The vibes where excellent for such an illustrious cloudy day
as the wind whaled between my ears. The hashers formed a circle to announce the
trail.
“Welcome to run number 1111 boomed wide” from his roughcast
voice, the hashers and I roared with excitement for the trail. Two on on and
only one big hill where the main takeaways from the hare’s (Happy Snappers)
speech at the start of the trail. Wide then handed out some balloons, I was
very confused, this wasn’t part of conventional hashing, but today was
different. The new rule was that we had to carry around our balloons for the
entire trail and had to wait for at least 4 people, or yourself and three
others (if that confuses you) to get a picture with our balloons before
checking out.
The longs started by looping around Georges (the fifth
edition) playing fields we almost lost the marks lol; but found our way back
onto the main trail. It was then a run along bridge road towards the nature reserve,
where there was another long short split before a ha-ha. I joked that we might
get run over by cows because of our red balloons, thank god Bull Bait is not
here I thought. We then continued along the canal with lots of fishhooks.
Stix, Wide and I arrived at a check at the crossing over the
canal, miles ahead of the rest of the hash but feeling tired. We saw a building
on the otherside of the canal called the Double Locks.
“that’s a strange name for a cafe” exclaimed Stix.
“Yes I never even realised that there was a café here” said
Wide.
“Must be an independent” I said confused. In need of
caffeine and happy to support local businesses, we all wondered in.
Well, I certainly hadn’t seen a café like this before, it
was dingy and dark and had lots of pictures of dead animals on the walls. We
looked around trying to find the place to order. I walked up to the counter to
place the order for me and my friends.
“Two americanos and a latte with vegan milk please”, I asked
the barista.
“I am sorry, but we don’t sell coffee here”. Me and the lads
scowled at eachother.
“This is a public house”, she said, I verified this on my
phone, indeed it was a public house (or pub for short), a place where imperial
measurments are still used, alcohol can be distributed and where important work
meetings can take place. According to reddit alcohol is a powerful drug which
enhances thinking and greatly improves coordination. I was also surprised to
learn that many of humanities greatest discoveries where first discussed in
public houses, such as Evolution, Gravity, and Gin.
There were a range of different taps all with different
emblems and shields on them. Stix asked for a pint of Neck Oil, which is a hop
flavoured cold drink. Wide and I both ordered pints of apple juice called
Thatcher’s, for some reason the bartender required me to show my photo ID to
check I was old enough to drink the special apple juice.
Me and the lads then went and sat down at one of the tables,
we were joined by a man who described himself as “a regular”, who was very
interested in what we were doing.
“We are hashes, a running club” I said.
“I am the dealer; I can get you some of that for your run”
he explained.
We sat there excitingly awaiting a game of cards. The man
chuckled.
“I can get you a couple of grams” the man said.
Finally, someone who could use metric, I thought excitedly.
We all handed over our bank cards. The man chuckled again.
“Unfortunatly I can only accept cash” by this point I was
becoming annoyed, who the hell only accepts cash in this day and age.
“Are you a dinosaur” I asked.
“Its less easy to monitor card payments using cash” the man
informed me. I signed reached into my phone and pulled out a couple of twenty-pound
notes to buy some of this hash.
After consuming the hash and a couple more pints of apple
juice we were feeling a bit dizzy and decided to rejoin the trail. Luckily the
man had informed us that he had a couple of unicorns and a magic carpet which
he said we could borrow so that we could catch up as quickly as possible. The
unicorns and magic carpet soured into the air as we sped towards the sweet
stop. The other hashers gasped as we arrived followed by rounds of applause for
our heroic attempt to catch up. We gave the unicorns some of our sweets from
the sweet stop, but not the chocolate raisins as they are poisonous to dogs. We
waved goodbye to the unicorns and magic carpet as they returned to the double
locks.
From the sweet stop we ran up passed the old people’s estate
and then ironically past the crematorium. With another long, short split
through a field before we arrived back at the car park. Down downs today went
to Paperwork and Pearl for annoying each other, eventually Pearl tried to push
paperwork into the canal. Woodpecker for turning 89 (an incredible achievement
and great to see him still hashing) and Wobbly bits to make up for Odd bits
going straight into the pub. On in to the tally ho where we enjoyed our meals.
Disclaimer: Any accusations that suggest that there was any
inappropriate behaviour due to the alcohol or hash consumed on the hash are
complete fiction. Furthermore, some parts of this weeks words are not true
and where added for comic effect.
