A bird's-eye view of sport, translated by two humans. With added waffling.

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Wiltshire town renames 200 residents 'Ed McKeever' to commemorate kayak gold

Bradford on Avon was once a Roman settlement and wealthy hotbed of wool production, but (perhaps due to school history funding cuts) is now best known as the home town of Britain's Olympic 200m kayak sprint gold medallist Ed McKeever. To celebrate his achievement, The Sporting Owl can exclusively reveal that the town has renamed 200 residents 'Ed McKeever' through a compulsory lottery.

As town councillor and tourism panjandrum Jonquil Bluffton-Herring explains, "We heard about Keshorn Walcott and his lighthouse over in Trinidad and we thought it pretty much kicked the shit out of Ed's obligatory gold postbox, if you'll pardon my English. But we don't have a lighthouse what with not being on the coast and all (though our canals are delightful and well worth a family visit), so we spent the last fortnight locked in our imposing 14th century tithe barn (open all year round; free entry for the under-8s and infirm) trying to come up with an alternative. We ruled out our historic Saxon church and grade I listed town bridge (fishing permits available at very reasonable rates) straight away because, well, let's face it, and with all due respect to Ed, kayaking in a straight line on a flat lake is barely a real sport and it's almost as boring to watch as he is to talk to. We thought a level crossing or disused quarry might be about right, but it turns out we named the last of those after local rugby flop Phil de Glanville in 2006. Anyway, having run out of landmarks, we decided that the best and coincidentally cheapest way to honour Ed would be to change 200 residents' names to Ed McKeever by deed poll - one for each metre he paddled."


Definitely not the Ed McKeever Bridge

Local historian Ed McKeever (formerly Xerxes Smith) agrees. "I'm sure I'm not just being characteristically pompous and presumptuous when I say on behalf of the entire town that we all feel very proud that Ed calls Bradford on Avon his home. To be perfectly honest this has saved my career by giving me something to write about - literally nothing has happened here since popular beat combo Jesus Jones formed in 1988. So if changing our names shows Ed just how much we care, then it's the very least we can do for our inspiring Olympic hero. And if any initial confusion results from more than 2% of the population now being called Ed McKeever, that's a small price to pay. Just ask lottery winners Ed and Ed McKeever and their delighted children Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed and Ed McKeever (though perhaps not their somewhat less ecstatic and rather confused sibling Jenny Williams)."

As the saying goes in Bradford on Avon, "under the fish and over the water" - perhaps a reference to the Great Troutstorm Rebellion of 1638, but almost certainly a very neat way to finish this report if we knew what it was supposed to mean.

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