Cheating Emma(but see Down Downs) Scrumper GBH Eth Ms. Whiplash LaybyLil Chris Squirrel C5 Keith Butterfly Spot Rawhide Spex Klingon Hashgate Salome Mike Iceman Foghorn Florence Tacky Nick Larry Mick Neil Daisy HairyMary The Tremblers Lord Lucan Greenfly Liz Sandra Potty 2Bob Puddleduck BoPeep Circle Tweenie TT2 Zebedee Jenks Khazi KarenLe Voisin sans chien Steamer

Well the evening was cold and the company warm as we waited for Cheating to return from the beer stop with C5. Tacky had brought some friends: Nick and Larry. And Sandra and Liz turned up for their second Hash. Quite amazing since their first was this year’s Fun Run. They quizzed me closely on the probable length of this trail and whether there would be anyone walking. I lied smilingly about the first part and pointed them at Ms. Whiplash and the monstrous regiment for the second. Incidentally, Ms. Whiplash came up with the quote of the night. Chatting about her visit to the Quorn Hash she mused, with a dreamy look, that "I’ve never seen so many willies." Perhaps not all at the same time….

Cheating and C5 finally arrived and Cheating duly confused us at the Gather Round with talk of Beer Stop blobs and bar 20’s and ‘don’t scare the pheasants’ and…oh God knows what else. We were damn glad to start running and get warm. Greenfly, Tweenie and Tacky and her toyboys and I flamed off down the road like Hash dragsters – which of course was our undoing. At the bottom of a *#!%ing great hill was a bar-7. Should have known really. Still, many others joined us including the splendidly suntanned Daisy and the somewhat more pallid Lord Lucan. Although he’d gone a slightly different colour by the time we ran back up the hill! In the graveyard of the fine church at the top was a massive monument to one, William Freeman who died on October 11^th, 1707, who was described as brave, friendly and good. These were not words that came to mind when we discussed the bar-7 laying person after we got some breath back. Still, this rather set the pattern for the Hash tonight – lots of up hill and down dale with long falses and bars. In fact, dare I say it, exactly what a Hash trail should be, since it keeps the pack together and knackers the FRB’s. But I won’t praise Cheating too much since at one point he stated, without shame, that he ‘richly deserved’ it. The sheer gall of the man!

Well, of course, BGB suddenly popped up like a rabbit out of a hat, half way down a long false. I just don’t know how he does this. Anyway, Spot and Nick and Scrumper and I had to leg it back up the hill on one of Cheating’s more ridiculous trail ideas. It goes like this – you have sets of blobs on either side of the road so the pack follows the false trail on one side and then comes back on the other! BoPeep was rightly scornful of a Hare that uses the same flour twice. The cheapskate!

It all started getting confusing from here with people hurtling about the woods in all directions while the walkers plodded steadily onwards. Stinging nettles whipped us viciously, loose flint rolled underfoot, bracken barred our way, rotting wood snapped as we stepped on it. It was getting more fun all the time. Especially when Potty attempted a Franz Klammer down the hill – without skis! A strange sort of army assault course appeared, followed by some cross country horse jumps. And then Greenfly was spotted doing press ups down a false trail. At least I think he was; a dishevelled muntjack deer fled rapidy from the scene as I arrived…. Butterfly confided shortly after that he had been out once or twice with Paddy, his dog, trying to poach the creatures but that one of them (I didn’t catch which) was too stupid to catch any. This was followed by BoPeep’s truism of the night "I think I’ve been putting on weight". Luckily the Beer Stop was called although it was in the valley below where Daisy and I had heaved our sweating carcasses up the a hill. We heaved them back down again and gratefully accepted liquid refreshment. And very convivial it was. I chatted to Mick and Neil. Mick who has been trying to join BH³ for some time but is continually being fobbed off with the "sorry, we’ve got no forms" excuse (perhaps someone’s trying to tell you something, Mick) and Neil, who turns up with thighs like Schwarznegger and a poncy Reading Half Marathon T-shirt and swears he’s never done a road race in his life! I feel a renaming coming on.

We left the bliss of the regroup for more up/down hill torture which was briefly interrupted by 3 things. One was Cheating getting his ear chewed off by the local gamekeeper as we sped silently past the pheasant pens. Two was poor, uneducated Tacky who thought the nearby ‘F’ stood for ‘F’easant.. and three was Zebedee executing a perfect pratfall over the most obvious piece of wood ever seen in the middle of some short grass. We briefly held up our 5.9’s for technical merit and moved on.

RA C5 presented the following :-

Our very best wishes to Dumper for a rapid recovery. We look forward to seeing you and Septic very soon.