March 2014 | By: The Scrotable Scribe
The Return of a Wooden Eyecon
In an event unfortunately about as rare as rocking horse shit these days, last Saturday’s run at Goa Gaja featured the appearance of legendary former Hash 2 Hash Master and possibly, hopefully, now and future R.A., the Inimitable, the Satu and Hanya, Wooden Eye (wild studio audience applause). Yes indeedy folks, and thank Christ for that. Now here’s a Welshman who is one tough customer, calls a spade a shovel, doesn’t take shit from either of them, on top of which he is one of the most spontaneously funny bastards produced by Wales since Tom Jones with some sticky middle aged underwear in his face on stage in Las Vegas.
Wooden Eye had taken the circle reins for less than a minute when the keg piss ran out, in the repeat of an issue that has been festering for weeks. He had the Beer Master on ice in less time than it takes to say “cashew chicken with snow peas”, and a further keg was immediately opened. He mercilessly down downed old mates Nightjar and St. Tits for not letting him get a word in edgewise at a recent dinner outing while he was attempting to unburden himself upon them about a harrowing recent trip to the Uk (U.K.) in order to replace a stolen passport. (This is not enormously difficult to imagine given the impressive vocal abilities of W.E.’s fellow diners).
Tearing up the rule book and throwing it out the window, His Woodenness also named an unfortunate young Asian female virgin who had fallen into a hash hole during the run within his sight, you guessed it, “Hash Hole”. With the power vested in him, he had her on her knees before him as he flicked beer into her face and performed the solemn christening. I don’t want to say what this looked like in the semi-darkness from a distance, but some of us wondered quite out loud if she had her mouth open. It was great to have him back, and it was obviously unanimous that we hope he rears his head more often, as the actress said to the bishop.
What run? Oh, that one. Well, it was pretty damn good as well, and green, green, green. Even as Labia was giving us the lowdown (no pun intended) it started to heavily urinate upon us. In fact we were saturated to the bone in minutes and it continued to cats and dogs it until twenty minutes or so into the run when it slowed to a bearable anglophile drizzle. So it was pretty muddy too as we alternated between wide open paddy and some respectably dense jungle sections. The whole affair seemed to slowly elevate until we descended into a very quaint river, valley and temple interlude, turned left into wide asphalt path and headed upwards again on a brutal angle.
Wheezing, I barely passed Anonymous, hands behind his back, strolling at a sedate leaning pace and looking as if he were taking a Sunday constitutional in Kew Gardens. “I’m soaked, mate”, I observed, to which with typical British understatement he replied “Yes, a bit moist”. What do you say to that? “Well, I would have said damp.” No. I knew I was in the sticks when three local women scuttled toward me handily attired for the weather with the hanging-towel-and-plastic-tub-set on the head so popular in rural Bali this season. One of them used, with daring originality, a hub cap with the hanging towel, the whole effect set off with the accessory of a shovel. It won’t be long before you see this look on the runways of Milan and Paris. Remember where you heard it first!
I just love the sound and rhythm of the Balinese language, especially the rural variety. I don’t know a word of it, inexcusably for a man of my tenure here but it always rises in tone at the end of an utterance giving it a kind of a “badip badip badEE, badip badEE” quality, an observation which I’m sure you’ll find nothing short of mildly interesting, so I’ll now stop my favourite steed Tangent in his tracks and dismount, sorry.
Run verdict: a bloody good one for this surprisingly rural and quiet area given the closeness of an insane Jalan Raya, very little garbage (another pleasant surprise), not a bunch of asphalt running and a pretty accurate calculation of the duration of the runs, good paper, and good checks. It was, as I said, a slippery experience and there were a couple of injuries. Cane Rat’s shin came into unfortunate and violent contact with a cement berm and Whykickanenema managed to sprain an ankle early in the piece thus seeing him hobble in (actually “by” for a start until we bellowed him into the car park that he was benignly limping past even as the circle was in full throated swing). This goes to show the literal “volume” of traffic on that woeful, nutso Jalan.
No doubt we’ll be seeing you all on Oczy and co.’s Easter run this coming Saturday, or as Michael Palin said in “The Life of Brian”, “Crucifixion? Oh, yes please.” On on.
