Bali Hash House Harriers 2

“No Mucking Funkeys”

At the risk of sounding like a hack, there was a distinct lack of Macaques on the forest track both leaving and coming back while running with the pack last Saturday, and that’s a fact. Yup, there wasn’t a primate to be conjured on the perimeter Jalan around the Monkey Forest, where normally there would be more of them than the peanuts in the bag that the little shits would summarily rip off from you then scamper away and wave their privates from a safe distance. Reason: well, it was raining, not heavily but steadily and monkeys don’t like to get wet. Unlike us, a monkey would never dream of leaving the comforts of a warm dry lounge room, driving for 45 minutes through chaotic traffic and wearing a pair of shorts and a singlet on a hairless body, jog through the jungle and scramble through wet scrub, muck and mud in the rain. “Are you insane?” a monkey would retort to any such suggestion. “I suppose you also plan to drink several alcoholic beverages of at least 5% strength, to excess, while making unearthly, tuneless hooting and cackling noises like some kind of ape, then regain the controls of your 2 tons of metal and glass conveyance… wait a minute, who’s the carbon based semi-bipedal Simian around here?” he would enquire. This is one of the reasons such a monkey feels moved to flap his pudendum in your general direction from time to time. Because we are douche bags in his eyes. And don’t get him started on Google glasses and Apple watches.

Anyway, who cares what these fairy little huckers think? It was NICE rain. It didn’t pelt or piss down on us but it was just enough to keep things unusually silent. A steady cooling drizzle and as it hissed away soothingly in the background, everything else was mostly dead quiet off the main roads. No dogs, cocks, motorbikes, no chain saws, no random deafening techno music in the middle of nowhere, or any of the other nebulous noise that makes up the daily tumult of life on this, let’s face it, less-than-serene-even-in-the-boonies isle. It was probably the most peaceful hour and a half I’ve spent while conscious and mentally competent (hmm, don’t know if I should go quite that far) since the Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology lectures given by a German Professor at my old school, who must have celebrated his 150th birthday around the time of the Boer War.

Whoops, off paper. It was a really pretty run too, much like last week’s outing: thoroughly green, quaint and rural, very scenic and enjoyable especially at the lake and temple area. Some ups and downs but nothing outrageous, well papered and marked and again, like last week, hardly any garbage to speak of. So thanks to the Chicken Brothers and co., a bloody fine effort. This was also the most successful tee shirt run that I (me, personally, sendiri) have ever experienced, anyway. Given out in an organized manner to celebrate not only Anzac Day but also the Centenary of the Gallipoli landings; they were excellently designed with a slouch hat on an appropriately khaki ground, used a high quality lighter jersey knit than usual with a perfectly executed V-neck ribbing. Everybody seemed to get one for a change and they were just as unanimously worn. The wantilan we were under swarmed with khaki like Australians on a Turkish beach. Well done Agent Orange and all those responsible, and thanks to Whitebait for his equally khaki sausage rolls, just kidding, they were brown and delicious, even though they bore little resemblance to either a sausage or a roll. Never mind, maybe they looked like that 100 years ago and he was going for authenticity. As long as they weren’t actually 100 years old (har).

There was probably more ups and downs in the circle than on the run, as has been the case with our circular activity of late. It lurched from hilarity to confusion, cohesion to chaos, changed shape from something approaching a circle to perhaps a close up of a cancerous wart; then from semi-circle to crescent, rhombus, parallelogram, right angle triangle. It was about as orderly as a fire drill conducted bilaterally by inmates of the multiple personality and schizophrenic wards. When, where and how will this end? Highlights of cooperation and audience interest were of course Labia’s virgin defloration which always has the crowd riveted; and this week, the Grand Master left almost not a dry eye in the house with Banjo Patterson’s “Waltzing Matilda” – a straight take, no irony, satire or smart-arsery. It was genuinely touching, until of course it had to devolve into the inevitable “All Aussies are Poofters” version. It is the Hash after all, but it was all over the place like mad cowshit.

Jangle Balls reminded us that this was also the 17th anniversary of the F.D.A. approval of Viagra and sang us some “blues”. Blow Joe took us on our regularly scheduled visit to Mobile and Wee Ronnie, The Penguin from Aberdeen, who we hadn’t seen for a while was down downed by the G.M. in honour of International Penguin Day. We thought Night Jar was bullshitting and googled it later, knock me down with a puffin, it really was I.P.D.

All in all a bonzer and enjoyable day, and nobody screeched, bared their teeth and shook their genitalia at us while hanging from the branch of a tree. There were no monkeys either.

On on
J.B.