Finchampstead Coasters

Karen Linda Hashgate Iceman Tony Honeymonster Baldrick Cerberus Premature and dog Molly Moonboots Uptake Steamer Hamlet and dog Jake Lonely and dog Beaver Ms. Whiplash Salome Wendy Tor Malcolm BigSpender and dog Toyah Adam Posh Ruth Bomber The Tremblers BGB Motox Alan Neil Dolly Cloggs PoisonedChalice(from Manilla) WetDream Cheating

Itsyor OldFart Hash

The first thing to clear up is the fact that there ain’t two Linda’s on the Hash. Not as recorded by me last week, anyway. One of them is, of course, Karen. The other is…er, Linda, my attractive taxi fare for the last two weeks. It was BGB, after the Hash, who picked up on this one while the KarenLinda was forcing hot chips into her cakehole faster than a starving chimp who’s been invited to a nit-picking session by a particularly bug-ridden friend. Karen hasn’t quite grasped the sharing concept of ‘Hash chips’ yet. Phrases such as “Touch that chip, Hashgate, and you’ll be swallowing your own teeth” slipped daintily from her tongue. No doubt she’ll mellow with time. BGB mentioned that a good Hash name for Karen would be MisType since that’s exactly what I did with her name. Far be it for me to tell our venerable RA Motox his job but he might like to bear the suggestion in mind.

It was very nice to see BigSpender back with BH³ after a seriously long layoff and one of GBH’s pals PoisonedChalice joined us for a trot. Ruth and Tor rejoined us for a second stab at Hashing and Malcolm and Adam for their first. The Hares gave us a complete torrent of excuses before we On Outed, including the admission that one of the Falses had four blobs before the ‘F’ (it was five). We muttered about falling standards before setting off, little knowing what was to come. Bomber and I foolishly went downhill for the ‘usual’ route. Then staggered back uphill, chastened but not entirely surprised. We slowly clawed our way back to the front of the pack where we found Motox who was using a cunning plan. It was as simple as sitting down and as sly as a sack full of stoats. This is how it went. Tony or I would near the currently leading Motox who would slow a little, look perplexed (not too difficult, this) then call ‘Lost trail” and cast about for a bit ‘searching’ theatrically. As soon as we hared off in another direction the bugger would shout “On On” and hurtle off into the woods, a manic grin on his face. It worked very well and I congratulate him on its execution. It wasn’t too long before we were all calling “Lost trail” and getting confused. Especially at one point when I came across two parallel lines of flour along the path. “What’s that mean then?” I asked a palely loitering Itsyor. “It’s two exclamation marks so you take care near the road.” Came his it’s-so-obvious, eyes-raised-heavenward reply. In the Penguin English dictionary the word sanctimonious is described as meaning ‘assured of one’s one rightness, virtue or moral superiority’. In the Hashgate Book of Words n’Stuff the entry is more succinct – ‘Smug git’.

Flour began to get scarce at this point and I found myself near to Hamlet and Lonely who were discussing how they would like each other to wear a dog chain so that the chain holder could pull the wearer off. This was slightly worrying so I hurried on. A pointless exercise really since no-one had the faintest idea where to go. After a short sojourn through a football match we headed forestwards with Itsyor clicking his tongue and tut-tutting, “Why can’t Hashers follow a trail?” If we could have found the blasted thing we would have done! Much, much more confusion followed even though Bomber accidentally stumbled across the trail. Steamer and Premature ran straight across a False. Iceman ran back the way he had just come. Itsyor appeared – and ran off. Trembler and I rushed out into cleared ground to find Hashers running willy-nilly all over the place. No-one had a clue where to go. Motox approached a small crowd of trotting Hashers. “Is there a False down there?” He enquired. “We’ve just come from that way.” Came the reply. I was beginning to enjoy myself tremendously. This was fine Hashing. We came back after Trembler found the five blobs and False mentioned earlier. OldFart appeared, looking a tad miffed at our confusion. “Try that way.” He hissed pointedly with yet more tutting and clicking. He and Itsyor had obviously been practising their exasperation technique for some time.

Now Tony and I made a very silly mistake. We saw a long, straight, wide trail and went for it like a brace of cats with their a***s on fire. Oh how we chortled at Cloggs and Premature going round the lake on the other side of the fence. Coo, they’ll have to run to catch us up, we grinned. Not so. A Bar 7 wiped off the grins and the two gasping moggies dragged their sweaty carcasses back to the pack and the Hares, who were high-fiving and one-nilling it in a woodland clearing. Still, it was a fair cop governor and we only had ourselves to blame. Nice one, Hares. We traversed some very rough gound and a swampy bit with duck boards where Hamlet’s mad dog, Jake, fell off the boards and stuck himself in the disgustingly coloured mud. Hamlet, the dog lover, laughed his socks off at the unfortunate animal. Jake wasn’t the only faller though for, as we ran on to dry ground, the lovely Wendy uttered an exciting whimper and went down, clutching her ankle. A large contingent of male Hashers began to gather, uttering soothing noises and offering massage. But it was the sight of Uptake advancing with a glint in his eye and spraying Gold Spot on his lizard-like tongue ready for some mouth-to-mouth that propelled Wendy back on to her feet faster then Ranulph Fiennes being surprised by a randy polar bear while out for an early morning Arctic poo. If one-legged running ever becomes an Olympic sport my bet’s on her to take gold.

The Regroup was full of people like Ms. Whiplash, Salome and the Lindas (all right; Karen, then) stonking about mightily chuffed at getting there first. We stayed only a short while. Then got on with the Long trail through the rather nice California country park. After much crashing about we caught up with Honeymonster and Lonely at the front, though how they got there we had no idea. We similarly had no idea how a smartly casual GBH had got to a check in the middle of nowhere so we congratulated him on winning the Cardiff bid for InterHash 2004 and ran off in different directions. Unfortunately, my direction was a ¼ mile downhill on a False trail. It was very kind of Itsyor to wait for me to get back. He presumably had not wanted to catch up with the dawdling Lonely, who was chatting up Posh. Probably about dog leads.

From here it was not too much further to the back of Finchampstead Church, up that fearsome hill. Although some, like Iceman and Adam, took a short cut across the football field. The congregation were a little surprised to see us burst into their midst as they stood outside but they took it well.

I described this minimally floured trail to Cerberus as ‘eloquently obfuscatory’. It was, and that carefully crafted confusion kept the pack together and caused the FRBs a real set of problems. Congratulations OldFart and Itsyor – a fine trail. Cerberus informed me she would set the dog on me if I ever spoke like that to her again. On On. Hashgate.

Down Downs

RA Motox eventually presented the following :-

Up and Coming