Windbag’s nasty tumble

CHRISTMAS wouldn’t be Christmas without a headlong pelt into the deep, dark unknown. The Haldon Hash House Harriers celebrated the festive season by sending us off into the pitch darkness, through ankle-deep mud and straight down an actual waterfall. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

The last hash run before Christmas is traditionally a rather sedate affair, sometimes a short plod through quiet town centre streets, admiring the twinkling lights and ending up in a pub full of tinsel and crackers for a little gentle re-hydration.

This year, however, we found ourselves in Kingswear, under starter’s orders outside the Steam Packet, bouncing up and down and cursing the cold as we awaited the appointed hour to set off. Hashers, as you probably know, follow a trail made up of various symbols, etched in flour on the ground. It is all perfectly environment-friendly, because the flour disappears in the next shower of rain. Some of it does not even survive that long. Somewhere near Brownstone the beam of my head torch picked out the tiny eyes of a mouse eating its way through a blob of flour set down to mark our route.

Fortunately it had left enough for us to find our way. Ernie, a Jack Russell terrier and a supposedly ruthless hunter of all small creatures, took one sideways glance at it and pressed on. He had a beer stop to get to before last orders, after all.

From the village we had climbed out along the coast path, down the steep steps one side of the valley, up the steep steps the other, and out into the dark, dark forest, running on a soft and springy carpet of pine needles in utter darkness, just the little circle of light from the head torch illuminating the way.

Down to our right the waves were crashing in against the rocks, but we had total faith in the hares who had created this late-night labyrinth that they wouldn’t lay a trail that took us over the edge of a precipice and plunging to our certain deaths, so we ploughed on.

A hasher called Windbag took a nasty tumble on the slippery steps. The fall rather took the wind out of his bag, but no lasting damage was done and he was quickly back on the trail.

At the daymark, the tall chimney-like structure at the top of the hill built as a beacon for ships far out at sea, the hares had left a sweetie stop, a tub of festive chocolates whose presence was indicated by a twinkling star propped up against the stonework. It was the best location for a sweetie stop ever. We watched the clouds racing in front of the stars as we ate, looked out at the lights of ships in the Channel and the flashing warning of the buoys marking the mouth of the Dart. What else would you be doing on a cold winter’s night?

Then it was inland to the bona fide waterfall, which may in dryer times be a rocky lane. After a couple of weeks of more or less incessant rain, however, it was a torrent, and it must have been a sight to behold as a long line of figures with little torches on their heads picked and splashed their way down the steep decline.

There was one more long, long climb in the darkness, with the lights of Torbay creating a glow in the sky over the outline of the summit ahead, and then a beer stop.

This is the hashing tradition we like best – a little table set up beside a parked car somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with plastic cups, water, beer and snacks. On this occasion a small snifter of the Famous Grouse was also on the list, and that was very festive indeed. From there on it was all downhill back into Kingswear, where warm, dry cars containing warm, dry clothes waited.

The Day I Started Keeping A Food Diary

I THINK she meant it well. I was talking to an old friend about running, about preparing for a long and gruelling event happening some months ahead.

I had been out for a training run and it hadn’t gone well. I had felt sluggish and slow – cold and wet and miserable. My Strava statistics were there for all to see, and they did not make good reading.

I was bemoaning my lack of form.

“Well,” she said, meaning it kindly, I’m sure. “You’re not exactly at your fighting weight, are you?”

I was cut to the quick. There I was, thinking myself to be a lean, mean, running machine, gliding across the pavements making hardly a sound.

But to other people I was altogether something different. I started hearing the heavy slap-slap-slap of my feet on the floor as I ran, convinced that I was waking people up and making them look up the number of the nearest seismic research laboratory to report a minor quake in the area.

People’s security lights were going on as I passed their houses. I set off a car alarm.

Time to do something about it. The trouble is, of course, that all the things I like are bad, and this is quite the wrong time of the year to be trying to do something about it. I like a pint, and I like a bag of chips. I like a mince pie and a yule log, a dollop of clotted cream here and there on my festive fare. I like crisps, and biscuits, and cheese.

The athletic Mrs H tips the scales somewhere between sparrow and kitten-weight. She sets off no car alarms as she passes the driveways of Paignton on her runs. No bright lights come on in the neighbourhood to chart her progress. The British Seismic Survey has never been notified.

A health professional, she has been taking an interest in nutrition, and its effects on the body.

Protein and carbohydrates, fats and fibre and sugars, that kind of thing. As a vegetarian, can you get enough protein into your system? It is all fascinating stuff, and involves keeping a food diary, making a note of everything you eat and drink throughout the day. Under no pressure at all, curiosity got the better of me and I joined in. There’s an app for it on your phone, of course there is. You type in the things you have taken on board, and little colour-coded pie charts tell you what they are doing to your insides along the way.

And once you have started doing it, there’s no stopping, even at this time of year when culinary temptation is everywhere.

There is, for instance, a packet of chocolate chip cookies within arm’s reach on my desk, and I’m not touching them. If I did, I would have to type them into the app on my phone, and my little pie chart would creep into the red.

I did fall off the wagon spectacularly at the weekend when the Haldon Hash House Harriers had their Christmas do. There was beer and breaded Camembert, curry and cheesecake and clotted cream. I typed it all into my app once the dust had settled on Sunday morning, and sure enough, things went red. I think an alarm went off in head office.

But the scales seem to indicate that I am doing something right. Things are going in the right direction, even if they are sure to nudge a little into the red over the next week or so.

This is your last helping of my weekly flim-flam before Christmas, so let me wish you a good one – be happy, be healthy, be kind.

Whamageddon

THE whole house smells of Christmas cake. At last, with a scant fortnight to go until the big day, it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

My festive fruitcake is cooling as we speak. It is my only serious cooking project of the year, and even if I say so myself, this year’s version is looking and smelling mighty fine. In a few days I will slap some marzipan around it and ice it, before standing a little blue Father Christmas and a reindeer on it, then sitting back and taking all the credit for it.

Mrs H, who cooks magnificent meals all year round for no recognition at all, will smile stoically as I lap up the adulation. The only slightly sour note to the weekend came when I was finally ‘slain’ from the great game of Whamageddon and passed over into a kind of musical Valhalla.

The aim of the game is to avoid hearing Wham’s seasonal song Last Christmas for as long as possible from December 1. Older and younger daughters both fell on the first day, one hearing the song coming over the speakers in B&Q, the other being struck down in a North London branch of Sainsbury’s.

We managed a whole Christmas shopping trip around Exeter without hearing it, but Mrs H was felled during a Christmas wreath-making workshop when one of her fellow wreath-makers put on a festive CD to help the evening go with a seasonal swing. I was fine, however, and I thought I was in for the long haul until I walked into the supermarket and heard ‘…this year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special (special)…’ Oh well, I gave it my best shot.

Musically, the season for desperate dancing is also well and truly upon us. This is the time of year when those of us who have done nothing more than to vigorously tap a toe now and then for the remainder of the year step confidently on to the dancefloor believing we can get away with it. We were back enjoying the hospitality of the Riviera Centre for the second time in a week when South Devon Athletic Club held its annual bash. I’m a fan of the old Eric Centre when it comes to looking after big groups of people on high days and holidays, and it never disappoints.

Suitably fed and refreshed, I stepped out with confidence on to the floor as an old Sister Sledge track unlocked the combination to my dancing feet. Hours later we were still out there, and Mrs H and I were the last people on the floor as the long-suffering DJ valiantly kept the tunes coming. My dancing was almost certainly terrible. Pictures were taken but I have yet to see them.

Even more festive, and very much less blighted by my awful dancing, was Saturday night at Kingskerswell Parish Church, where the Glorious Chorus choir presented the first of their seasonal concerts for 2018. It was completely wonderful – in fact hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck-standing-up wonderful. Unamplified, unaccompanied acapella voices filled the lovely little church with a selection of seasonal songs, not one of them an obvious choice. I had heard great things about Glorious Chorus and their Christmas shows but had never seen one until now. Evenings at the parish church are always enjoyable. Twinkling lights pick out the pews and there is tea and cake in the interval. Some people had brought little vacuum flasks of mulled wine with them. Glorious Chorus brought festive cheer in abundance, and the sound was unforgettable. There is another chance to see them at 7pm this Saturday at Ashburton Arts Centre. You won’t regret the trip.