J. Arthur blames COVID for our present problems with car parks (today’s was very severe).  Apparently the Great British public took to going out into the countryside when visiting friends became illegal.  Of course there are always solutions, and today everyone found somewhere, in many cases out in the road, to the irritation of householders.

  Tosser, our hare, (visible only when we were all back) told Bolshie we should expect 4 miles with no short cuts.  We were back in 68 minutes, suggesting nearer 3.5 miles.  Yes, Bigfoot would have been in sooner, but today he was sporting a T-shirt dedicated to a saint from Cappadocia, for some obscure reason adopted by white supremacists here, and not running with us.

  Chastity Belt remembers setting trails across the cricket ground, but mostly when we have run from this car park in the past we set off east.  Today on the contrary we started to the north and ran a left-hander, crossing the nearby roads: all credit to Too Posh for solving the first check by going across a road.  Thereafter the trail was excellent, a first class choice of scenery and routes.  If that meant hills (and it did!), well, fair enough, SH3 are meant to appreciate hills.  Long in the tooth?  Perish the thought!  Today there were 3 or 4, but nothing like say the ascent from Godstone to the North Downs recently inflicted on us by Lord Raleigh.  He, as always really, was there today, with Teddy Bear, Hans der Schwanz, Tequil’Over and such like, all males faithful to the Hash but preferring not to do the full trail.  (Our women are made of sterner stuff…..) Speaking of women, I observed that Missing in Action and MoLE (is that her handle?) [yes] faithfully set twigs in an arrow at each solution to a check, whether or not the flour makes it obvious where the solution is.  Devotion to duty! Both women walk very rapidly rather than run, though they do break into an occasional trot.  The most obvious fast walker among men is J. Arthur, though today for some reason he finished after most of us were in.

  Another success for Tosser was that even near the end the pack were in touch with the front runners and observed the solutions to the checks.  This was the usual case in years gone by, but has become a rarity now.  A glimpse from that past was the presence of Cool Box, eternally young, and her Madonna.  We were not numerous – perhaps 20 to do the full trail, women and men more or less equal in numbers and indeed in prowess; Atalanta was only a few minutes late.  It was striking how many people remembered the old pub nearby, now closed.  I had thought, mistakenly, that Gill, a hash wife seldom seen, had acted in the nearby priory, or its grounds; but she is still acting, and currently preparing a Life of Jesus acting as the Virgin Mary. How many of you understand the chronology of those first years AD? Christ was certainly not born at 0, partly because there was no zero, straight from 1 BC to 1 AD, [Ed: remember the controversy over which year was actually the “millennium” year?] but mostly because Herod died around 4 BC, so Christ’s birth would have been say 5 or 6 BC…… As for his death, probably 30 AD, making his mother about 53. How often do you see her portrayed as a middle-aged woman?  Not even in scenes where she is holding his lifeless body.  Iconography has a lot to answer for…..

  On On,
  FRB (a politics free zone, especially pre bi-election!)