The words according to Meaty Whore
Disappointingly for me, there was little meteorology this week although that probably came as a relief to others.
Sunset was at 18:16 BST, air pressure was a relatively high 1008 hPa, air temperature was a balmy 16.9 degrees Celsius, relative humidity was 96% and there was 8/8 cloud cover at the start. There had been some menacing flashes of lightning on the drive down to EA but they had stopped and there was no precipitation falling as we circled up *.
When the GM asked if there were any announcements, I stupidly mentioned that it was my last SH4 hash, as Tight Arse and I were emigrating to the Far East (almost to the Somerset border in fact) and we would have to hash with ISCA in the future but thanked SH4 for many wasted Wednesday evenings.
When it became apparent that the nominated scribe hadn’t turned up, a new SH4 alphabet was invented that had a bonus M between A and C, meaning that it was my turn to write the words again. I hope that ISCA use a more conventional alphabet than SH4! Another noticeable absence was NIce Buns who was rumoured to be worried about the showers that had been forecast for the evening.
The hares were Overshot and Rusty Bottom. The instructions for the night were so complex that no-one could remember them, with options for walks, shorts, short-longs, longs, long-longs, hops, skips, jumps and even marathons. Overshot demonstrated how we had to walk in a special way to safely cross a fallen fence but his demonstration looked more like something out of the Ministry of Silly Walks or even an audition for the rear-end of the horse in East Allington’s pantomime.
Navigational difficulties were a common theme throughout the night, although they did keep the pack together. Shortly into the trail, the flour completely disappeared and the back markers caught up with the FRBs as all options were explored. Eventually a hare appeared, but unfortunately it was the wrong hare, who’d been responsible for laying the other end of trail. Even the hare, Overshot, got lost when he misplaced his phone and he had to be rescued by Rusty.
Dimmers was discovered leading Rizzo astray on several short cuts and trying to hide his crimes by turning his head torch off so that no-one would notice.
I was running with Scruff and Scruff’s owner (sorry I’m always better at remembering dogs’ names than I am at humans’ names) and we were excited to find that we were at the front for one section. However, it turned out that everyone else had short cutted so severely that although we were the first to run over that section of the trail we definitely weren’t at the front. But we got our revenge when the short-cutters took a wrong turn, ran down a long steep hill and we re-discovered them as they had just finished puffing their way back up their bonus hill, which I think serves them right for shortcutting!
There was further confusion on the longs when we lost the trail, ran in circles for some time and eventually saw a road sign indicating that it was only 1.5 miles back to EA so decided to cheat and head back along the roads as we were all getting quite thirsty. However, we came across the short-long (or perhaps was it the long-medium?) trail and turned on to that to avoid some of the tarmac. I was one of the gaggle of lost-longs and after 90 minutes on the trail was very glad that the pub was kindly still serving foot-long sausages despite the very late hour. In the end, for a second week running, only the famous five, this time being Overshot, Second Coming, Barbarella, Low T Arse and Olive, completed the full long.
On the shorts, Gary Glitter took one for the team by attracting all of the flies and moths to herself and sparing everyone else. Gomez and Morticia’s cute Zoe is growing rapidly and is perhaps no longer considered as cute due to her hoovering up all of the cow pats on the trail. Zoe’s car share partners were concerned about whether such a small dog would be able to keep down so much muck while they were heading back along those winding roads.
Wet Spot was incredibly rude to many fellow hashers along the trail, making offensive new names for them. WGAS was so upset that when Wet Spot asked for directions he pointed down a sideroad. Wet Spot fell for this cunning trick and headed off for some bonus extra distance as punishment.
Gaffer and the Plympton team hadn’t made it to the hash but I think that they would have enjoyed the many streams, brambles and fences that the hares led us across. While crossing one particularly high fence I became quite concerned that Daisy would never be able to have a sibling because the barbs were getting precariously close to a delicate region.
Spotty Botty was the RA for the night and demonstrated some of her newly acquired teaching skills by having an unruly pub full of hashers sitting in silence before she’d counted to five. Discipline is going to be tight in Miss Botty’s class!
Thanks were given to the first five farmers who’d let us hash across their land that evening. Apparently we didn’t need permission from the sixth farmer as they didn’t Give a Shit and all their fences were down and easy to cross anyway.
A special mention was given to Hekkel and Jyde who had driven back from the Lake District that day just to make the hash.
The RA presented herself with her 200th t-shirt (and a down down as she often does). Other down downs went to the hares Overshot and Rusty Bottom, Wet Spot for rudeness, Meaty Whore for desertion and Morticia for being helpful.
So long and thanks for all the cheesy chips (although I’m not so sure about Squashed Ball’s cheesy jokes). On On to the Loddiswell Inn, Loddiswell!
* these values are all guessed from nearby weather stations and shouldn’t be completely trusted but hopefully are fairly representative of the evening.