Our GM in an earlier version of his 3 stints as GM opined that our hash had no need of pre-run talks, but has since gone with the flow.  Today’s introduction to the trail may have fired him to think again.  Our sympathies must be with the committee members who find hares; Surrey has hashed too often in this area, where no trail could possibly be new, but if that is what the hares choose, what can they do?  Today we did find a pond I did not remember; otherwise all the woods and canals and rivers were only too well known to us.  True, today much of the start, the out trail, was our traditional return route to the car park, but this was an indifferent consolation.

  All credit to our harriettes (my spell check dislikes this word!); the front runners today were Satisfaction Guaranteed, Atalanta, and Miss Whiplash, though Doug kept them company valiantly.  Others who did the main trail, such as Petal, were behind me, to my considerable surprise [Ed: too busy gassing]; I tend to be a back marker nowadays.  Online Services, our hare, and his side kick Simple stayed with the short cutters, perhaps in a majority today; we don’t often catch Belcher and Veggie Queen in their number, but I do understand.  By the time we reached that pond the hash were very strung out.  A very short trail (some 55 minutes) and certainly successful in keeping the runners together, with both groups on the same towpath on the way in at the same time, which is how we hoped to hash in the old days.  Well, the relatively old days; when I joined Surrey, short-cutting was an art everyone else admired, not a provision by the hare.  The expert was UG himself, and even he occasionally got it wrong.  An error in those days meant getting well lost and arriving hells late!  Ah well, autres temps, autres moeurs.

  Another noteworthy aspect of today was the weather. I have written only too often that getting wet on a Surrey trail has become a rare event; no one could say it poured down today, just drizzle, but it was certainly not a dry morning. The rain became more real as we gathered for our drinks, which of course in December included mulled wine, thanks to Tequil’Over.  We were perhaps 20, all told, and today the only non-runner was Lord Raleigh, our most faithful attendee.

  I was asked at a lunch recently what I thought of our Prime Minister. “The worst for a century”, I said, which went down well, until I added “Apart from Liz Truss”.  My companions, mostly Tories, felt she should not be mentioned in the same context; actually I was sparing their feelings, as I should have included Boris Johnson.  When did we last have a good PM?  My answer would be Blair  [Really?] before the Iraq war, and I thought well of John Major. Have you noticed how seldom the memoirs of politicians include any form of self-criticism?  You would have thought they would take the opportunity to examine mistakes, but this seems beyond them, after they retire as it was when they were in office.

  On On,
  FRB