It was excellent to celebrate the equinox by welcoming once more the families who have found our Sunday excursions congenial. We should elect one of the parents as a JM next spring. “Youth at the helm” as the man said. And if one of the mothers, then “beauty at the prow”.

  Well, today’s hares were both of the fair sex, but this is no excuse for not going round again. Some of the checks were so strange we spent ages stumbling upon the solutions; apart from the families and (of course) Atalanta, few were back before I was, in 100 minutes, where normally that distance would have taken less than 85, time lost at enigmatic checks. This said, it was a perfectly good trail, largely in woodland, familiar enough of course, SH3 have been here often, but still interesting and attractive, with plenty of shiggy to remind our runners of hashing traditions.

  We stayed east of the A29; though the second check threatened to take us back across it. Atalanta, who was only one minute late, soon solved it as a back check; Veggie Queen came upon more flour and attracted us into following it, but this petered out oddly, and once again Atalanta found where we should go next. Then came the longest of our baffled pauses, scratching around and searching for flour; I think this time it was Stevie Blunder who set us right. [Ed: See trail map below]. All credit to Hans der Schwanz, gamely making good progress on these slippery paths; at this stage even Teddy Bear was still with us.

  When we had got past the lake we found flour in two directions at a junction; it took us a while to work out that the counter-intuitive direction was the one to follow. From there the trail went south, and appeared to stop once more; some expressed disappointment that we appeared to give up and head for home, but were relieved to learn that we were again back on flour. It must be said that many of the checks had not been marked through, though some were, certainly the last one, sending us back for what must have been almost a mile on tarmac to return us to our car park. All credit to the youngest with us today (four years old perhaps), carried by Daddy in the worst of the mud, but otherwise gamely hashing with the best.

  When David Mamet’s play American Buffalo came out 50 years ago there was considerable comment on the obscenities, with an explanation that poor, less-educated people spoke like that to express emotion and emphasis. Nowadays much of what was once known as polite society is equally ready to use what TV calls strong language; the words generally avoided now, except by right-wing thugs, are racist instead. I have not adopted obscenities, though when during a trail Too Posh sent me to ask the hare (Captain Webb) for instructions I did report “He told us to fuck in the general direction of off”. Naturally many people adopt the speech they hear round them, including vogue words, buzz words, words and phrases currently “in”; if these include obscenities, so be it, though the traditional swearers and cursers – such as soldiers – must resent this. It is held to be a quality to “write as you speak”, though probably most people omit foul language when they write, however much their speech is interlarded with obscenities. (I tend on the contrary to speak as other men wrote, centuries ago; Villon or Marvell, and ignore modernisms entirely).

  On On, FRB