The Strickland Arms in Ducklington promises clowns the second Sunday in May, but that is not such a tall order as the place was overrun with them the last Wednesday night in April.
We were there, of course, to support Silent’s feeble, erm, that is ‘heroic’ attempts at setting a trail without even a semblance of spatial awareness. Five-point-eight miles, indeed; it was easily 5.8 miles along the shortest vector through the centroid of this mammoth loop. However, the countryside was gorgeous, pocked as it was with the ponds formed in the dormant quarries and filled with the colourful leachates of the mining industry.
An additional trail feature was the statistical sketch and analysis of variance presented before the run in which the distribution of the flour blobs and chalk markings were detailed. Salty Nuts spent the next hour-and-a-half counting blobs on the left, right, center and in koo-koo places as an aid to navigation. Spotting a random outlying chalk mark on Gee Gee’s trousers (talk about your ANAL-ysis!), I dashed up to help correct the sample population in a rare case of cooperation between the scientific and law enforcement communities; and, since this is a family forum, that is the only mention of rubbing one out that can appear here.
Another nice feature of this trail was the proximity to so many Welsh brothels on the last 17 miles of rural track, but as Lock Jaw approached the sheep made a mad dash away from the fence. “Girls, come back, I’m a changed man,” and other protestations were heard to echo in the hills, but the daylight was ebbing and the death march had to continue.
Eventually…mercifully, we found our way back to Ducklington and the beer and food tables on the green near the Bell Inn. The pack trickled in and soon we found ourselves surrounded by locals in a scene that bore a disturbing resemblance to the latter acts of The Wicker Man. Ducklington is named after these web-footed pensioners that overpopulate the place (medical terminology like NFN and Departure Lounge sprung to mind), but FLK Animal Magic speaks their language and dashed over to calm the mob.
Most of the behaviour already noted above met with the wrath of our guest RA, Shagger, but his fundamentalist rage was also directed toward Pink Pussy who received a grudge down-down dating back about a year to some sin committed at an away weekend.
And, then as quickly as the trail had been r”n (in case you missed it, not quickly at all) the circle was finished and the assembly dispersed. The last noteworthy thing I heard was Web Fart turning down an offer of crash space at Silent’s Ducklington batchelor pad: “well, if you were young, hot, and female, maybe” he offered the lonely hare as an excuse…leaving the rest of us thinking, “nil out of three.”
