I was really looking forward to getting drunk at the White House [pub, that is]…man, that takes me back to my 6th grade school trip to Washington DC. But the hare, Bollard Naked, suddenly changed the venue at the last moment so instead of warm reminiscences about Secret Service agents and stern teachers to deal we were sent down the road to Long Hanborough and the George and Dragon. Still, Long Hanborough has 6 pubs servicing the 2600 residents and this was a nice bonus for those of us that occasionally find ourselves off trail, slightly, and in need of refreshment.
Speaking of drinkers of great excess, the Hanborough station was the last rail stop for Winston Churchill’s remains as they made their way to the parish church grounds in Bladon. His ghost loomed large that night as more than once I overheard hashers channeling the Great Man. For instance, shortly into the march, Salty Nuts exclaimed, “from Bladon on the River Evenlode to Long Hanborough a little further up the Evenlode an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across this hash.” “Quit yer whinging, that’s just a fence,” Mummy’s Boy shot back.
At another point I caught the last bit of this conversation that also evoked the Great Man’s ghost:
Finger Flasher: “…yes and you are short but, in the morning, I shall be sober.”
Whadesay: “Yeah, that would be a first.”
Details, details…oh, some Milton Keynes hashers (sort of the German tourists of the hashing world) showed up to recruit for the 20th Analversary of the MKHHH. Bollard felt guilty for sending Gadget off into the Blenheim Forest wearing a deer costume and left early to warn the hunters that one of the deer might yell in an almost human way, but just keep firing. And, the trail was brief but fairly interesting given the short notice for the change-of-site.
The George and Dragon was packed when we returned, largely due to the fantastic food on offer. I didn’t actually see a menu but I heard that Pink Pussy wouldn’t mind being sandwiched by Victoria and Web F@rt, and that picture has put me off dining in the near term.
I bade adieu to my compatriots, stowed away on a vessel to Bicester, and, as the miles ticked by, Churchill’s words once more rang in my ears:
“Even though large tracts of trail and many old and famous Pubs have fallen or may fall to the grip of cheap supermarket cider and all the odious apparatus of temperance movement rule, we shall not wander too far off trail. We shall go on-on to the end, we shall hash in the county, we shall hash on the marshes and through mounds of cowshite, we shall hash with growing confidence and diminishing brain cells, we shall powder our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall hash on the beaches in the hopes of spying some half-dressed 20-year-olds, we shall hash on the playing grounds, we shall hash in the fields and in the streets, we shall hash in the hills (unless we are in East Anglia on a road trip); we shall never be sober….”
On-I’ve taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me-on,
drSR
