The Lure of Ladies in Boats.

I sometimes used to watch a YouTube video in which a French string orchestra played an abridged version of Ravel’s Bolero on a pontoon moored on the River Seine. The director used several tracking shots which included some overhead footage of young women rowers (French presumably) powering their way along the same river in competition.

Last night I watched a British cop drama which began with the discovery of a man’s body in the River Tyne in North East England. The discovery was preceded by tracking shots of young women in two racing boats powering their way along the same river.

I soon realised that the shots of the women rowers were my favourite parts of both films, and so I naturally fell to wondering why. Why am I so in thrall to young women rowers?

I decided it was down to the coordination of legs, arms, shoulders, and torso working in concert to achieve a desired end. But that wasn’t all of it, naturally. It was also about a small band of attractive, nubile women confined to a narrow space casting vital feminine energy into the lively air above a body of water. Put the two together and you have my definition of sexy.

Attractive young women have always been one of my greatest narcotics, you know; possibly the greatest of all (and I do include tobacco and good whisky in the list). I put it down to the thread of Irish ancestry in my lineage (pretty colleens are God’s compensation for a life spent on an imperfect planet) because I gather my father was just the same. My mother said so once: ‘Just like your bloody father! I saw how you looked at those girls in…’ My own addiction started, as far as I can remember, when I was twelve and hasn’t relinquished its hold yet.

There was one woman who didn’t quite fit the profile, though. My feelings for her went much deeper into realms previously unknown to me and never sank to the level of the libidinous. I won’t say who it was because she just might read this one day and feel ill. I wouldn’t like that.