The names Tosser and CL occur more often in the schedule of hares than the names of some of you, ready to criticise but less so to volunteer.  Our Hare Raisers struggle to fill our schedules; remember your responsibilities before commenting on the work of others.  I have not myself set a recent trail: I shall gladly join anyone who would welcome my collaboration.

  Well, to today. Obviously the car park chosen was too small, as Doug and Mrs R had predicted; the car park further south is much bigger. Some uncertainty about our hares, neither visible at the start: was CL even with Tosser? However, some drivers were leaving just before 11 am, so late arrivals had it easier than others.  And away we went on time, even Atalanta.

  At the first check nobody stayed to tell the bold soul who checked forward that the solution was back; but hey, front runners need exercise!  The early checks were quite close together, so we stayed in touch, with a little group forming to discuss and identify a reptile glimpsed by J. Arthur, said to be a slow worm, except that no one knew what such a creature was.  Well, we pushed on till we reached the northern boundary of the Common; most hares here use the soggy middle, with all those boards, but today we were taken to much of the perimeter of the Common, certainly to the north and east, so that our feet stayed fairly dry.

  There was no Checking Chicken today (I assume no one had spare flour?) which led to an oddity: an arrow in the mud directed a group of us led by Bonn Bugle to veer right, but half a mile on we found runners who had been behind us had disregarded this arrow and were now ahead. Somewhere around now the sun went in, making it harder to orient ourselves; at a point where I thought we were going away from home, Dr Death, an excellent navigator, did not agree.

  By now the checks were much further apart, so we were more and more strung out.  At an apparent offer of a short cut I followed and joined Hash Flash and Master Bates on the full length version; we then came to a check circle which had not been marked through at all.  We carried on using what we recalled of the Common, not wholly inaccurately, and found ourselves the back markers, with everyone else already at the beer.

  We have now suffered under seven unsatisfactory Prime Ministers in succession, or eight if we count Blair post Iraq. True, one can think well of Gordon Brown and Theresa May as human beings, but not as national leaders.  To get a “good” PM we have to go back to John Major, and Blair before Iraq.  (You will gather that my verdicts have nothing to do with party loyalty, which probably counts more highly for most of you).  I do not share the enthusiasm for Margaret Thatcher, since I think society much more important than she did, preferring to go back to her very opposite, Harold Macmillan.  Charisma has with any luck been given a bad name by the truly deplorable Boris Johnson (Trump is highly charismatic) though to have a PM with none at all, like Starmer, is equally unsatisfactory.  “Know thyself” was advice admired in ancient Greece, but very rare in most politicians – think of the smug, self-satisfied accounts they give of themselves in their memoirs, never probing their mistakes – but clearly Wilson had that gift, leaving office before his mind went.

  On On, FRB