‘Strong and long’. Another joyful refrain I heard on while walking along the Cam. Sadly, this did not relate to stripey knee-high socks. I also spent a good, ooh, 15 seconds convinced I was hearing a female cox shouting ‘Cooked! Spinach!’ in a demented fashion at her crew of vikings. But sadly this transpired to be ‘catch, finish’ once I’d taken the broccoli out of my ears. Pesky broccoli.
By the way. Should you ever, you know, casually like, find yourself in an eight in a race, I strongly recommend the following piece of advice: If you’re going to be beaten by a short oar, I mean sheet / canvas / beard, then you might as well do it while all of you have your faces painted like oompa loompas. I wish I’d taken a picture. But then I’d have had to reduce myself to the level of ‘ooh, it’s a lovely day, I best take my camera out in case there are any spectacled bears in the vicinity of the newest tapas bar’. Which would go against the Charlie Brooker law of walks. (Namely ‘don’t, it will only rain and there’s a really good episode of the Wire on in a minute. You wanker.’)
And I know you’re wondering. Yes. The oompa-loompas were wearing stripey knee-high socks.
