"A Comedy of Harers"
It was threatening to rain as we proceeded in a Northerly direction, Your Honour (no wait, that was the Sergeant describing his movements before he busted me and my mates for underage drinking in 19… never mind). Let’s start again: It was a bruised and plum coloured sky indeed as we proceeded up Jalan Raya Payangan and proceeded, and proceeded and kept on proceeding expecting to spy on the left at any second that comforting red and white sign shepherding us to the camaraderie, banter and and warm bosom of our Mother Hash, Bali Hash House Harriers TWO! (TWO!) But alas it was not to be, quite yet.
Further Jln P. proceedings took place, then a bunch more lengthy proceedings, and then it absolutely pissed down to the point that even if there was a sign to see, which as it turns out, there wasn’t, you’d have been hard pressed to make it out. Or as Hash Master Labia, who ended up in Kintamani for Chrissakes, (and he wasn’t alone) later put it glumly: “I couldn’t see fahk oorl and there was fahk oorl to see anyway”.
We were among the fortunate to be greeted by a gaily coloured roadside Blow joe in regulation Grateful Dead tie dyed tee shirt (I don’t know about you, but my thoughts on this particular group of entertainers were always that I’d be grateful when they actually were dead) and a marginally more conservatively dressed Mount Her, gesticulating at the opposite side of the road. We took this to mean, of course, that plans had somehow changed and we were to turn right, but we missed the turnoff even then due to the sign being a creatively earthy and minimalist brown on cardboard brown hue. So many fantastic colours, as Timothy Leary once said. We made it to the car park of the local SDN Kerta school in time to pay Hash Cash, hurriedly doff unwanted accoutrements, don wanted ones, lock the mobil and listen to Mount Her inform us encouragingly that most of the paper was probably now “in Sanur” due to rain and “good luck with that”. “Oh well”, I thought “another Saturday, another Hash” and left it at that. How wrong I was.
This was far from a regular run-of-the-mill Hash. It was far from anything, for that matter, but it was enormous fun in fantastic countryside. This was the first in-earnest wet run of this wet season so far, and dude, it was wet, it was muddy, it was slimy, it was great! There was no lack of slippery, heart-in-mouth descents sliding out of control and wildly groping for any vegetation within reach. Arse tobogganing down precarious sloppy trails of sludge, meters at a time and centimeters from serious drop offs, whooping like a fool.
We were less than 15 minutes out when it comprehensively pissed down on us yet again as we struggled through jungle trails and strode ridge top paths beholding scenes of unimaginable drama and beauty. Mist rose in palls over the thickly forested ridge we had come from, now behind us, once we had crested the river valley wall. The climbs were challenging, as heart-poundingly arduous as the descents were tricky. I was saturated, filthy but very, very content; a pig in shit, as it were. And it wasn’t over yet, no, no. We still had beautiful richly green mature paddies to feast our weary eyes upon, and a particularly striking sylvan scene of a lone mossy temple under a gigantic billowing tree a bit up the road from the paddies.
This run (run?) was judiciously chosen by a couple of old hands who have been around the block. It was, if I may use the Latin I so labouriously learnt at high school, fucking good. My favourite part, besides the pretty climb up the stone steps after the river crossing, and the even prettier multi-step climb even further up almost at the end, was the rope descent, repelling down the mud and rock wall-face to the fast flowing river and its bank below. What a kick in the Hash Khyber that was. B.T.W. thanks to Spook and Organ Grinder for sticking around to show Hashers how to traverse this section; paper by the river, as predicted, having indeed ended up “in Sanur” and the river being particularly brisk and high.
“B.T.W”? Did I just say that? See how far this puerile S.M.S. language has penetrated the culture when even your revered and learned Hash Trash writer, otherwise described as grumpy old shitbag, has descended into using it. What’s wrong with me? This sort of thing is only for spotty twenty year olds who look twelve or vice versa, can’t spell or punctuate, use fonts that look like bacteria and text each other pictures of their private parts. It’s all got something to do with rap, the Kardashians and climate change if you ask me.
Where was I? Umm, what am I doing in this room again? Oh yes, back at the schoolyard, day was swiftly morphing into night under a slate grey sky and a ragged circle was coagulating. It was only supposed to be a short one, (as the actress said to the bishop); personally all I wanted to do was sit by the fireplace (or at least the barbie) at home in a pair of slippers, pipe and velvet night jacket with a brandy and have a nice game of whisk with the dog. But somehow or other having nothing to do with the opening of a second keg, we found ourselves still there at 8.30 pm making plans to meet at The Fly Café. It was St. Andrew’s Day B.T.W. (Aarrrrghhh! Again!) And there was a bit of “fun” to be had with that, especially Night Jar’s incredible rendition of a lengthy classic Scottish poem about a doomed mariner and his crew complete with words like “bairn” and “laird”, “haggis”, “sporran”, “caber” and “bagpeep”. They actually probably weren’t there but I did cover myself and say “like”, like.
Mustafa Shit made a reappearance, we hadn’t seen him for a while, and well, they just don’t make Hash names like that anymore, he’s living proof. If there was a Hash name Hall of Fame, and there should be, he’d be the first inductee. We did indeed end up at The Fly and I must say it was great to see the old place again as well. Under new management, the mahi mahi is still the fish so nice they named it twice. And the band plays on.
On on
J.B.
