"You lazy b*st*rd!"

Well, that's LVH3 for you - always a smile and a friendly greeting when you turn up for a r*n, What prompted this particular Baldbrickian outburst was the fact that I had just pulled on to the car park at the Black Bull on four wheels when I only live ten minutes walk away - at least I think that's what it was. However, as I explained to the hairless one, there was method in my madness. Or maybe I'm just mad. That's far more likely.

Anyway, thing is the village was playing host to a coachload of visitors from our twinning partners from Socx in North-East France, and rumour had it that some of them were insane enough to want to accompany us on our Sunday ramble. Right, I thought to myself, good marketing opportunity here, so I bunged a few boxes of surplus hash haberdashery onto the back seat of the horseless carriage and set off in search of a fast buck. In this post-Brexit-referendum era in which the pound is rapidly heading towards parity with the eurocent, surely our continental cousins would not pass up a chance to acquire a stylish LVH3 wardrobe at knockdown prices? I was not mistaken. Suffice it to say that Socx is now the new fashion capital of France, forget your Paris.

Twisted decided to show off her PhD-level French by saying "Bonjour!" to our guests as she arrived. "Does that mean hello?" she enquired with more than a trace of uncertainty in her voice. Er, yes, Twisted my dear. Chuffed with her display of linguistic prowess, she then over-reached herself by informing them "Je suis Anglais". When I informed her that that actually meant "I am an Englishman", she decided to leave the advanced stuff to the experts.

What the French experienced was actually an atypical trail, in that the hares had laid several miles of road to join the fieldy bits together (where do they get the time and money?). Also, in a bid to discourage actual r*nning (there's far too much of that kind of thing going on these days, if you ask me), one of the hares decided to open the beer stop AFTER the FRBs had gone past. That'll teach the b*ggers to slow down in future - hit 'em where it hurts, right in the alcohol intake.

On on, then, to the Black Bull, for proof that in Lancashire haute cuisine doesn't just mean an upstairs kitchen. Get it? No? Honestly, I'm wasted on you lot. And thank you hares for doing your little bit to bring us a little entente cordiale. I think that's what was in the bottles in the softies bucket. Oh, suit yourselves. Don't know why I bother.

On on to my ante diem decimum Kalendas Augustas r*n (23rd of July, but you knew that).