Fruits…and Nuts

Hashgate Cheating Mudwoman Zebedee Florence TT3 Legover Dwight Julia and baby Sam PonyExpress SlipperyNipple John Ms.Whiplash Dumper Septic ShutupWally Iceman OldFart Arnie C5 FloridaJohn Martha Short’nCurly Lonely and dog Beaver Cerberus Lynda Linda Greenfly Spot Motox Dribbler Butterfly and dog Paddy Honeymonster Foghorn Cap’n Y-Fronts and Tigger the dog SuperGay(aka Neil) Ben Wendy Bev SkyDiver Centaur Ann-Marie Potty Nutcracker WetDream Jimmy the dog and James(dog Rusty was having a rest) BGB Tony Flash Cyclogical HeyBabe ShaginaJag Spex Caboose Gutbucket Hamlet and dog Jake

Utopia, With Blobs

So what on earth are The Blobbies and Utopia doing laying a Hash here when they know damn well that a hay lorry is due to catch fire and melt a sizeable portion of the M4? Oh the joys of crawling along the A4 in 90% humidity to find out that what you had expected to be two lanes was in fact, one, because some pillock was trying to start his car with jump leads attached to the battery of a car parked alongside him in the nearside lane. Though the British are a resigned lot and generally sympathetic to other’s problems there were many there who snailed their way past musing on the fatherless and canine ancestry of the hapless motorist. So, needless to say, I was late. Fortunately, I was joined by Mudwoman and Cheating and we set off to follow the well drawn flour arrows (thankyou Hares). It was as well they had drawn them since some kind soul had sabotaged the trail by sweeping away blobs. Sadly, they had not swept away the blobs leading to the bar-4 way down a hill so the three of us had to thunder all the way back up the damn thing. But it wasn’t long before we heard familiar shouts ahead and I spotted TT3 and a gent who seemed to have stepped out of ZZ3 looking lost in the forest. We view-hallooed and promptly got lost ourselves so we felt right at home and back in the swing of things. We began a tentative trot through a field of thick-stemmed 2 metre high beans, me following immediately behind TT3 who was following brother Zebedee. “Like to go past?” He offered in a gentlemanly manner. “Why thankyou.” I replied, stepping by. “What a brick.” I thought; then that thought was immediately replaced with a similar one that substituted the ‘b’ with a ‘p’. The sod had tried to push me in the beans! I must say I’m starting to get paranoid about this Scribe role. Last week Spot attempted some Scribe rogering and later this evening Dumper drank my blasted pint! Still it wasn’t all terrible. I got to chat to Arnie about the Tough Guy event that Lonely, Zebedee and I took part in on Sunday. On hearing how magnificently we coped in this event run by and for lunatics, she absolutely insisted we take her with us next year. No problem Arnie. The thought of you getting covered in all that glutinous mud will no doubt spur us on to an even better performance! Of course the one thing about Tough Guy is that it seriously knackers you. I had been looking forward to a gentle jog round tonight’s Hash. Not a bit of it, of course. The Hares had us running up hills, through forests, shiggy, copse, furze, heather, tundra, veldt, the Mojave desert, Himalayan foothills, rainforest etc. etc. They had speckled the trail with all manner of geographical regions. Just as we finished wading waist deep through icy mountain streams we’d find ourselves brushing off marauding tsetse flies only to find the way blocked half a mile on by vicious gangs of Arctic hares. Erm; do I detect a slight hint of the surreal creeping in? I think I do. Let’s get back to reality – well, Hash reality. While OldFart and I took the correct trail under hanging branches in dense woodland Hamlet and Spot indulged in some serious short-cutting. Mind you, we were all following (“Keep calling at the front!”) Cheating who ran as silently as a gagged greyhound. As he put it so diplomatically later; “You lot should sniff your own trails .” All those wishing to connect to Cheating’s cobblers with their knee should form an orderly queue.

Mr Blobby thoughtfully met us at the little stream he had laid on and I did see at least one fool (un-identified) splash through. The rest of us sensibly spattered across the half-inch deep part to the left of the little bridge and Spot ‘tarzaned’ his way over via a fallen tree. A series of back checks awaited us and duly caught us out well and truly with people running back towards those who had been following. Nicely done, Hares. We sped through lush, green forests heavy with woodland scent in the humid air. We snapped and crackled our way over thick carpets of pine needles and dry branches. A long-grassed meadow here. A dense field of flowering clover there. An ‘F’ appeared on the grassy trail next to a forest. C5 very sportingly crackled off into the trees closely followed by daughter Arnie. The old music hall tune, “I’m following in my father’s footsteps. I’m following my dear old Dad…” sprang to mind. What a family of fairplay athletes agreed Lonely and I… as Lonely stood on the ‘F’ and Cerberus, Honeymonster, Centaur, Neil and I sped past him, grinning from ear to ear. Another bridge appeared and Foghorn and I turned off left while others attempted to find the lost trail. We certainly found the lost trail ourselves and backtracked rapidly. Not rapidly enough since everyone else had completely disappeared. God knows how they vanished so quickly. We stopped aghast. We listened for calling. Silence. Then a muted “On on.” from miles away. Foghorn farted, almost completely de-furring a passing roe deer and causing most of the surrounding foliage to drop from the trees. A number of feathered objects fell to the ground, feet in the air. “Beg pardon.” Uttered Foghorn. The adrenalin kicked in and in no time at all I found myself hurtling up a steep hill past the startled Florence, legs going like pistons (mine, that is).

We knew we couldn’t be far away from the pub as we entered an area very similar to that where we had On Outed. The flat, white-stoned ground was pocked with clumps of beautiful flowering heather and surrounded by man-eating gorse. The stuff ripped your skin to shreds. Unfortunately, we went into it a few times because we had lost the damn trail among the white stones. I got lost. Then Arnie. Then Zebedee. Then Gutbucket. It took Centaur to spot the bloody great “On Inn” sign with a large arrow pointing to a wide track that led us straight back to the pub and a fine pint (unless of course, someone else drank it…).

An excellent trail by the Hares across varied land laid which kept the pack together. And if it hadn’t been for us late buggers it would have done so even more! On On. Hashgate.

Down Downs

RA Motox (who really must get a head torch to enable him to see his notes) presented the following :-

Up and Coming

1290