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Independent on Sunday 11 June
2000 (The
Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race!)
Last June, Simon
Thackray paid a visit to his local baker in Helmsley, North
Yorkshire, and presented him with an unusual request. Would he
mind loaning the use of his industrial oven for the baking of
a giant Yorkshire pudding, 3ft in diameter?
Thackray, a sculptor from the
nearby village of Brawby, explained that he was organising The Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race, for
which he required at least six of the traditional Yorkshire dumplings,
each big enough to hold a small oarsman, each coated with lashings
of yacht varnish and each thoroughly pond-worthy. Thackray had
dreamed up the event a few years earlier, while drinking at his
local pub. "Wouldn't it be great," he mused, "to
sail down a river in a giant Yorkshire pudding?" Before
long, he had crafted a scaled-down prototype from a shop-bought
pudding, powered by a small electric motor. It had its maiden
voyage in his bath.
This floating battery model inspired
The Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race, the second of which took place
yesterday on Bubb's Lake (Bob's pond) in Brawby. Despite its
name, this isn't actually a race. Rather, it is an enactment
of a "mythic legend" penned by Thackray's friend, the
poet Ian McMillan, and recited by him to a bemused crowd in what
looks like becoming a regular event. A peculiar mix of history
and fiction, the legend also celebrates the history and traditions
of Brawby (whose name is thought to be derived from the Danish
god of poetry, Braggi), by way of a tour of the village after
the race, and a mass of declaimed information of questionable
usefulness. (Did you know, for example, that citizens of Brawby
were for several centuries immune from arrest or punishment by
the local sheriff's of officers?) The highlight of the enactment
is the "race" itself. Five junior oarsfolk, dressed
in brightly-coloured safety gear, paddle valiantly aboard pudding
vessels in a bid to save "The Thing" from the grasps
of a temple of doom, aka "The Shad". "There is,"
says Thackray unhelpfully, "a start but no finish."
Not unlike the colourful stars of the Edward Lear nonsense rhyme,
The Jumblies, who went to sea in a sieve, then? "Yes,
indeed," muses McMillan. "It's as bizarre as a Dadaist
event from 1930. Tristan Tzara would feel very much at home."
The picture here depicts a tense
moment from the event as seen from the pond-side, including an
unfortunate sinking in the background. The frantic paddling of
the leaders echoes the Herculean stirring that goes into each
boat's creation. The recipe for one boat comprises 50 eggs, four
bags of flour, 25 pints of milk, beaten and baked, lined with
industrial foam-filler and given its characteristic glossy finish
with layers of of yacht varnish.
The beauty of the boat race, McMillan believes, lies in the juxtaposition
of the real and the imaginary. "The story itself has become
a local legend, and soon it'll be like Woodstock: people will
pretend they were there - people will want to say, 'I was there
when it all started'".
That may or not be true. But
what isn't in doubt, in case you were wondering, is that it really
wouldn't be a good idea to try this at home.
Jane Czyzselska
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