The Dragon Boat Team Needed a Drummer, and I Ended Up Paddling

Fourteen Years of Custard

I have been a dinner lady at a primary school in Sunderland for fourteen years. I serve about two hundred and forty lunches a day, I know which children will cry if their peas touch their potatoes, and I can carry a tray of jam sponge across a hall full of six-year-olds without losing a single portion. I am fifty-five, I have two grown sons, and until last spring the most strenuous thing I did outside work was walking our dog, Biscuit, up and down Roker seafront.

I am telling you this so you understand that I was not a sporty woman. I was a woman who watched sport with a cup of tea and opinions.

Pauline's Problem

It started with Pauline, who works the till at the bakery near my house. Pauline paddles on a dragon boat team that trains on the Wear. I knew this the way you know things about people you see every morning, vaguely, without ever asking a proper question.

One Saturday in April she leaned over the counter while I was buying my stottie and said, "Our drummer's moved to Leeds. You've got a loud voice. Come and sit at the front of the boat on Sunday."

I said I could not swim very well. She said the drummer did not need to swim, she needed to shout. I said I was fifty-five. She said their oldest paddler was seventy-one. I said I would think about it, which in my family means no. Then I went home and Biscuit looked at me like I was a coward, so I went.

The Front of the Boat

A dragon boat is long and narrow, with ten pairs of paddlers sitting side by side, a steerer at the back and a drummer at the front, perched on a little seat facing everyone, beating time on a big drum so they all paddle together. It is a wonderful seat. You can see every face. You can see who is trying too hard and who is pretending.

For three weeks I sat on that seat and shouted. I was good at it. Fourteen years of telling children to sit down and eat their carrots had prepared me for this exact job. The team laughed, the boat moved in time, and I went home with a sore throat and a feeling in my chest I had not had in years.

The Morning Someone Did Not Turn Up

In May, one of the paddlers was ill on a training morning and the boat was short. The coach, a quiet man called Derek who used to row for Durham, looked at me and said, "Fancy a go on the bench?"

I lasted about six minutes before my shoulders started to burn. By twelve minutes I could not feel my hands. By the end of the session I was mostly moving the paddle for decoration. Pauline, sitting in front of me, kept saying "lovely, lovely" without turning round, which is what I say to children when their painting is a brown smudge.

I could not lift my arms to brush my hair the next morning. I served lunch with my elbows tucked into my sides like a penguin. But I went back the following Sunday and asked to paddle again.

What Happens to a Body That Has Only Carried Trays

I want to be honest about this part, because I think a lot of women my age feel it and do not say it. My body had stopped being something I used. It was something I managed. Something with knees that complained on stairs and a back that did not like the cold. I had not felt properly, usefully tired in years.

Paddling made me tired in a different way. My shoulders and back started to wake up. I began noticing muscles in my forearms when I lifted the big trays at work. One of the kitchen girls asked if I had been going to the gym. I told her I had joined a boat, and she looked at me like I had said I had joined the circus.

The tiredness was also a problem, though. I would come home on a Sunday and sleep through the afternoon, and on Monday I could barely lift the urn.

Advice From the Seventy-One-Year-Old

Our oldest paddler is a retired nurse called Marjorie, who is seventy-one and has arms like a docker. After a training session in June, while we were hauling the boat out, she asked how I was recovering. I told her the truth, which was badly.

She asked what I ate. I told her. Toast for breakfast. Whatever was left over at work for lunch. Something with chips on a Sunday because I was too tired to cook. She gave me the same look I give a child who says they have eaten their vegetables while hiding them under the plate.

Marjorie told me I was probably not eating nearly enough protein for what I was now asking my body to do, and that at our age muscle does not come back as easily as it does when you are twenty. She said she had a shake after every session, usually a Whey Protein one mixed with milk, and that it had made a real difference to how she felt the next day. She said it like she was telling me to wear a vest in winter.

Me, in the Supplement Aisle

I am not sure I can describe how out of place I felt the first time I looked at those big tubs. I have always thought of that sort of thing as being for lads with tattoos who stand in front of mirrors. I picked up a tub of Protein Powder, read the back of it like it was a medical leaflet, and put it down again three times before I bought it.

I told nobody at first. I mixed it in a shaker in the kitchen while my husband Alan was out, as if it were something shameful. When he found the tub in the cupboard, he read the label and said, "Are you going to start lifting cars?"

I told him only if he parked badly.

The Other Thing Marjorie Mentioned

A few weeks later, at the end-of-season barbecue, a younger paddler called Jess was talking about Creatine with Derek. I had never heard the word said out loud. I asked what it was and Jess explained it was something a lot of people take for strength and power, that it had been studied a great deal, and that she had started on it after reading about it for months.

I did not rush into that one. I asked my GP first, because I am fifty-five and I have learned not to take health advice from a barbecue, however nice the burgers are. She was relaxed about it and told me what to watch for. I am still reading about it. I am a dinner lady, not a scientist, but I can read a label and ask a doctor, and that, it turns out, is most of what you need.

The First Race

In September we raced at a festival on the river. Ten boats, a crowd on the bank, a woman on a loudspeaker who could not pronounce Sunderland properly. I was in the boat, on the bench, fourth row, left side, with Pauline in front of me.

We did not win. We came fourth out of ten, which Derek said was the best result the team had had in three years. I do not remember most of the race. I remember the drum, the new drummer shouting, and Pauline in front of me shouting "lovely, lovely" and meaning it this time.

Back in the Hall

On Monday morning I was back behind the counter with two hundred and forty lunches to serve. A little girl in Year Two, who always asks me questions, wanted to know why I had a plaster on my thumb. I told her it was a blister from paddling a dragon boat.

She looked at me with enormous eyes and said, "Is the dragon real?"

I told her yes. I told her I sit inside it every Sunday, and that if she eats her peas she might be strong enough to come and see it one day. She ate every single one.