In the 1988 newsletter, readers were asked to write letters for publication. This request brought the following from the Revd. Bob Horner:
Yes. I would like to join Bluefriars — although the tie makes me smile because of its pictorial association, unconscious no doubt, with the Odyssey. When they got back to Ithaca one of Ulysses' crew was asked what he was going to do. 'I shall put an oar on my shoulder and walk inland until I am so far from the sea that someone will say 'What is that thing you have got there?' That is where I shall live.' He would have looked just like the Monkton Bluefriar on the tie.
My rowing 'c.v.' goes like this:
1931 MCSBC (Deserted to play Hockey. Captain 2nd XI. I had realised that I would never be big enough for the VIII.)
1935-38 Got into St. Peter's, Oxford, 1st VIII as a freshman.
1943 Christmas Eve. Won a tankard in a coxless pair with a Hertford man at a regatta on the creek at Karachi — of all places. I was at the School of Artillery at the time.
1947-55 Master in charge of Rowing at Nottingham High School. (I was Ordained in 1957).
1967-75 Coached various college boats when I had an Oxford living and was a member of the OUBC Coaching Scheme. I once had the pleasure of watching the (subsequent) Blue and former Captain of Eton flogging away in front of me in the octologue and I finished on a good note with the Balliol togger that was second in the races. An odd clerical concatenation — Oriel, who were Head, as usual, were coached by the late Bishop Pepys, then of Buckingham. . I went to Henley every year from 1967 to 1984 and only saw Monkton win once! So the account of the boys' activities in 1987 was most interesting - the fastest crew ever! Jolly good; but think what some of their predecessors had to contend with in the way of equipment. I seem to remember that the first great Monkton crew (1931) rowed in a stagger-seated boat which creaked and groaned and almost wobbled when it was lifted from the water. I tried to scull in a whiff with fixed pins and a fixed seat. As regards fighting spirit the boys may well equal but will never surpass the 1932 VIII – a length down at the mile post, but the seventeen year old Laurie brought them home six feet ahead of a Pemboke crew which had done well in the Mays and contained N.J.Bradley (rowing in a battered panama hat). It was the race of the day. Your coaching notes ('hands, bodies, slides') reminded me of an entry at Bedford Regatta in the 'fifties – the 'Hansbodegasleighde Klub' (Denmark). At least the Committee thought they were from Denmark until they realised that four Cambridge undergraduates were having a joke.
Very best wishes for 1988
Yours sincerely
Bob Homer
The Editor asked Mr Homer for more, and is delighted to print this second letter:
Thank you for your reply to my letter. Yes. You may quote from it; but if you have those Henley results please check the year and distance for the races against Pembroke. If it was a year later Laurie would have been over seventeen.
An explanatory note about rowing at Karachi. There were Boat Clubs with clinker fours, coxless pairs and sculling boats, in the days of the Raj, at Karachi, Madras (I heard of N.J.Bradley sculling there in war time) and Naini Tal (possibly at Bombay and Calcutta also). The Indian boatmen were called khallassis and when my friend and I got into our pair for practice about a fortnight before the regatta we 'sat' it, miraculously almost immediately, and we were greatly encouraged by the attitude of our khallassi who pushed us out because, after we had done a couple of 'strikes', he watched us no longer and strolled back into the boathouse. Obviously he thought the visiting sahibs were competent.
The reminiscences come back simply from reading the reports house bumps for example, with 'two' in the (School) head boat whose shorts started slipping down (fixed seats, of course) about a hundi et! yards from the finish. Women on the bank averted their eyes but he kept his mind on the job in hand and did the last few strokes, triumphantly on his bare bottom. The same character, who looked like a fair- haired Greek god, almost won Monkton's first Oxford Trial Cap. He was still in when the eights were reduced to three, in 1933, but O.U.B.C. morale was low, having lost 10 races in succession (with three more to come!), and the 'Orthodox' versus 'Fairbairn' controversy was at its height (Oxford was predominantly 'orthodox') and when the coach said 'Four, can you not open up the angle between your body and legs more quickly?' he most unwisely replied 'I was trying to get a hell-note.' So the prospect of a white cap with the dark blue crossd oars vanished immediately. That was the late Dick Whately, spare man for M.C.S. 1st VIII, 1933.
And the provincial regattas with weak umpires and unfair courses and awful time-keeping. They were ever thus. Even at Marlow there was a peculiar slanting finish and I can remember sitting in the Umpire's launch at half past nine on a chilly Friday evening waiting for a heat of the school fours to begin – with the result that my poor boys who had motored all the way down from Nottingham succeeded in beating Canford by about a quarter of a length but lost to Abingdon (with only a few miles to travel) by a few feet. The only regatta where race followed race with clockwork regularity was Bedford – thanks to a strong-minded character in a little tent beside the finish and the boathouse, with a telephone and a tannoy. At 10 a.m. one saw him installed with a mound of sandwiches and a crate of beer and at six-thirty p.m. the last final went off bang on time and the sandwiches had all gone – and so had the twelve bottles of beer! I shall always remember Burton-on-Trent, where the river was the colour of stout – doubtless now purified. It would not have done for Monkton. Our boys returned in triumph with a great piece of Victorian silver inscribed 'The Brewers Challenge Plate' and I won a case of light ale in the raffle.
Oh, all sorts of memories – sitting, easied, below locks, while M.C.S. paddled past on their 'long journey' with Balliol -'Bones' in command. Someone in the school boat called out 'Look. There's Bobby Homer.' And I felt on top of the world!
I once actually rowed behind a man who had won the Boat Race for Oxford in 1911. That was the late 'Toby' Tinne, our St. Peter's Bursar. He was coaching us and he got in the boat one day when someone was absent. He was also the only man who ever rode down the stairs of the Leander Club on a bicycle. I also rowed for St. Peter's in what was only the second Reading 'Head'. We did remarkably well, finishing seventeenth. At least it sounds good – until you realise that there were only eighteen crews in it, in far off 1936.
I could reminisce for ages and win the Great Boring Championship of the S.W., but the trouble is that there is no-one here who understands. In Oxfordshire, I had the late James Nickalls, Vivian's son, with whom I had rowed and who had a neighbouring parish, and dear old Herbert Thompson who had been rowing correspondent of the Sunday Times. In addition to collecting a knighthood in India for his work at the time of Partition to add to his trial Cap he was one of the last of the dauntless breed who had flown triplanes on the Western Front ('went up like a lift, old boy'). Also, of the younger generation, there was John Morrison, Vicar of Aylesbury, who coxed Jesus at the head of the Mays, around '58-'60. Between them they used to keep me supplied with Stewards' Enclosure tickets. I wish I could have retired to the Thames Valley, but house prices there are astronomical. If any of this rag-bag of jottings is any use to you, use it.
Yours,
Bob Homer.
p.s. - My 'desertion' to hockey was not wasted. I played in a jolly good college side and in a championship-winning team in Jamaica and enjoyed those blindingly fast sandy Indian pitches, where the ball moved like an ice-hockey puck and only the boards round the edge stopped a full-blooded drive ending up in the nearest bazaar.
M.C.S. 2nd VIII – about as far as I could possibly have got – had about one race a year in the '30s.