Each year the winning crew in the Boat Race is invited – “lured” might be a more honest way of putting it – to Rutland Water to challenge the eight from our own University of Rutland at Belvoir. With its jagged rocks, submerged wrecks and wartime mines, the course offers a challenge all its own.
As is customary, Rutland wins.
When the surviving Cambridge oarsmen attempt to introduce one of their customs to the event, I tell them shortly to “Take your hands off our cox.”
You see, the Rutland crew is traditionally coxed by a Well-Behaved Orphan – they may not be that good at steering, but they are all Terribly Light. As I had seen Ruttie (my old friend the Rutland Water Monster) lurking in the deep, and as Ofsted has been asking Awkward Questions lately, I decided that throwing the winning cox into the water might not be such a good idea.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary
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