BACK TO THE SILLY SEASON

Conclusive proof this weekend that we're heading back into the silly season on the Thames, with a couple of incidents involving unfortunate scullers and so called 'pleasure' cruisers. The first involved an oarsman from Furnival Scullers who avoided a collision by the skin of his teeth when the crusier he was rapidly approaching, decided to alert him of its presence only when he was practically on-top of it. Luckily he managed to 'hold-it-up' and nip out of its way before it turned him into rescue fodder for LRC.

The second incident featured a certain (recently returned from holiday) Mr Richard "4inch" Binch of Twickenham. After being washed down by a thoughtless river boat near Richmond, Richard did what he does best and had a go at the driver. Mr Binch spent 6 years in the Navy in his youth, so the slug doesn't doubt that his language was rather colourful. which may explain why the crew of the boat didn't take kindly to the verbal abuse flying and proceeded to hose him down in his scull.

A rather irate and soggy Rich appeared back at the clubhouse shortly afterwards and The slug reckons he should inform the PLA - I'm sooo glad the government wants to encourage use of the Thames as a major highway into London...

FAT BOYS SWIM??

Last weekend saw the dynamic boys in blue come flying to the rescue again, and so regaining their pole position in the guardians of the Lower Thames challenge. Not to be denied some victims to save whilst the girls in red, black and white were away on holiday camp, the boys in blue had to find some other people to rescue and so, just to keep the score even, they sent two of their own out to play the part.

Having selected two particularly fat boys in blue, they were told to go and judge just how wide a coxless pair really is. Having chosen to accept their challenge they accomplished it with style and panashe and headed off upstream to see how big their pair was compared to the gap left between the work boat suspended from Hammersmith bridge and the butress of Hammersmith bridge.

The results of this challenge were as expected and proved conclusively that a pair is much wider than the gap. This also had the unexpected side effect of providing the boys in blue with the worlds first sectional Janousek coxless pair. Not bad for a boat that was only two months old and has hardly been used !!!

Luckily the fat boys in question were protected from harm by their coating of lard and were unscathed by the incident although one of them did get a bit wet, and for some strange reason they were in a coxed four next outing...

VANITY, VANITY...

The slug has always been impressed by how well turned out Peter Haining manages to be, on every occassion - infact the blue-eyed scotsman is rarely seen with a hair out of place. So how does Peter manage? is it simply natural style...

Well the slug can reveal that Peter's wardrobe has been bolstered considerably since securing sponsorship of this year's international sculling challenge from Hackett clothing. Infact, those of us lucky enough to see the post race interviews on BBC digital, may have spotted that he was dressed from head to toe by the sponsors, as were certain other Thames RC members - although fellow interviewee Greg Searle (a Molesey member) was a bit peeved he'd "missed a trick" when we pointed out that he was lacking in Hackett kit.

The slug was pleased to note that Peter also put in some special personal effort before appearing on national telly, as he was overherad telling 'revelers' at theThames RC bar that he had "plucked his eyebrows specially" for the occasion.

NA-NA NA-NA NAH!!

The Slug has a lovely little bit of slime for you from the men's HORR last weekend, which saw Queen's Tower knock the Leander boys off the top spot by 3.5 seconds. It seems that, staying true to the gentlemanly spirt of good spotsmanship ingrained in all rowers, the cox from QT went up to Mr Redgrave and chums after the race and congratulated them on winning the Page trophy.

mmmmmmm.....