Free Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics by Martin Brandon-Bravo Page A

Friday evening prior to the Women’s Henley Regatta in 1996 we could not believe how cheap this delightful, but very old cottage was. I felt sure there had to be something very wrong with it, but having worked out on the back of Sally’s cigarette packet – she doesn’t smoke any more – that in six months I would qualify for some pension bonus and could, with a bit of help from my friendly bank manager, fund its purchase, I agreed that Sally would enquire as to what was wrong with it. She came to the regatta at lunchtime and said we had an appointment at five, and the deal was done. The flaw was the old roof on this 16th century cottage was sagging and since we had re-roofed our old farmhouse in Barton, this did not put us off. Our friendly builder in Nottingham went down with his mate one Monday morning, finished up on the Friday, with the listed buildings inspector quite happy with what we had done. It has given the whole family a lot of pleasure ever since.
    Having dumped my pension pot into the purchase of the cottage, I was taken aback when the following year, Sally was having a quiet drink with one of our neighbours whilst I struggled to get a new refrigerator up a ladder, through the bedroom window, and finally into the kitchen. On joining them, Sally said that our friend Daphne was selling her boat, a Shetland four plus two. Sally saw the negative look on my face, for whilst we had always fancied a gin palace on the Thames, I was nervous at the outlay and running costs – and with justification ! However as Sally put it, “How old was your brother Michael when he died, and how old will you be next year. 66, well buy the b***** boat”. She was right of course, and we had great fun for four years with the Shetland, when we swapped it for a bigger craft with an inboard engine, and of course a larger galley for Sally! Only in 2010 when we were both seriously ill, did we accept that it was too great a risk to keep it and sold it to our friends in the next door cottage in September 2011.
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    Chapter 5
    ROWING DAYS
     
    Having as I’ve said faced up to my lack of hand, foot and eye co-ordination, and taken to rowing and athletics at school, the former became my relaxation, if that’s the right word, from business for thirty years, and politics spanning those years and all subsequent time thereafter.
    On leaving school and moving to Nottingham as a trainee manager, I found my greatest need for diversion was satisfied when getting down to Trent Bridge and finding there were three clubs there. The first was the Nottingham and Union Rowing Club, and because I was wearing my Thames Rowing Club tie – shameless advertising – I was collared by the then chief coach Freddie Brooks and the skipper Bobby Swift and agreed to join. The other two clubs were the Nottingham Boat Club and the Nottingham Britannia Rowing Club. The “Boat” had been formed in the late eighteen hundreds because the Rowing Club at that time would not permit rowing on a Sunday. The “Brit” was formed to provide artisans the chance to take up our sport, since - as artisans - they could not join either the “Boat” or the Rowing Club, those clubs being affiliated to the Amateur Rowing Association. There was friendly competition between the clubs and the University, and I knew I’d joined the right set-up when at the February Head of the Trent long distance time trial in 1953, my club won the Headship, only to be disqualified on a technical objection from the president of the “Brit”.
    By then I had put on enough weight, I weighed in at about ten and a half stone, to row rather than Cox, and won a place in the club junior eight planning to race at Chester Regatta. The then classification of junior was not related to age, but what you had won at open regattas. The first stage was Novice, the next Junior, followed by Junior Senior, then Senior and subsequently Elite. Back then there were still crews who rowed on “fixed pins”