your number’s up
Perhaps by selling coke or hash.
Leave before you get in “Debt”
And before you join the throng
The unemployment offices are full,
And council housing lists are long.
Though you book your tickets now
Wondrous sights on land and sea
Trollies in the local canal
And sweet fuck all on BBC
You will blossom, you will grow
You will enjoy life’s new phase
Finding out that it’s a bigger world
Than England and her eccentric ways

English lanes with speeding cars
English gardens strewn with trash
English fields now all built over
English towns don’t look so flash
English people,
Don’t dare smile,
English jokes I think are funny
Shellsuits are the height of style,
English weather, more damp than sunny.
And in your rememberings
Don’t forget the endless pain.
The way the royal family’s leeches
Went to the trough again and again
Shame we left it so late before leaving
Shame the planet’s changing fast,
Because life too short and of this I’m certain,
England’s living in the past.

When we emigrated we had a good look around for a bank that would suit our needs. We realised that Australian banks charge like wounded bulls, but what can you do – you need to put your money debt somewhere. All the banks seemed pretty similar to us, similar charges in each of ‘em so in the end we went with NAB because they’d just won Bank of the Year in Money magazine and because they had a village branch in nearby Berry.

Pretty much from the outset we started realising that NAB probably weren’t much cop but once you’ve got your direct debits and incoming payments all sorted it’s a real pain to change, so we stuck with ‘em. Over here pretty much all bank accounts come with a cheque and a savings account and usually a third separate credit card account. So when you go into a shop and use your card they always say, “Cheque, Savings or Credit” and press the appropriate button. Obviously most people keep any spare cash they have in their savings account in the hope that it’ll attract a buck or two of interest while it’s in there, so it’s the most common account used in a shop with EFTPOS. That’s all fine and dandy, but with our NAB accounts, we couldn’t use the savings account in shops – only the cheque. So when we went shopping we had to get online and transfer funds from the savings account to the cheque account. And you know what it’s like – you often forget to do things and so we were always finding ourselves in shops with baskets of food and no way of paying for them.

NAB also have the most woeful insecure on-line security. While most banks use various enigma machine style cyphers to encrypt your data entry, NAB have boxes for username and password that you just type in. I’m a member of web forums for desktop wallpapers that utilise more advanced security. Anyone that has a keylogger on their PC (and as a PC fixer I can tell you that’s probably a pretty high number) will have their account completely compromised.

Then there’s the way NAB charge. Now like I mentioned I realise that all Australian banks charge you for farting, but NAB have taken this to dizzy new heights. When we go overdrawn, even if it’s for five minutes, we’re charged $35 per day. This is on top of NAB’s charges which include a $4 monthly service fee, $0.50c if you use a non-NAB ATM machine, the $3.00 charge if you withdraw money at your branch (!!) and the $5.30 for a periodical payment to another bank. Now the thing about this system is that there’s no leniency shown whatsoever – you go overdrawn you pay. The problem is that we’re broke and we spend a lot of time trying to keep just the right amount of money in our account to cover our out-goings. And then NAB go and stick $7 of charges on our account, we go overdrawn and they charge us $35 a day until we get it back in credit. This has happened regularly since we got the account.

Anyway – we’re broker than usual at the moment and so we weren’t very happy when NAB did one of their specials on us – taking account charges out of our account, pushing us overdrawn and then charging us $35 for the honour. So we found ourselves go from being $15 in credit, to $115 overdrawn in the blink of an eye. I was furious, so was Liz. She’d tried getting through to someone on the phone with the telephone banking without success and phoned me up very pissed off. I told her since I was near Berry, I’d call in at the NAB and deal with it personally.

I asked the lady at the counter if I could speak to someone about my account’s charges. In the background the branch manager Lyndall was tapping away at a computer, I pointed to her and said, “Lyndall will do.” So she wanders over and speaks to her, comes back to the window and says that’s fine she won’t be a minute. Now, since this was a private discussion I’d assumed that they’d take me through to the talky-talky room – but no, she appears at a window at the end of the counter. Lovely. Okay I think – if you’re happy for all the customers to hear this, so be it.

So anyway – I explain to Lyndall what’s happened, I tell her that I’m sick and tired of the bank robbing us blind. I tell her that we’ve already had a three month mortgage break since we’re so broke and we could *really* do without NAB hammering us for $35 in overdrawn fees every time *they* push us into the red. I explain how it’s usually bank charges that push us overdrawn, not poor account handling on our part. I tell her that NAB make the taxman look like a charity. I also tell her that we’d tried to arrange a meagre $100 overdraft facility in order to keep a cap on these crazy fees and that after a two hour grilling by their loans department we were turned down. And lo and behold, she decides to take pity on me. We go through the statement and pick out the last set of fees and she says she’ll reverse them, thus putting our account back up to $15 in credit, from $120 overdrawn. Now I know she did me a favour, but she has this saintly air about her like I’m supposed to doff my cap and “Yes maam” her because she’s putting back money that was taken under the most dubious of means in the first place.

As you can probably understand we’d been looking around for a new financial institution in which to put our money debt. However when we looked at the fees and charges documents they all said the same, that we’d get charged for everything. So then we went to see Westpac with whom we have our mortgage. When we set up the mortgage (they were the only bank that would touch us) we had to set-up a cheque account from which our mortgage payments would be drawn each month. And all we’ve used that account for, in the three years we’ve had it, is to deposit our mortgage payment into. So imagine our surprise when we discovered that this account attracted no charges. No charges for using ATMs, for desposting money, for writing cheques, for farting. And then we found out that Westpac didn’t charge you for going overdrawn as long as you sorted it by 6pm. So we’ve begun moving everything over from NAB to Westpac and as soon as we’re sure all the incoming payments are going to the right account I will gleefully close our NAB account. Wankers.

Missus: They’re definitely coming. Have told them they’ll need to chip in with electricity etc.
Me: Fuck!
Missus: And my mum says she has learned her lesson!
Me: Fuck!
Missus: They are coming for ages.
Me: Define ‘ages’.
Missus: 9th dec – 18th jan
Me: And they’ll be in this house during that entire period? They’re not like, buggering off to Perth for five of those weeks?
Missus: …   …   At least it’s over christmas so loads going on.
Me: Yea, a double homicide for starters ….

Not sure whether this is unique to Australia (I somehow doubt it) but a good number of Jack’s classmates have seen films that about three age classifications too old for them. It troubles him, because we won’t let him watch grown up films and he’s jealous of his school friends who have. He’s nearly eight years old and there are quite a few films that are out-of-bounds.

That said I do wonder how some films come by their classifications. For instance, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the first film (The Fellowship of the Ring) is a PG, but the second two (The Two Towers and Return of the King) are both PG-13. There’s certainly nothing in the second two films than is any worse than the first one. There’s pitched battles and limbs chopped off, orcs, and a huge man eating octopus just for starters.

So we decided to let the sprog watch all three films. I was given the extended film box set by my elder sister a couple of Xmas’s ago and I’ve never got round to watch all that extra footage myself. You get two DVDs per film or about 11 hours of film in all – it’s not the sort of trilogy you sit down and watch when you’ve got to be somewhere.

Anyway, the sprog was ill off school at the start of this week, so we began watching. He thoroughly enjoyed the pitched battles and was particularly taken by Legolas, the wood elf played by Orlando Bloom. So over the course of this week we’ve worked our way through them. By the time Frodo, Gandalf and Bilbo got on their Elvish boat and ‘diminished into the west’ we were well and truly over it.

Quite enjoyed the extra footage in the extended editions. The most important bit for me is Sarumon’s demise, which doesn’t get any screen time at all in the cinematic edition. Anyway glad I’ve seen it all now and glad that the sprog enjoyed it. He has told me he’d like a bow and arrow for his forthcoming birthday. For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all…

I boldly went …
So. Star Trek. Not bad actually. Had fun spotting some of the knowing winks that the director made to Star Trek fans. I’d tell you what they are, but I wouldn’t want to get myself labelled as a geek or something. I mean, imagine!

If you ever need proof that, despite the trappings of civilisation we’re still just a bunch of largely defenceless descendants of monkeys, you only need look at the influenza virus. It circulates around the globe targetting those communities in winter and whose occupants defences will be at their seasonal low ebb. It can transfer from ‘animal’ to human, it can mutate, it can be transferred by the air but is happy to jump ship on saliva, snot, shit and blood too. The Spanish flu virus which struck just as the armistice was signed at the end of the first world war is estimated to have killed at least 20 million people and possibly as many as 100 million. Truly an amazing virus – and one that is highly likely to outlast mankind’s tenure.

I’ve had proper flu just once and I sure as shit won’t be unhappy if I never get it again. Over here in Oz everyone (not just the elderly) is recommended to get a flu jab – the posters go up just as the kids return to school for the autumn term. But the incidences of flu are few and far between. You hear people in the queue at the bank saying they’ve just got over the flu but at worst they probably had a bad cold. I don’t know why people feel the need to exagerate in those circumstances. I’d also like to go on the record as saying that I’m not one of those soft bastards who gets man flu. I’ve no idea why blokes feel the need to ham it up when they’ve got the sniffles, but it sure goes on. The absolute worst offender in the world for that is the FIL – he could audition for RADA when he’s feeling under the weather. Grumpy wanker that he is normally, he turns into an absolute cunt when he’s got a cold.

Anyway – our small household has had its first round of winter bugs – a head cold. My dad caught it first and I caught it from him. All last week I had it, then Liz and Jack got it at the same time. Jack’s immune system seems to be handling it better than Liz’s, though we’ve given the sprog the day off school today because he’s got those dark rings round the eyes that kids get. That said, the missus is suffering badly too, thanks to wisdom teeth that are so impacted they’re growing sideways into otherwise healthy molars – combine the pain of bones growing into your jaw and a throbbing head cold and you can see why she’s not feeling too clever.

The timing of the bug was, of course, perfect as today is the missus’ birthday. We were all due to go out for an evening meal at the Thai Riverside, but that’s been put on hold until everyone’s feeling better. For the first time in many years all her family managed to remember her birthday. The worst offender, her sister, even sent her over a very nice skirt and top from Monsoon (the missus favourite and much-missed shop). My present to the missus this year is another cat. Because they won’t be ready for another month, I told Liz early and we went up to the vets a couple of days ago so she could pick a kitten from the litter of four. The kitten (named Simon) will join our dog Kali and our cat Mukka. They’re all rescue animals.

We insure all our pets because we got caught out once with a humungous vets bill in the UK. They have a slightly different attitude over here because, let’s be honest, Australia is not a nation of animal lovers. I asked one of my customers, who I’d been chatting to about pets, if he had pet insurance and he said, “Fuck no! When he gets too crook I’ll take ‘im out the back shoot ‘im.” Nice!

Giving blood-sucking leeches a bad name …
Speaking of putting down lame animals, an amazing story reaches us from the England, relayed to us by the wife’s sister. The SIL’s partner owns a car dealership and he’s been using the FIL for valeting and car delivery jobs. The FIL prefers to keep the arrangement off the books in case he should attract any undesired attention from Ye Olde Taxeman and he is therefore paid in petrol. Every month the FIL submits his hours and gets an equivalent amount of go-go juice in return. Anyway, couple of weeks ago the SIL asked the FIL if he’d come over and help her erect a trampoline for the use thereby of his grandchildren. No problem, he says, and spends an hour or so helping to put it up. Everyone thinks what a kindly grandparent he is, right up until he adds the hours he spent putting the trampoline up, to his latest invoice! Tighter than a nun’s cunt.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

So it’s about two and a half years since I joined my local surf lifesaving club. Originally I signed up because I wanted to help out with Nippers, because the sprog was attending. But the sprog didn’t like Nippers much and he dropped it after one season, but I found out that I rather liked it. I did my Bronze Medallion, then my IRB crewman, then defib, spinal and senior first aid awards. This year I added beach management to the list, which means that I can be a patrol captain.

Today, however, I took a new test – IRB driver. I’ve been building up to this one since pretty much my first days on the beach here. Way back when we first visited this area (five years ago now), we paid a visit to nearby Gerroa and the surf club were there doing IRB drills. As they bombed around in the surf, flying over the top of waves, I thought to myself – that’s the life for me. Then, shortly after I started training for my Bronze, nearly three years ago, I got to crew the IRB and found out that it was as much fun as it looked. Scary as fuck on many an occasion, but fun.

Over the last couple of years I’ve attended various events around these parts, in the capacity of crewman in the IRB. Whenever the opportunity arose I’d hold my hand up and volunteer. I’ve blogged about the Huskisson Triathlon which takes place in February every year and is a really good laugh. But as much fun as crewing is, I was very jealous of the drivers. I’ve never been a very good passenger and after a while, it started to grate on me. So I decided to pull my finger out and get on with my drivers award.

So for the last four months or so, every Sunday, I’ve been down at the beach here doing my IRB drills. The first thing I learnt, when I took that drivers seat at the rear of the boat, is that the guys who I’d watched all those years ago at Gerroa were pretty fucking good and had made it look far too easy. Driving a little inflatable boat out through the surf, negotiating the break, punching through waves – these are not things that came naturally to me! It’s not like I’ve been a lifelong surfer or anything – I came to that very late in life on our many holidays to Cornwall.

The first thing you learn as a surfer is how to read the surf – to know where to  paddle out, to time the sets so you dont’ get smashed by the shore break on your way out the back, to spot the rip so you get an easy paddle. I’ve had to learn all that from scratch – particularly since the beach here, as I’ve pointed out before, can be a complete fucker. Anyway – reading the surf becomes doubly important in an IRB since you’re not just responsible for yourself, but for your crewman/woman and potentially any patients you pick up in the surf.

Depending on how big the surf is on any given day, it’s a real art getting that boat out through the waves. I’ve had a great time learning how far you can push that boat too. I don’t think there’s many people who’ve crewed for me that I haven’t jettisoned from the boat in spectacular fashion on one occasion or another. Nobody minded of course, because you have to learn what the limits are so that you can drive just inside them.

Driving an IRB means getting out through the break, driving to where you’re required (often in a holding pattern if it’s a club day) and getting back to the beach safely. It means paying very close attention to what’s going on around you – not only the waves, but the surfers and swimmers in the water. But there’s also the behind the scenes stuff too – prepping the boat, troubleshooting engine issues.

There are many elements to the IRB driver’s exam – first you do a pre-course booklet which basically qualifies you to drive on the river. Then you’re supposed to do a larger log book over the (several months duration of your course). In reality I did both those books last week. So first your books get checked, then you sit a 40 question exam on things like search and rescue, code of conduct etc. Once the assessor’s happy with your paperwork, you move outside and do prep drills.

During prep one of the most important elements that you’re quizzed on is the roll-over procedure for the engine. There’s a very specific order you have to do things in. Once the assessor’s happy that you know your prep, you get suited and booted and actually take the boat out into the surf.

We were fairly lucky with the weather. The swell was fairly kind (though it had its moments) but there was very little wind, the sun was shining, the temperature was about 21c and we were blessed with lovely warm water courtesy of an unseasonal current direct from sub-tropical Queensland. I was taking the driver’s test with Matt and one of the club’s young-uns, was doing his crew exam. Matt went out first and had no trouble doing his crewed run in and out of the break, parallel runs, turn and run from waves, punch through etc. Then he did his solo drive which went okay too.

So after Matt’s turn I did my crewed run, which went fine. And then I had to do my solo. Unfortunately, at that moment, the gods of the swell decided to play a trick on me and sent endless shore-dumping 1.5m waves into the breakzone. I just couldn’t break through. When you’re driving solo you can’t punch through a wave like you can with a crewman, so you have to wait for your moment and gun it when you get the opportunity. Only that opportunity never came. As one big wave broke practically on the shore, I drove the boat in to catch my breath. The examiner, I was told, wasn’t concerned – I’d behaved sensibly. So I hopped back in  for round two – just as the swell died down. I gunned it and made it out the back without further incident. The assessor had me do a few parallel runs etc, but I’d spent so long in the shore break beforehand that I knew I could handle that okay and he waved me in mercifully quickly.

So then it was on to the resuces. An unconcious patient in the green water and a conscious patient in the break. Matt went first, with me as crew and James as patient. All went well until the return to shore when a wave sucked out at the last minute and Matt was nearly thrown out of the boat (normally an instant fail). Then we switched around, me as driver, James as crew, Matt as patient. That went well too. We all returned to shore.

So practical over, we took the boat up to the shed for post-patrol shakedown and paperwork – then we were told to go off and get showered and changed. On return we were greeted with a celebratory beer from the bar and were told we’d all passed. Hurrah! I’m very pleased I’ve finally got there and am now a card-carrying Silver Medallion lifesaver. When the carnival season rolls around again in a few months time I can drive the boat. Not only that, but I can now do my jetski and jetboat awards if I want to. We’re doing an induction on the jetboat at the start of the new season in September and I’ll decide then if it’s something I want to pursue.

The club’s also keen on getting into the IRB racing scene. Now that we’ve got a few willing drivers and plenty of able crew, it’s something worth considering. It is not, however, a sport for the faint-hearted as the image above conveys far better than words could …

Oh yea, and in light of my amazing work throwing people out of the boat this season in my IRB training – I was awarded the ‘Not the Clubman of the Year’ award. Rather fetching, don’t you think?