In the beginning was the thought and the thought was void and without form.
So what year was it? And who had the thought?
It was 1953. Rationing was still in force and I was foetally imprisoned against my will. So many wrongs to right in the world and I could do nothing about them. So I did what many a person has done before me. I sucked my thumb, thought void thoughts and waited for the waters to part.
Big Ears creator, on the other hand, peered out of the window at the bleak November landscape. The North Sea had just retreated back whence it came and bodgers were to be seen again, returning from the high ground around Hammersley.
Bu**er this for lark, I fancy putting my feet up at Christmas, for a change. So she opened the front door, went to the local vegetarian patch and picked a suitable Big Ears from underneath a cabbage. “You’ll do”, she said and went back home to put her feet up.
Big Ears grew up to be a fine runner whose only weakness is a tendency to rupture his coolant pipes and leak bright red liquid onto the ground.
All of the above is really a long winded way to introduce the inevitable.
November. Rain. Cold. General Havelock pub. It must be Ade’s birthday Hash. And so it was.
Some years we head straight uphill and go along Spring Lane. But not this year. The hare was kind and gave us a trot along the level towards High Wycombe. An opportunity to warm up reluctant muscles, stiff after the exertions of Herbert’s Hole at the weekend.
If this was the zig, then the zag was the dash back through King’s Mead playing fields. The place was heaving with people, most playing netball, some playing rugby and some youngsters hanging around. Some other youngsters dashed up on their bikes, eager to know what these idiots were doing running in the dark. I don’t think we enlightened them much.
That was the gentle introduction over with and the hare reverted to form. The trail led up the hill, under the motorway and into Fennells Wood. It never ceases to amaze me how the highest paths around are usually the muddiest and this wood was no exception.
However, nothing lasts for ever, even if it seems so at the time. Wood gave way to tarmac and a dash down Treadaway Hill. An opportunity to discard the accumulation of mud on our trainers.
A meander through the quiet back streets of Loudwater brought us out onto the A40. Here there was an involuntary split in the pack when the cream of the FRBs headed into Wycombe while the remainder went the other way (the whey?) towards the golf course. Did we miss them? Of course we did. Well, some of them.
Squeezing between houses along an unloved road brought us to Hammersley Lane. Still no sign of the FRBs. Feeling guilty, we sent out a search party. By that I mean Gerry. Lo, no sooner had he disappeared from sight than the lost souls ran down from above. So we had to then start searching for our search party. No matter. All ended well and we crossed over the road into a nature reserve and slid anxiously down to Gomm Road.
Here the hare seized the initiative, having looked at his watch, and pulled us along with haste into the marsh (or had been, once upon a time) and along the riverside walk. We would have called in on Natasha but she lived on the wrong side of the tracks, so we didn’t. The highlight of this section was the outfall of the Little Marlow sewage works pumped 3 miles underground all the way from, you guessed, Little Marlow. So romantic. Ade brings Jilly all the time.
Then a final left turn along a memorial to Dr Beeching before hitting Gibbon Manor. For those of you with a long memory, you will recall that at the beginning of this piece I said that this was the hare’s birthday celebration. Through the trademan’s entrance and into the garden for some well received fare, that Hashers’ staple, beer and do-nut mix (do they?).
After too short a stay, on-on to the pub. Even though it was not far, it was far enough that the beer tried to escape the way it had entered our bodies, powered by compressed gas.
At the pub we were regaled by a dapper chappie in a suit, come down from Larndon, special-like, to present a Tosca to our very own singer/song writer, Ken (I can see my ‘ouse from ‘ere) Smith. Very well deserved.
The end.
PS. Happy Birthday Moose and many thanks for the nosh.