Toddy

Cards on the table. Toddy was a hero of mine, a very special stranger who stepped into all our lives at ERC a whole thirteen years ago.  He rowed at first with Steve Kerridge and Dave Nelson but after Dave’s death he was invited into our Vulcs coffee crew which was setting the pace for eager miles and outrageous breakfast vittles on a variety of sandbanks.

Toddy, we were quickly aware, was a lifelong fine-boater, a practitioner of the delicate arts of balancing a competitive eight, driving for the finish line at Henley, and moving at once to the hospitality tent. In keeping with his Chairmanship of the Sheffield Rowing Club, he wore an extravagant blazer, knew a great deal about the fine arts of blading, won national and world champ medals in the Seventies, and chuckled a lot.

Coastal rowing took him utterly by surprise: no blazer, no angst issues with balance and perfect technique, but a great deal of water, tides that could eat you alive, and a fleet of French sea boats that doffed a cap to sliding seats but – if handled properly – would keep you safe’

Toddy, as ever, handled them more than properly. To his great surprise, given his many fine boat triumphs, he found himself falling in love with expeditions to Topsham and Dawlish, with the craic and camaraderie amongst the Vulcs, and – when conditions turned suddenly evil – with the quiet knowledge that we’d always see each other home safe.

Home safe.  In all, I rowed with Toddy twice a week for more than a decade and during those years he became a close friend and a bit of a mentor. Not in terms of rowing skills (he sensibly gave up after a while) but in terms of the man he so clearly was. As a crew, as the years went by, we lost count of the tally of injuries Toddy sustained and survived: throat cancer, broken ribs, a broken neck undiagnosed after a skiing accident, a heart attack that nearly killed him, and finally two brand new knees to replace the wear and tear of Henley and various rock climbing scrapes. The man, we all quietly concluded, was immortal.

But it was far, far more than that. Toddy, says yours truly, was a man apart, a very special combination of resilience, generosity, unflagging commitment to the next mile and the next pint, plus a kind of homespun South Yorkshire wisdom all the better for being quietly blunt.

Above all, in an ever-noisier culture, he had the gentleman’s talent for listening. To every conversation, and there were many, he brought the patience and the curiosity to bide his time, judge his entrance, and offer advice or a yarn or two.  He was an intensely clubbable man. He loved the to and fro of crews yakking on and off the water, and when it came to advice his judgement was largely bang-on. He had a fund of stories and a wonderful sense of life’s ironies, large and small. For his wisdom, wit, and unfailing good humour, I loved the man.

One of my fondest Toddy memories was the morning he decided that his reprobate hooligan Vulcs needed a little gentle schooling in the arts of proper rowing. At that point, the club still owned a fine boat quad and we gathered at the University boathouse on the Exeter Ship Canal.  We spent a tiresome hour putting the wretched thing together, losing nuts, bolts, spanners and patience before it finally looked like a rowing quad and Toddy pronounced himself satisfied.

Under his tuition, we tried the Boat Race thing and did our clumsy best to manhandle the sleek beast into the water before extending those huge wooden oars and wobbling away. Between the University boathouse and Turf Locks there were seven fishermen. We seriously upset six of them and the other guy packed up his rods and left.  We snagged angling lines, disturbed the fish, speared into the reeds and fed passing swans with the remains of our vittles. In short, we were the demented stick-insect afloat, four coastal rowers tussling with the abrupt collapse of everything we thought we knew about rowing.

Toddy took all this in his stride, and it was only when we were struggling to get the beast back on to dry land did he offer any kind of verdict.

‘That,’ he growled, ‘was a disaster. You all owe me a very big drink.’

A pleasure, Toddy.  As ever.