I REALLY must not meander over to the “On-Inn” so soon after the Hash!! Having skilfully avoided ALL, no Most, of the pitfalls of hashing, why I blunder into this one I DON’T KNOW!

  The Gurnard sidles up to me and says (something along the lines of)

  “You write excellent reports, and I know you stick to the trail resolutely, so a good factual report would be great for the RS! Would you mind doing it?”

  Or was it?

  “Umm I haven’t got around to asking anyone yet; how about doing the write up? Shouldn’t be any trouble for you, having been nowhere near the trail the whole time, YOUR reports usually don’t get around to actually reporting on the hash, so OK? Just send it to Petal”.

  You decide which!

  WELL he was wrong! I had been on the trail!
About as far as Tiller, 200 yards, or there abouts, then; Gurney spots The (not A) Tiller standing guard at the first deviation from tarmac into God forsaken scratchy “bushland” and says “Ok Peay you can go back now” (bitchy!!).

  Peay: “Thank you oh great one” (another puff on the non-exotic cheroot”), I’ll just make sure they all get on the trail off this tarmac!

  THEN, to me, “There is a back check up there! Tee Hee, I wonder what is going to happen!?”

  I ignore him and go and see for myself. It is silent; whoever has told Tiller it is a back check has long gone, along with a posse of also-rans. The marked trail divides; flour to the left, flour to the right! Hmm, looks like one of those flaming “Checkup Chickens” (more like Cockup Chickens) to me. I go to the right… yep, a gap, then two blobs, 50 paces; more blobs; yeah this is the real trail, I’ll go back and see what this “famous” “back check” looks like.

  Retracing and taking the “Left hand Path” (Oooer don’t tell Dennis Wheatley!) the “Back Check” circle is adorned with a forward arrow and various other hieroglyphs so I “give it a go.

  Naaah – no marks after a 100 yards (91.44 metres) the arrow was bollocks! SO naturally carry on.

  Ooh I wonder where it goes… past a lovely open bit, with no orrible scratchy scrub, and a green and verdant playing field… lovely. THEN, what should confront me but a whole bunch of Vikings, who have worked out the “rules” of the hash… well done!

  They go past me and shortly find the ARROW-defiled check squircle, a debate ensues (the sensor steps in here to stop my insensitive parody of Icelandic chatter) … and they disappear.

  Shortly after they are followed by; Lets call them a group of “hashers”; OFF flour, TRUDGING along, grumbling, stumbling and eventually finding the “Cockup Chickbrain” arrow and I hear “That’s marked in error! It doesn’t go anywhere!” and PROBABLY continue and go up the “Right Hand” trail (Good Christians!) and, either; get back on the real trail or get stuck in an infinite loop. Whatever; I cross the lovely open playing field and attempt to find the Inn Trail.

  OK, so I’ve mentioned the hash! I THINK I know where it went because I wandered around to the North and West of the “Hastings Touring Park” last time we Hashed (got lost) around here, and even got mixed up with the Old Coulsden (??!!) trail who just happened to have picked Hastings the same weekend as us!!

  Anyway I THINK it skirted the touring park, used one, or both, of the public footpaths that return to Barley lane, then trudged along it and then went South and East (turn right!) into the country park, then wiggle back along the Southern edge back to the carpark, which I presume had been described as the end point at the Hare Talk.

  At times like this I wish I had listened to the “Hare Talk” (not really!). “Why? What did she say?” (I hear you ask)… I don’t know; I never listened. BUT I DO know, from Fuhrer Gurney’s hare and trail “analysis” at the On-INN circle that the talk was VERY long and along with breaking the whole set of “red lines” he had “requested”; Eskimo had forgotten to tell the Icelandic contingent how to hash!!

  The Red Lines included;

• No Hills … good luck with that in Hastings!
• No tarmac… fat chance with minimum foot paths parallel with Barley Lane.
• Keep it short… yeah Eskimo and Eveready?  After we have travelled all that way …no chance.

  I had been selected as Hash Scribe by the time the various Down Downs were meted out and should have been able to relate them, but my pencil broke and the dog ate my scrap of paper, so I can’t.

  I DO remember that Bonn Bungle requested that I help sing a “French Song” to acknowledge our recent foray to Provence and rather than “Frère Jacques ” or “Sur le Pont”… “A Frenchman went to the lavvatree ” was the order of the day. Well it wasn’t quite as heavy a Lead Ballon as our rendition of the repurposed “I was Lost in France” either the evening before at Eskimo’s 70th celebrations or indeed after the “French National Anthem” (not).

  I can’t help but mention Eveready’s Provence report. It was printed on the 2642 RS but in a form I can’t even begin to unravel, [now formatted a bit!] so I cut and pasted it into a document, added some “white space”, sat back and had an enjoyable read. A number of Jewels were hidden in the text which I relate here, there could be more, take a look.

  First:
 “The limestone geology around Cabris meant the scrub was a Mediterranean type called Garrigue which is tough enough to withstand intense summer sunlight and regular droughts, coming to Surrey soon perhaps.

  It is also resistant to Hashers and being rather prickly, encouraged everyone to stay on trail, even the underlying leaf litter was prickly.

  Once popular in the UK in the 70s and 80s, [but] after a couple of unpleasant pornography discoveries, today Garrigue litter is rarely mentioned.” [priceless!]

  And second, one I needed help in finding;
A late heatwave in southern France and parts of Spain had pushed temperatures in some places to over 40C but in Provence only to the mid 30s, but for those arriving by car saw an electronic motorway sign near Aix en Pains, the only one in English, saying ‘Heatwave conditions, drink lots’.

  [Aches n Pains! Priceless]

  There’s more!! 

  OnOn
  Teq