August 2013 | By: The Scrutable Scribe
Stand by for the Hashional Nanthem
Last Saturday's run at the Shooting Range in Sembung was a bit like Grace Jones in her day: long, hard, amazing scenery and a bit dark early in the evening in the jungle area. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact it was one of the best ones we've had recently (runs), but it did start out, well kind of confusingly. There were concerned (ha!) H.P. calls from the hares to the Hash Master: the short was a 2 hour walk and the long a 2 and a half hour run, everybody should leave a quarter of an hour early, no wait, a quarter of the people should leave every body else behind, an hour early, no hang on, long runners should walk the short backwards half an hour late. If I were a conspiracy theorist I would have been convinced there were "black ops" involved, or maybe in this case "brown ops'' to bewilder the shit out of the bulehs.
As you know, hares taking any form are not to be trusted, I've noticed that they have constructed exact replicas of villages far from the locations of other villages, right down to Ibu's Warung, in order to fool innocent hashers into believing they are closer to the beer than they actually are (while they hide in the bushes and piss themselves laughing at us). True!
Well, it didn't take much urging to convince the great bulk of us (Comes Up) to piss off early, groan, which means it's going to take another several runs with live hare starts to get back to leaving at the prescribed time. The optimum time to leave on a hash run, has proven, over several years (since 1936 to be exact) on average, in the tropics, to be 4.30 in the afternoon, to be exact, if anybody is at all interested.
It was getting hot as hell in the car park and hats were being considered. Mudflaps donned a particularly cunning number that bore an arresting resemblance to a racing Muscovy duck perched on her bonce. Off we skipped in a notably different direction than Labia had bid us do a year earlier. And what a surprise, rather than the pleasantly padi and palm filled rural and flattish run we had expected, we found ourselves on a dramatic descent grasping at innocent vegetation such as immature sengon trees that some poor bastard was trying to grow as we slipped and slid on foot and maximus gluteus down trickling stony falls and generally precipitous topography (see: rocks and shit).
This trend continued with even more difficult ups and downs more along the lines of Pejeng than Mas, and more than we had bargained for. More than two or three ups and downs (four) were on the very long short plus a marathon jungle path run that was perched over an incredible river valley affording spectacular views. By the time we had gained the padis again and were "on in" which took 15 minutes more after sighting the sign, shadows had lengthened considerably and it was getting on to 6.30 of the clock. (You are now officially more sick of the word "more" than I am).
Back at the shooting range it was discovered that German Shepherd was missing, but we knew she was a Frau that could look after herself. Germans can survive anything; their operas are 6 hours long and they don't have a word for "fluffy" – they do though have a word for "butterfly", it is "schmetterling". They're a tough bunch. An Italian family containing many smallish children also went missing, but looking and dressing like the Von Trappes they were probably from the Alpine part of Italy and also survived.
The circle was in full swing with the usual shenanigans e.g. Labia flinging mint juleps at virgins, Wooden eye down downing bleating Welsh folk, Night Jar warbling evensong, when Jangle Balls foolishly attempted to teach drunks a new Hashional Nanthem or three based on "God Save the Queen", "Whatever The U.S. National Anthem Is Called" and "Advance Australia Fair" . This of course veered dangerously out of control with Seppos shouting their heads off, Ockers Oy, oy, oying and Poms being Poms and could only be diverted from chaos with a couple of Dung Beatles ditties to soothe the savage beast of jingoism. Note to J. Balls: as much as we appreciate your admirable efforts, please try to leave nationalities and ethnicities out of things as I have done so assiduously in the last and first paragraphs. Thank you.
It was a great run, circle and G. Shepherd and the V. Trappes's leiderhosen saved the day and got them all safely back to the car park. On on next week to the same neck of the Alps near the Coca Cola factory, bring a hat, one with a little feather in the band if possible.
Yodelidelayitee.
