Bomber Cloggs Tom Hashgate Motormouth Danish Iceman StickyDicky GulabJaMoon Cap’n Haystax Honeymonster Hamlet Spot Lemming Mother Theresa 2Bob Puddleduck Trembler Cerberus Salome Eth Ms. Whiplash Wally BGB Harimou HeyBabe Hamlet Shep Centaur

And he was right. Nothing to do with the Hares. They did a fine job, marking the trail with a mixture of flour and various coloured chalk marks. It’s just the area. The river bit was nice but the rest is just a mixture of urban and light industrial. But the sun was shining warmly on this 1^st of April! And we gathered in Waitrose car park, amazed at the springlike atmosphere. Most others had gone on a Hash jolly to Italy so our group was a small, but select band – the Hash equivalent of the Bloomsbury Group. Which was probably why Cloggs elected to play her April Fool cerebral jape on our elite gathering. This involved spraying the air and certain people with ‘Fart Gas’. Wow, it stank! Not so much eggy or beer but more like burning iron filings with just a subtly hint of llama’s gall bladder (trust me; I know ;-) It was fascinating to see the explosion of Hashers as the miasma unfurled amongst them. A Trembler dashed retching from the circle. A Hamlet suddenly found his old sprinting legs. Bodies lay over car bonnets, heaving. Unfortunately for Cloggs Shep and Lemming exacted a terrible revenge by pinning said lady in a full nelson and spraying her liberally with the noxious compound. Let’s hope its gone away by now. Bomber, wearing clown braces, bow tie and collar got us on our way – but not before Cloggs had put some itching powder down Wally’s back…

2Bob and I started off in entirely the wrong direction, ending up in what appeared to be someone’s garden. Very nice it was too but it required a fast walk from me to catch up with the pack. But I did and off we went, over the bridge as usual and then down along the river as usual, Wally still whining on to me about his blasted sweatshirt (the one with the name ‘Thrush’ on it instead of ‘Wally’). Sadly, the Great Black Sodding Swan of Reading which regularly patrols this stretch on the lookout for bovver in the form of toddlers out of push chairs and old people was not about otherwise I’d have pushed the bugger in and enjoyed watching it asserting itself in the pecking order. A picture of the mighty beast appears here and I am sure you can see the rather obvious drawback in its personal armoury when it comes to non-aquatic confrontation of the physical variety. No feet! In the river, sans problem. It can duff up luridly blazered blokes wielding punt poles with barely a blink of its evil eye. However, unless it swoops suddenly on its intended landbound victim silently from behind it’s buggered. Falls over, you see. Arse over beak. Looks like a complete loon.

But I digress. We passed across the delightful dual carriageway and made for the station car park. Now next to the station car park is a post office sorting office and yard, with a sort of automatic car entrance. We walkers neared the area soon after the ‘runners’ and as we approached the entrance a disembodied electronic voice squawked at us "You’re going the wrong way!" Nice one, posties. We all had a damn good laugh at that. Hopefully, they could see us chortling on their cctv.

Bomber and Cloggs had actually laid a fine trail right up to the eighth floor of the car park, with the spiral car exit to zoom down on the way out. Some, of course, just had to take the lift up. Oh, how very sad. Mind you, a group of us walked through the ground floor just in time to see Iceman, 2Bob and Puddleduck, StickyDicky, Motormouth etc pop out of the ramp and head for the graffiti and rubbish adorned pedestrian bridge next to the main railway line. Aware of how fortunate we were to be on this Hash we tripped lightly across, just as a juggernaut train pulling four thousand cement ballast trucks roared past. Teeth rattled, eyballs bounced, loose skin flapped and bellies wobbled as we clung desperately to the snaking railings. The Millenium Bridge is nothing to this. Eventually the tremors stopped and we rubber-legged our way forward into the rubbish strewn downward path and on to a bit more paving under the bridge. At this point I was chatting to Danish who seemed very surprised when a friend of mine, big Frank, strolled past with a cordial "Hi Phil". She had this curious idea that I generally lived under the bridge, greeting and being greeted by various friends and aquaintances. I nodded and smiled. It seemed safest to agree.

So on towards Tesco’s and the rather unpleasant sight of Wally with his shirt off having a bit of a bath in some of the more sodden parts of the field. It seemed that Cloggs’ itching powder was having quite an effect on his back. I figure he was damn lucky she didn’t give him a squirt round the nadgers.

One of the things the Hares had told us was that, hidden in various flour blobs, were sweets ready to be devoured by the lucky finder. Motormouth was getting highly hacked off that he hadn’t found any at all, presumably because some greedy slob at the front had forgotten all about the younger Hash members who were running today. So own up. Who ate all the sweets? Names need to be named.

So on to the Baron Cadogan in Caversham. Nice enough pub. Reasonable beer. Unfortunately, a highly unreasonable manager. The pub has a ‘no kids’ policy, even on a Sunday. There are ‘No smoking’ signs in the pub. And the manager operates a ‘No-one enjoys themselves in my pub’ policy. Perhaps it was because Wally asked the barmaid if she had any jugs. As we prepared for the Down Downs outside he joined us to state in no uncertain terms that we were not to do it in the car park and kids could watch from the car park but not stand in the pub courtyard. He then stood there with arms folded and a face like a dog’s bum with a hat on (thanks for that Spike).
Shep officiated at the Down Downs :-