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Report 1468
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Wine In - Wit Out
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Evelyn Waugh aphorism: "A gentleman in his cups may be amorous or maudlin, but never truculent"
Yes, well, did anyone ever claim male hashers were, or even could be, gentlemen? Our lot are largely past being amorous ("in your dreams" is a phrase which comes to mind) and are probably unfamiliar with the word "maudlin", though they have plenty to be maudlin about. (Not all readers may know that this word comes from Magdalene, as still pronounced in our older universities). But when it comes to truculence....
At the end of a perfectly civilised and decorous May Ball the barman closed the bar. Whereupon two men who had already had more than enough - in another context one might say out of their minds, but not of these two - became resentful. This dastardly duo - yes, you have guessed, our universal Uncle and his bald headed sidekick - were by turns pompous, patronising, overweening, querulous, and at last vulgarly abusive; all, one is glad to report, to no avail whatsoever.
"Would anything anyone had said have persuaded you to change your mind?" asked a polite (! Yes, I assure you!) Tequil'over. "No? Ah well, to bed then".
The next day, against the odds you may say, Licky Dick did have Mop Top as his hod carrier; and a first rate trail they laid. Certainly the area is relatively new to many hashers - somehow when we have run from Fernhurst before, we have tended to use the northern heights. Even Abba was to be seen at the start striding manfully along, only to disappear thereafter. So without benefit of earlier knowledge, and the sun in evidence only at the very end, we had to use our checking skills to the full; which kept a large proportion of a good pack well together. A visitor from San Settimio asserted that following the Cunning Linguist was about as wise as following Popeye;
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and indeed the checks were solved by a wide range of the front runners, not just by our fast men. (Credit where it is due: First On and Velcro were up at the front throughout. Our other female stalwart, Chunderous, was found at the end on the cricket green, doing strange things with a cricket ball.....?!)
One of the best checks was in the middle of a felled forest, the hares discreetly hidden to admire our ineffective attempts at a solution. A foreign visitor asked very reasonably what use the timber would be put to; I was obliged, embarrassed for an answer, to change the subject.
The trail took us past various farmyards. It is wonderful how much noise a braying donkey can add to the usual racket; no Circle should be held without one. (You may supply the obvious witticisms for yourselves...) Also the cry of a peacock, shrill and piercing; we had a female group who came up with a fair imitation, holding forth in clamant tones on a forthcoming ski-ing holiday in Chile. I have a wistful vision of a hash in which any words exchanged on the trail are pertinent to our activities - the hare, the likely direction, the flora, the fauna, the front runners who are no longer so fast as once they were....Some hope!
Overleaf you will find news of a T-shirt design contest- no, not a make-over of our Hare Raiser - to publicise the 1500 event on January 10th & 11th next year. Mark this weekend in golden letters in the overhang pages of your current diaries, begin to rehearse your turn in the entertainment, volunteer as a hare, vow to stay sober over Christmas as preparation........
See you there!
ON ON FRB
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