The event I’m about to introduce you to has already passed us by, but you might want to look for it next year, so let’s talk about it anyway. It’s a sports event. Sort of. It celebrates British eccentricity. Emphatically.
The Chap Olympiad’s website says it’s “designed to reward panache rather than sporting prowess and the games require the minimum amount of physical exertion. Not since the days of Bee versus Pigeon Racing during the Victorian times have so many befuddled anarcho-dandies and gin-addled punks been gathered together under one parasol to make mockery of the whole idea of sport.”
Yes, bee versus pigeon racing seems to have been a real thing. It also seems to have happened only once. It wasn’t a major thing.
The chap contests this year were (or included–who knows?):
Tea Pursuit. Contestants cycled around the course, transferring a cup of tea from one rider to the next. The amount of tea remaining in each team’s cup decided the winner.
French Connection. Three lumps of French cheese were mounted on poles and contestants tried to knock them off using a baguette as a javelin.
Top Trump Toupee. Contestants tried to knock Donald Trump’s wig off his head with a softball.
Umbrella Jousting. Contestants charged at each other on bikes, brandishing umbrellas and (by way of armor) wearing bowler hats and carrying briefcases.
Riding Crop Rumpus. Participants knelt in a row and a contestant tried to whip them with a riding crop. Why is the word tried in there? Because the participants were defended by a lady in a leather catsuit. Don’t ask me. I’m going to assume this has something to do with British public schools, which are private schools, generally for the elite. And very strange places.
Butler Baiting. A fleet of butlers mixed gin and tonics and pairs of contestants made a three-legged dash for them. If they didn’t make it in one minute, the butler got the drink.
The olympiad tried to set world records for the most hats worn while riding a bicycle (I’m going to guess that’s hats on one head, since they seem to be talking about one bike, but it’s hard to tell), the most ties knotted in one minute, the fastest 100-yard sprint with a cup of tea, the most hats tossed onto a hat stand, and the most people smoking one pipe.
Photos? Yes indeed. I have no idea if they’re from this year or some other, but I don’t suppose it matters. I’d tell you how many years the olympiad’s been running but I haven’t been able to find out. What I can tell you is that the sponsor, The Chap Magazine, was founded in 1999, so this isn’t a traditional tradition.
The magazine, like the event, espouses anarcho-dandyism.
Anarcho-what? Listen, I didn’t make it up, so don’t ask me to make sense of it. It seems to favor tweed, smoking, facial hair (it’s all about men), a highly ambiguous relationship to upper-class male traditions, and a strong sense of the absurd. I read one magazine article, on boater hats, which describes them as sitting on your head like inedible crackers. It was a good piece of writing, and even if it was about fashion, and upper-class male fashion at that, it was entirely readable. If the article’s typical, the magazine’s well written.
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My thanks to Bear Humphries, who dropped the olympiad on my head. I’ll have to find an inedible cracker to drop on his in return. In the meantime, you might want to check out his photography. He’s doing some work with abstracts that I really enjoy.
Well, the English have always done eccentricity rather well. And the higher up that social ladder, the more eccentric they become.
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I understand that it works that way, but I wish I understood why.
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Nobody understands that. How did Freud and co, get to the top?
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I have no explanations.
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They’re not really eccentrics; they’re trying too hard.
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I think you’re onto something there, but it does seem fair to celebrate eccentricity, even if you have to do it from just outside the hazy line that celebrates eccentricity from boredom.
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We Brits are good at being absurd.
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Truly. It’s one of the things I love about you.
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I was immediately reminded of the old Monty Python sketch ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year’, which I suspect may have crossed your path at some time or another. Some of the photos could almost have been lifted from it!
And you’ve just gained Cornish Bear another follower.
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I’m glad you’ve followed him. I love his blog. And you’re not the only one who was reminded of the Python sketch.
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I thought there’d be others, somehow.
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Gawd above, where do you find this info (lol)?
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On my own, I wouldn’t have. A friend sent me a link. I haven’t thought to ask where he found it but I really should.
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Ha. They undeniably have a remarkable sense of humor.
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Can’t argue about that.
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Very reminiscent of the Monty Python sketch, the Upper Class Twit of the Year Show. Worth a look on YouTube if you don’t know it 😊
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I just saw the movie link of One Man, Two Guvners,” and it’s got a stunning upper class twit. He’s very funny when you don’t want to slap him across the face with a two-by-four.
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Is that now a movie? It got mixed reviews when it was here in the theatre but it won Corden an award. We have a long tradition of poking fun at upper class twits, kind of a national sport.
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It’s not a movie, but the National Theatre links to movie theaters all over the country for one night, so you see a live show on the movie screen. It’s a great system. The play has a great cast, some wonderful moments, and some stuff they could (and probably should) have cut as far as I’m concerned. Still, the good moments were wonderful.
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Thanks, sounds like a good idea and worth seeing – if only we had a cinema in town!
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We’re a good long way from one ourselves. The closest one that does the link is in Wadebridge, a 40-minute drive away, but just to make things difficult we drove down to Falmouth, which is more like an hour and a half away, to meet friends. No point in doing it the easy way.
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Nice to see you keeping up another British tradition, making it hard for yourself 😂
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I’ve acclimated pretty well, and anyone who hears three words out of my mouth will laugh themselves silly at hearing me say that.
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If public schools are private, what are non-private schools, privates?
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Non-private schools used to be local authority schools, but that was too simple, so now they’re free schools, they’re academies, they’re an assortment of–just to complicate it–privatized, um, thinglets.
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Baguette javelins? G&T’s at the goal line?
I really need to hop across the pond.
You Brits have all the best sports…
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Yeah, well, there’s also rugby, where a friend’s son got his nose broken. A baguette to the nose would’be been kinder.
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The country is going to the dogs when eccentricity has to be coralled and organised.
In Leo’s days on the Stock Exchange one of his colleagues used to bring in jars of frog spawn to be given to others to take home and place in their local ponds and watercourses, giving rise to the sight of gentlemen suitably euipped with the regulation bowler and umbrella sitting in their regular places in the commuter trains to the stockbroker belt with jars of frog spawn on their knees.
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I really don’t want that image in my head.
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I expect their fellow travellers shared your view…after all, given the British reserve, no one in the carriage would have enquired while all would have essayed a wild surmise…internally, or course.
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Hello Ellen, and thank you for the mention (and hello to those that followed the link but too shy, or tactful, to have said anything to me about it).
I got the Monty Python vibe from this lot too. There’s got to have been a ‘slapping people with a wet fish’ contest too, surely? :)
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It sounds a little messy for their tastes. You start slapping people with fish and you mess up their (and your) clothes. But I do appreciate the link.
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Sometimes I’m even more prouderer to be English than at other times. Though I think April might have a point.
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Yeah, this is worth getting activating all your prouderer sensors for, even if April does have a point–which I suspect she does.
I just read a very good review of your book, by the way–Frank L. Parker, on GoodReads. How’s it going?
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Thank you. Frank was very kind. I think it’s going pretty well – though (inexplicably) it doesn’t seem to have appeared in the bestseller lists yet. Advice welcome!! Mind you – I can’t rewrite history :-)
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I’ve had that problem (not appearing on the bestseller lists) myself. If I figure out a way to solve it, I’ll be sure to let you know. Although rewriting history is a thought.
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A thought indeed. But then we might not be where we are. Doesn’t tweaking history risk a breach in the space time continuum? Or something else relatively complicated?
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Oh. You’re talking about tweaking the actual happenings. I was just thinking that if we wrote something more appealing it might sell better. Although I will admit that my imagination isn’t up to creating anything wilder than the real thing.
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Fair point!
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Heh, heh, heh … no surprises there though … remember this is the country that gave us Monty Python, the Goon Show, and other assorted comedic absurdities! :D
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Who could forget?
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Looks like it could be (fodder for?) a Gary Larson cartoon… Sort of reminds me of his 100 meter mosey race cartoon, maybe that was the Wild West version of this Olympiad? :)
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I tried to translate it to the wild west and my mind exploded.
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The hilarity! I must share this one with my guys. And yes, I checked out the photos. Some of it reminds me of the eccentricities of Mardi Gras season in New Orleans–not the stuff one usually sees.
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I wish I could be a fly on the wall of one of your classes. I’m pretty sure I’d enjoy it.
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You would certainly find things quite comical at times.
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This is one event I wish I’d seen! The umbrella jousting must take some skill and physical exertion.
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Skill, yes. Exertion? I’m not sure. That runs counter to the spirit of the event. I don’t think you have to actually move fast.
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Oh, that’s so funny! I wondered, as this seemed like the one event which required exertion. I should have known better. 🙂
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I’d guess that the theory behind this is that a gentleman never lifts anything larger than his little finger while sipping a cup of tea. And certainly never causes himself to sweat. Or something along those lines.
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😀
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I was going to reference Monty Python but I see several people have beaten me to it!
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Great minds (or so they tell me) think alike. That sounds suspicious to me, but what the hell, it’s flattering.
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They also say “Fools never differ” which is less than flattering so I’ll take the former, not the latter!
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I’ll join your great mind in preferring that.
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That explains a lot about recent Brit politics. :)
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!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Interesting event as well as the bee/pigeon race!! Thanks so much for linking up at the #UnlimitedMonthlyLinkParty 5. Shared.
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Thank you.
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What? No competition for lashing squirming robot effigies of Trump & Johnson with riding crops?
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Too contemporary for them, I suspect.
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