The discovery came during a routine inventory check ahead of this year’s Fourth of June celebrations
WINDSOR Eton College confirmed this week that its oldest rowing trophy, awarded annually since the eighteen-sixties, has apparently been missing from the display cabinet since 1987, a gap of nearly four decades that went entirely unnoticed until a junior member of staff conducting a routine inventory check happened to actually read the little brass plaque underneath the empty space.
How The Discovery Was Actually Made
The staff member, tasked with dusting the boathouse trophy cabinet ahead of Fourth of June celebrations, reportedly assumed for several minutes that the trophy had simply been removed for polishing, before realizing the polishing rota itself hadn’t mentioned it in living memory.
The Leading Theory
School archivists have proposed several explanations, the most popular involving a Housemaster who retired in the late 1980s and was known, according to one colleague, to “borrow things for photographs and forget entirely that borrowing implies returning.”
Reaction From The Rowing Club
Current members of the boat club expressed a mixture of genuine outrage and mild amusement, with one Captain of Boats noting that “several boys have literally rowed their entire school careers underneath a completely empty shelf without a single one of them asking why.”
What The School Is Actually Doing About It
A formal search has reportedly begun through several storage rooms, at least one disused chapel cupboard, and, per one particularly hopeful theory, the back of a supply cupboard belonging to the art department, whose staff have denied all knowledge but “wouldn’t rule anything out.”
Where Things Stand Now
The trophy remains missing as of publication, though the school has commissioned a temporary replacement plaque reading simply “Currently Being Looked For,” which several boys have already noted is, at minimum, an improvement in honesty over the empty shelf. Further school satire coverage continues at bohiney.com.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
The London Prat
Scriptor Rerum Novarum Cupidus: Morag Sinclair
