Master Bates is not our only hare to choose the same venue for repeated trails.  Of Tosser’s several runs from this car park, our GM remembers best his first, when we found from the start someone else’s flour, and ran a completely other trail – all but Ear Trumpet, arriving late and doing the real thing all alone.  Today we started north, as if to access the usual Puttenham terrain, but no, after several checks in close proximity we had done three sides of the tarn and were back on Tosser’s preferred southern area.  We did see the hare at two of the checks (he had not been at the start for any hare talk), and then did not see him again till we were in. 

  Tosser has an adventurous approach to trails; where most of us go for a simple circuit, he prefers frequent zigs and zags, so that I began to wonder if in answering Lonely’s question with cheerful confidence “Oh, anti-clockwise, certainly!” I had been wrong.  But no; logic prevailed, and anti-clockwise it was.  The checks were too far apart for a hot day; well, on reflection, for any day.  Our group of runners, inspired by the cheerful confidence of Chunderos, soon became well separated from the faster few.

  Despite a long, tiring, sunny and sandy hill we were back in some 88 minutes, having covered 5.5 miles, which is quite rapid for Surrey these days; I have no idea how much less the real front runners took.

  Bigfoot (one of them, of course) was eager to correct my report last week; his son Ryan has been hashing since early childhood, and is “new” only to Surrey.  Atalanta, another, caught up with us after only 20 minutes today, and Kelinchi was for once there at the start.

  Blunder and Bean had been caught by today’s traffic problems (sunshine on Sunday with an M25 closure!) and started late.  The return trail went into a  swamp, and several of us just took the road which went on to the nearby car park.  Mother Brown heroically submerged himself in the shiggy so as to stay on flour.  Halfway home J. Arthur felt guilty at reneging on Tosser’s trail, and plunged
back into the countryside to find flour.  Now these are hashers we can admire!

  Justine Greening describes the noisy faction in her political party as “Reform-lite”, a label unlikely to catch on; but which word is best? The word “nativist” comes to mind, though it is as yet little used, and in any case comes up against the curious fact that many of the best-known of this faction are not of British stock originally; the descendants of immigrants whose pet aversion seems to be immigrants. Obviously they are just trying to attract votes from people (of authentic native origins) who dislike foreigners, a British trait going back centuries. (Remember the expression  Johnny Foreigner”?)  Not that these unpleasant attitudes are unique to these islands; Europe is a hotbed of such prejudices. What seems special here is the anti-woke campaign: “Keep your wrong ideas! Nobody has a right to challenge any mistaken notions you may cherish!” Naturally everyone has lost sight of the original meaning of woke, an African-American term to mean awareness of racial prejudice, so that anti-woke is either to favour prejudice, or completely meaningless. In this country it is usually both. For all that, increasing numbers of people here describe themselves as anti-woke; Reform UK is too dangerous to ignore, especially on climate change.

  On On, FRB

[Ed – Political opinions are not necessarily endorsed by Surrey Hash House Harriers!  However, Plato once said: “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”  So you get the mismanagement that you deserve!]