When Mrs Sturgess brought a lawyer to a school egg and spoon race, chaos and controversy ensued. Sports writer Thomas Grave asks, who truly won?
No-one can accuse Mrs Edna Sturgess of timidity.
No-one would dare.
She marches, she doesn’t walk. She yells, she doesn’t talk.
On the field of battle she is formidable. Some of her competitors lose form just so they don’t rile the undisputed No.1.
She is victorious in the dressing room, the minds and bodies about her wilting in the industrial heat of her aura.
So it has been at the Little Warbler School Sports Day for many a year. Mrs Edna Sturgess with her tweed skirt like armour, her woolly top keeping the secrets of her craft close to her chest. That brooch, in gold, she wears like the medal of a permanent winner.
A three-legged race for the history books
Who can forget – or will be allowed to – that remarkable showdown in the three-legged race of three summers ago? When Mrs Sturgess and her battered and bruised son Stelwyn rampaged through the field, from first to last, after the young boy tripped in the second quartile.
Others would have given up the chase and cuddled their weeping son, perhaps nursing his broken arm which he held at a sickening angle. Not firebrand Mrs Edna Sturgess, who yanked the pallid and screaming boy, like a ball and chain, up the field so she could take the tape and keep her record intact. Stelwyn, having ploughed through the field, emerged like a muddied foal, quite incapable of sharing the glee of his mother.
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Stelwyn has grown since then. Left the school. Become a pacifist painter. But Mrs Sturgess has checked the paper work, twice, and imposed upon the committee a ruling that she can defend her undisputed record in the egg and spoon race, the pinnacle in her trifecta of specialist events.
So here we are.
Facing her great rival on the field of battle
She faces this day the young pretender Mrs Fontley Spoon – yes, that’s right. It’s in the name and in her blood. Mrs Spoon, the scrappy up-and-comer has been showing form in her chosen sport across the playing fields of Guardian City, happy to fill a lane if another mother falls ill. She sold her house, moved to a chicken farm and wakes at the crack of dawn to cart her ovoids at speed across tight mown pastures.
She teamed up with former top spoonster Giddy Wakes – now retired – who has been putting the young woman through her paces. Because she knew this day would come. This day of destiny.
The showdown: Spoon v Sturgess.
That we should live at at a time when two such unconquerable spirits can go head to head.
This is that day, a level playing field before them. Mark it well, this amphitheatre, this stage of the greats.
Out strides Mrs Spoon, to cheers – for she is the underdog, despite her pluck and upper body strength. Her hand trembles momentarily, yes, but when the warbler egg is lowered into the neat bowl of that specially streamlined silver plated spoon, she is as steady as a rock. Fixed in her purpose.
What on earth is going on here?
Mrs Sturgess next, to fresh if muted applause. She has with her – what is this?
Judges, what is this?
A spoon like a spade. She rests it on her shoulder. Four feet long.
And what’s this? Further confusion as the judges flick through the rule book. Boos from the crowd. The start is delayed for an inquiry. People tell Mrs Spoon to quit, walk off the field, this is foul play.
Mrs Sturgess has with her a lawyer and a very, very large Warbler egg. The lawyer comes from the Guardian City ornithological society who confirms the egg is that of the of the Great Crested Warbler (ovatus maximus) and there’s nothing in the rules about bilateral taxonomic … blah, blah, blah.
They ask Mrs Spoon. Does she mind?
Mrs Spoon senses an advantage. Mrs Sturgess surely has a handicap with such a weight. What is she thinking? Mrs Spoon is lithe and quick.
The gun fires. Mrs Spoon is gone, a blur.
Oh, the humanity
But it’s a trap. It’s a trap Mrs Spoon!
Her deft steps make the Warbler egg precarious in its metal nest. The ground is pitted and furrowed. She stumbles, she falls, she picks up a time penalty. And another. And another.
Meanwhile Mrs Sturgess’s super egg is immovable, the weight of the egg providing heft and certainty.
She takes the crown.
People drift away.
They can’t watch.
The word on their lips is “cheat”.
Someone says – although he has no proof – that Mrs Sturgess was out at midnight digging divots and troughs and all kinds of obstacles across the field to bring about such an outcome.
She is driven.
They think it’s all over
It is a sour spectacle.
But this is the last we may see of the great Mrs Edna Sturgess.
She never was a people’s champion but she had their respect. No longer.
Has she tarnished her legacy, or has she created a template for winners? The debate will occupy the taverns and beer halls of Guardian City for decades.
When the wee toddlers of Little Warbler School grow up, will they remember this day with shame? Or will they delight in Mrs Sturgess because they were banned from playing games for three months while the new turf grew in?
Sport is unrivalled drama. Mrs Sturgess, we salute you for reminding us of that beautiful truth.