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Hash 1325

1325

Date
15 Dec 2015
Hare
Hounds
34
Doggos
Distance
8.32 km
Scribe: Sooper

Conscious as I am that the veracity of these records is of the utmost importance, I always make sure to use best journalistic practice and refer back to my contemporaneous notes.

The notes I have for Phil's run from the Crown in Cookham say:
Mud
Slippy
Nicki kicked a cow pat

Right. Well I think that's enough to work with. Pretty sure I can pad this out to 500 words no problem. I can always revert to incoherent ramblings if I get stuck. Frankly most people won't have read this far anyway.

So. We arrived in the picturesque village of Cookham on a dark, damp, December evening. Nowhere near cold enough for December, definitely too moist.
Most of us parked in the National Trust car park as instructed but Audrey was worried about the crime - we were after all south of the river - so shifted her fancy car to somewhere more brightly lit.

We squelched our way across the green to the pub where our hare for the evening introduced some mostly rhyming virgin hashers (Matt, Cat and Fintat) and we set off into the mizzle.

Across from the pub we disappeared down the side of the Institute of Marketing which if you look at it on Google Earth appears to be modelled on the Pentagon. Probably the command and control centre for the John Lewis Christmas adverts.

There followed a long stretch across the fields. This section was flat, muddy and very slippery underfoot. In fact the rest of the run was flat, muddy and slippery underfoot. There were meese a plenty throughout the evening. Even four footed hashers with a leg at each corner who you'd think would be more stable didn't always stay upright. Summer disappeared into the water and had to be rescued, although that might have been Roger trying to clean the mud off.

After a bit of aimless phaffing we went across Widbrook Common and then a long, flat, muddy slippery loop around Strand Water which was of course the inspiration for the Roxy Music number. Bryan Ferry probably used to fox hunt round here. That's why the Ferry at Cookham is so named. A danceable solution, To teenage revolution, Do the Strand love.

What do you mean 'incoherent ramblings' ... ok, fair enough.

Hey, did you know that the Witan (ask Gerry)(Gerry's aside: Actually Cookham was technically the capital of England at this time! - Æthelred the Unready was staying there for a short while) for met in Cookham in 997 and there was a Royal Palace here cos I certainly didn't. Mind you, that's from the Wikipedia page so I don't know how accurate it is. I mean that page doesn't even mention anything about Bryan Ferry ... yet. It does say that the name derives from the Old English cōc + hām which is of course a particular hobby of the prime minister, he probably picked it up when he was at school down the river.

Anyway, we looped back up across some flat, slippery, muddy fields alongside Fleet Brook emerging back onto the Moor at Cookham opposite the car park.
Back in the pub there was plenty of copy generated for the Chip Advisor ratings page, not much of it printable though even on the internet. Four pounds a pint for something tasting suspiciously like something from a Boot's homebrew kit.

For added excitement, late in the evening it became apparent that we had lost one of the hounds during the hash. The reason we realised we were a man down was the appearance of a rather soggy Zorro complaining that he'd been hopelessly lost for hours. Since he seemed to be found again now though it was decided there was probably no need for a search party so we all went home to bed (probably, I don't have notes for everyone on that).