By Richard Parfitt |
Yesterday marked the day of the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race. This has apparently been running since 1829 and involves, as one would imagine, a boat full of Oxford students and a boat full of Cambridge students rowing against one another to see who can persuade their respective boat to travel in the requisite direction at greatest speed. I’m writing this on Friday before the race, so I can’t say who won this year, but I’m guessing that it was either Oxford or Cambridge. Even as an Oxford student, unfortunately, I really don’t care.
As you’ll know from my last blog, I have absolutely nothing against sport. I couldn’t live without it, I’ve never lived without it, and I structure an unreasonable amount of my life around it. Nor indeed do I have anything against rowing. I enjoy watching it, I can totally see the appeal for those who do it, and I would encourage kids looking for a sport to enjoy to try it out if they think it would be fun.
The problem is that being at Oxford or Cambridge really ruins rowing for the non-participant. I realise this happens at a number of other universities with strong rowing clubs, but the problem seems particularly pronounced among this weekend’s featured participants. A conversation with a member of a rowing club will always end up being about rowing. Even a harmless ‘how are you?’ gets you onto how tired they are because they were up at 5am in the freezing cold being yelled at by a 5’4” anthropology student with a potty mouth. Let alone if you ask them about their thesis: ‘No I haven’t done any research for 6 weeks because of one of the many annual rowing events at which glory is handed out in ill-defined quantities to those who suffer for it’.
One by one the Oxford postgrad loses friends to the river, most will never come back the same.
The boat race, therefore, has the feel of an annual pilgrimage. The great gathering of all those who have developed an unusual obsession with overpriced stash bearing their College logo. Of course I’m not calling for it to be discontinued, I understand that there’s a rivalry to be settled and fun to be had, but heretics like myself will be praying that nobody brings it up in conversation afterwards. In true pubs and pubs style, I’ll probably go for a beer instead.
Richard Parfitt is a Committee Member for Pubs and Publications. You can find out more about him and the rest of our committee here.
Image 1: commons.wikimedia.org
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