Storm Chasers

Caboose Hashgate Gaffertits Sarah Gusset Nick Glittertits Pissquick Whinge TC Cerberus Desperate Billy Bullshit Shitfor Hitchiker Motox Ms Whiplash Snowballs Potty Nutcracker Twanky CabinBuoy C5 Septic Utopia Bastille Spex Centaur Bomber Posh OldDog Iceman Flash Foghorn Cheating BGB Shutupwally Honeymonster OldFart Itsyor Fiddler Shitshoveller Penny Pitstop Lonely Poison Ivy Baldrick PP NappyRash and dog Barney Muff Oddballs Quack Swallow Dunny RampantRabbit Florence Zebedee Ms Whiplash Slowsucker Steve Andrew Cloggs Nonstick

Heavy Weather

The world is full of contrasts isn’t it? Consider my arrival at Haines Farm, Ash Lane, Silchester. It had been a peaceful drive. I’d missed the heavy rainfall and the storm clouds had passed. The air was a little fresher than the oven-like day, here in the damp lanes smelling of wet grass and flowers. How peaceful it was as the car crunched into the wide pebbled drive. Not a soul about but two shaggy highland cattle and a dark bovine friend, contentedly munching the tasty grass and viewing my arrival with passing curiosity. Then BH³ started to arrive. Flash on his bike, looking lost. Gaffertits swept in, handbrake-turning. Caboose wandered in, having walked from the station, and knelt down to tie up his laces. CabinBuoy arrived in his people carrier, roof festooned with kayaks, and tried to run him over before taking up two parking places. Dumper appeared in his rather large Saab. Cars started appearing from everywhere. Chaos reigned. BGB was directed to the far end near the gates and promptly got stuck in the wet verge, revving his engine and trying (almost successfully) to burn out his clutch. The smell of toasting metal engulfed the area as OldFart parked, believe it, a Ford Focus from which Itsyor and Fiddler unfurled themselves. Poison Ivy to’d and fro’d in order to park close to other cars and leave some space in the middle, though she seemed to Fiddler and me merely to be going backwards and forwards with no appreciable change in her position. OldDog arrived and started yapping on about how someone had filched her running shoes from the Moonlight hash at C5’s on Saturday (incidentally, if you have them, please return them. I really don’t want to see OldDog in those orange trousers and red wellies that she wore after the Hash any more. Fashion disaster? Right on.)

Dunny and RampantRabbit also pulled wearily in. they had not only done C5’s Moonlight but had ‘enjoyed’ the experience of the Tough Guy on Sunday so were not only covered in bruises and scratches but very leg-weary as well. For those who do not know the Tough Guy is a rather extreme event near Wolverhampton that starts with an exhausting (particularly so since the day had been hot) up-and-down hills long run before entering the Killing Fields, which consists of a series of streams and lakes to swim, wade and duck under, tunnels to crawl through, overhead ropes to shimmy across, massive structures made of logs and netting to scramble up and climb over and the best shiggy ever experienced. They have photographs if you’d like to see them in action. For more information visit www.toughguy.co.uk and thank your lucky stars you weren’t foolish enough to join them!

Our course today wasn’t quite so challenging but was complex and long enough to fool most of the FRBs and keep the Pack together. There was a Short, medium and Long and one Regroup where we stood steaming among the dripping trees.

All the while the clouds, which had dissipated before the Hash were beginning to gather. Big, dark thunderheads which roared and crackled in the distance. Something was coming and we were out for a long time… It all got rather confusing where the earlier rain had washed out the Trail markings and I found myself at one point in the delightful company of Gusset and Sarah, running down the snicket by The Plough in Little London. We had got ahead of the medium trailers and were congratulating ourselvess on our cleverness. We waved and grinned cheesily at the old boy sipping his pint outside the pub. Then we waved at him again when we came back, having lost all trace of flour. We tripped lightly down the hill. Then tripped not so lightly back up. Waved at the by now bemused old boy, who was eyeing his pint suspiciously, and went back along the snicket. When we popped out into the field again we heard the FRBs coming up the hill towards us and realised we were going in the wrong direction. Ho hum. Back along the snicket. Wave at old boy etc. then find Motox coming back from the well-hidden path just up from the pub on the other side of the road. “I’ve been right down to the woods on the other side of the field and there’s no flour.” He wailed. A little head-scratching ensued, with Billy, Bastille (our new French Hash friend), Zeb et al all bounding up and down the road. But there was nowhere else to go and four clear blobs led us across the field and into the woods where we eventually picked up the almost washed-out Trail. Crikey. This was confusing! We had been through woods and fields, along a semi-dry stream bed, in, then out of another wood. To and fro. Hither and thither. Willy and nilly. The Hares had done a very good job of confusing us and we were beginning to tire. The only person who seemed to know where we were going was, of course, Cheating who opined sagely, “It’s a left-hand trail.” But then it’s always a left-hand trail according to Cheating. I think he must have a left-hand bias. A bit like a drunk who desperately attempts to go straight but veers off left and crashes into the bushes. This, the picture on the left (of course) is a left hand and its rather interesting that a line has been drawn across the finger tips. It emerged, during a particularly surreal conversation at the Moonlight, that, if your index finger is longer than your first finger, you must be gay. Fascinating stuff, particularly if you have this digital phenomenon and you aren’t. Anyone like to own up to this physiological feature and how do you see yourself in the broad spectrum of sexuality that delineates our personal make-up?

We finally staggered to the On Inn and I enjoyed a trot in with Glittertits, Spex and our Hare LoudonTasteless. The latter, in his additional capacity as HashMash had laid on a feast of bread, cheese, beer, wine in true Bacchanalian style and we duly chomped and slurped our way through it like pigs at the trough while the thunder continued to roar in the distance, lighting up the dark clouds with angry flashes of lightning. Which was when the farmer dude turned up in a large land rover tugging a trailer full of girders and scaffolding. It was quite interesting watching him manouevre his way through the log jam of parked cars (since my car was well out of the way) and Poison Ivy bit her lip next to me as he slid within an inch of her nifty Boxter. Still, he managed ok and we all went back to shoving food down our necks like it was our last supper.

Many thanks to our Hares for a masterly trail, laid in oppressive heat and hardly a drop of beer between them.

On On. Hashgate.

Down Downs

Surrogate RA Motox presented the following in indomitable style:-

Clutched the pint and slipped it down

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