People Troubled By Wind

Paddy the dog (with Butterfly) C5 Charlie Honeymonster Wendy Foghorn Tony Iceman ShutupWally Nutcracker Potty Greenfly Barbara 2Bob Puddleduck Flash Cap’n Haystax Dumper Septic Spex Zebedee Florence Glittertits PissQuick Baldrick BGB TinOpener Miranda and dog Emily Cyclogical SkyDiver TerryDactyl

In The Teeth of The Gale With The Newbury Original H³

My thanks to ShutupWally for writing(?) the Gobsheet last week. It was literary equivalent of a sprint between the arcane and the insane. I believe the result was a tie.

The sharp-eyed (and less pissed) readers will have noticed the smart new helicopter logo above that denotes that this year BH³ have chosen to support the Thames Valley Air Ambulance charity. More details can be obtained from Foghorn or The DragonLady.

As you know, Sunday was a day of gales. Our picture shows C5 vainly attempting to distribute his tardy Runsheets. Round my way massy oaks were crashing earthwards to block roads, smash cars and bring down power lines. The coast was lashed by a furious sea. Light aeroplanes were blown like leaves across airfields. And poor Dribbler had a serious problem laying the trail. It’s his memory, you see. At a certain age short-term memory loss becomes a problem and this is why it took him hours to lay his part of the trail. He’d be jogging along, bent double against the wind, pull a dry gobbet of flour from his bag and drop it lightly floorwards as he looked ahead to the next likely placement. Quicker than the eye could see the mischevious gale whipped away the powder so that when he checked it, it had gorn! Then, of course, he couldn’t be sure he’d laid a blob in the first place so he’d look ahead, drop another, find it gorn and so on and so on. Poor chap was at it for ages.

We On Outed down the road and Glittertits was almost an early casualty as one of those old ‘Sunday only’ cars, driven by an old git with bottle bottom glasses and a grim expression, attempted to mow him down. Perhaps the driver’s myopia had caused him to miss his real target, ShutupWally. Better luck next time. Tony and I, very altruistically I thought, ran to the corner of a sodden field. Completely pointless of course, since the trail went nowhere near there. We were called back by the eldritch quacking of Honeymonster’s new hunting horn. Bit of a misnomer this, since the sound it emits is that of a gay mallard mincing along the riverside in search of companionship. However, the instrument served its purpose and we always knew where he was… so we could avoid the sound whenever possible. He and I hit the Long and Short trail soon after Cyclogical who was desperately searching for flour in long, wind-whipped grass. We all traipsed into a wood and lost it again. Something about the large white blob on a nearby tree caught my attention. Swipe me if it wasn’t flour! And I was told by an attractive optician last week that I didn’t need glasses! We hurtled down through the debris-strewn forest and managed to send Zebedee off the wrong way at the check. Heh. Heh. SkyDiver and I hit the right trail and slipped out of the forest at the bottom of a long hill with the wind blowing us backward. We were not to be beaten by mere nature. Faces almost to the ground, we forced our way up hill like so many Marcel Marceau’s. Neck muscles straining. Hearts pounding like steam hammers. Every time you opened your mouth to take a breath half the air in the UK blew in so that you swelled up like a bullfrog and your eyes popped out on stalks. We eventually made it to the little road at the top and the flour disappeared. I staggered over to the gate wherein a crowd of sheep looked on stupidly and hung on it for a bit like an old shirt on a washing line. When I’d recovered I turned round to see a single sheep on my side of the gate regarding me curiously, her head cocked to one side. “’Ere.” She seemed to say. “Be you a’goin ter open that gate young feller?” Impresed by the animal’s obvious intelligence and fine breeding I slipped the gate open. She took a cautious step forward. Then trotted in with a polite “Thank’ee.” This display of manners was in complete contrast to the woolly hooligan who, a little later, attempted to duff up Tony by butting him in the groin as we ran across its field. You just can’t tell can you? The regroup followed shortly after and we stood about waiting for the others. TerryDactyl flew in and crashed against a tree trunk, hiding from the blusters. 2Bob and Puddleduck breezed in. The now walking Greenfly(glad to see he’s recovering) and Barbara strode by. Florence admitted quite brazenly to Wendy and myself that she might just “blow off in this wind”. Fortunately, we were standing to the leeward…

We nipped off smartish before we got too cold, only to be held up by Miranda who was committing severe dog abuse on Emma who was having trouble negotiating a stile. Tony kindly picked her up and threw her over (Emma, not Miranda) and we charged on to find a Hare (Coach) standing silently in a wood. It was so spooky that we rushed past in a fright, eventually finding ourselves at a finely crafted pedestrian field gate that was standing on the site of the stile that Cyclogical smashed in a fit of pique a couple of years ago. He and I made our way across the wet field and up the hill on the other side. When we descended a field path beckoned straight ahead and down we went. This part of the trail proved to be Julia’s renaming reason. Two blobs led to… no ‘F’ in flour and Cyclogical, Tony and I took the more interesting, non-trail, woodland route back to join Florence past the On Inn. A number of others followed, enjoying the geese and curious bullocks on the way. I’m sad to say that Zebedee was among the Short Cutting B******s who ran along the road in a desperate attempt to get back before the real athletes. He did, but at what cost to his severely tarnished reputation?

I must commend today’s Hares for even getting out of bed in such atrocious conditions, let alone lay such an excellent trail. Our grateful thanks to the Newbury Originals.
On On. Hashgate.

Down Downs

C5 officiated and presented the following :-

Up and Coming

787760

The Hash Quiz

Thursday 28^th November at The Red Lion, Upper Basildon (597762) £4.50 tickets include supper. Get ‘em from Ms. Whiplash.