Atalanta announced the length of the trail as 5.3 Km; incredulous, Bigfoot asked “Don’t you mean miles?” 95 minutes later Bigfoot was still running the trail, suggesting his correction had some validity.  SH3 have run many times from this car park; today it was over-full, with cyclists and hashers making life problematic for the general public.  But though the start was entirely familiar, the later stages of the trail were new and unusual.  We had plenty of fast runners to solve the checks, including No Nookie, RAndy Pandy, and Loopy Lou, but where the short cut began all failed to find flour, and only the arrival of the hares put us out of our misery – we had not gone far enough in the real direction. Hares 1, runners Nil.  We had snow and ice to contend with, and yes I took a tumble where the going was most slippery, but the day warmed up and in general falls were avoided.  The hares brought the pack to the On In by a long hill, usually held to be a fault; the pack should do their hill-climbing early in the trail.  Certainly this slope took it out of me.  J. Arthur asked me to remind him of the handle given to a frequent visitor, not a paid-up member; I suggested, correctly as it turns out, “Proxy.”  Proxy arrived late-ish and was one of those who had to park at the entrance to Pitch Hill car park. This proved an advantage: the first check, just up the usual hill where we generally go, was, like many others on this trail, a back check, the solution going right past his car.  RHUM accompanied the short-cutters, Atalanta the main pack; since this included your scribe, and others as little fitted for speed as I, she would whisper to us where a back-solution was in order, so allowing us to stay, if vaguely, in touch with the faster-moving, Simple or Stevie Blunder for example.  Indeed like this I even had the honour once of “finding” the solution and calling the others on.  When I think of time gone by, when I would feel ashamed to have (genuinely!) solved fewer than 3 checks (my record was 12) then I have to admit embarrassment.  I feel like the butt of Sir Toby’s humour, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, saying wistfully “I was adored once too.” Next week’s hare, Miss Bean, joined us very late in the run, busy elsewhere; our problem may be that part of the A3 will be closed.

  Don Giovanni chooses damnation rather than repentance, which seems realistic enough: libertines are set in their ways.  Obviously there have always been sexual profligates, though few as mesmeric as the Don: Zerbinetta is no fool, but finds him irresistible despite her better judgement, and is saved only by chance.  Young men of all centuries have always included skirt-chasers in their ranks, and some never settle down, but I suspect it is in our own times that emulating Don Giovanni – or seeking to, his score sheet would be hard to match (ma in Spagna son già mille e tre) – has corresponded most closely to the prevailing mindset.  The idea of the Virgin Mother is especially antipathetic to most magazines for women, the editors having no patience with virgins, and choose to omit child-rearing from their contents.  Only one sexual choice is anathema to our culture, namely celibacy, and one sole partner in a lifetime must be uncommonly rare.  Curiously, the closing aria in the opera (“This is the fate of wrongdoers!”) was omitted from most stagings of the opera until quite recently.  Perhaps because it is our culture that needs reminding?

  On On, FRB