Cap’n Haystax (There you go, Cap’n. With apologies for forgetting to include you last week) Dumper Spot Hashgate Danish Tom NipponTuck Foghorn David(see Down Downs) Anorak Rosemary and Kundun the dog Ann The Tremblers Mr and Mrs Blobby Utopia C5 Uptake Chuck BGB Cloggs Spunky Dave Baldrick Mafia Lonely and Beaver the dog Florence Zebedee CircuitBreaker GBH Motox Shep Soco ….and much later – Butterfly Dribbler and Paddy the dog ….and even later than that – Paella Flash ….followed by Cheating

So there I was, being berated roundly by Cap’n Haystax for leaving him off the Gobsheet last week. And, indeed I thoroughly concurred with his admonition. "Hmm." "Yes, yes". "Z’at right?" "Oh, yes." I agreed, desperately seeking a method of escape. His torrent of castigation momentarily ebbed and I turned to come face to face with a grinning Baldrick. Crikey! This was an even worse shock. The fellow’s face was covered in scrubby beard growth due, he informed me, to a night of fleshpots and debauchery round Caversham the night before on Bomber’s Hash pub crawl. Before me stood not the dapper Paul McNeil resplendant in suit and bow tie from before, but Baldrick the bag man who had obviously spent the night in a gutter somewhere sleeping it off. A once proud drinker etc….
Ann purred up in her posemobile TVR, scattering Hashers nonchalently and tossing her blonde locks ‘because she’s worth it’. The effect was spoiled somewhat when her exhaust scraped embarrassingly while driving through a puddle. Uptake feigned interest in my knee operation while telling me all about his. The Blobbies and Utopia wafted pinkly about the car park. NipponTuck had kindly graced us with her youthful presence and she’d dragged along her old Dad, Foghorn. The Hares, Dumper and Spot had brought huge, empty flour bags from The House of Dumper’s bakery, just to show how much flour was used to lay the trail. Mind you, they never said they had been full to begin with. No GM today (probably still hungover from last week) so C5 sent us off for our tarmac trip.

To celebrate the arrival of British Summer Time the weather was grey, dampish and slightly windswept. This matched the state of many Hasher’s hair styles and, in some of Bomber’s pub crawl attendees, their general demeanour. But we trotted merrily along the pavement, getting caught by an early bar and breaking off into some very fetching backstreet alleys. Dumper is very good at laying trails that loop like the petals of a daisy and this style suited Tadley down to the ground. It enabled us walkers to short-cut across the labyrinth of inter-connecting snickets, cuts, alleys and by-ways, which was great as we could actually get ahead of the more lunatic element (i.e. the runners). Early on Chuck and I joined Danish as she recovered from a particularly stellar burst of speed – Chuck has achilles problems so is ‘resting’ at present – and we found ourselves at the front of the pack, having to check it out! A novel experience when walking and so slow compared to running. In the event we got it completely wrong and returned to the check, arriving at the same time as Zebedee, who promptly ran off the wrong way. However, we know he likes his running so we felt it kinder not to call him back. GBH arrived and was promptly duffed up by three of the girlies. What for, I do not know. CircuitBreaker streamed past his broken body with nary a check in her stride, affirming that ‘He only does it for the attention’.

A stream, nothing like the one in the picture, beckoned (‘Beck’ ‘Oned’ – it’s a Hash joke. Oh, please yourselves) and Shep and Mr. Blobby indulged in a bit of water sports (hmm; perhaps I should rephrase that) while Mafia asked me if I would care to help her dump Spot in the brook. What a charming thought from a lady. She told me later that she used to be scribe, writing the Gobsheets in Latin and citing lots of arcane incidents that even the participants couldn’t understand. I was never taught Latin but I can certainly say something disgusting in Yugoslavian and Gujurat.

Mr Blobby finally showed he was a true gent by helping Utopia from the damp gully. From a distance it was like watching a big pink rat suddenly popping up out of the drain. Er, begging your pardon, Ma’am.

GBH droned on, listing the destinations on his forthcoming Pope’s World Tour. Then I found myself with Chuck again, along the side of the not-to-be-walked-upon common. All of a sudden we popped out into civilisation, next to the On Inn and opposite a road sign that read ‘Rowan Road’ (that's the one where the pub is). Zebedee, leading the pack, also popped out, spotted the road sign ….and ran off the other way! Remind me never to go orienteering with that one. Almost next to the pub we met Dribbler, Butterfly and Paddy the dog, who was standing in the back of the car. In an effort to show off he attempted a difficult swan dive into the three inches of water in his dog bowl. Hilariously for us, he got it wrong and fell in with a mighty splosh! I like Paddy – he’s a good old dog.

RA C5 presented the following :-