English

by Ben Fogle

  While my mother wanted me to be a cricketer, I had my sights set on becoming an international worm charmer.

  The World Worm Charming Championships have been held annually near Willaston in Cheshire since July 1980, when a local farmer’s son, Tom Shufflebotham, successfully charmed 511 worms out of the ground in thirty minutes. The championship’s eighteen rules are strictly enforced by the International Federation of Charming Worms and Allied Pastimes (IFCWAP), a body that also regulates such sports as underwater Ludo and indoor hang-gliding. Tom Shufflebotham’s 29-year world worm charming record was finally broken in 2009 by ten-year-old Sophie Smith, whose team successfully charmed 567 worms to the surface.

  The key to worm charming is to try and fool the worm into thinking it’s raining. Since the rules stipulate that worms must be charmed without the aid of water, the most popular technique is ‘twanging’, which involves planting a pitchfork into the soil and then rocking, hitting or twanging it. The movement sends reverberations down into the soil, encouraging the worms to think it is raining. Other less orthodox approaches have also been adopted, including playing rock guitar or xylophone, and even tap dancing to the Star Wars theme. Some competitors have employed rather unscrupulous tactics such as hiding worms up their trouser legs or chopping them in half to double their number – both practices in contravention of international worm charming law.

  WORLD WORM CHARMING RULES

  Each competitor to operate in a 3 x 3 metre plot.

  Lots to be drawn to allocate plots.

  Duration of competition to be 30 minutes, starting at about 2 p.m.

  Worms may not be dug from the ground. Vibrations only to be used.

  No drugs to be used! Water is considered to be a drug/stimulant.

  Any form of music may be used to charm the worms out of the earth.

  A garden fork of normal type may be stuck into the ground and vibrated by any manual means to encourage worms to the surface.

  Garden forks to be suitably covered to prevent possible injury when being transported to and from the competition. No accidents please!

  Each competitor to leave his/her fork in allocated plot on arrival.

  A piece of wood, smooth or notched, may be used to strike or ‘fiddle’ the handle of the garden fork to assist vibration.

  Competitors who do not wish to handle worms may appoint a second to do so. The second shall be known as a ‘Gillie’.

  Each competitor may collect worms from his/her own plot only.

  Worms to be handled carefully and collected in damp peat and placed in a suitable, named container provided by the organizing committee.

  A handbell to be rung about five minutes before the start of the competition.

  Competitors to keep clear of competition plots until given the instruction ‘Get to your Plots’.

  The competitor who ‘charms’ the most worms to be the winner.

  In the event of a tie, the winner to be decided by a further five minutes’ charming.

  Charmed worms to be released after the birds have gone to roost on the evening of the event.

  After seeking some local advice I headed into town to stock up on provisions. I bought a worm bucket, a small set of bells, a child’s trumpet, a tambourine, a toy car, a tin whistle, a pitchfork and an alarm clock. I wasn’t sure how I was going to use my eclectic mix of tools but I was desperate to win.

  I returned to a carnival of all things worm. There were children dressed as worms, dads dressed as worms, mums in army camouflage and various worm-charming contraptions that would wow Caractacus Potts. Recreating the sounds of thunder, lightning and the pitter-patter of raindrops were all the worm-bait you needed. There were bicycles mounted on blocks with the rear wheels removed and replaced by two sticks with big boots on the end of each one. As the bicycle was pedalled, the boots thumped in turn against the ground. ‘Just like thunder,’ smiled the inventor. There were old lawnmowers that had been adapted Heath Robinson style to ‘twang’ the soil with each movement rather than chop the grass. My personal favourite was a stereo with its speakers facing the ground and a playlist called simply ‘Rain’.

  I gathered my worm tools and headed into the arena. There was a roar from the crowd. This must be what it is like to be an England player walking into Wembley Stadium, except I was in a Cheshire field. Still, it felt good.

  We were each given a three-square-metre plot of ground that had been carefully marked out with ropes, and we had half an hour to charm as many worms to the surface as we could. Having stepped into the ring, I sat cross-legged on my little patch of soil and planned my tactics, eyeing up the competition. There were nearly a hundred competitors including worm-charming veterans.

  ‘Focus, Ben,’ I muttered to myself.

  ‘… five, four, three, two, one …’ Brrrrrrrrrrr! the klaxon sounded.

  I knelt on the dry grass, picked up the tambourine and started tapping it rhythmically against the ground. Nothing. Not a worm in sight.

  I took the tin whistle, placed its end against the soil and blew tunefully. Nothing. Blew … forcefully. Still nothing.

  I jangled bells and tooted on the trumpet. Still not a worm in sight.

  Every so often I would hear a great cheer as a worm was carefully extracted from the ground. ‘How are they charming them?’ I fumed.

  I patted the ground with the tambourine and blew again on the tin whistle. In desperation, I resorted to a sort of rain dance, tapping my feet against the ground in simulation of rain.

  Each new cheer drove my increasingly frantic attempts on. I lay on the ground and held my hands to my mouth. ‘Wormy, here wormy worm worms.’

  Nothing.

  Just as despair was beginning to set in, I caught a glimpse of something in the green grass, a flicker of brown. It was the unmistakable body of a worm. I froze, my heart began to pound. I had to get it before it disappeared back into its hole. Slowly I lowered my hand. I practised the ‘chopstick’ movement with my thumb and forefinger and … snatch! I snapped at the ground. My fingers locked around its slippery body but it was thin, really thin. Too thin.

  I had overestimated the power of my squeeze and the worm snapped in two, leaving me with a writhing half-worm between my fingers, in direct contravention of the spirit and practice of international worm charming.

  ‘You killed it!’ frowned the director.

  ‘No, I doubled it,’ I corrected her as I placed it in the bucket. At least I was off to a start. The problem was that the competition was already halfway through. There were only fifteen minutes left to pick up the pace and by the sound of cheering and whooping, my competitors each had more than half a worm in their buckets.

  The clock ticked on and I tried some pitchfork twanging. Miraculously worms began to appear. They were small, skinny and sometimes a bit ‘halvy’, but they were beautiful, writhing worms none the less.

  One, two, three, four, five … the pile began to mount until the klaxon sounded once again, marking the end of the competition.

  ‘Right, time to count the slippery little suckers.’ I smiled for the cameras before disappearing to the counting station, where worm marshals would validate my haul.

  ‘Well done. You have seven worms,’ announced my counter.

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s a little more than that,’ I corrected her.

  ‘No it isn’t!’ she said, holding out the bucket.

  ‘What about that?’ I smiled, pointing to another worm in the corner of the bucket.

  ‘That’s half a worm!’ she said.

  ‘So it’s seven and a half worms,’ I responded triumphantly.

  ‘We don’t count halves.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, a little miffed.

  ‘Animal cruelty,’ she answered.

  The weigh-in complete, it was time for the announcement of the winners. The tension in the field was palpable.

  ‘The winner of the World Worm Charming Championships is Leon Holt with two hundred and ninety-six worms.’

/>   ‘Two hundred and ninety-six!’ I nearly choked. ‘Two hundred and ninety-six!’ I repeated, open-mouthed. This ten-year-old had well and truly whopped me. My dreams of world worm dominance had been shattered, and with that my worm-charming days were over.

  And that was the end of that – or so I thought, until the show went out a couple of weeks later and I found myself caught up in a row about the nuances of the English language in a bizarre and truly English way.

  ‘Someone has lodged a complaint against you with the BBC,’ warned my agent.

  I was puzzled. ‘Was it for animal cruelty?’ I wondered, anticipating that someone had objected to my half-worm – the English love all animals, great and small.

  ‘No,’ she replied, ‘for swearing on air.’

  What did she mean? I rarely swear, and certainly not on camera – and definitely not on a pre-edited Sunday morning rural affairs show on the BBC. Apart from once getting in trouble for saying I was ‘knackered’ during a coracle race, I was usually accused of being too prudish, and yet now I was in the midst of a formal complaint against me for bad language.

  ‘The complainant,’ began the report, ‘alleges that during a Countryfile report on the Silver Jubilee World Worm Charming Championships, Ben Fogle said “It’s now time to count the slippery little f**kers!”’

  What the f@£k? Pardon my language, but really, on a pre-recorded Sunday morning show? Really? The complainant had it in for me and wasn’t giving in easily. Despite the BBC’s assurance that I had in fact said ‘slippery little suckers’, the viewer was still not satisfied and took the matter to the Head of Complaints.

  The Head of Complaints responded that ‘throughout the worm charming the sound quality was less than perfect and there was a loss of sibilants; however, the phrase “slippery little suckers” had an alliteration which the alternative lacked’.

  Despite, or perhaps because of, this confusing explanation, the complainant took it to the Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee. And so it was that the board of the BBC governors was forced to watch me taking part in the Silver Jubilee Worm Charming Championships. They concluded that I did indeed say ‘slippery little suckers’.

  If you can’t catch worms, you can always try crabs.

  ‘I caught crabs in Walberswick’ reads my favourite T-shirt. It is from the time I took part in the World Crabbing Championships in the Suffolk coastal town of that name.

  Crabbing is another quintessentially English hobby. It reminds me of my childhood, sitting on the harbour wall in Padstow with a crabbing line in the water. The fear and excitement of catching one of those fearsome clawed crustaceans was overwhelming.

  The Walberswick crabbing championships have become something of an institution, attracting thousands of spectators as well as hundreds of competitors. The contest lasts ninety minutes, each crabber armed with a single line and bait of their choice. The person to land the heaviest crab wins. Bait really is the key.

  I had done a little research into crab bait and discovered that bacon and sausage seem to be the most popular, followed by bread. My secret weapon … Marmite, of course. Oh, and Jammie Dodgers. I’m not sure how I settled on these, but I felt sure any good crab would be unable to resist the black stuff.

  The starting gun fired and a thousand lines dipped into the murky waters. (The scale of the competition is amazing – the peak entry was 1,252 in 2009.) I smeared some Marmite onto a Jammie Dodger. There was a flurry of excitement as each crab was plucked from the lines and placed carefully into waiting buckets of water.

  ‘Haven’t you caught anything yet?’ asked a young boy, peering into my empty bucket.

  I shrugged and watched him walk back to his father and their bucket full of crustacea. His father was disentangling another crab from their line. It was Richard Curtis, the film director. Not any old film director, but perhaps the director of the greatest quintessentially English movie hits, from Four Weddings and a Funeral to Notting Hill and Love Actually. A man who understood the curious customs and attitudes of the English. And now, here he was with his children competing against me in the fiercely competitive crabbing championships.

  For ninety long minutes, I dangled my Marmite-smeared Jammie Dodgers into the murky tidal waters. The problem of course was saturation – as soon as the biscuits hit the water they dissolved, leaving my line baitless. And crabless.

  All around me families and children were hauling in monster crabs while my bucket remained conspicuously empty. Finally, as I lifted my line from the water, I saw a tiny crab holding on for dear life. I had caught a hitchhiker. Admittedly he was tiny, little larger than a thumbnail, but he was a crab nonetheless.

  The clock ticked down and the klaxon sounded. ‘Competitors, remove your lines from the water.’ We each made our way to the official crab counter and I presented my tiny crab. I was beaten by Richard Curtis and family, who took the championship title. All I left with was the T-shirt. It still makes me laugh.

  Sport is an English national obsession. Largely, it has to be said, because we believe we invented most of them. Inventing a sport, or codifying its rules (another English speciality), bestows a superiority which is very useful when we no longer dominate that sport; just think of football, and our fixation with England’s one-off 1966 World Cup victory.

  The big three sports that originated from these shores are football, rugby (which split into rugby union and rugby league, and led to American football and Australian rules) and cricket (which morphed into baseball on the other side of the pond). In fact, there are twenty-eight other sports that originate from England. Alphabetically, the list runs: association football, bandy, English billiards, bowls, cricket, croquet, Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, Devon wrestling, Eton fives, extreme ironing, ferret-legging, fives, indoor cricket, Lancashire wrestling, netball, rackets, rally-cross, rounders, rugby fives, rugby league, rugby union, shin-kicking, squash, table tennis, tennis, underwater hockey, walking football and water polo.

  A. A. Gill in his book The Angry Island: Hunting the English wrote, ‘The English have invented almost every game you can think of – and if they didn’t invent them, they grabbed and codified them. Far too many games’ rules have been constructed by the English for it to be merely coincidental …’ It does seem astonishing that such a tiny island has been responsible for creating so many of the world’s biggest sports. I wonder if it is indicative of our inclement weather that we need to run around to keep warm.

  The Cotswold Olimpick Games, an event recognized by the British Olympic Association as ‘the first stirrings of Britain’s Olympic beginnings’, were started on the Thursday and Friday of Whitsun week in 1622 by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James I. They illustrate our historic, long-lasting love of sport and games in general. Dover believed that physical exercise was necessary to strengthen the population for the defence of the realm because, as a maritime nation with plenty of enemies, we always needed to be prepared for an imminent attack. Events were open to rich and poor alike and included horse racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords, cudgels and quarterstaff, and wrestling. In booths and tents, chess and card games were played for small stakes. A temporary wooden structure called Dover Castle was erected in a natural amphitheatre, complete with cannons that were fired to begin the events.

  Puritans disapproved of such ‘pagan’ festivities. By the time of James’s death in 1625, many Puritan landowners had forbidden their workers to attend. These conflicting attitudes to the Games were symptomatic of the problems in the realm, and increasing tensions between the supporters of the king and the Puritans resulted in the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642. It’s not much of a surprise to learn that this brought the Games to an end. They were revived after the Restoration of 1660, but ended again in 1852, when the common land on which they had been staged was partitioned between local landowners and farmers and subsequently enclosed.

  Astonishing
ly, the Games were revived again in 1966, and except when exceptionally bad weather or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has forced their cancellation, they have been held each year since on the Friday after spring Bank Holiday. Events have recently included tug of war, shin-kicking, dwile flonking, motorcycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, and Morris dancing. Not events that you’ll see Usain Bolt or Mo Farah taking part in.

  If there is one sport that truly defines a nation it is football. Wherever I am in the world, I am asked which football team I support. The universal language of football is one that transcends culture, language, and class.

  I have an admission to make. I have never really been into football, neither playing nor watching. It has played into my guilty English conscience that I am so illiterate when it comes to our national game. Of course I can reel off a long list of football teams and even players, but don’t ask me to put them together correctly. I would argue that a key definition of true Englishness is an ability to talk fluidly and knowledgeably about the beautiful game. I have always seen it as a true indicator of my mongrel genes.

  As A. A. Gill wrote, ‘After the language, football is England’s greatest gift to the world. When all the other inventions are rust and junk, when the discoveries are commonplace, there will still be football. The only truly pan-national human activity, football is played on every continent; there isn’t a child in the world who hasn’t had a crack at goal …’

  When we say football, we mean association football (known as soccer in some countries), but other variations of the game based on kicking a ball evolved and are known as football codes – gridiron football (American football or Canadian football); Australian rules football; rugby football (rugby league and rugby union); and Gaelic football.

  Football appears to have started as a popular peasant game, played between neighbouring towns and villages. Typically, each ‘team’ would have an unlimited number of players, the purpose of the game being to fight for and move an inflated pig’s bladder to markers at either end of the town. It doesn’t seem to have mattered how they did it, and games often became mass brawls. The authorities would later attempt to outlaw such dangerous mob pastimes, but some still exist as quaint traditions to this day. For example, in Alnwick in Northumberland, the game begins with the Duke of Northumberland dropping a ball from the battlements of Alnwick Castle, while Workington in Cumbria holds a game between teams named the Uppies and Downies.