Petal achieved a first in my experience with our hash; to cross the B383 north of the usual car park and use the land west of that road.  Not that it differs that much from the terrain on the eastern side, but it was novel and interesting to be there at all.  When we eventually came to tarmac again, I assumed it to be the 383 once more, and – with no sun to guide me – set off to my right.  Wrong! We were on the B385, the Chertsey Road.  Oddly enough, considering the abundance of flour earlier on, at this stage the trail petered out as we crossed the road, though it must have gone left.  Wally, back after many months, had been just in front of me, but now disappeared, and indeed was not back at the Circle.  Lost, or went home early?

  The first part of the trail was entirely traditional: north to the road, turn left, and later left again, to confront the Belted Galloways.  Petal had conceived a longer and more ambitious trail, but realised how boggy the common had become, and shortened it.  This meant we got to the “Celtic” monument to Queen Victoria, seldom visited on previous sorties by SH3 on this common.  I should mention a strange path early on, equipped with wooden steps, but hopelessly overgrown with gorse, and therefore I assume little used nowadays;  Birthing Blanket and I stumbled clumsily down, to find that others, more ingenious, such as Peay and Master Bates, had found an easier route.  Shortly thereafter came the first short cut, joined to my surprise by stalwart hashers like Bonn Bugle and RHUM.  (The other part of the short cut came later, when we reached the B383).

  Bonn Bugle is off to Australia for 2 months, to visit her daughters, so we shall be GM-less for a while. Much of the Circle was devoted to saying a temporary goodbye to her, with your scribe standing in as the absent Hans der Schwanz.  Well, quite a lot of absentees today; we cannot have been more than 25 or so. We did have several front runners with us, Atalanta, Bigfoot, Simple, and today we also had Wurzle, after a long absence from our ranks. Early on Wally had been going at a fair bat, expressing surprise at my faltering pace; I must have aged while he was away.

  The elderly clinging to the meanings words had in their youth are often reminded that usages change, that language is alive and develops. Master Bates keeps to the original meaning of decimate: when a Roman legion was disgraced, one in ten would be slaughtered.  Nowadays most people just equate decimate with slaughter, oblivious to the “decim” meaning.  Are they right?  I have no real idea what “iconic” means today, except that it has little to do with icons.  In my world, refute differs from deny; we need both words.  And a third, rebut”, which so far has not been misused.  The most glaring example of misuse is “literally”, nowadays used purely for emphasis.  “He was literally torn in two”; unlikely, unless attacked by a lion.  Even those insisting on how language changes can hardly hope to persuade us that literally means today “not literally” I admit that stresses do evolve; I still pronounce exquisite, harass, integral, with the stress on the first syllable, research with the stress on the second, but humbly plead old age rather than assert that my way is right.  Even I admit that “superb” no longer means “proud”; it did, once.

  On On, FRB