Hash 973

It's comforting to know that there are things you can rely on in hashing as there are in life. We know, for instance that the GM will put a huge number of on-backs on his runs, that Simon's hashes will be up and down steep hills, that Matt and Roz will always win prizes at fancy-dress runs and that Sooper's runs will be measured to inch-perfect accuracy on his GPS.

So it was that this run was pre-measured on his reconnaissance trips to the merest fraction of an inch, at just under 5.5 miles. It was reassuringly hash-like to hear that, when he set it, it had somehow changed to the 5.9 miles he announced to the hash, to the “Just over six” he whispered to a few hashers and even to the “It's over six and a half” he confessed to Whipping Boy. Accuracy indeed. On the actual run he measured it as 5.86 miles with no on-backs. Actually it was 5.91 miles with many, many on-backs and checks. Was this his first measure of success for the evening?

A goodly crowd gathered in the car park and we set off on the stroke of six minutes late, running south towards the river. The first check, a hundred or so yards out, saw the long-short split - and from that point on we didn't see the short cutters again. Fortunately Lesley told me all of the many things that happened to them when we were in the pub later. And to be doubly sure I wrote them all down as soon as I got home.

Now, a week later as I write this, (I was away), I find that my “comprehensive” notes on the Blonde's detailed tale, consists of the mysterious phrase “The short new hashers were two false” (and yes word “two” was spelt that way and I am sure it meant something at the time relating to two separate events). But if she was also referring to the fact that the hashers were on the short trail or that she was being rude about their height totally escapes me. But, rest assured, the short run was both detailed and interesting when she told me.

And so on to the multiple lengths of the long run. We had been told that the first section of the hash was very flat so may well be furiously fast - and so it was through Higginson park (named after General Sir George Higginson, Marlow's famous centenarian who handed the deeds of Court House to the council sometime after his 100th birthday). Fast also along the river and whilst doubling back towards the park and even faster when we re-doubled in a sneaky fashion back again towards the river.

By the time of the first regroup the pace had been quick enough to bring a delicate rosy glow to the cheeks of the lady hashers. The gentlemen, as men are want to do, were sweating like pigs and gasping for oxygen.

Eventually we arrived back at the Marlow-Henley road after a particularly fine on-back (which caught loads of people but I just sadly just missed out on). A right towards Marlow followed by a left and we were heading north towards Bovingdon Green, (best known 'cos of Mike and Judy memorably missing a hash by turning up at a pub called the Royal Oak in the Bovingdon Green north of Amersham, rather than the Royal Oak at the Bovingdon Green near Marlow which, as everyone knew, was the venue for the hash).

A left into a field took us to the steepest hill of the evening – where the vicious on-back at the top made Helen's eyes light up at the prospect of an extra climb. However, soon after returning to the bottom and climbing back up, she got caught by yet another on-back and had to descend and ascend the monster for a third time! Judging by the age it took her to catch up I am not sure that she enjoyed this quite as much as the first two times. So perhaps she now knows, as does half of the hash, what it is like to be “over the hill.”

A pleasantly torturous route seemed to take us on two half loops in the wrong direction but eventually we headed back (downhill for a change) towards the allotments at the top of Marlow, where I heard one hasher ask, “What do you call a stolen yam?” Answer - A hot potato!

And so back to Marlow which, according to the Doomsday book was the “Land Of Queen Maud In Desborough Hundred” and consisted of fifteen hides with 26 curucates in the demesne, two ploughs, 35 villeins, twenty three copy-holders, twenty six curucates of pasture and pannage for 1,000 hogs". Unfortunately that probably won't make you much wiser. Better informed perhaps but, like me, not any wiser.

Yet another fine hash and convivial evening in Sooper's ever-on-going Marlow hash series.