Turners

Pissquick Ms Whiplash Spot Simple Skids Snowballs SkinnyDipper Caboose Flash Rainbow Warrior OldDog Swallow Slowsucker Dunny Rampant Rabbit TinOpener Blind Pew Full Frontal Chopstix Shandyman Dwight C5 Utopia Mrs Blobby John Dumper Lungs Bogbrush Fannybag Bumwiper Booby Blowjob CabinBuoy Cheating Little Stiffy with dog Maisy Slackbladder Nuttcracker Lonely Messenger Boy and dog Lucy Honeymonster TT2 Fiddler Fritz Motox

Turn and Turn Again

“Coo!” I hear you say. “ A Gobsheet from Hashgate. How rare!” I have, unfortunately to agree. The last few weeks and the next three Tuesdays (the only day I usually have free to write this organ – today’s Wednesday) have been taken up with a creative writing course. I am hoping to hone my Gobsheet writing abilities on the whetstone of the tutor’s imparted knowledge. As you can tell, there is still a certain bluntness. Perhaps, in three weeks, a burnished Toledo steel-like quality will have crept in to the, dare I say it, prose 

Having passed, hooted, waved at and been totally ignored by Caboose I drove my car into the familiar car park with its rather unfamiliar new, surrounding brick wall and backed up to it; managing not to emulate Honeymonster, who very nearly nudged over a pile of bricks that had been so inconsiderately stacked by an unthinking brickie. Skinny Dipper then turned up and backed in next to me. She whipped out a newspaper and pen and became engrossed in the Sudoku (Soduko? Sudoko?). So engrossed in fact that she appeared to be in some kind of catatonic trance for she moved not and neither did her pen. A difficult one I guess.

GT was the main Hare on today’s Hash, having already laid another and played host (along with Pissquick) on Saturday to around thirty people to celebrate his birthday. The aud feller looked quite chipper for one with such a heavy round of socialising, though his ankles looked a tad fat. Closer inspection revealed that he had some sort of padding around them. Now either the elastic in his surgical stockings had given up the ghost and the items had plummeted like tubular pink waterfalls around his lower legs or he was firming up his suspect joints. I like to think it was the former.

OldDog sidled up to me with that face-lighting grin she has. “Mrs Blobby’s been showing us her knitting.” She told me in a deliciously confidential manner. She went from gossipy fun-poking to being really interested in about one minute, advising me how the clever threading had been achieved and baffling me with her woolly thinking. You talk to her. You’ll see you quickly get baffled too.

We On Outed. From The Turner’s there are a standard number of ways to go. The Hares pointed us left and we decided to get lost in the field next door to the pub. Quite a difficult thing to do bearing in mind it is a large, flat area with a couple of football pitches on it but we managed with little trouble. Surprising really, since the Trail was following a fairly standard route. We stomped out into the dry forest.

Now I say ‘dry’ forest and most of it was. After a few weeks with as little rain as the Simpson desert and a few days with a Sirocco-like wind the ground was hard and knobbly (somewhat like certain Hasher’s knees) and the trees and scrub rustled as we flew past. Apart from one bit. GT had told me, then imparted to the rest of us at the Circle, that one particular area was a mite boggy. So boggy in fact that he had been sucked in almost up to the waist in the stuff before managing to heave himself out of the morass. We had all listened carefully to his instructions, especially when he said he had relaid the Trail so it went around said area. Everyone except C5 that is. I was following him into this damper part of the forest when I heard GT from behind shout a warning. Too late. C5 staggered to one side as a plimsoll was pulled into the fen. His arms adopted strange positions. A strangled gargle emitted from his wiry frame as he yanked his leg out, only to overbalance on the other side, pitch forward and assume a supplicant pose in the shiggy. Presumably to the bog god. We were delighted, of course, and suggested he might like to award himself a pint at the Down Downs.

The Wednesday Whingers among us enjoyed the Trail tremendously since much of it followed the path they usually tread on that day. The rest just enjoyed it since we crashed through the dry forest floor as well as trundled along pleasant footpaths, with very little tarmac in sight. While crashing through the forest Dunny also greatly enjoyed being behind Caboose, whose every footstep was a slip or a slide on the dead and crunchy cut branches underfoot. I told her it was because he usually runs in London and is not used to the slightly more challenging underfoot conditions.

Shandyman, Simple and I eventually caught up with the small group of walkers who seemed intent on hunting down a pair of lambs that had escaped from one of the fields that edged the track down which they were walking. The lambs would gambol forward a little then stop and look back, trying to get up the courage to run back up the lane. Perhaps it was the sight of Bogbrush’s moustache that kept them edging backwards. We decided to walk too, rather than frighten the little fellows. Shandyman, rather unkindly I felt, suggested that, since there were two lambs, he and I might enjoy a fine roast dinner later. I gave him the arched eyebrow and he fell silent. Eventually, we reached the bottom of the track wher we should turn left to go up the steep hill. The lambs eyed us, we eyed them. They screwed their courage to the sticking place and stampeded past us back up the track in a woolly blur. They were safe until the Long Trail runners came hurtling down. Lord knows what they would make of a red-faced and sweating Slowsucker. It’s certainly something I wouldn’t want bearing down on me (if you, er, see what I mean). Talking of which, the daft fellow got into a bit of a race with Fiddler on the way back and ended up nearly ralphing heavily in Swallow’s car following his Herculean effort. Takes all sorts doesn’t it?

A fine Trail in a fine area so thanks to GT and Slapper for their splendid efforts.

On On. Hashgate.

Down Downs

RA C5 presented the following :-

Slowsucker started very early but still finished last

Up and Coming