Tuesday 25 January 2011

Hashy New Year

Back after the Christmas break, fifteen hashers assembled in the village of Burgães, near Santo Tirso, for this blow-out, hared by Titchy Percy and me. We were joined by Extremely Green, a visiting hasher from Madrid H3, and were hampered in our explanation of our markings by the fact that the rain that had hit on Friday afternoon and throughout Saturday had been of (cold) monsoon proportions, washing away most of the chalk. Fortunately, we had used a lot of string, so the trail was more or less picked up.

After an on-back within minutes the worst may have been feared, but it was the only one on the largely rural, partly village route and in fact the whole hash took less than an hour and a half, without a pit stop, which I thought was kind of us at this time of year. Our other visitor, Paul, Family Jewel's brother-in-law, with us for the second time, may not have felt us so kind as he managed to check steeply downhill wherever a steep downhill presented itself and was not the right direction. 'All part of the game,' he was heard to mutter through grimly gritted teeth.

Unwittingly, we had set partly on the same course as Big Stick and Snorter not so long back, and they spent the last third of the hash reminding us and anyone else in the area of the fact, knowingly pointing out which direction it could be, couldn't be, was or wasn't. This held us up for a while when they knew absolutely that it was not down a particular cobbled path. Which of course it was. 'Well, this was completely overgrown when we...' grumbled Big Stick as he hauled himself up the old, paved path.

When the end came, it did so suddenly, much to most people's delight. Extremely Green seemed to have enjoyed it and liked the fact that we try to keep everyone together, rather than leave people behind. Mind you, there have been times...

With the usual bash to follow in a friendly little tasca, without Snorter who wanted to rush back to Porto to watch Liverpool lose (when he could have watched Liverpool lose in the restaurant just as miserably), the hashing new year seemed nicely seen in.