Stricken down with acute 'diaryerror', our usual correspondent Nick Evans ('St@') was unable to present himself, so I've been asked to do the reportage on this occasion.

I hasten to add that his condition was in no way a result of pie, mash or eels being 'off'. In fact the looseness was not in his bowel but in his calendar keeping. He may have forgotten that 2005 ended (a common error at this time of year). Of the exact truth we cannot be sure, but in any case this precipitated the tragedy that was for him '6/1'.

6/1/6 was the date when Nick Evans registered a 'no show'. As the rules stipulate, a 'no show' means no points, and it's points that make prizes. To put it bluntly, he didn't turn up. So I fear to publicize yet another debacle in the history of the pie'n'mash championship - in which already there have been embarrassingly many. Perhaps it serves up a reminder that unexpected twists in the plot of the p-n-m saga can never be ruled out. Or Roald Dahl for that matter.

On this polar afternoon, Evans, calling for postponement of the meeting, utterly failed to deter the other edacious adventurers with their crazed, glacified eyes and their reinvigorated prurience for kudos.

Undeterred and oblivious to the infelicity at 'base Evans', the pie predators pounded onwards, with an aspiration to satiate on anything gratuitous at the consortium of culinary consummation. Upon adjoining the queue at Arments they were greeted by Leader who rose up from his 'reserved' table like a ravenous lion ardent for second helpings. He had arrived long before from the barren wastes of North London to avail himself of the frittered emoluments of this particular debacle. And he thought that he was the only one turning up ... enter Messers Lucas and Hollingsworth. Leader had ventured all the way into the 'foreign, unwelcoming south', only to nonchalantly embark on the return voyage as soon as he'd finished ingesting.

This is not the first time a divine 'kamikaze' wind has intervened mercilessly to blow the season wide open - to turn the race into another white knuckle bob ride. Leader now leads with Lucas and Evans in his immediate wake, respiring down his dorsum.

Incidentally, the liquor was found to be chromatically pure, with total absorbtion in the red and blue areas of the spectrum. The condiment set - charmingly improvised from plastic containers with pierced lids - I recognised as dating from the early '80s.

Yours,
Richard Lucas (Champion '95, '99, '01, '02, '05)