Whilst it may have seemed that Zorro had set a normal Hash, nothing could be further from the truth, it was obviously a thinly disguised evaluation to see who was suitable to be selected for military operations.
It all started with standing in the carpark for as long as humanly possible in the extreme cold to see who would crack; this is a standard military test to weed out the faint-hearted at the first hurdle, but thanks to the strength and resilience of all the Hashers no one faltered. Ant took to the challenge full-on and met the -1° temperature with only shorts and a T-shirt, ‘the man is made of strong stuff’. Zorro confused everyone by quoting the distance in kilometres, this then led to much muttering and mental calculations as the Hashers tried to convert the distance into miles to make it sound shorter, but the large range of answers didn’t help much and the general consensus was that it was ‘quite a long way’. A hint that this was no normal Hash was given when Zorro pointed out that there would be a lot of on-backs, but it took a while to work out his true motives… and then we were off.
The on-backs came thick and fast - ‘5’ then a ‘1’ then a ‘6’ then a ‘5’ then a ‘6’ then a ‘4’ then there was a ‘check’ followed by a ‘9’ then another ‘9’ then a ‘1’ and then another ‘9’, followed by a ‘2’ then a ‘1’ then a ‘check’ and finally a ‘7’. It did appear that these on-backs were just to test our mental determination and whether we would crack under the pressure, but could there be more to them? Surely, he could not have just set a random list of numbers, and then it started to become clearer once they were all written down 516564099192107. Then the numbers started to drop into place and with a few spaces they became 51.6564, -0.9919 21:07.
Suddenly it was clear, it was a grid reference and we had to be there for 21:07. The Hash picked up the pace and the race was on. As we got closer to the time and the grid reference it became apparent that we were supposed to rendezvous with the helicopter that would have provided us with the information as to where the short-cut route back was, but it was tight and we did not make the rendezvous in time and watched as the helicopter took off leaving us to take the long route back.
--colbreak--At this point the marks faded out as it was not expected that we would be on this extended route and it did leave Zorro to do some heavy map reading on occasions to point out where the flour would have been laid if it had been needed.You could see by the look in his eyes that he was disappointed that we had not made the helicopter rendezvous after the trouble he had gone to, to arrange it. (It was a nice touch Zorro and has seriously raised the bar for others to follow.)
It was now the long slog home, but not before he threw in the ‘man down’ test and Paul who was in on the game, knew how to play his part. After challenging us with a never-ending morale-sapping hill the final test was triggered; whilst everyone stood looking at a gate discussing whether they had been through it before, Paul threw himself into the fallen tree and called for help. The ‘never leave a man behind’ test was on and it was ‘Ice man’ Ant that sprang to the rescue and helped pull Paul out as Roger from a safe distance provided overall management of the ‘pulling out of a tree’ operation.
With Paul rescued from near certain death the final push was on, and we were back at the pub for ‘Tea and Medals’ in no time.
As it turned out everyone has passed the test and is expected to turn up for military duties at 08:00 on Monday with a short-back-and-sides haircut. When you get there, you will find Zorro wearing a Rambo vest and combat trousers with a knife between his teeth waiting to take your winter woodland training to the next level. Me, I will be sat in my office with the heater on, it’s a bit cold out there at the moment.
Final Note: I fully expect that for the next Hash that Zorro sets we will be issued with a chicken and two matches and we will be expected to survive an overnight Hash in the woods.
A Joke
The Sergeant-Major growled at the young soldier: "I didn’t see you at camouflage training this morning."
"Thank you very much, sir."