Berkshire Hash House Harriers
Bog Sheet
Run Number: 1836 Visit the web site: http://www.berkshirehash.co.uk
Website email: iceman@berkshirehash.co.uk
Venue: The Forester Arms
79, Brunswick Street
Reading.
Hares: Miss Whiplash & Skinny Dipper.
Birthday revellers
BGB, Blind Pugh, BogBrush, Caboose, Diver, Florence, Heavy Petting, Iceman, It’s Yor, Lungs, Kerb Crawler, Messenger Boy, Miss Whiplash, Motocross, Mr. Blobby, Mrs. Blobby, Mudquack, Nappy Rash, Nearly Twice, Penny Pitstop, Posh Tart, Randy Mandy, Slapper, Tequilova, Twanky, Whinge, Zebedee, The Landlord (the real one), Alice.
Revellers Run
Firstly, let me set the scene. It was a cold January night and I was getting bored waiting for the snow to melt when a cry for help came in on the email. It was from Hashgate and at first I thought his Zimmer frame had let him down in the snow, so I chucklingly read on to find he was being deported again to India for a month! The amount of time he spends there strengthens my belief that he is a love-child of the late Mr. Ghandi (?). I digress. He wanted a stand-in Hash Scribe, and being bored at the time, I agreed ( at least for one week). So here I am, Bogbrush, at your service.
This got me thinking, now would be a perfect time to change the name of the Gobsheet to a more appropriate one.
So it is now called “The BOGSHEET” (anyone who doesn’t understand, see me later).
I also thought it would be a good idea to get my hands on Hashgate’s Dictaphone, but predictably he remarked
” No, you will have to use your finger like everyone else.” (Mr. Blobby told me I couldn’t use that joke because it was older than him, but you can’t be put off by a fallen man. See down-downs).
My only other instruction in writing this Bogsheet was to type slowly, for those of you who can’t read quickly!
On with the plot. If you remember from the top, we were Hashing from The Forester Arms. I always enjoy quaint
little Berkshire pubs, with their thatched roofs and big log fires. Well I was somewhat disappointed today by the exterior of our venue, but the welcome and hospitality we got inside more than made up for that. In fact the landlord even ran with us to make sure we went back! One or two times on the furthest reaches of the trail ( just near Basingstoke I think) he remarked that he been tricked into doing this and was ready to go back, but kept going anyway. I was going to say he felt bitter at one stage, but being a stout fellow, he kept going, but one can overdo the Landlord jokes, so I won’t!
Off we set in the usual dis-organised fashion, searching for blobs. Then I noticed Skinny Dipper just behind me,
like in a pantomime, carrying lots of blobs in a bag. So I kept my eye on her and soon found we were cruising along
Tilehurst Road, then down Rustle Street, picking up speed as we went (other drugs are available here as well, so I’m told). It was at this point that Whinge suddenly shot past me, at break-neck speed, obviously out of control, and disappeared in to the distance. I thought he had possibly got a whiff from MacDonald’s on the Oxford Road or had realised one of the FRB’s hadn’t paid their Tick, but he confided in me later that he had started going to Jim several times a week and got put through his paces (better not mention this to TC). Then after going along Baker Street, with the sound of a saxophone playing a tune in my head, we came to a dilemma. The IDR straight ahead! This caused a temporary bunching of the pack. It was at this point I was sorry we didn’t have Lemming with us, because we could have re-enacted his naming (with a bit of persuading maybe) by chucking him over the wall on to the IDR down below! Mother tells me he does bounce up and down some times, so he would have survived. At this very point in time, some one noticed Whinge, by now come to rest not on the nearest bridge, but two bridges away, madly waving his arms in the air because he was too far away to hear his “on-on” (and that’s a long way in Whinge’s case). We were now in the town centre proper and drug dealers were running in every direction, quicker than us, thinking we were a crack team from the Drug Squad and not realising we were a crack-pot team from BH3. The hares thoughtfully took us on a trip through the old bus station, pausing only slightly to let the FRB’s (and Flo) ascend thirty or so concrete steps. Flo probably thought they were off on a shopping trip, but sadly what goes up comes down again. And so they did. Narrowly missing the station, we then went and loitered in Forbury Gardens until on-on was called off toward the Duke St. bridge, and after crossing the Kennet so many times via a foot bridge, we were loosing the will to live (not to mention our sense of direction) we ended up traversing along past the cafe’s and cinema adjacent to the Kennet again. It would have been quicker to swim up stream! On we went, while Posh recounted to me her nasty accident with a nasty cyclist, in that very spot, and what she was going to do to him if she met him again. I only hoped for his sake that he used one of those shorter bicycle pumps and not the old twelve inch ones! Then all of a sudden we were in the car park of Matalan, dodging the mother’s (that’s what some called them anyway) as they hunted blindly for one of the two hundred empty parking places! What happened then, I hear you ask? We found ourselves going off road, or in this case, off car-park and along a path full of shiggy, but only for one hundred yards (aprox. ninety-one point four metres for those who have been metricated) before meeting the FRB’s coming back. So we ended up back in the Matalan car-park only to then find we needed to go all the way down the shiggy path to the bitter end. This is where I learn some of Caboose’s family history, when he told me that this was once a branch line in to Reading station when he was no more than a little shunter. We could almost smell the bar-maids apron as we hit the good old pot-holes of Kenilworth Avenue. This is where my stamina showed, as I left Slapper wallowing in my wake and wishing he hadn’t started the day by running three miles to Burghfield Bridge before being re-united with his car, as No-Sole drove me and Motocross to the Hash (arriving in perfect time for the start incidently). Then it was just over the Bath Road and back in to Brunswick Street. Phew! It’s harder work writing it than it was running it. A most enjoyable trail I thought. Well done hares.
Mind you, the story isn’t over yet. I then had to wait out in the cold while Skinny Dipper (the running hare) swept up the back markers and arrived back at her car, from whence I retrieved my bag. I was quite chilly when I got in the pub (remember the one with no log fire), but fortunately I think I just caught the latent heat from the candles on Miss Whiplash’s birthday cake (or was it Flo’s and/or Randy Mandy’s too). I soon felt toasty again and so did the people next door! But I did get some birthday cake, so all ended well.
On-on. Bogbrush.
Down-downs
Fallers: Mr. Blobby Both downed in fine style, The Landlord’s extra years
The Landlord of experience shone through.
Loosing hat in tree: Messenger Boy Messenger Boy slightly won, but I am getting better.
Making Motocross arrive late: Bogbrush
(charge denied) and drunk
while stripping the willow
last night)
Returnee’s : Mudquack Finished amicably in unison.
Kerb Crawler
Birthday Girls’: Miss Whiplash Flo finished first, predictably, closely followed by
Florence Ms.Whiplash (six inches away) and Randy Mandy.
Randy Mandy
Hares: Skinny Dipper Last little story here. The Landlord saw the state of
Dipper finishing the run and donated a Brandy for her
down-down. He didn’t realise she was not feeling
well! Dipper then set a world record for a down-down
in 0.25 seconds. Miss Whiplash came second (again)