Bomber Tom Spot Scrumper Spunky Centaur Bill Julie Mick StickyDicky Gulab Ja Moon Old Fart C5 Sue5 Paella Gusset Anorak Trainspotter Shep Lord Lucan Ladybird TT2 Bill Cheating Dumper Septic Flash Dave Stretchmarks Maneater Phil Khazi Julie Karen Foghorn Mrs. Foghorn Zebedee Florence Greenfly BoPeep Tweenie 2Bob Puddleduck HoneyAnt Ann Mr. Mainwaring Squelchy CarelessWrister

After a week of torrential showers and weather generally favouring creatures that float or swim, this was bound to be a Hash to suit the shiggy-fanciers. And so it was. As Bill, Spunky, Centaur, virgins (nice to see you both) Julie and Mick, and I chatted amiably in the car park you could smell the dampness emanating from the sods. (Make of that what you will!) Luckily, the rain was holding off for once and we were fortunate that it did throughout the Hash. The car park filled rapidly and a variety of virgins and rarely-seens from Oxford (including Ladybird) appeared. The Hash performed it’s usual warm-up routine of ‘having a bit of a chat’ and ‘pretending to know what’s going on’ and Bomber very kindly did a Rolf Harris on the car park in order to show us what a flour blob, check, bar (yawn, yawn) was. Fortunately, we managed to just stay awake and before you could say "swipe me round the gob with a wet kipper", we were off. If you’ve ever dropped a grenade into a pond full of fish you can imagine the ariel view. Hashers pounding off in all directions – not that anyone knew where they were going….all except one. Greenfly, the sneaky blighter, had previously recce’d the trail with Bomber in the underhanded pretence that he might help lay the trail. This was complete obfuscation and blather and was purely an obvious attempt to gain prior knowledge so that he might mislead as many gullible Hashers as possible. Well it worked a treat since various people followed the bugger into uncharted backwoods at various points on the trail. Ladybird also tried this once but for a different reason….more later.

It turned into a very enjoyable cruise through mud, lanes, forest and the occasional road. Particularly, at Goring Heath almshouses where two of us made a long detour off trail, round the road and latched on to the back of the main pack again. Shortly afterwards we hit forest and BoPeep showed his true prowess as a ‘No Rules’ Hasher by insisting on running over a false in the forlorn hope that ‘it always goes this way’. Well, it didn’t and he came thundering back down rather sheepishly (har, har, geddit?). Mind you, everyone else was completed foxed too and, to the delight of Bomber, we scampered around like headless chickens for a while until the doughty Ladybird called ‘On On!’ in a confident manner. We should have known. The poor sap hasn’t Hashed with us for some time and had obviously ignored Bomber’s teach-in at the car park. It was, in fact, a false trail. Had this been Shep we could have understood it but no, it was just Ladybird being thick. Never mind. He got a free pint out of it (see Down Downs). We crashed around in the muddy forest for a bit with ‘Roaring’ Lord Lucan leading the way and sounding, according to ManEater like he was undergoing labour pains. I pointed out to her that he has never done a stroke of work in his life and passed on, regardless.

RA C5 officiated with brio, despite the sheep going down on him! :-

Treasure Hunt by car - On 24^th June at 19:00. Gridref 655646. Parking in the (well marked) playing field. The trail is organised by Dribbler and Butterfly. Food available later at the local takeaway and ON2 Lonely's house in Mortimer.