Run	Date	Hare(s)	Description	MapRef	1:50000	1:25000	1:10000	Aerial
698	2010-11-07	Dr Blood & Pink Flamingo. Remembrance Run.	Singleton Forest, Drovers, Broadham House	SU888146

"They also serve who only stand and wait" (John Milton 1608-1674).

Bad fortune had dealt a severely strained fetlock to Bambi which results in this account being written from the perspective of one who sat in the warmth of Treefeller's chariot while the pack scurried after the flour on a cold grey overcast morning, on the hash closest to remembrance day.
Pink Flamingo was not present, being naturally attracted to water she was busy preening on the edge of a baptismal pool while her son was taking a ducking. Nevertheless she and Marjet had helped to lay the trail earlier in the morning, such dedication!
As usual Canman called the pack to order, welcomed newcomer Ros and mentioned that this was the anniversary of the disappearance of Lord Lucan.

A few words from Dr Blood and the pack were off at seven minutes past the hour, taking the track north west from Broadham House.
Then silence, broken only by the odd flurry of bird song and the rumbling of Treefeller's belly.
No, not Treefeller's belly, the sound gets louder and develops into an approaching vehicle, a late hasher, perhaps Mussolini ?.
No, not Mussolini, it's a pickup loaded with bags of bird feed and piloted by a concerned looking individual who gives us a long stare as he passes and departs in the same direction as the pack.
Then silence again and much time goes by while Treefeller and I discus the causal nexus and it's relationship to hashing.

A tap on the window. It is Doc and The Chamois who were supposed to have made a rendezvous with the pack at a regroup in order to participate in the remembrance silence. They had waited for "ages" but no one else turned up.
Ah... a flash of yellow in the distance at Burntoak Gate, the returning pack ?
NO it's Spiderman, he mutters "I didn't do it all, it's too long for me".
He then tells us about an unfortunate mismatch between the aspirations of hashers and those of a certain bird feeder which had resulted in some time consuming exchanges of opinion.
Finally at fifty one minutes past NOON many more yellow shirts are spotted in the distance and the pack eventually trickles back on in.

Canman thanked the hares, present and absent, for a nice long run in an unfrequented area and Dogwhistle awarded the Hash-It to Jerry for not being able to tell the difference between flour and bird shite followed by a race down to The Partridge in Singleton, where I gathered the following observations from Jerry and Bika over a pint of London Pride.

Apparently Jerry and Bika had done all the checking, Old Faithful, Flash, Canman etc were all lazy gits.
The reading by Tigger of stanzas from the poem "For the fallen" by Binyon and the two minutes silence at the second regroup had been poignant.

For those of you who like to know details of the route then here it is:
north west from Broadham House along the edge of the trees and into Nightingale Wood, a sharp turn east back towards the oil well but then north into Herringdean Wood and east through the gap between Highditch Copse and Punters Copse to emerge on the SDW.
Three hundred metres east on the SDW and then south to the seven way junction in Charlton Forest via an easterly loop to approach the junction from the south.
Finally south west from the junction to the on-in via Burntoak Gate.

Bambi.