Suddenly it's autumn, the trees have not quite realised it yet, but the sky is grey, the
wind is cold the lanes are muddy once again and the Christmas cards have arrived
in the charity shops.
An early vehicular false trail by Spiderman resulted in a delayed start during which
Bika entertained us with a review of his marks which somehow involved The Number
of The Beast, can't remember why?.
There were no newbies or visitors, thus we were soon on our way and after a brief
flirtation with falsies to the west we discovered the trail through All Saints cemetery,
past the pirate headstones and out onto the eastern pastures.
"Oooooo, ponies" exclaimed Tumbletot as she made a bee-line for a
paddock to gaze into equine eyes the other side of an electric fence. "Yelp!"
went Belle as she discovered the fence was live. Toot, toot, toot went Kinky as his horn
called us north then east down the slope to a re-group near Down Road.
West then, back up the slope, cutting across Lith Lane, to the strains of something from a
modern opera from Vixen in her slightly husky alto voice, reminiscent of Lauren Bacall,
however no one was whistling.
A harmless padlock on the steel gate at the top caused Pancsi and Splasher to be temporarily
deluded into thinking that it was locked before we dashed across the fields, with Prancer puffing
away at his vaporiser, to the back of The Farmer Inn.
No beer here, yet, across the road and south-west on Ham Lane to Tagdell Lane, where Bika
made an executive decision to shorten the route due to the passage of time and an ever
increasing thirst.
There followed a charge down hill to Lovedean Lane where the speedy found a fish hook that
caught Kinky, Pancsi and The Ref.
At the junction someone had kindly discarded an armchair for Prancer to rest his plates
and watch the rest disappear towards Hinton Daubney.
Most of us knew the way back from here, which was just as well because the trail had been
ploughed up moments earlier. So it was east to the bottom of Catherington Down and the
tough climb to the top to admire the view of the pylons marching into the distance, before
reaching the On-In after one hour and twenty minutes of electrified hashing.
At the circle we talked about many things, Dogwhistle's dressing gown revelation, electrified
dog, stuck dog, lazy dog, and just had to give the Hash-It to Spiderman for forgetting
the way to the car park.
Just a short walk and we returned to The Farmer Inn, this time to apply ourselves to the
serious business of Apres Hash in the Lounge Bar which soon became our sole preserve.
On On ! Bambi.
on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on | |||||||||||||||||||||||||