February 2014 | By: The Scrotable Scribe
Taking a Leek in Sanur'
It was around about this time last year we had our last run in Sanur under very different meteorological, and for that matter, avionic conditions. While Disco Wanker wasn’t the Hare then as he was last Saturday, nor was it Leek Day, I seem to recall that he figured quite largely in that event as well. It was the day Lion Air took a dump in the Indian Ocean at the end of the runway at the Ngurah Rai International Airport and the week that Margaret Thatcher went to that great “General Belgrano” sinking in the sky. Disco was telling jokes about glass bottomed “Sea Lion” aircraft for non-snorkeling tourists and “Lion Air Surf Tours” less than an hour after the event, thus proving the axiom that bad news travels fast and tasteless jokes are measurably faster than the speed of light. The gathered hashing throng were merrily singing lusty versions of “Ding Dong, The Witch is dead” to honour the passing of Our Lady of the Merciless Iron Handbag.
I also recall (but don’t ask me what I did, or had for breakfast yesterday) that it utterly pissed down raining after a huge and deafening crack of thunder out at sea as we were on in, and that all the smart arse Sanur expats who walked or biked down to the run got saturated for their exertions and stood around wet as shags for the duration of the circle, me included. A year ago! How time flies when you’re in a coma.
This year was a different story in the weather department as the non–hat wearing hare staggered into the car park about 4pm visibly affected by a merciless battering from Old Sol. He looked like a fire hydrant with a hanky wrapped around it. I mean, I know he’s Welsh but this was ridiculous. It was all I could do to refrain from stamping on him to put him out, poor bastard. That really should have set the alarm bells ringing, but I thought “Oh well, it’s later now. The worst of the heat is gone, buggar the hat”. What a tragic oversight that turned out to be. It was hotter than Hades out there. We were barely out of the car park before I practically passed out on the hasher in front of me.
Sweating like rapists and pregnant nuns we crossed the insane, berserk stream of traffic on the bypass and quite literally hot footed it up Jln Danau Tempe. We took a novel right turn that took us past some barely surviving paddy territory, at the end of a street of practically non-existent asphalt, hemmed in and hopelessly outnumbered by jostling two story houses on streets barely wide enough for one car. I don’t believe Bali will be winning international prizes and acclaim for its town planning strategies (or its architecture) anytime this century, perhaps this millennium, but at least these monstrosities provided a bit of much needed shade. I should definitely not have buggared the hat.
It wasn’t long before we were on Jln Batur Sari where it becomes Jln Tukad Lestari, the new Expat Row taking laurels from Pengembak now that everything on the beach side of the Bypass is too expensive to buy or rent, or just too old and moldy. We hung a righty down Jln Tirta Nadi 2, another ludicrously busy traffic Jalan past the Hospitality College and the local gym that plays jaunty hip hop style wallpaper music so loud your ears start bleeding as you pass the laundry six buildings before it. Believe it or not, this used to be a relatively quiet back street before the traffic lights where it meets the Bypass were installed, now, well… I won’t go there, and didn’t particularly want to go there last Saturday either. Son of a bitumen, it was hot.
Past the “Man Shed” we toiled and boiled, a white elephant of a bar that was doomed by its location before it even opened, through the traffic lights down the slip road to Danau Poso (or Danau Pussy for reasons that become obvious the later in the evening and the further West you go down it). Continuing along the opposite Jalan, the name of which I’m not even sure, that adjoins a narrow crazy angled gang and gives out onto, voila: Jln Merta Sari, the prettiest most tree lined Jalan in Sanur on which we spent all of five seconds before ducking down the gang that runs between the Mercure and Sanur Beach Hotels out onto the beach walk. What a relief! Ocean, breeze, salt air and coolness. I was so hysterical with gratitude to be there I practically dropped to my knees and kissed the paving like some long exiled political prisoner or returning hostage. Ten minutes later we were cresting a sand rise and beholding the loveliest and most beckoning panorama in Bali – I’ll give you a clue, it’s red and has four wheels.
It wasn’t that long a short and we were back in the land of the living in about 55 minutes. The long however, was a different story at, I’m told, an hour non-stop running or 10 k all up going as far north as the Bali Beach Hotel before turning tail south, buggar that in that heat. Not my cup of broken orange pekoe. I’m a hasher, not a masochist. We stood around drinking beer and singing songs with the word “bastard’ featuring prominently in an orange and yellow sunset that reflected off the water through the feathery tree growth on reclaimed land at that beautifully balmy time of day; a great time to be outdoors in the tropics. Sometimes Sanur sunsets rival Kuta even though the sun does in fact set that side, if you haven’t noticed. It never ceases to amaze me that one is actually encouraged, let alone allowed to do this shit, coming from a country like Australia, a nation so over - governed and over - legislated that you can’t get up and take a piss in the morning without breaking a dozen laws on your way to the shithouse.
Labia broke in some virgins waving his bushy thing around like a witch doctor possessed. Then, for reasons known only to himself, Rabid Mangy dog blurted out a string of absurdity so offensive that Labia, who still badly needs to study the Shriving song, had said canine placed on ice by righteously avenging and eager volunteers while he conducted other business at length. Incredibly, this still did not shut the rabid one down. Even being shriveled in the most punishing broken English humanly possible proved futile. A revived Disco Wanker took the “floor” (dirt) and punished, well, everybody for all description of misdeeds. It was a bloodbath.
Jangle Balls gave away at least a “gross” of Welsh leeks (spring onions from Hardy’s) for identifying the occupations of famous people who were surprisingly Welsh, e.g. Anthony Hopkins, actor in “The Silence of the La-a-a-a-a-a-ambs”. Julia Gillard, female (notionally) Prime Minister of Oz who was born in a place called “Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-rry” in Wales. Keith Potger from the Seekers who sang “I’ll Never Find Another E-e-e-e-e-e-e-we”. Welsh factoids abounded: a Welshman with a sheep under one arm and a goat under the other it transpires is bisexual, etc. While this was all very fun making, the short runners had had plenty of time to get a head of Bintang steam up and were completely out of control, babbling and heckling and generally carrying on like Welsh sheeple. Social drinking was called and the herd wove off bleating obscenities and being wooly minded.
Next week, Sex on the Desk and Slip It In take us to Mengwi which will be quite the Arena for their talents.
On on.
