Tired, Huddled Masses

Karen Lemming Mother Theresa Donut Hashgate Swallow Quack Shitshoveller Penny Pitstop PoisonIvy Vertigo Simple Vlad Drac Twanky BlowJob Tom NappyRash Diver PP and dog Barney Lonely Bootsie Hitchiker Cheating Spot Snowballs Little Stiffy Slackbladder C5 Iceman Glittertits CIAC Baldrick Pissquick Motox Tinopener Lilo and dog Emma Trainspotter Anorak Dave Flash Dumper Septic desperate Shitfor Billy Cerberus Fannybag Bogbrush Florence Zebedee Shirley (aka Rainbow Warrior - see below)TT3 Cloggs Nonstick OldDog Centaur Paula John FuckingBlowJob LaCrease Mr Sloppy

How Long!!?

Typical bloke, you see. Didn’t ask, did he? Just stabbed a stubby finger in the general direction of the satnav and followed the voice of ‘Jane’ blindly. Which is why Glittertits and Pissquick found themselves at Goring rather than Checkendon. All he had to do was ask, “How do you spell ‘RG’?” and he’d have been there. I thought Pissquick was remarkably restrained at the Regroup when she explained why they were late. Barely a ‘dickhead’, ‘prat’ or ‘complete tosser’ passed her lips.

They were just two of the seventy and more who turned up on Sunday. This included quite a number of Oxford H³ who had attended to see Ladybird cock up the Trail. They were to be disappointed in that respect since our Hares had not only organized muddy field parking (which resulted in some quite amusing wheel-spinning by the heavy of foot), a beautiful sunny day and (as Bomber put it during his introductory speech in the Circle) ‘a very long trail’. Which reminded the Oxford participants why they don’t usually attend Berkshire Hashes – they can be incredibly exhausting. Lord knows quite how long this was but there were two Regroups and a Beer Stop. By the time we reached the latter we had almost lost Mother T and Flash, both who jogged in while Simple was mid way through the Down Downs. In fact, since I mentioned them, let’s get ‘em out of the way:-

Down Downs

So the burning question of the day is: “Is Bootsie losing it?” Quite early on in the Trail I scampered muddily past the delightful girl. She reached out towards me and puckered up. “What ho!” I thought, “Ain’t life grand.” Unfortunately for me, she suddenly stopped in mid-pucker, gasped slightly and offered the somewhat lame excuse, “Swipe me Hashgate! I thought you were Lonely.” “How very kind.” I thought. “But no. I have a number of friends.” The poor lass is obviously suffering with mental as well as visual myopia. Still, you can understand it. Lonely and I agreed later that we are very similar. Tall, lean and whipcord-muscled. Finely chiselled features with a certain boyish charm, a ready smile and a devil-may-care attitude. I could continue but modesty forbids. Perhaps we should wear T-shirts with our names printed in large letters. But would you want to parade around with ‘I am Lonely’ on your chest? Perhaps not.

Of course, my recording machine had decided not to work for this Hash. I think that, having been shouted at by me so often and draggged about in the freezing cold and soaking rain it had stamped its little metal foot and turned its little metal back. Luckily, this Trail was so enjoyable (despite the exhaustion) that I can remember just about everything. Drifting lightly down that warm sunlit hill after enjoying the stunning view over Oxfordshire on the windy hilltop is one of them. As was the look Cerberus gave me while we were there on that hilltop. We had all stopped for a bit of a Regroup and a stamp about to keep warm and Barney, PP’s super-fit dog decided he wanted to play ‘Fetch’ with a lump of stick. Not something he does usually, according to PP. Various people threw the stick for him and he duly brought it back each time, one time to me. I scratched behind his ears. Informed him he was a ‘good boy’. Noted thet Cerberus was standing a few yards in front of me, eyeing the view. Buzzed the lump of wood, well, clear of her head (that should be ‘well clear of her head’). Barney bounded off, tongue hanging out. Cerberus turned very deliberately towards me. Don’t know if you’ve ever seen the film ‘Carrie’ but it was a similar birds-falling-dead-off-their-perches-in-the-utterly-silent-moment sort of moment. I almost experienced an unexpected (and free) skin peel from her laser-like stare. Blimey! You can understand why Billy is a gibbering idiot. Exposure to a lifetime of these has scrambled his brain. Not surprising he’s a couple of eggs short of a dozen. Barney duly brought the wood chunk back to Cerberus, luckily breaking the spell, and since Cerberus is a confirmed dog-lover she couldn’t resist heaving the thing into the field for him to fetch. Unfortunately, she had a somewhat awkward back-handed approach and it landed three quarters of the way up in a leafless bush, where it dangled tantalisingly, twisting in the breeze. Barney looked up at it. Then looked at our dog-lover with a sardonically raised eyebrow. “And bollocks to you too.” He projected wordlessly, running back to PP with a disgusted snort.

The Trail sucked its feet through thick forest with enough shiggy to drown a Lemming, skipped lightly along dry tarmac, skittered over rocks and stones, clambered up hilly tracks and slid down steep slopes. In short, we had just about every condition under foot and around we could want. And most of it in brilliant sunshine. The Pack stayed together most of the time, since there were a number of shortcuts across the more extreme loops. Tiringly, most of us made the mistake of running round the loops. One would then meet, for example, a fresh FuckingBlowJob and LaCrease trotting blithely along and not out of breath at all. Luckily, the second half of the Trail seemed to run mainly downhill. Which was fortunate, since there couldn’t have been much more uphill left to run up. Although those daft enough to go on the Long Trail from the Beer Stop had another steep hill in their loop, unlike the sensible – Lemming(sensible?!), Iceman, PoisonIvy, Baldrick etc who opted for the Short and found that, amazingly, Whinge was miles ahead of everyone else. Mind you, he was blowing like a whale who’s just escaped the Japanese ‘research’ fleet. Obviously gasping for a fag. Which he duly enjoyed outside the pub while many of us luxuriated in bacon baguettes liberally smeared with the haute sauce de choice (red or brown). It actually got so darn cold outside that just about everyone shoehorned into the pub and desperately warmed up. This was where Flash, sitting in an armchair and finding a small lad next to him, essayed a socially risky joke by asking him if he wanted to, “Sit on my lap ho ho.” No one was more squirmingly surprised than he was when the little chap started to climb on his knee and we all enjoyed Flash’s embarrassment hugely.

I’ll leave the last word to Baldrick. During a conversation about Burns’ Night he informed us that, “The only problem with a sporran is if you have dangly balls – the ladies don’t want to sit on your lap.” This conjured up awful and grimace-making visions until he explained he was referring to the adornments attached to the sporran. We all breathed a sigh of relief and took deep and restorative draughts of our respective beverages.

Thanks greatly, Hares. A damn fine day.

On On. Hashgate.

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