Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Things You See...

... when you haven't got a shotgun handy.

Went carol singing in Topsham this evening. Yeah - I know. Tin ear. Tone deaf. Can't carry a tune in a bucket. Can clear a room in seconds. That's me. But it was just a bit of fun, collections for charity (Force this year, last year it was Hospicecare).

It's part carol singing, part pub-crawl really. (Topsham has a lot of pubs. And I mean a LOT.) There were 2 gay blokes, 2 straight blokes, 3 lesbians and 1 straight woman in our little group. We wander in and out of the pubs and sing a carol or two (we take requests - including shut up and go away *g*) and the punters have the option to either drop a donation into the bucket or buy us a drink. Most do both. By the end of the evening we've generally collected a fair-sized donation for the current year's charity and we're all fairly merry. (I stayed pretty close to sober this time because I knew I had to do this update and I wanted it to make sense.)

Anyway, there we were, in the car-park of The Lighter Inn, getting ready for our aural assault on the unsuspecting patrons, when we were suddenly surrounded by men. Half-a-dozen of them. Fairly buff young men. Wearing speedos (the really tiny ones - budgie-smugglers an Aussie friend calls them) and running shoes. And nothing else. In spite of the sub-zero temperatures.

The gay blokes and the straight girl were very happy. The rest of us were deeply traumatised.

The semi-naked idio... erm... gentlemen, obeying some secret signal, ran off. And they were doing some serious running. Full pelt, no gentle jogging for them. (Well it was cold.)

I hadn't a clue what was going on. One of my companions enlightened me. Apparently they were hashers. The Isca Hash House Harriers, to be precise. A local chapter of a world-wide fraternity. They describe themselves as a drinking club with a running problem. They don't always run in so few garments. Unfortunately we caught them on a day when they did. I suppose I should be grateful that they were wearing speedos. It could have been much, much worse.

I'm still traumatised though. In fact, after I've finished this, I may just need another cup of coffee and a digestive bikkie to settle my nerves.

Not a lot of updates for you tonight. Enjoy what there is though. See you next week. Goodnight and may your God/s go with you.

Ze

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