"Wayan and the Po’ Boys"
Once again we were defeated by “jam karet” last Saturday getting to the Hash. If your Bahasa is a touch shaky as mine always has been, this is an Indonesian idiom that means “elastic jam”, no it doesn’t it means “rubber carrot” (if you’ve been to Hardy’s Sanur lately, you’ll be able to witness these in the flesh), no it doesn’t, it means “carrot jam”. Just let me go to google translate again, ah, here it is, it means “jam your carrot in”. Just kidding, it refers to the attitude to time, indeed the nature of time itself here on the Island of the Floppy Carrots: “rubber time”. We started from Sanur with every good intention humanly possible, at 2.45 pm to get to Bukian near Payangan at 4 ish or just after.
Alas, this was not to be, and I still don’t really know why I ended up driving like a ratbag on steroids for the last 5k from the turnoff on Jln Raya Payangan to arrive at the run site at 4.35! At least the Hash Map said it was 5k. It may well have been, but it took us 1 hour and 50 minutes to get there, all up. How did this happen? Were we abducted by aliens? Experimented on horrifically in private areas no self-respecting alien has any business being in such close quarters to, let alone with long surgical instruments? Did we time travel to the past, meet our grandfathers, shoot them, realize our mistake, go back a bit more, struggle with our counterpart doubles in the past without shooting them in order to prevent them from shooting the grands, go to the future to check on the grand children? What? What? Rubber time is the only explanation, except in our case it shrunk. It must have been on the rebound from our time travel jaunt in the De Laurian Taruna. That must be it.
So, remember the first paragraph? Yes, there was a Hash run when we finally got there, late, for reasons beyond our control if not our imaginations; and an extremely enjoyable one at that. It had all the hallmarks of a better quality run in the foothills: ups and downs that were a bit challenging but not over the top, great jungle settings, some incredibly kick–arse trees and gratifying views of middle-distance mountains across paddys in a fairly sparsely populated neck of the woods. I saw no garbage, the paper was pretty clear most of the time and it was blessedly cool and overcast with barely a sprinkling of rain to dampen the spirits, or us. Not a lot of Asphalt or Anjing (the two double “A” no no’s on a good Hash) and very little traffic indeed. It wasn’t long before, employing my sleuth-like razor sharp faculties, I began to get the general economic picture of the area: while undoubtedly located in them thar hills, this was not exactly the Beverly Hills of rural Bali.
I didn’t see a car or motorbike out in the Desa for a good part of the run, then when I did see two wheeled transport it was a geriatric Yamaha being used to transport a load of banana fronds. Now I’m not exactly sure of the nature of whatever transaction took place as a result of these goods being delivered to the purchaser, but I’m reasonably certain the exchange would not have represented high finance. I don’t think the vendor would have been in the banana frond futures market, somehow. Similarly, I doubt whether the owner of the ancient Suzuki 100cc I saw sputtering down a rural pathway piled high with cut weed, weed which grew wild everywhere, was about to retire to a Cote D’ Azure manse on the profits of whatever contract he was about to fulfil.
Jogging past a gent in Terylene slacks rolled up to his calves, flip flops, a blue tee shirt with “POLICE” emblazoned on the back in white, standing paddy side and dipping the line of his fishing rod into the muck, I enquired. “Ada ikan Pak?” “Ada”, he assured me and held up a separated finger and thumb, “Kecil, untuk oleh raga” which as you keen Bahasa learners know is “small ones for sport”. This afforded me an even clearer portrait of what the affluent local sportsman-about-town does for amusement on a Saturday afternoon. It’s not exactly Zane Grey or Papa Hemingway strapped into their chairs and doing battle with 300 kg blue marlins off the coast of Cuba in the late ‘30’s, but by God, it’s good enough for Bukian. Look, I’m not taking the piss here, I can easily see myself doing this of a lazy Saturday arvo, especially accompanied by some prescription drugs with Tolkeinesque names like “Bilbo”, “Zocor” “Aragorn”, “Gandalf”, “Chantix” or “Galadriel”.
Anyway, it was a beautiful run and we have to thank variously, I’m led to believe, Organ Grinder, Balderdash, Cane Rat, Spook and the changing cast of members of Fleetwood Mac and The Travelling Wilburys. There wasn’t that much of a huge turnout for Saturday’s run, perhaps 60-70 stalwarts. It may have been rain, distance or those pesky alien abductions. However, we did have quite the complement of visiting Swedes in the circle who sang us lusty Swedish drinking songs, at least I assumed they were. They could have been advertising jingles for pickled herrings or sauna parts for all I know. Some of the girls could have been singing about Ericcson or Ikea tampons for that matter, but they held my attention.
I wouldn’t say that this was the best circle we’ve ever had, but it had its moments and where else would you want to be on Saturday night? Surrounded as we were by palms, banyans and temples, beer, jolly company … and then it pissed down. Just like the song, no wait a minute, that’s ‘and then I kissed her’, sorry. It was a great day and evening as usual and if you’ve got friends in town, bring ‘em along next week, it can’t be beat. If you haven’t seen a virgin deflowering ceremony deep in the back blocks of Bali conducted by a Londoner, then you haven’t, have you?
On on
J.B.
