A swelteringly hot Monday afternoon somewhere on the lower slopes of Pendeli found a small group of hashers asking themselves what they were doing there when they could have just gone for a cold beer and a swim. Many of them looked rather the worse for wear and were clearly still recovering from the weekend. Gobbler, for example, appeared to have put her makeup on during a minor earthquake.

As 7pm drew nearer, the size of the pack steadily grew. Our numbers were swelled by Oopah who was making a rare guest reappearance and Major Arsehole who had brought along Alice so that she could get her monthly ration of exercise all in one evening. Imac arrived in style by announcing himself on the Marine PA system and Mountain Goat turned up for once before the start. As hashers stood around comparing their weekend hangovers, the horn was blown and soon Flying Sausage and Two-lips began telling us about the run while everyone else studiously ignored them.

Suddenly we were off and predictably enough, the trail immediately took us up the nearest steep hill. Equally predictably, this turned out to be the first of many false trails. However, a surprisingly large group of hashers actually made it all the way to the "F" including Two-lips who was so determined we would get caught out by the falsie that he actually ran it himself.

The next stage was fairly flat and a few of the Front Running Bastards took off into the distance. Not so Hamish MacTavish who was quite content to chug along at the back of the pack in second gear. Hamish has developed a very economical running style which makes it look as though someone has tied his shoelaces together and he just can't be bothered to stop and untie them.

Another steep uphill section took us to yet another falsie although this time Two Lips remained at the bottom smirking as the returning FRBs ran back past him.

From here the trail went downhill in every sense with Mash and Mountain Goat racing each other down a treacherously steep path. The rest of the pack did their best to follow although this was not helped by a conspicuous lack of calling - GM & RA please take note in future runs.

Eventually we came out close to the Mustang Riding stables where it became clear just how far (and uphill) we had to go to get back to base. Spirits were raised, however, by a few verses of "Father Abraham" and then ON ON was called in the general direction of home. Hopes of a fast route back to the beer were quickly dashed when the blue soon took us off to the right through a particularly extensive rubbish dump to a falsie where we had almost looped back on ourselves. From here things got even more chaotic when one or two of the FRBs ran on through the "F" to emerge at the back of the pack.

There was further confusion when the trail met up with the road leading up to the start. The main body of the pack crossed the road and found the trail proper but a small splinter group headed directly up the road, perhaps following the smell of beer or maybe just doing a bit of judicious short-cutting. At one point Strawberry Foreskin emerged from the bushes on the right, ran a few yards along the road and then took off into deep scrub on the left for reasons best known to himself.

For a while it looked as though the trail was going to take us round Pendeli, perhaps via Nea Makri but after a few twists and turns we rejoined the road and this time it was ON INN and into the beers.

Once everyone had queued up in order to congratulate the hares, a circle was formed and S4S began dishing out a barrage of DIOs for reasons both real and imaginary. Notable among these was a chunder given to Dirty and Hairy's daughters (of which this week there seemed to be about 12) and to Carl for losing his young son Connor (or was it for finding him?). There was also a moving ceremony in which acting RA Flesh Gordon handed over an empty plastic bag to Imac who would be standing in for a while.

As dusk fell, the hares gave detailed directions for getting to the Taverna and having listened carefully everyone took off in different directions.

And so ended another chapter ended in the glorious history of the Athens Hash House Harriers.

ON ON!