Bumps 2018: day 4

[Day 3]

TL;DR: row-over, but a good one.

Today was difficult: we were going to struggle to do anything but row-over, since we were chasing the same Nines 2 crew who had escaped us on Day 1, but we needed to Believe in order to have any chance. And in the end we did believe, and did do our best, but it wasn't enough. We got to perhaps 1/4 length - three whistles - on Ditton, but they pulled away somewhat down the Reach. However, that was already much better than Day 1, when they'd started pulling away after First Post. For unclear reasons Keith kept flogging us after the railway bridge, but you can see from the trace that weren't really having it. We dropped City 2 behind us early on.

Looking at my GPS trace, we managed 1:40 (6:33) from A14 to Railway bridge, which is now my record. Which is excellent: it was about time I broke the longstanding record of 2013's first-night row-over ahead of Sharks (6:40). Although our A14 to FP was still only 1:16, which we've managed all week.

And so I should name our fine crew, for posterity. In the picture you see me channelling my inner Putin, or possibly Lord Flashheart. At the back, from the left: Chris Wood (2), Alex Fanourakis (5), Conor Burgess (4), Dan McGreal (coach), Ralph Hancock (bow), Tom Pryke (stroke); on their knees before me Steve O'Rourke (3) and Jonathan Pilgrim (6), and in front Keith Lee (cox).

I should perhaps admit here that I was a touch nervous about Keith's steering, but he was fine. The nerves came from his newness, and his tendency to hit the bank during practice starts at the Plough, due to trying to shave the wall too close. But during the race I think our lines were good.

And so, the end of another season. There seems to be some interest in doing off-Cam regattas which I think would be good: we didn't get a chance to really fulfill our potential during bumps, it would be great to have some other chances.

Afterwards, we had drinks and speeches at the Waterman until quite late (and I got a present, a hip-flash with engraved stoat, for doing the crew organising; that was quite touching), and then more drinks at City until, oh my goodness, is it really 3 am? Time to go my unsteady way home...

Bumps 2018: day 3

[Day 1] [Day 2]
[Jo's video]

TL;DR: up! On City 2.

Despite my efforts to jinx us by speculating yesterday about today going on rails, it did. We got a fine start, more stable, and soon had the pleasure of seeing Tabs 4 dropping back. We had a whistle - actually Chris's Kazoo - not long after the A14¹, and held that for a while as the water got choppy and we wobbled on a couple of strokes. By the end of FP we were on two, then onto three around FP, and then continuous and then it was over. When it's over it's always too soon and it would have been lovely to keep racing, but before it was over I was internally desperate for it to stop, as always.

From the GPS: start peak 1:25; A14 to FP 1:36 (1:16), three seconds better than yesterday; we can still do better than that.

Up ahead, Tabs 3 duly took down Nines 2, so we get a shot at them tomorrow, just like day 1. Sadly, Tabs 2 took down the Robs 2 spoon barge, so the eagerly awaited - by me - Tabs 2 vs Tabs 3 death match won't happen. Nines 2 will be ruing not quite closing down Tabs 2 yesterday. Just one tiny extra effort can make all the difference.

Notes

1. Now I watch the video, actually, under the A14.

Bumps 2018: day 2

[Day 1] [Simon's Video]

TL;DR: row over.

We met today in a better spirit than we left yesterday evening. We had a brief chat through the obvious: yes, we could row better, we shouldn't aim for just a row-over, we could probably get something on Tabs 3 off the start, and there was unlikely to be much from behind us. And off we went. After a good practice start at the Plough we span onto station with Chris there again, got out for a wee, and my nerves were better. I even remembered to turn my GoPro on, alas into the wrong mode, never mind I'll try again tomorrow.

The start was fine, though our brief down-to-bowside crept back in. Fairly soon after the start - perhaps 20 strokes - as I was looking back watching for Nines 3 to drop away instead I saw them in some kind of trouble, perhaps a crab or equipement; and not long after they were bumped. We took perhaps 1/2 length off Tabs, and may have had one whistle, but by First Post they were back to station (post race reports tell me) and we heard only, faintly, their whistles on City 2 and passed them bumped out in the gut. FP was - and I haven't looked at my GPS trace yet - better than yesterday but still not our best. With crews out ahead and behind by Grassy we had nowhere to go really although I'm not sure everyone else had realised by then. I was willing to go as far as the Plough, and oh-go-on-then around Ditton, but when Keith started flogging us down the Reach, which was exactly what we should not do (cos City had an easy day today), we rebelled :-).

All in all today was the near-inevitable result of nothing unexpected happening. If tomorrow goes on rails we can hope to bump City not too far off where Tabs got them.

[Update: now I've looked at the GPS trace. Our start peak was slower (1:28) but better sustained. A14 to FP was 1:38 (1:19), and to Plough 1:30 (3:33) both of which are slower than yesterday. So: we can do better than that.]

FROM far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.

Now—for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.

Bumps 2018: day 1

TL;DR: down just past Ditton to Tabs 3.

[Jo's video from the bike] [Simon's video from First Post]

I forgot to write my "pre bumps" post this year, so can't quite capture what I would have said yesterday. But I turned it over in my mind, and what I thought was that the crew had gelled well, we were consistently paddling at 1:55 and starting at 1:25 and below, and sustaining it well. Pre-bumps prep had gone about as well as it could have, and if only we weren't too unlucky in our choice of opponents, we could do well. My assessment was that City 2 (9), whilst respectable, were likely to be the best target; Nines 2 (10) could easily be good; and Tabs 3⁴ (12) could be better.

Alas, we were unlucky in our choice of opponents; and didn't row our best.

The day went well for the club: W3 rowed over, M3 bumped up, W2 bumped up, M2 bumped up - we cheered them as we rowed down towards Stourbridge - and W1 bumped up - we cheered them after we'd pushed off. I'd managed my nerves well enough, and cheered loudly for M3 to get something out of my system. The row down to the start was decent; the start itself was a little delayed and we didn't get out of the boat. With Chris Smith and Will Miller and others there to push us off there was no worries on that score. And so to the start, which I'll write before I look at the GPS trace. I had my head down and mind empty, which got me from the four minute to the start gun, but my mind was so empty I forgot to turn the riggercam on.

The start itself was good. Sometimes we have a tendency to drop to bowside around stroke 5, but that didn't happen this time. All went well, Tabs weren't gaining and, although we had no whistles, Keith assured us we were gaining on Nines 2. Somewhere towards First Post there was I think a bit of a swerve on the steering, possibly associated with avoiding Robs 2 bumped around there. Our lines around First Post and Grassy were decent, but it was rough and we didn't cope with that as well as we could; nonetheless it was I thought still fairly good. Tabs were perhaps a length or less off at Grassy¹, and closed down Plough Reach, and put on a commendable spurt at three whistles to take us down just round Ditton². There were a fair number of crews bumped out along the way, one of which was the City 2 / Nines 2 pair ahead of us.

Now looking at the GPS trace... start 1:25, which is good but not our best. And there was a patch of 1:40 down FP. And 1:40 down Plough Reach. A14 to FP was 1:37 (1:17) compared to my best of 1:26 (1:08) on Friday 2013. A14 to Plough was 1:40 average (3:32) compared to my best of 1:37 (3:26) on Friday of 2016.

[Update: Strava-trawling, I can find Tabs 2: 1:16 to First Post. So it's a shame they swapped their 2 and 3 crews⁵. And we were only 2 seconds slower to the Plough than Press.]

So I think the numbers somewhat contradict my impressions of the race: we slowed more on First Post than I thought.

We could row better tomorrow. We could, optimistically but realistically, take more than 5 seconds off our time to the Plough. Had we done that tonight, we could possibly have stayed clear of Tabs 3 to the Railway bridge, so I fear tonight will have to join my list of disappointing first nights (or looked at another even more optimistic way, 8 seconds off to FP could have seen us bump Nines 2³). However, given Tabs 3 speed once they'd pulled themselves together, I think we'd have to row at our very best to have survived them.

Notes

1. False memory to some extent; and anyway that's not what I was concentrating on. Jo's video shows them half a length off on the exit from Grassy, and I think you can hear their first whistle around FP. 

2. From the vid: I hadn't realised at the time how wide we were around Ditton, probably inevitably due to Tabs on the inside; but it meant we were doomed at that point anyway as we would inevitably have lost half a length round the full corner.

3. Yes, I am getting carried away with might-have-beens. Sorry.

4. Slightly confusingly, the crew who were traditionally Tabs 2, their "intermediate men", are this year their 5th boat. Their actual second boat is the Hills Road Returners; and third third boat (on order on the river) is labelled as "M2".

5. The HRR only just escaped Nines 2 on day 2.

Refs

* GPS trace from Tabs 2. who appear to be about the same speed as us.
* Day 0 thoughts from last year.

Play review: Cymbeline

Last year The Winter's Tale; this year Cymbeline. Like AWT the plot has to be regarded as compressed. We this time were M, Mother and I; and the picnic blanket from the car to keep us warm in the second half: despite the long run of hot dry weather it grows chill at night if you're out.

The production was not quite so smooth this time. The audience was a little thin, and two of the actors - the servant, and one of the romans - must have been pressed at the last moment as they had scripts (though the servant managed his quite well and I only realised it was a script, not some letters he was carrying, nearly at the interval). Also the two princes were played by women.

Is there much to be got out of it? The dialogue is "witty" in that rather hard to follow, but rewarding if you do make it the the end of the sentence way that Shakespeare has; and they spoke it well. There's a kind of a plot, though why people would go from "Britain" to "Italy" via Milford Haven is somewhat obscure. Not I think one of the major works.

Oh, and the woman who played several roles - Belarius; and a woman in Italy - was so like Micky, of about 20 years ago, in her role at Rome.

Book review: Mexico Set

Mexico Set is volume two of a nine (good grief) volume series by Len Deighton. In my youth I read the classic Funeral in Berlin, The IPCRESS File, Spy Story, Horse Under Water, and so on. And was always dead impressed by how he managed to never name the character. So I was a little unhappy that this one has a name. Or at least, I was when I first read it three decades ago; I've got over that now. I happened upon Berlin Game and read that in WS, and bought MS for a relaxing Saturday.

Aanyway, it's the same kind of genre and setup, and it now seems almost to be coming back into relevance, with a resurgence of evil under Putin.

Much of it is well done, the plots seem to work, the dialogue good, and all that jazz. Let me pick some nits, though:

1. Sometimes people are terribly careful about where and when they talk, to avoid being overheard. Nonetheless, they gratuitously use the full name / surname of their superiors: why would anyone do that? And at other times - there are several conversations in markets, in airplanes - for the sake of flow in the novel the characters talk in situations where they clearly wouldn't.

2. Stinnes showing up in Mexico where Werner and Zena went is far too implausible a coincidence not to trigger alarms immeadiately. The characters realise it for us far far too late, as is necessary for the plot, but it isn't believeable. Werner following Fiona to Boshar seems odd, too; though TBH I was a bit lost in that bit.

3. The Biederman sub-plot is odd. His only real function is to be killed by the KGB; but he's a multi-millionaire successful businessman with a large family; this isn't the sort of person you just rub out for trivia, it would be far too messy. I feel we're lead along with him, including to his distant house, for no particular reason.

4. Zena. LD is clearly fond of her character, perhaps she is typically Berlinische or something. But really, is it believeable that she'd be so mixed up in stuff?

5. Which brings me to my last quibble: at various points, especially the end, the plot depends on Our Hero accepting the word of various people that they're in charge; or that things will happen this way, and he never goes back to check with his superiors that this is so. Again, it's just not plausible.

Oh, but I should also add: there's a pile of shoppin-n-fuckin in there too. In the sense that people's shirt labels and shoes and so on are constantly described. It's a touch weird: Our Hero, though grown up Northern and non-Oxbridge, and outwardly contemptuous of that world, nonetheless has a detailed knowledge of it.

Book review: to kill a mockingbird

To kill a mockingbird is dead famous; you can read almost all about it at wiki, so I won't repeat all that. As a novel, I think it works: the storyline is interesting, the characters well and subtley drawn. By which I mean that rather than simply describing them, we generally find out about them by what they say or do or how others react to them.

But of course its qualities as literature are somewhat overshadowed by its value or role as an element in the campaign for racial justice. In that respect, it is interesting to quote a line from the wiki review, where the value of literature like this is praised as it can "challenge the way we think about things". Alas I am too enlightened: the book did not challenge me at all.

Which leads onto another thought: the book, as a political / campaigning object, is of it's time. We find, again in wiki, reports of people complaining that it didn't go far enough. And it is easy to see instances of this: although Scout briefly wonders, and asks, why all the jury are countrymen; and it is explained (slightly implausibly) why no townsfolk sit, and then why women cannot, because of the law; it occurs to no-one to wonder why black folk aren't on the jury. Nor does it occur to anyone why black folk live out on the outskirts beyond even the white trash. In this I contrast it with Heart of Darkness, which is timeless.

Wiki also contains the throwaway line "its black characters are not fully examined" but I think this deserves more examination. The book is, essentially, about White Folks, and is implicitly racist to that extent. Poor dead Tom Robinson has to die in order for Atticus to be sad about him dying, and indeed for there to be a plot at all, but apart from that we care nothing about him. He even has to have lived all his life with a terrible injury to his right hand, in order for us to be sure he was innocent, and therefore even sadder about him dying. He even has to die escaping from prison, because otherwise we'd have to have an electric-chair scene, which would be distracting, or his appeal would be left hanging at the end of the book, which would be annoying. The black folks are terribly nice to Scout and Jem, but otherwise fade into the background where they belong, with the honourable exception of Calpurnia. Does the book title fall into that, too? If Tom Robinson is the innocent mockingbird, does that not infantalise him?

Wiki seems confused by the mad dog episode but it is not confusing: it is there to show that Atticus, although somewhat disappointing his children by not being a man of action or even playing the-thing-they-call-football, is nonetheless an All Action Hero when needed. That, I think on reflection, is somewhat crude of the author, and not necessary. A more confident book would have allowed Atticus to be heroic in the courtroom and morally upright, and would not have required him to be a deadshot too.

I said the characters were good and they are, but because the protagonist is a young child - only six at the start, and this is good, because the story is introduced slowly, in pieces, that she does not put together but we do, a lovely authorly trick - inevitably she ends up having to think thoughts about character, race, and people's place in society that no young child would ever think - or so sez I - but other than a slight air of implausibility I don't think that matters.

On poverty: I'm a little confused by the financial status of the Finches. They appear to be quite poor, as judged by trivia like finding chewing gum in a tree being a fine find. Yet they get given air rifles for Christmas. Is this consistent? I don't know.

Finally: Heck Tate. Geddit?