#36 Stay Upright
Jun 6th, 2008 by doing better
It is no easy matter to maintain our bipedal stance on a muddy hill so steep it might be mistaken for a wall. Hundreds of feet have worn away the grass, leaving a slick, treacherous surface. We slip and fall to our hands and knees, clinging to tree roots and other people’s legs as we try to scramble up and regain some dignity. Instead we pull the others down into a bigger heap of laughing, squirming raincoats.
We are pilgrims to a baffling spectacle. We have driven across the countryside, clogged the roads for miles around, trekked through the meadows and up the hills. Those fools among us who still believe in summer have turned up in sandals and shorts, only to capitulate to the downpour and purchase disposable raincoats at inflated prices. We have come to Cooper’s Hill.
Here we are gratified in our muddy, wet, unbalanced misery to behold fools greater than ourselves. Dozens of men, women and children line up to throw themselves down the hill. They are the racers. Their object, unaccountably, is a cheese. This is a cheese rolling.
“The cheese is rolled. The cheese is off!” announces the master of ceremonies. “Watch where it rolls.”
The cheese is of the Gloucester variety, large and disc-shaped. As it bounces down the hill, it appears to be coming apart at the seams. After it swarms a group of hearty men who become increasingly muddy as they tumble down the slope. They might be rugby players, for they look fit and determined. They are not rugby players, however; they are cheese chasers. Some of them have come from abroad to chase the cheese. They may break their legs or even their necks, yet they will risk these terrible injuries in the hope of a glorious moment when they will seize the cheese and hold it aloft in victory.
The racers tumble past us in just a few seconds. The downhill race alternates with a slow, plodding uphill race which few of the contestants are able to complete. We spectators use this break in the action to change our positions on the hill and slip down in the mud a few more times.
Before the next downhill race, a lone figure emerges. He appears to be wearing a cape, but it is hard to see him clearly because he goes so fast. We do see, however, that he gives himself to the hill with unbridled passion. What he does cannot be called running; it is nothing less than a dive. He plunges down the hill. His body bounces like a rag doll, turning and flipping haphazardly.
In the crowd we fall silent. We have never seen a human body abused this way unless on a movie screen, by professionals. But this is happening in real life, before our very eyes, to a tall, thin youth in a homemade cape. After he has flown past us, we are convinced he must be dead, broken, snapped in two. We cannot see the finish line where he has landed. The master of ceremonies makes no comment. The next race begins.
We are chastened by what we have witnessed. The man in the cape has gone far beyond the bounds of acceptable treatment of our bodies. We can laugh at the cheese racers because they are just stepping over the edge, but the tumbling man has made us witness to an extreme we do not wish to know.
We step carefully down the hill and trudge through the meadows. We are cold, damp, sober, and very glad to reach the steadiness of the road.