Plenty of front runners for the Jingle Bells thrash, and they all chose wrong directions at the second check, so J. Arthur sent me south on the path, where the solution lay. This brought us to the great house at Clandon, a building site since the disastrous fire almost 10 years ago; we have hashed there often enough, but not by the paths our hare chose today. A good mark for ingenuity, but a black mark for the check which followed south of the main road, so that front runners had to cross a busy dual carriageway to get there and then cross back again when the solution was back on the north of the road. The trail then went along the A247 for a good distance, and indeed a substantial proportion of the trail was on blacktop. How unwelcome is that when our normal paths are so muddy, so slippery? I suspect tastes differ; my own preference in winter is to avoid tarmac and accept the shiggy, but I can see that not all of you would agree.

  We came to a little village, after which the hare laid down green flour for all but those in front, not so much as a short cut but to avoid a deep pool which the fastest had to run through, a sort of Christmas prank. At this stage there was considerable confusion as to where we went next, with green flour, white flour, no apparent flour, and the speed merchants mixed up most democratically with the rank and file. My report thus far has no names: let me mention such welcome returners as Stilton, No Nookie, and Proxy, all joining cheerfully in the confusion.

  Soon after this we came to Clandon Golf Club (the rival attraction is called Clandon Regis) and so back to our start, and our Circle, presided over by Chunderos, preposterously dressed as an angel, or the Sugar Plum Fairy, assisted by Too Posh, also colourfully dressed. Bigfoot chose people to represent characters in a dragon anecdote; a new runner, as Welsh, was a dragon, Spud a dog, and I was the stand-in for a soldier, as having been in submarines, a doubtful equation. Submariners have an anecdote to illustrate their opinion of pongos: an army officer is shown round the complexities of a submarine, after which he comments cheerfully “Very interesting, what? I suppose there’s some sergeant wallah who understands all this?”

  A number of prominent people nowadays pride themselves on being anti-woke. Now, if this expression had existed at the time, many 20th century issues would have been described as woke. Votes for women, making divorce easier, removing the ban on homosexual relations, abolishing the death penalty: would they take us back to square one? I suspect not; they would wish to focus on today’s issues, notably a reckoning with our past as slave traders and slave masters, and hostility to immigrants, a topic dear to such hearts. This hostility has always existed in all cultures, and is rife in Europe and the US now; no one can deny its reality or prevalence. People say we should not decry or blame such thinking, but accept it and sympathise with it; the woke find it embarrassing and shameful. In Roman times 25 to 30% of the people in Britain’s towns were immigrants; since then we have had warlike invasions by Saxons, Danes and Normans, and peaceful arrivals by Protestants (Huguenots), Jews under Cromwell, and since then citizens of our colonies and Empire; send them all home and England would be empty. But saying so is “woke”.

  On On, FRB

Editor’s note   (I await my hand slapping!!)

• Votes for women, etc. would never have been “woke” issues as they ensured true equality, not “positive  discrimination” (a ludicrous contradiction in terms) in favour of “protected characteristics”.
• We don’t have an embarrassing past as slave traders, except those of us who are over 250 years old (maybe a couple in SH3), but some of our forefathers may have.  None of us was responsible for the state of the world  into which we were born, but we can strive to make the it a better place.
• In ancient times there was not much difference between immigrants and invaders, the country being more a collection of settlements.  The  “hostility” issue in immigration is an inevitable clash of cultures, as has long existed across mainland Europe and the Middle East, hence some arrivals, e.g. Huguenots, Jews & Catholics (more recently), being more peaceful than others.  Religion and class have been the biggest causes of wars.  Net migration of 1 million hides an even greater number of inward migrants. When William the Conqueror landed he completed his conquest with 7,000 countrymen, which is a “drop in the ocean” compared to the numbers landing some distance from Pevensey Bay these days!

On On! Ed