Legolas described her trail as a sausage, circumference 4.5 miles.  I decided this meant 75 minutes (which in the event proved spot on), so after 40 minutes, run very largely on the usual Surrey trail from this car park, I said to J. Arthur (who agreed) “We are about to turn sharp left”.  This was almost true, except that the turn was sharp right: we came back by a quite different and less familiar route.  Not without a challenge: the trail took us through a demolition site, whose custodian wanted none of us.  But the hare sweet-talked him into being more amenable.

  Previous Surrey hares on these downs have taken us through part of the memorial to Verdun and WW1, but not the photogenic cluster of vertical timbers enriched by verse, nor the field of statues, so this was original and well worth while.  Obviously in the end the return trail rejoined territory we knew; Chunderos even went on the slide in the children’s playground.  Well, we did have Velcro’s grand-daughter, Daisy, with us.  However, Legolas then found a way to take us near the grandstand; now, in a world where no rules are permitted, we each make our own rules, and one of mine is “With the car park in sight, forget flour and just get there!”  So I forswore the twists and turns the hare had dreamed up, and thus got in before the real front runners, who had proved more docile.  Well, only 2 or 3 minutes before them; Peay acted as I did.  We had some of Old Coulsdon’s harriers with us; one was heard to say he had run 6 miles by the time we got back, which suggests a remarkably unsuccessful approach to checking. In the past I have been accused as hare of gazing towards the solution; certainly Logolas did that today, which made solving checks easier.  She even told Randy Pandy, at that moment the only hasher anywhere near the solution, to go further left, though by the time he did so others had got there.

  Master Bates said he had found this car park as difficult to reach as the notes explaining how to get there had predicted, which seems mysterious; it is true MB sailed past the entrance and came to a barrier, finding the (needless) instructions for opening it incomprehensible.

  When Asterix is in England, a woman there says “I cook all my food in boiling water: I find this gives everything an exquisite taste!”.The joke was out of date, as culinary preferences here had moved on when this was published, but it reflects Continental assessments of our approach to cooking. It was also over-generous to us; in those bad old days nobody spoke of cooking, and certainly did not expect anything “exquisite”.Most of you will remember the dreadful food of our childhood; it would be interesting to trace how we opened up to French, Italian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, cooking. Who persuaded us? Travel? Elizabeth David? We had once known good food here; in medieval times our diet was the same as in the rest of Europe (mind you, the Scots, Irish, even Welsh, have always had their own specialities). I suppose garlic was one of the last ingredients to be accepted; I am sure you will recall the widespread distaste for garlic, which was regarded, scornfully, as French and contemptible. Conversation at table has changed too; now we comment on the flavours and ingredients served, as for the wine: we did not when I was young.
  On On, FRB