Ramblings Around Derbyshire

A collection of shamblings culled from the local press written by Bob Ellis.

Regatta de Blanc

It gets quiet in The Duck and Fruit bat of a lunchtime. The only company is a rep from JCB who wonders if it gets lonely writing this piece. I try for sympathy by banging on about the aching fingers stabbing out a meagre living on the old Imperial by candlelight. Had the typewriter been new, I could have said it was a mint Imperial, thus ensuring a booking for Summer Season.

You know when you have been on your own for too long when you start to find Michelle from Eastenders attractive. I feel a bit like that now. The first weekend in May used to be The Derby Regatta.

Not really one for sport, it served to herald the spring, if there was to be one. It also had a beer tent. Here, enough courage was taken on board to develop a reasonable Oxbridge accent to try to bluff your way into the Members Enclosure, where you delight mine host with the perils of coxless fours. You offer a date for this great victory and feel your confidence slip as the mental arithmetic puts you in the Lower Fifth at Derby School at the age of seven. But there is nobody here.

Across the river, the goalposts on Darley Fields have given way to rolled cricket pitches, where the gentle thud of willow on leather and leather on chin suggests practice matches have begun.
In the Chester Green Community Centre, the fixture list is drawn up. Let's see now. Rolls-Royce Sinfin A versus Glaxo Hepatitis B...

I can see it all now. Standing tall in immaculate whites, clipping a medium paced daisy-cutter to midfield for a gentle single. The truth of the matter is mine was always the long walk back to the pavilion, the jeers of my fellow sportsmen causing me to wonder if being out for a duck is some form of rhyming slang...

Clive James had a word for it. Actually, he had several pages worth, waxing lyrical on the social side of University life in his book, May Week Was In June available from your local proctologist. In the bar of The Derby Rowing Club, where the New Men are engaged in a Yard of Crème de Menthe Competition, they tell me that in an attempt to make the Regatta more of a family day out, they would go against over a hundred years of history and have it in June. Nobody told June why they had done this.

I'm standing here with a bedraggled Yucca in one hand and a pint of Old and Violent in the other. The plant is to be the day’s only trophy, care of The School for the Deaf charity stand, while we wait for the rain to stop. So bad is the downpour that the poor soul who capsized during the single skulls sits on the bank wondering why he isn't getting any drier. So much for June.

Today, regatting seems to be big business. The Derby event is pencilled in for the twenty-second of May, pushed back to its historical date to fit in with regattas around the country. Well, almost...

It was to be an homage to Mr James that I call this piece "May Weekend Was In June." Somehow, "May Weekend Was In June But Market Forces Put It Back In May Again" has lost the atmosphere. It may have lost the feeling, but at least it will avoid the writs. Or is that more rhyming slang...